At ten-fifteen, the tornado sirens started.
“The nearest hospital was forty minutes away,” Gabby said. “In Salina. My dad went to get the truck. He ran out into the parking lot. And the storm hit.”
She looked up at the ceiling. At the plain white plaster.
Ezoic
“F3,” she said. “It came right across the wheat field. Right over the motel. Took the roof off this whole end of the building. Rooms 16, 17, 18. Gone. Just gone.”
Ezoic
“Oh my God,” I whispered.
“My dad was in the parking lot,” Gabby said. “He got thrown against the side of the truck. Broke his arm and three ribs. He couldn’t get back to her. He couldn’t even stand up.”
“And your mother?”
Gabby smiled. Through tears.
“Jean,” she said.
Jean Voss was fifty-one years old in 1994. Before she and Elmer bought the Prairie Rest, she’d been a labor and delivery nurse at St. Francis Hospital in Wichita for twenty-two years.
