chapter five

Jade woke up in the back of a pickup truck, cradled in someone's lap.

She groaned when the truck hit a slight bump in the road, jostling the occupants inside. The movement sent a jolt of pain through her left arm tucked to her chest, and she remembered suddenly that it had broken sometime after the wave had hit them. Her eyes fluttered open, a dull throb beating against her temples - the sky was dark and clear above her, sprinkled with stars, the moon full and radiant, illuminating them with it's light. André was looking down at her, too, face crestfallen.

"You with us, West?" He asked, and Jade felt his arm tighten around her slightly. His dreads were pulled back into a ponytail- there was a small scrape on his forehead, but otherwise he looked alright.

She nodded and swallowed thickly, green eyes observing around her. Tori was leaning against the side of the truck, her knees tucked to her chest and arms wrapped around them, peering over at her with an unreadable expression. Robbie was standing, holding onto the top of the truck carefully as it carried along down a winding road. She could hear a murmur of voices as they passed a huddled group of people on the side of the dirt road; could hear someone wailing in pain, and another person screaming for help.

"Beck." His name was the first thing that she said when she found her voice again, her mind fogged with confusion and her throat dry and hoarse. "Where is he? And Cat?"

André leaned his head back and looked away from her. His expression didn't change, but his voice lowered. "I don't know," he said solemnly. "We can't find either of them."

"We looked everywhere we could, for hours, but neither of them showed up," said Tori. Her words were thick, like she'd been crying. "Then Dre found you - or you found him, really. You collapsed, and we had to get you to the hospital. We're with another group of survivors from the resort and some nice locals that are going, they offered to take us with them."

Jade squeezed her eyes shut, taking a deep breath to try to calm the storm of sudden panic raging in her chest. Her lungs ached slightly; after getting to higher ground, she had struggled to breath, and she had coughed up a lot of seawater as result. "No. We need to go back," she said through her teeth, and one of her hands curled around her left elbow, clutching it to her. "We need to keep looking."

"You need medical attention," Robbie said desolately, brown curls wisping around his face from the breeze. "Your arm is eighty shades of purple and you might have a concussion as well."

"Maybe they're at the hospital," André suggested. "We won't give up until we find them, I promise."

Not wanting to think about the alternatives, Jade chewed at the inside of her cheek, chest rising and falling with shuddering breaths. Beck had used his own body to shield her from the wave, and Jade remembered being torn from him seconds later - that when she had surfaced, he was nowhere to be seen. To think that he was anywhere but safe, to think that he could have died when the water hit, made her stomach turn over.

She shifted in André's grasp, using her uninjured arm to help push herself up. André steadied her, and she leaned her shoulder against his, her back pressed against the window of the pickup. "Cat only weighs like 90 pounds," she murmured, her voice trembling - hardly, but trembling nonetheless. It wasn't like Jade West to show her fear like this, to be anything but level headed in a situation, but her emotions were running rampant, thoughts racing, and she couldn't bring herself to even care. She just didn't have the energy to put up a front. "That wave could have crushed her."

Tori's face creased slightly, and she looked away from Jade, eyes downcast. Tori, Jade knew, loved Cat. "I saw her jump into the pool before it hit her," she said. "That was smart of her. It might have saved her life."

"Yeah well, Cat's smarter than people give her credit for," Jade said sharply, tucking her knees up but being mindful of her arm. At that point, she could hardly feel her hand or her fingers, let alone move them. She knew she should have been worried about that, but it was the farthest thing from her mind. Only Beck, and Cat, who were still out there somewhere, lost.

"I know," Tori said softly, frowning. "I know she is."

André rested his forearms over his knees and leaned his head back. "Robbie's phone should still have some battery life left," he said. "Why don't you call your folks and let them know that you're alright? I'm sure they're worried."

"Save the battery," Jade insisted, unable to keep the bitter tone from her voice. Her mother had moved back to New Jersey before graduation and likely didn't even know she was in Thailand to begin with: Jade hadn't bothered to tell her, and her father, who Jade wasn't in the mood to deal with, sure as hell didn't tell her either. "I'll call them later."

Taking her answer as final, the four of them settled into silence for the rest of the ride to the hospital. Beside her, André drummed his fingers lightly against his bruised knees and stared off in front of him, watching the dirt road. Robbie carefully maneuvered to sit at Tori's left. She looked as if she was lost in her own little world. Apparently, she was not processing anything that had happened very well. Jade couldn't exactly blame her, but didn't bother to mention it. Her throat hurt, her head was pounding, and her lungs burned in her chest. She was done with talking.

She closed her eyes, one throbbing and swollen still, and inhaled sharply when the truck hit another bump in the road. Everything hurt. But, still, nothing hurt more than not knowing if Beck was okay, or if he was even still alive.

She should have gone to fucking Cancun.

.

.

After the tsunami hit, the devastation was so great that it seemed to Tori like most of Khao Lak had gone silent.

It was like nothing she'd ever seen before, the pure rawness of it all; the bustle of tourism and native life wiped out in mere minutes, leaving nothing but absolute destruction in its wake. She saw maybe one helicopter fly overhead, and nothing else but a few buses full of children and elders leaving for the mountains or provincial hospitals. The groups of people who remained at the resort she and her friends had been staying at were very few.

When they arrived at the hospital, she suddenly understood why that was.

Everyone in the surrounding area who had survived, had gone there.

How their driver maneuvered around the massive crowds of people, Tori couldn't say. The hospital staff had set up several triage centers beneath large tents outside the main building, prepped for the aftermath of a natural disaster but grossly unprepared for the sheer quantity of patients that they would receive. There were people everywhere she looked: some crowded around a bulletin board covered with what looked like lists, others searched for loved ones among the patients, children being watched and cared for underneath a large tent closest to the entrance of the hospital. Most of the chaos seemed to migrate toward the doors, where people were ushering those with injuries inside.

The pickup pulled up as close to the entrance that the driver could get it and one of the locals that had offered to take them to the hospital stepped out to open up the back for them. Tori hopped down first, followed by Robbie, and André lingered behind to help Jade down - who, despite sharply insisting she was fine, still looked pale and wobbly at her knees, clutching her broken arm to her chest.

All four of them followed the man as he lead them inside and through the crowds of passing people. At the doors, hospital orderlies and nurses were arguing with several survivors. Tori couldn't understand what was being said, but she had a vague idea by the frantic gestures of their arms, and how they held back those who were trying to push their way through. They must not have room for more patients, or could not accept more simply because they did not have the materials or medicine to correctly treat them.

She worried the bottom of her lip. What if they were turned away? Jade's arm needed to be treated, and her head needed to be looked at in case she suffered a concussion.

André's hands found her arms and held on, tight but not constricting. Tori figured he was keeping close behind her so they didn't get separated. Up ahead of them, the local had taken it upon himself to hold back one of the orderlies that began yelling at them, and Robbie was holding onto Jade's good wrist, pulling her through the doors as quickly as he could.

It took them several minutes to find a place to wait, and eventually they settled on a small room that could have resembled a closet had it not been for the examination table, sink and medicine cabinets. Jade sat down on the table, green in the face, and Tori turned to face the local as he muttered to them in Thai and made to leave.

"Wait," she said, gingerly reaching for his arm to gain his attention. She wasn't sure if he could understand her given the language barrier, but she tried for it anyway, pressing a hand over her heart. "Thank you, thank you so much."

The older man nodded, and with one last look at the others behind her, he was gone.

The door shut behind him. The murmur of the hundreds of voices outside, all the screaming and wailing and the local news playing on the TV's in the waiting area, all became muffled behind it, leaving the four of them in relative silence.

"Jade," Tori began softly, turning to the other girl as she sat upright on the examination table, her shoulders slightly hunched and expression blank. So different than the confident, assertive Jade that she was used to. She thought about reaching to put a hand on her knee, a small gesture of comfort, but ultimately decided against it. Despite becoming somewhat-closer-friends during their senior year, Jade's temperament had largely remained the same, and Tori did not want to risk prodding at her nerves, especially while she was injured. "You should lay down."

"Don't tell me what to do, Vega," Jade snapped, although it lacked her typical conviction. Still, Tori didn't push her, resigning to one of the metal stools near the sink and watching as Jade, with noticeable effort, shifted to lean her back against the white wall behind her, too stubborn for her own good. After a beat of silence, she said: "What are we going to do about Beck? And Cat?"

"If there's a chance that either of them are here, we have to start looking now," André said. He was pacing the left side of the room, unable to keep himself still since they've arrived.

"But there must be hundreds of people here," Tori said, shoulders slumped. "Where do we even start?"

"On our way in I saw a lot of bulletin boards around," Robbie suggested. Tori recalled seeing them as well. "It looked like they had lists of patient names on them. If one of them is here...then maybe we could find them that way. It might not be the best option that we have, but right now, I think it's our only option."

André had stopped pacing long enough to rub his hand over his chin, nodding over at the three of them. "Hey, it's something. I'll take something over nothing."

Tori agreed. "We should start looking then." She paused. "Who's going to stay here with Jade? It could be a while before a doctor can get to her."

Jade immediately bristled in defense. "I don't need a freakin' babysitter, Vega," she said through clenched teeth. Tori couldn't necessarily blame her, but she was in no position - or condition, for that matter - to argue with them.

"We're not leaving you here by yourself," she said.

"Yeah, no way, West," André said. Tori was eternally grateful for him always backing her up. "Someone's gotta stay."

"I'll stay here with her." It was Robbie who spoke up next, adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose. Jade looked even more dismayed than before, but Robbie paid her no mind. He glanced over Tori and André with a faint, but tired smile. "I think I'll stay out of the crowds. You two go ahead and find our friends."

Despite Jade's obvious distaste, she said nothing. Tori released a heavy breath, though the tension did not leave her shoulders. "Okay, it's settled then," she finalized. "We should go."

André nodded, and the two of them started for the door, pausing only when Jade spoke up.

"Tori." It was rare that Jade addressed her by her first name. She sounded haggard, like her body was finally succumbing to all the stress it had been through. Tori looked over her shoulder to meet her eyes, and was momentarily floored to see Jade's were glassed over with unshed tears, one still mildly swollen and a horrible shade of black and purple. "Find them."

She nodded solemnly. "I'll try," she said. "I'll try."

About an hour later, and Tori was ready to resign, the hope that Beck and Cat were there withering away in her chest each time she and André had scanned a list and come up with nothing. The crowds of people were so relentless, searching for lost loved ones, that it took nearly ten minutes just to squeeze their way up to the bulletin board, where a great number of papers overlapped each other, all containing names of victims.

On their way to the fifth and last board they had seen, Tori and André scoped every nook and cranny of the hospital that was accessible to them; scanning hospital beds and calling out their friends names in hopes that someone would respond to them. But it was becoming increasingly clear that their efforts were in vain.

André stayed behind as Tori made her way up to the last bulletin, pushing passed the throng of people. Her eyes went over each list of names twice, three times, lest she miss one of them by accident. Her heart lodged in her throat when she saw the name Caterina, but the flash of hope dissipated just as quickly when she noticed the surname was not the same.

Tori sighed and looked back at André, waiting anxiously behind the crowd. She frowned over at him and shook her head, her shoulders deflated.

Beck and Cat weren't there.

there's really no excuse for me not uploading in like...two entire years, but lost a lot of motivation for writing for this fandom around the time that I fell off, but now that it's back in full force I hope to finish this and other abandoned works, and maybe put out something that I've been working on during my absence. I'm really really sorry about this guys - but worry not, the next chapter to this is nearly finished, and will definitely be up before the end of next week :)

also I know it might be frustrating to have waited 2 years (if you're still around!) and not hear anything about Beck and Cat's fate. but I promise you, it's coming. you'll find out very, very soon.

please drop a review and let me know your thoughts/predictions! they're my motivation for finishing.