“How are you getting home?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Listen, T.J. hasn’t even called his parents yet. I don’t know anything at this point, but I’m going to give his mom and dad your number so they can coordinate with you. Wait for their call, okay?”

“I will. Oh, Anna, I don’t even know what to say. We had your funeral.”

“Well, I’m alive. And I can’t wait to get home.”

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter 40 – T.J.

Anna handed me the cell phone. I dialed my number and waited for someone to answer. Pick up, pick up, pick up.

”Hello?” It was my mom. A wave of emotion washed over me when I heard her voice. I hadn’t realized until that very moment how much I’d missed her. Tears filled my eyes and I blinked them back. Anna put her arm around me. “Mom, it’s T.J. Don’t hang up.” There was silence on the other end, so I kept talking. “Anna and I didn’t die in the plane crash. We’ve been living on an island. The Coast Guard rescued us after the tsunami and we’re at the hospital in Malé.”

“T.J.?” She sounded weird, like she was in a trance. She started crying. “Mom, put Dad on!”

“Who is this?” my dad yelled into the phone.

I felt a second wave of emotion when I heard my dad’s voice and I wanted to hold onto it, but my desire to make someone understand what had happened and where we were, won out. My voice was steady when I said, “Dad, it’s T.J. Don’t hang up. Just listen. Anna and I made it to an island after we crashed. The Coast Guard pulled us out of the water after the tsunami. We’re at the hospital in Malé, and we’re both fine.” There was silence on the other end. “Dad?”

“Oh my God,” he said. “It’s you? It’s really you?”

“Yes, it’s me.”

“You’ve been alive this whole time? How?”

“It wasn’t easy.”

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“We’re okay. Tired and sore. Hungry.”

“Is Anna okay?”

“Yeah, she’s sitting here next to me.”

“I don’t know what to say, T.J. I’m overwhelmed. I need to think for a minute. I need to figure out how to get you out of there,” he said.

For the first time in a long time, nothing weighed heavy on my shoulders. My dad would take over and bring us home. “Dad, Anna wants you to call her sister, too and make sure she knows what’s going on.”

Anna gave me the phone number, and I repeated it for my dad.

“The last thing I want to do is hang up, T.J., but it’s 8:00 p.m. here, and I need to start making calls before it gets much later. Getting you on a plane might be difficult because of nine-eleven. If I can’t get you and Anna on a commercial flight, I’ll charter one. It will probably be tomorrow before I can get you out of there. Are you both able to leave the hospital?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Can someone take you to a hotel?”

“I can check. Maybe someone can give us a ride.”

“Once you get to a hotel, call me and I’ll give them my credit card number.”

“Okay, Dad. Is Mom all right?”

“Yeah, she’s right here. She wants to talk to you.”

I could hardly understand my mom. As soon as she heard my voice, she started crying again.

“It’s okay Mom, I’ll be home soon. Don’t cry. Put Dad back on the phone, okay?”

When my dad came back on the line I told him we were going to talk to the local police and then we’d try to get to a hotel, and I’d call him from there.

“Okay, T.J. I’ll be waiting.”

“He’s going to start making calls,” I said after I snapped the phone shut. “He said getting us on a commercial flight might be hard because of nine-eleven.

“What’s nine-eleven?”

“I don’t know. He said he might have to charter a plane. If we can find a ride to a hotel, we can call him and he’ll give them his credit card number. We probably can’t get out until tomorrow though, Anna.”

She smiled. “We’ve waited this long. I can wait one more day.”

I pulled her close and hugged her. “We’re going home.”

We walked out of the supply closet and looked around for Dr. Reynolds. He was standing in the hallway waiting for us with two police officers. There was another man waiting with them. He wore a khaki shirt with the name of the seaplane charter stitched on the pocket.

Dr. Reynolds held a brown paper bag with a big grease stain down the side. Smiling, he handed it to me and I looked inside. Tacos. I pulled one out and handed it to Anna, then took one for myself.

The deep fried tortilla was wrapped around shredded beef and onions. A spicy sauce dripped down my hand. I wasn’t used to so many different flavors at one time. Starving, I ate the whole thing in under a minute.

The officers wanted to talk to us so we followed them to an empty corner of the lobby. I reached into the bag and got both of us another taco.

The officers spoke English but their thick accents made them hard to understand. We answered their questions, telling them about Mick and his heart attack, and then crashing and making it to the island.

“The search and rescue team found parts of the plane but no bodies,” one of the officers said. “We assumed you had drowned.”

“Mick knew we might not land safely so he told us to put on life jackets. Otherwise we would have,” Anna said.

“They searched for bodies,” the other officer said. “But they didn’t expect to find any. There are sharks.”

Anna and I glanced at each other.

“Some of the wreckage from the plane washed ashore. My backpack, Anna’s suitcase, and the life raft. Mick’s body washed up, too,” I said. “We buried him on the island.”

The man from the seaplane charter had some questions.

“If the life raft washed up, why didn’t you trigger the emergency beacon?”

“Because there wasn’t one,” I said.

“All life rafts have a beacon. They’re mandated by the Coast Guard when a plane flies over water.”

“Well, ours didn’t,” I said. “And believe me, we looked.”

He wrote down our contact information and then handed me a business card.

“Please have your attorney call me when you get back to the states.”

I put the card in the pocket of my shorts. “There’s one more thing,” I said, turning back to the two police officers. “Someone was living there before us.” Anna and I told them about the shack and the skeleton. “If you were looking for a missing person, we may have found him.”

When we finished talking to them, we asked Dr. Reynolds if someone could drive us to a hotel.

“I can,” he said.

Dr. Reynolds drove a beat up Honda Civic. He didn’t have air conditioning so we rolled our windows down. He pulled out of the parking lot and roads, cars, and buildings – things I hadn’t seen in so long – amazed me. I inhaled car exhaust fumes, so different from the smell of the island. When I saw the sign for the hotel I smiled because it finally hit me that Anna and I would have a room, a shower, and a bed.

“Thanks for all your help,” we told Dr. Reynolds when he dropped us off in front of the hotel.

“Good luck to both of you,” he said, shaking my hand and giving Anna a hug.

The hotel hadn’t suffered much damage. Someone was sweeping debris away from the sidewalk in front when Anna and I walked through the revolving door. Hotel guests had gathered in the lobby, some of them standing next to piles of luggage.

Everyone stared at us. If there was a no shoes, no shirt, no service rule, I was currently violating it. I caught our reflection in a large mirror hanging on the wall. We didn’t look so great.

I followed Anna to the reception desk where a woman stood typing on a computer.

“Are you checking in?” she asked.

“Yes. One room, please,” I said. “And could I borrow your phone?”