When the sirens went off, she heard a woman screaming from the end of the east hallway.
She ran.
Down the walkway in the wind. In her nightgown. In the rain and the hail and the roaring dark.
She found Marisol on the floor of Room 18. In labor. Alone. Terrified.
“Jean picked her up,” Gabby said. “My mom was twenty-two and eight and a half months pregnant, and Jean was fifty-one and five foot two, and she picked her up. Somehow. And she carried her into the bathroom. And put her in the bathtub. Because that’s where you go in a tornado.”
She looked at the outline of the old doorway behind the shelves. The edge of the pink sink.
Ezoic
“And she grabbed every towel she could find,” Gabby said. “And she climbed into the tub with my mom. And she covered them both with a mattress. And she held my mom’s hand while the roof came off.”
