the wife holding what appeared to be a newborn baby, got into a waiting car, headed home to begin their family life together.
He seemed to be letting everyone down. Including—no, especially—Olivia. He could almost feel tonight’s nightmare coming on.
Where did he belong? Here, or there with Charlie?
Or in neither place?
Sitara, Kedar...last spring
THE EARTHQUAKE HAD come first. Without warning, the land began to shake, tremors shifting the simple huts of the village, sending people running into the street. The few two-story buildings swayed and windows shattered.
From his office at the clinic, which was shaking right along with the rest of Sitara, Sawyer watched it happen. There was little he could do. Such quakes happened now and then, more often than he cared to think about. People huddled together, babies cried, dogs and chickens ran for shelter.
After a minute or two, the quake subsided. Sawyer peered out the window but saw little damage. During the monsoon season after summer, he’d worry more about landslides, but in spring...
The thought hadn’t left his mind before he heard the rumble of sudden movement, and to his utter horror the whole side of the mountain that reared up at the end of the main street began to shift.
People looked up, screamed, then ran again, fleeing toward the clinic where he stood, waving their arms, looking back with their mouths open, gaping in terror.
Sawyer froze. In a wide swath of grayish-tan dirt and a gathering cloud of dust, rocks and boulders swept toward them, toward him, ripping trees out by the roots, consuming houses and sheds and farm animals like some giant hand clearing the green mountainside, the growing crops and anything else in its path. Like some monster, roaring like thunder. He would never get that sound out of his head.
Before he could move—but where to go?—some of the townspeople had swarmed into the waiting room of the clinic, weeping and moaning. Others hadn’t been as lucky; the landslide had buried them at the end of the street, sliding past the clinic but destroying the outbuilding that served as his and Charlie’s hospital. He knew the people inside would be crushed as the infirmary collapsed under the weight of rock and soil.
A woman rushed through the clinic door, one arm hanging, obviously broken. A compound fracture. He had to move, to help.
But shock had stunned him, and where was Khalil? After seeing him at the clinic earlier for a minor complaint, Sawyer had sent the boy back to school. Sawyer tried to move but couldn’t. He felt stuck, as if in cement or quicksand, and people were still yelling. Help us!
* * *
IN THE MIDDLE of the night, Sawyer jerked awake. He’d been dreaming, just as he’d expected he would, but the horrific images followed him into consciousness. He fell back against his pillow, sweating, remembering how he’d failed in Kedar.
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