Free Wake the Dawn by Lauraine Snelling Page B

laughter and a rise in conversation coming from the waiting room. Now what? She continued on to the waiting room. With grins wide enough to stuff a controlled-substance report into, Dennis was carrying a big plastic bin and Yvette was shoving a gurney through the door. No patient, though—plastic and cardboard boxes took up the space, with a large coffee urn jiggling dangerously at the foot.
    Behind them, Gerty Larson and Ellen Jackson came trooping in. Esther knew them, had treated them both. Why were they up at this hour and smiling?
    Dennis called, “All you folks stay where you are, and these angels of mercy will bring this around. We have sandwiches, coffee, and juice for the children.” He put his plastic bin down and popped the lid. Yvette opened the boxes on the gurney.
    Ellen gestured with a plastic pitcher. “I’m doing the juice. Children first, and then adults can have what’s left. We’re preparing more over at the church, so don’t worry about taking the last of anything.”
    Gerty pulled out a plastic tray, put a creamer and sugar jar on it, and began pouring coffee into paper cups.
    Rob appeared in the hall entry, swore a very happy Anglo-Saxon epithet, and gathered juice and sandwiches in both hands. “For the Gustafsons in two!”
    Esther let herself sag against the wall. Thank God for church women who would feed people no matter how the storm raged. How they had done this, she’d probably never know, but when Dennis handed her a sandwich she simply took it and thanked him.
    Dennis wasn’t losing that glorious smile. “They have that refugee shelter set up in our church basement. Really chugging along. Harry in the power truck went to the grocery store and stocked them up with food and stuff; grocery didn’t even charge them. Thank God for their oversize generator; it’s big enough to handle all this. We can move some of these people over fairly soon, I would think.”
    Esther bit into her sandwich and accepted the cup of coffee. One more minute, if I can have just one more minute. Seven forty-five. Maybe she was going to make it. Maybe they were all going to make it.
    “Esther?” Ben beckoned her from the surgery. “We have Hannah ready.”
    “Did you take an X-ray?”
    He shook his head. “I’m a border patrol officer and a hospital administrator, remember? I don’t know how to use that machine.”
    “Wheel her down to radiology and we’ll start there.” Radiology. Sounded so big-city, and it was essentially a closet pressed into use because it was big enough to hold the machine.
    Ben was asking, “No X-ray technician in this town?”
    “One, but I haven’t heard from her all night.” Surely if all were well, Susan would have checked in.
    Ben was sure chatty. Annoyingly so. She didn’t need noise, not even his rat-a-tat monologue. “The repeater’s down and our only radio communication is with each other. Local. The ham operators, though, they’ve been bouncing signals around and made contact with a friend of a friend…you know how they do. Minor miracles sometimes.”
    No, Esther did not know how they did or what they did. And she didn’t want to. But she anticipated that she was about to find out.
    Ben rolled on. “They made contact with Minneapolis, who put the word out. Choppers are lined up to come in as soon as the weather permits, and half a dozen ambulances are waiting until the roads are cleared enough for them to get here. And they told ’em we’re out of blood and saline and everything else. So we have blood and bags coming, lots of units.”
    “Good.” She finished her sandwich and tossed the plastic bag in the trash, then headed down the hall as Ben went off to fetch Hannah. Three people stirred from their places against the wall or on the floor.
    “Is it morning?” one asked. The wrapping around her leg was bloody and she groaned when she tried to scoot back against the wall.
    “It is. There is food available in the waiting room if you can make it down