Chapter Text
“Noah, I told you to be careful! That was my mother’s favorite dish, it was older than the both of us,” David shouted as I heard his chair scrape loudly on the floor and his angry footsteps come towards me.
I hated it when he got stressed out. It always resulted in making me nervous and clumsy more than usual, which equaled to me getting yelled at. Now, with the big storm coming, his stress levels were through the roof.
I whispered my apology in the direction of my feet where he was currently cleaning up my mess, and pushed myself up against the wall behind me, and the probably spaghetti-specked refrigerator.
“No, no, no,” David sighed. “You don’t have to apologize. I’m sorry for getting mad; besides, we both know how much I despise my mother.” He started to clean off my feet. “Did you burn yourself any, baby?”
I knew I should just stay out of the way and not worry about it like he told me to, but after breaking so many of his dishes, along with an array of other things, I couldn’t help but curse myself for being blind, for not being able to see, again; for not taking the time to feel out and make sure nothing was in front of the toaster before I pulled it out to the edge of the counter. I deserved to have my bare feet and ankles spattered with mildly hot sauce and broken china. “No. I can do this myself, though.” I crouched down and took the wet cloth away from him.
“How do you even know where to clean? See? Look, you missed a spot.” He took the cloth back and resumed treating me like an invalid.
“Funny. I can tell when I am or am not clean, thank you,” I mumbled, but mostly to myself since I’d clearly missed a lot of spots.
“Oh yeah, I’m well aware that you can,” he muttered back, simply petting my legs with the cloth now, more than likely just to touch rather than clean. “Especially after having to clean up yourself after we’ve… well, you know,” he teased.
“Is that all you think about, David, you perv,” I swatted his hands away to stand back up.
“Hang on a second, babe, I’m not done,” I could hear the smile in his voice, as he emphasized, “There’s spaghetti allll over these pretty, long legs of yours,” in that odd, Southern drawl of his that I loved to listen to.
When he was finally done, he ordered me into the living room so he could wash the dinner dishes without further threat of plate destruction. I found the couch without much difficulty; I’d gotten substantially more familiar with the layout of the house – but clearly not the china – since I’d moved in with David about a year ago. It was a cozy, small one-story house, easy for me to get around in and open, nestled in the heart of Lakeview, New Orleans.
One thing I could say for sure about living in this place, was that it was the complete opposite of life in Wyoming; for one, Wyoming never had severe hurricane scares.
I turned on the TV – a good source of entertaining background noise – and found it already on the local news channel. David had basically locked the TV to this channel almost a full week ago. Apparently, this was supposed to be a very serious storm.
“…At its most powerful level, Hurricane Katrina – now a category five storm – threatens to bring wide-spread destruction to coastal Mississippi and Louisiana. This storm is anticipated to impact the greater areas of the Golf Coast, which includes the city of New Orleans, whose metropolitan area rests at most six feet below sea level. The storm is expected to make landfall anywhere from five a.m. to eight a.m. tomorrow morning… We go now to our friend Steven, who is now stationed near the Superdome. Steven, what’s the update on street now…”
I closed my eyes as David came to sit beside me on the couch and listened to the weatherman and anchorwoman go back and forth about the statistics and theories surrounding the storm named Katrina for almost an hour, completely intrigued by their conversations. There was talk of last-minute evacuations and plans for repairs after the storm passed. Most of it sounded pretty common sense; the things my family would prepare for if a tornado or something were coming.
“Hey, David? What’s a hurricane like?”
“What’s a tornado like,” he questioned back smartly, getting edgy again. The news report of what the storm had already done to Florida didn’t sound very good at all.
“Well, I haven’t been in one since I was eight, but, it’s a lot of wind, loud… like standing next to a moving train, scary… especially when it sucks your house from off the ground like it did it to my aunt’s house. We live really close to the mountains so the ranch stays mostly protected, but in town, I remember it being really bad.”
“Hm.” I could tell that I was pushing his buttons and I hadn’t meant to, but if we weren’t planning on avoiding this storm, I wanted, needed to know what to brace myself for. “Well,” he started, “imagine all of what you just said, but with water instead of a bunch of dust, and add in a couple floods and more wind, and that’s basically it.” He turned up the volume of the TV.
“I think we should have left,” I muttered.
“And gone where, Noah?”
Good question. At this point, every flight out of New Orleans had to be full – and I doubted my nerves were stable enough now to even get on another plane – and there was no way in hell David’s parents would let us stay with them, not if I planned on showing up. If that were the case, surviving a hurricane would be a piece of cake compared to sitting through their bigot-fueled wrath, again. “Hey, David?”
“What?”
“What’s a flood like? Have you ever been in one before?” I touched his hand and he pulled it away, getting irritated. He could be such a baby sometimes.
“Noah, I wish you would take this seriously.”
“What are you talking about? I am. Hello, I live here too, and I’d just like to know what it is I’m getting myself into. Forgive me for being blind, and for growing up in a place with no coastlines and hurricane threats. It’s not like I can just ‘look it up’ online and see what it is.”
“Fine. Sorry.” He finally calmed down. “Okay, think about this room, the chair we’re sitting in.”
I sat back again and thought about how the air circulated the space, which places I usually bumped my knees on, the fiber of the couch, the curtains, “Okay?”
“Now imagine all of that being under anything from, say, ankle-deep water to muddy, debris-filled, possibly toxic water that consumes you instantly. Oh yeah, and if you ever get stuck in the later – which is almost impossible thanks to the levees up everywhere – and don’t know how to swim, you’re drowning,” he finished crudely and turned off the TV, standing up. “I’m not much for company tonight, babe, I’m going to bed. Good night, Noah.”
I jumped up after him. “Hey wait! Why are you getting pissy at me, I didn’t do anything. I thought you said the dish was no big deal!”
I rounded the corner to the bedroom and ran into his back, knocking him forward a few steps. I didn’t apologize.
“Just stop, Noah. I’m tired; leave me alone.” He sounded overly exhausted to prove his point. “It’s not a crime to be irritated or pissed off.”
“It is when you take it out on me! All I did was ask you a couple questions. I’m sorry if it’s a bad storm, but I mean, I’m scared too. It was just a question.”
“A dumb question. Noah, a huge hurricane is coming, like, tomorrow, and now you ask this shit? How is it you finished college without knowing what the hell a damned flood is!? I mean, I know you can be immature sometimes, but not dumb. If you want me to stop being stressed out, stop annoying me. That’s all I ask, now can we please just go to bed, or something?”
Something lightweight hit me in the chest. I bent down to see what it was. David had thrown his shirt at me. How very mature.
I knew where this was coming from; David was scared and felt trapped in a corner by the threat of his house getting damaged or blown away. When the college loans and bills came in, or when he’d have a fight with his mother, who lived a million miles away in the French Quarter, about him being with me, he’d get mean like this. It was a normal reaction I’d grown used to.
But it didn’t make what he’d said hurt any less.
I turned to leave the room. I didn’t need to put up with this; I’d sleep on the couch if I had to. And when the water-tornado destroys the living room and I drown in a toxic flood, he’ll only have his childish temper to blame and keep him company at night.
Well, at least I tried to leave, until my foot got caught in his shirt and it tripped me up, bringing me to the ground hard. Classic exit.
I could feel David trying to pick me up in a panic, before nothingness. “Noah! Oh my god, are you okay!? Shit, you’re head’s bleeding! Noah? Noah…”
* * *
I woke up about five minutes later lying on the bed with a killer headache and a sore leg. “What happened?” Feeling groggy, I could hear David rummaging around for something in another room. I moved to the edge of the bed and tried to get up. “David?”
“Stay on the bed, you’ll get blood in your eye!”
“What!?”
“I think you might have twisted your ankle a little. You caught the coffee table on your way down; you got a nasty cut over your eye.” He hurried back to the bedroom and went into the joined bathroom.
“What are you doing in there?” I winced as I touched the cut, fingers coming away wet.
David continued to search the bathroom, while I sat and waited. “Damn it, of course we don’t have anything we need.” He whined, and knelt beside me, dabbing at the bleeding cut. “I blame myself for this.”
“David, it’s not your fault. I’m clumsy. Shit happens like this all the time. Get over it, already.”
“It is my fault. I’m such a jerk. Damn it, it’s already raining; I forgot to restock the first-aid kit and I can’t take you the hospital for stitches this late. Not in this crazy weather,” he sighed, completely crestfallen now.
I reached for his hands to stop him from fussing over me so much and held then, trying to calm him down. “It’s okay, David, I’m okay. I just need some painkillers and sleep and I’ll be fine. We’ll go when the storms over, okay?”
“No. I caused this; I need to fix it. It’ll get infected if we leave it open, and its too deep… Noah, we don’t have any more painkillers, or antibiotics here. I’m going to have to go out somewhere, and get some. If I’m lucky I can get to one of the shelters or something and get some medical supplies.”
“Wait. What? No, no, no, I’ll be fine, you shouldn’t go out now.” Once again I reached for him and he moved away. I tried to get up after him, but I got dizzy and had to stop trying to move. David was making a terrible mistake, and he wasn’t listening to reason right now. I felt helpless to stop him as the rain and winds picked up outside and my legs felt like lead.
“Listen, I’ll only be out for an hour and then I’ll be back and we can go to bed, okay? You won’t even notice I’m gone before I get back, okay? Don’t worry about me; I’ll be fine.”
Without so much as a hug or goodbye, he left me.
He left me.
Alone in the house.
After being here a whole year, he’d never done that before; always making sure I was at least with someone who could watch after me when he wasn’t able to be here, always afraid something would happen and I’d need help, always making sure that we were together as much as possible…
Now here I was, sitting on the bed holding a cloth to my bleeding forehead waiting for him to come back home to me.
Thirty minutes past as my watch announced the time.
Then an hour.
Then two hours.
I could hear the wind rustling angrily outside as the rain beat against the windows. An uneasy feeling came over me. What’s taking him so long to get back? I got up tentatively to search for my cell phone.
When I called David’s number, it rung twice before the annoying ringtone went off somewhere from the other side of the bed. I kept it ringing until I could reach it, hand bumping into his wallet along the way.
I counted to ten to calm my nerves, then to one hundred, but it didn’t work.
He’d left without saying goodbye, without his wallet, without his phone, without me. Which meant that he could literally be stranded anywhere right now, without any way of calling for help. Or, maybe… No, he wouldn’t do this on purpose. I mean, this is David. He would never do that to me. He wouldn’t leave me here alone in all this.
But, then again…
As the wind and rain grew stronger still, I had a terrible feeling David wouldn’t be coming home back tonight…
* * *
I drifted out of sleep a few hours later, halfway sitting and laying on top of the bed to what sounded like a train running right outside the house. “David?”
No answer.
The cut on my forehead had finally stopped bleeding, but my headache persisted. The windows were rattling violently and the air felt too thick. I got up and limped out, feeling my way carefully to the kitchen, and opened the small window over the sink to let out some of the pressure. Wind and rain instantly attacked me, it sounded like bombs were exploding down the street. I wasn’t sure whether to reclose it or not, but figured I’d keep it open just in case, figuring that if the hurricane sounded as if it were already tearing off pieces of siding and shingles, a little rain inside the house wouldn’t hurt it anymore.
Where the hell is David? Was he on his way back? And if not, did he have a safe place to stay? I couldn’t tell what was happening outside, but knew it would be impossible and way too dangerous to drive in this wind.
When I opened the refrigerator it felt only mildly cool, which meant the power must have been out for a while.
There was nothing else I could do at that point but go back to the bedroom. I felt utterly helpless. I couldn’t call David, there weren’t any neighbors’ houses to flee to, I didn’t know anyone that well in the neighborhood; the small group of friends I’d made here were really all David’s friends, and they all lived on the other side of town, which is hopefully were David was right now. Maybe he’s with Sarah… or… that guy he meet at that party at Sarah’s place… No. He’s with Sarah. Hopefully.
I sat on the edge on the bed pathetically holding David’s phone and wallet as the wind continued to assault the house. I couldn’t convince myself as easily as I should that David was coming back. I had to be honest with myself; it wasn’t just the storm that had him stressed. It seemed like ever since I’d moved here, our relationship had been going on a rollercoaster for us. At first, I hadn’t thought moving in would be a good idea; that sooner rather than later, he’d get tired of constantly having to take care of me, of cleaning my messes, of giving up so much for me. But he had convinced me to stay. Now, here I was, constantly getting yelled at by his family, constantly fighting back, and apologizing to David for being so clumsy, and here he was, gone.
But it wasn’t all bad all the time, though; far from it. We’d had just as many great moments as bad. I was sure he loved me as much as I loved him, as much as we’d been through together in just this first year… but now I wasn’t sure of anything.
It didn’t make any sense. If he wanted to break up with me, fine. But why leave me in his house, with a huge bleeding cut on my forehead, in the middle of a hurricane? He could be a jerk sometimes, but… he couldn’t be that mean. He wasn’t that mean, he was an angel, for Christ’s sakes, but I couldn’t control my self-esteem, couldn’t focus on everything else going on in my head when my ears felt like they were going to explode the next time the wind blew something else down—
Something rumbled loudly outside and snapped very close to the house. I jumped up. Now would be a great time to have working eyes. When I’d been in Wyoming, I’d always been with family during the storms there. Hell, all my life, I’d been with someone who could tell me what was happening… I didn’t know what to do now. I thought about calling my parents back home, but quickly remembered why – in spite of whatever was going on outside – that wouldn’t work; they would complain and yell for waking them up, then tell me this is what I deserved for leaving them and moving here so far away from them, that they missed me and love me, and then hang up after saying goodnight to David and I. I’m screwed.
I dropped his things back on the bedside table and lay back down, giving up. There was nothing else I could do now but wait until the morning.