Maya finished the call about the woman's brother before she tried Rae again. Help had been sent. The caller had used her key and found him conscious on the couch, ill enough to need the response and annoyed enough to complain about it.
Maya told her to keep the door open.
Then she called her daughter. The call went unanswered. She stopped it when the direct line rang.
Elias.
His breath sounded different now. Each inhalation caught, stopped, began again. Maya stood.
“Where are you?”
“Service room. Back wall.”
“Can you move?”
“I tried. My leg won't—”
A cough cut him off. She looked at Imani and beckoned her over. Luis had the incident. The crew was on scene.
“Elias is still inside,” Maya told the supervisor. “Live call. Back wall of the service room. His leg won't hold him.”
Imani relayed it. Maya kept the connection open.
“They know where you are,” she said.
“Rae. Don't let her come back.”
Maya pressed her free hand against the desk.
“She's outside.”
“I heard her. At the kitchen. She answered.”
“We've told the crew.”
He tried to say something else. Maya heard a scrape and a small involuntary sound, not a word.
“Don't try to get up if you can't,” she said, keeping it plain. “Tell the crew where you are when you hear them.”
“The voice,” he said.
“I know what it said.”
“Don't let her do it.”
His words were scarcely louder than the sound of the line. Maya leaned closer to hear.
“I'll speak to her,” she said.
“Tell her—”
He coughed. There was no finished sentence to save.
The assigned operator took the live hazard information while Imani stayed beside Maya. Another call waited in Maya's queue. She looked at its light and at the private phone in her hand.
“Luis can take your queue,” Imani said. “Step away and speak to her. We've got this.”
Maya confirmed the handoff. She told Elias an operator would stay with whatever connection he could keep and that the crew knew his location. She waited until he understood another operator would remain with him.
In the briefing room, she called Rae.
Her daughter answered on the first ring. “Did they get him out?”
Maya's mouth opened before she had decided what to say. He's out. She could say it. Rae would stay on the sidewalk. Maya could apologize afterward, when the crew made it true.
She put a hand against the cold table.
“No. He's still in the service room. He's alive. He called me.”
“Is he badly hurt?”
“He says he can't get up. He told me where he is. The crew has it.”
Rae made a small sound, then stopped breathing loudly enough for Maya to hear the effort.
“You saw Dad's new recording?” Maya asked.
“Yes. You sent it,” Rae said.
“I heard the whole file,” Maya said. “It's those words. Nothing after.”
“I can hear him from the side door.”
“I know.”
“It's so close.”
Maya remembered the kitchen only from Rae's spring photographs. She didn't know what her daughter could see now.
“Where are you standing?”
“By the yard gate. Outside.”
“Stay there, please.”
“The recording says I go back.”
“It says you intend to.”
“He heard me. He thought—”
“Rae.” Maya's voice broke. She steadied it, not hiding the break but keeping it out of the next words. “I want you to stay outside. I'm your mom. I want that very badly.”
Rae said nothing.
“I can't tell you what happens to him. I can tell you the people who can reach him are there.”
“The room wasn't fully isolated. They'll have to check.”
“Tell them what you know. Tell them what you don't.”
“I already did.”
“Then ask if there's anything else they need.”
Maya heard feet moving near Rae, then a radio voice. Her daughter asked somebody a question, waited, answered. When she came back, she said, “They've got the location. They need us out of the yard while they bring equipment through.”
“Can you move?”
“Yes.”
Maya listened to the few steps. “Where are you now?”
“Beside Ruth. Just outside the gate.”
“Dad asked me to stop you coming back,” Maya said.
Rae's breathing changed.
“Because I'm already outside?”
“Because he doesn't want you inside.”
“He told you that?”
“Yes.”
For a long moment Maya heard nothing but movement from the street.
“He always came when I called,” Rae said.
Maya shut her eyes. She saw the wet shirt, the child holding his neck. She could remember being angry at him on a bright beach while he set their daughter down alive.
“I know,” she said.
“He came.”
“I remember.”
Rae cried then, once, a sharp breath that she couldn't swallow. Maya let the next silence belong to her.
Maya put the phone closer to her ear. Rae was swallowing, trying to get her breath back.
“I'm here,” Maya said.
“Don't hang up.”
“I won't.”