Boyd Morrison: The Tsunami Countdown

“Don’t you dare let Rachel try to play matchmaker. I’m very happy being on my own right now.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Kai said. “I’ll make sure you don’t get stuck with him all night.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” she said, climbing in. She unrolled her window and nodded at the center’s main building, a low, squat structure typical of the government cinder-block construction from the 1940s. It was bland but tidy, with a fresh coat of whitewash and neatly manicured hedges. The words “Richard H. Hagemeyer Pacific Tsunami Warning Center” were emblazoned on the front of the building in large letters, honoring a longstanding director of the National Weather Service. It was only a hundred yards from Kai’s house.

“Must be nice being a thirty-second walk from the office,” Teresa said.

“Not always.”

“I get it. The good part is being close to work. The bad part is being close to work.”

“Exactly.”

Teresa laughed. “All right, you two,” she said to the girls. “Seat belts.”

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Kai said. “Rachel wants you to call her on your way.”

“Okay. And I might as well get your number in case I have to reach you.” Teresa dug her cell phone from her purse and flipped it open. “Oh, crap!”

“What’s the matter?” Kai said.

“I didn’t charge my phone last night. The battery is almost dead.”

“Now, don’t you wish we had my cell phone here?” Mia said.

Teresa swiveled in her seat. “What I wish is that I had taken it away from you before we got that bill for three hundred dollars’ worth of text messages last month.” She swung back around to Kai. “What’s your number?” Their fingers pecked at the phones as they traded info.

“I’ll just talk to Rachel for a minute,” Teresa said. “If I don’t answer my phone, you’ll know why.”

“No problem,” Kai said.

They gave a wave and were off. Kai patted Bilbo on the head.

“Looks like it’s just us boys now,” he said, but the dog was already sniffing around the hibiscus bushes and making his mark.

Kai’s cell phone rang. He opened it assuming it was Rachel, but the caller ID told him it was the PTWC. He punched the Talk button and heard the voice of Reggie Pona, the only other geophysicist staffing the Center that morning.

“Hey, Kai,” Reggie said. “I tried you at home but no answer. Are you around?”

“I’m standing outside. Just saw the family off.”

“As you can see, the tour group isn’t here yet. But I thought you might want a few minutes to look at something before they get here.”

“Why? What’s up?”

“I just issued a tsunami bulletin.”

9:03 a.m .

The Grand Hawaiian was the newest and swankiest of the luxury hotels lining Waikiki Beach. Constructed over the razed remains of a 1940s apartment building, the 1,065-room hotel was the brainchild of a Las Vegas resort mogul looking for new locations to expand his empire. An airy pedestrian sky-bridge at the sixth-floor conference facility connected its two twenty-eight-story towers. Rachel strode onto the sky-bridge from her offices in the Akamai tower toward the main ballroom in the Moana tower, carefully reviewing the checklist for the disabled veterans brunch while she walked. The governor of Hawaii was scheduled to address the group and then accompany them to a remembrance ceremony at the Hawaii State Veterans Cemetery. It was the biggest event in the young hotel’s history, and she was on the hook to make sure everything went off without a hitch.

As she ran through the routine checklist, Rachel couldn’t help but think about her late-night conversation with Teresa. As a resident, Teresa was charged with saving patients on a daily basis, making a fundamental difference in their lives and those of their families. Rachel, on the other hand, was responsible for making sure that there were enough servings of mahi mahi at the brunch.

Her job as a hotel manager was comfortable and paid well, but being a doctor had to be infinitely more rewarding. Rachel had thought about going into medicine long ago, but for financial reasons she never seriously considered it. So when she met Teresa, it was Rachel’s opportunity to help someone else achieve her dream.

Teresa had been a nurse when she introduced herself to Kai and Rachel during Lamaze class. Teresa and Rachel had hit it off immediately, but the lout Teresa was married to at the time didn’t get along as well with Kai. The two women got even closer once Rachel, after years of working on Teresa, finally convinced her to pursue her passion and go to med school. Teresa’s husband, who wanted her to give up working altogether and become a stay-at-home mother with five children, filed for divorce. To make things worse, it also turned out that he’d been having serial affairs on his business trips. During that difficult period, Teresa had leaned on Rachel, and Lani and Mia spent every non-school hour together.

When Kai accepted his new job, Lani was devastated about leaving Mia. So as soon as Teresa had a week off from her third year of residency, she planned a trip to Hawaii, and the Tanakas happily agreed to host them.

With Teresa visiting, Rachel was reminded that she had abandoned her dreams for practicality, and she didn’t want her daughter to make the same mistake. If Lani wanted to become a scuba diving instructor or a professional soccer player or anything else, Rachel wanted her to have that opportunity.

Halfway across the bridge, Rachel was so deep in thought that she nearly ran into Bob Lateen, the chairman of the veterans conference. His frown told her she was about to have another problem.

She shook off her reverie. “Can I help you, Mr. Lateen?”

“Mrs. Tanaka,” Lateen said, keeping up with Rachel in his motorized wheelchair while she walked, “you assured us that we would have sufficient accommodations for our accessibility needs, but there is a serious situation in the ballroom that needs to be taken care of immediately.”

Rachel squinted from the sunlight streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the skybridge but still maintained a polite smile.

“Mr. Lateen, I want you to know that we take your concerns very seriously, and we value your patronage. I will do anything I can to help. Now, what’s the problem?”

They exited the bridge and came into a lavish foyer. Some of the attendees were already milling about. Rachel and Lateen weaved their way through and entered the Kamehameha Ballroom, the largest in the hotel.

“The problem,” Lateen said, “is that we are supposed to start the brunch in less than an hour, and I can’t even get onto the dais.”

He pointed to the wide raised table at the back of the ballroom. On the right side, a standard staircase led up to the dais. On the left side, a short ramp had been constructed over the staircase. Now Rachel could see the problem.

As instructed, a ramp had been installed, but whoever oversaw the construction either hadn’t done it before or hadn’t thought about the needs of the person that would be using it. They had essentially laid the ramp directly over the stairs, canting it up at a slope impossible for anyone in a wheelchair to negotiate.

“If I use that ramp,” Lateen continued, “I will look like an idiot because I will have to have three people help me up. They might as well carry me up the stairs on the other side.”

“I understand the problem, sir. Let me contact the contractor. We’ll have this fixed before the brunch starts.” She pulled out her walkie-talkie.

“Max, is the dais contractor still in the hotel?”

Max Walsh, her assistant manager, picked up immediately.