Fated Ch. 26

In my bedroom, the unplugged laptop was playing a bunch of slow songs loud enough to be softly heard from the living room, where Eric and I were doing a slow dance. Leaning against him, I felt protected, cherished, loved, honored. It was a great contrast to the storm raging around the complex, the lightning occasionally striking close enough to our apartment that one or both of us would jump as the thunderous sounds shook the floor beneath us. Yet I knew that, in my big brother's care, no harm would come to me.

Then the unexpected happened, and from having grown up in an area where this was a very real threat for much of the year, we both knew exactly what it meant:

The city's rarely-used tornado sirens sounded, just barely audible over the intense thunder enveloping the city.

We wasted no time. Hand-in-hand, we hurried to Eric's bedroom closet and closed the door. Like mine, his closet was the walk-in type with enough room for both of us to huddle comfortably on the floor against the built-in shelving at the back of the closet. We huddled in the darkness, my heartbeat nearly as loud as the thunder shaking the building. My face was buried in his neck as he held me tightly, each of us simply waiting, hoping that the tornado would not reach us.

"Shit!" I heard him say, and I lifted my head to discover that we could no longer see any light through the tiny space at the base of the closet door.

This is it, I thought, but if I must die, at least I'll die in my big brother's arms. Somehow, that brought me comfort despite my fear, although I was still concerned that, in death, rescuers would find me topless with my big brother.

*****

It was nearly 11:30PM when Eric's cell phone rang, waking us both. "Eric here," he said softly, his voice clearly groggy. A pause. "Oh my..." Another pause. "I'll be there at sunrise."

"What is it?" I asked as he ended the call.

"The tornado practically destroyed the office building," he said. "I'll need to be there in the morning to help try to find our equipment in the rubble and help start the insurance process."

"Damn..." I muttered. But the main thing is that the tornado had struck at night, so there would have been virtually no one in the building.

Reaching for his cell phone again, Eric reset the alarm.

*****

My place of employment was also affected, not by the tornado itself, fortunately, but by the debris as the tornado had passed very close to main campus.

I looked up at the main library with sad horror. The once-beautiful brick building clearly showed the signs of multiple impacts by heavy objects, at least some of which lay inert on the ground: a car door, part of a telephone pole, large tree branches. Virtually all the windows had been destroyed, and I was almost certain that the books and other items on the east side of the library were damaged by water.

Still, the campus in general looked much better than other parts of the city. From the rail line, I had witnessed incredible destruction. Homes and businesses had been demolished. I had seen plenty of overturned vehicles, and not all of them were in the streets. Emergency crews had been seemingly everywhere: police directing traffic, ambulances hurrying between the tornado zone and the various hospitals. There had been two Red Cross vehicles visible, and plenty of helicopters flying overhead.

Not surprisingly, I was told to go home, that it would be at least a week before the library would be able to open again. "If you can, get out of town for the week," my supervisor told me. "My town was devastated by a tornado about ten years ago, and the next three months were the most depressing time of my life because I had nowhere to go and nothing to do. That was why I came here, because I just had to get away. I suggest you do the same, and by the time you return, things should be almost back to normal here on campus."

I strolled across campus. The area around the main library had seen the worst impact from the flying debris. Fortunately, all the dorms were on the other side of campus, so the few students living on campus for the summer had all been safe. Still, it was hard to look at everything, hard to see the people in the impacted neighborhoods walking around as if in a daze. It made me remember something a professor had said once about being in Berlin just after Reunification, that it had been incredibly easy to spot those who were originally from East Berlin because they had an aura of gloom and sadness around them, and the same could be said of the residents and business owners of the impacted neighborhoods.

The tornado had "jumped" at one point, which spared a convenience store I had often frequented when living on campus. The store's owner greeted me with a sad smile, clearly thankful that his store had been spared from any direct damage but clearly distressed nonetheless.

And, making matters worse for everyone, the heat and the humidity were both incredibly high to add to the collective misery of the city.

I rode the light rail back to my own neighborhood, once again sadly riveted by the destruction along the way. It was a relief to be back at the apartment complex, but I also felt guilty that others in the city were dealing with such terrible loss of property (and life, as I later learned from the television news) while all my belongings were perfectly safe, and my big brother and I had survived the turbulent evening with no incidents.

"Hey little sister," Eric said when he called me around lunchtime. "I'm coming home, and I'll be working from home for at least the next month."

"I figured as much. I'll be home for at least a week as well until the library is officially open again."

When my big brother arrived, I immediately went to him, and we hugged each other tightly. What we had each witnessed that morning had changed us forever, and, perhaps strangely, had further solidified our forbidden relationship, strengthening our love in ways no one else would ever understand.