Chapter 4: Borrowed Weather

By the time Evan reached Lake Union Park, three people had objected to his umbrella.

The barista had called it a bold choice. A cyclist at the light had informed him that locals used hoods. Outside the museum, a man beneath a soaked baseball cap looked up and said, "It's barely raining."

Rain ticked against the navy canopy. Water streamed from the man's cap.

Seattle treated umbrellas as evidence of weak character. Evan treated dry glasses as a clinical advantage.

Marisol had ordered him outdoors before his shift. Walking between the hospital, his apartment, and White Pine did not qualify because, according to her, all three involved problems he believed he could fix.

He found Su beside the museum wall.

A poster hung above her shoulder: LAKE UNION DRAGON BOAT FESTIVAL, SATURDAY JUNE 6. Painted boats cut through blue water beneath the date.

The real lake was gray and restless. Small waves slapped the pilings against the wind. Su stood several paces back from the railing, her empty hands folded at her waist.

She looked at his umbrella.

"Four," she said.

"You don't know about the other three."

"I know Seattle."

Her cream blouse and charcoal trousers belonged behind the White Pine counter, not beside a March lake. Damp black hair touched her collar. She had no coat.

Evan stopped beneath the poster. "Did you come here to study future scheduling conflicts?"

"I wished to look at the lake."

"From the museum wall."

"The wall does not move."

A gust drove rain under the canopy. Su watched the water take the dock in short gray bites.

"Have you reached a conclusion?" he asked.

"About the lake?"

"Or the wall. Whichever is under review."

"The wall is adequate."

He waited.

Su glanced at him. "The lake has not asked to be evaluated."

Neither had the stair four days ago. He had looked anyway, then chosen not to ask what lay beneath her shoe.

His shift began in fifty-two minutes. For once, he had nowhere else to be until then.

The rain hardened.

People left the benches in the quick, dignified walk Seattle used when fleeing weather it refused to acknowledge. Su folded her arms. A tremor crossed her shoulders.

Evan angled the umbrella toward her. "Come under here."

"I am already wet."

"That can get worse."

"So can your questions."

"Usually slower than hypothermia."

She stepped beneath the canopy.

His smallest umbrella had been designed for one prepared person. Su's shoulder pressed against his upper arm as they moved toward the covered shelter beside the dock. Cold came through his shell at the point of contact.

Two teenagers occupied the shelter with skateboards under their feet. A family had pulled a clear cover over a stroller. The man in the baseball cap stood at the open side, rain dripping from both elbows.

He nodded at Evan's umbrella. "Might be useful now."

"There are several schools of thought."

Su's mouth bent before she turned toward the lake.

Wind shoved spray beneath the roof. One teenager caught his board with a heel. The other boy had a red hood, soaked canvas shoes, and no interest in the family glaring at the water he shook from his hair.

Su rubbed her thumb across the knuckles of her opposite hand.

"Are you cold?" Evan asked.

"No."

"You're shaking."

"One tremor is not shaking."

A second followed.

"That makes two."

"You are counting. That is not care."

He took her wrist before the rebuke reached him.

Her hand closed around his fingers.

The cold stopped his thought. Her skin held less heat than the rain. He turned her wrist and found the pulse, slow and deep.

Su pulled free. "You did not ask."

He dropped his hand. "You're right."

She looked more bothered by that than she would have been by an argument.

Evan tucked both hands into his pockets. Every next question lined itself up neatly. Circulation disorder. Thyroid disease. Previous exposure. Medication. Each had a reasonable purpose, and he had already crossed the first boundary.

Rain hammered the shelter roof. A gust struck the teenagers from behind, and the board beneath the red-hooded boy shot away. It rolled across the wet concrete, found the sloped planks of the dock, and gathered speed.

"Hey!"

The boy ran after it.

His friend shouted his name, lost beneath the rain. The board struck the end rail, flipped once, and vanished into the lake.

The boy reached for it.

His left foot slid. His hip hit the rail, and then he was over.

The impact made a flat sound. His red hood surfaced ten feet from the dock. He opened his mouth and took in water instead of air.

Evan dropped the umbrella.

"Call 911. Water rescue."

He ran onto the dock. Behind him, the stroller father repeated the address to a dispatcher. The man in the baseball cap grabbed the life ring from its hook and shoved it into Evan's hands.

The boy slapped at the surface without lifting his face. Cold shock. No control of breath. His friend knelt at the edge and reached.

"Back up," Evan said. "Stay on the dock."

He threw the ring. Wind caught it. The rope snapped tight two feet short.

The boy went under.

Evan dropped to his stomach, one arm braced around a dock post. The planks drove rain through his shirt. He swept the ring across the spot where the red hood had disappeared.

Nothing.

"Come on," he said.

Lake water knocked against the pilings beneath his chest. Each wave came from the north, driven hard enough to throw spray through the gaps.

Then the sound changed.

One piling fell silent. The next did the same.

A narrow line appeared in the rain-beaten surface. The waves along it ran south against the wind, smooth-backed and close together. They reached the place where the boy had vanished.

Red cloth rose beneath the surface.

The boy came up on his back as if a hand had lifted a sleeping child. Water carried him sideways and set his shoulder against the dock ladder.

Evan caught the hood, then the jacket beneath it.

"Help me."

The man in the baseball cap lay beside him and seized the boy under one arm. Together they dragged him onto the planks.

The boy coughed. Water spilled from his mouth. His hands clawed at Evan's sleeve.

"You're out. Stay flat."

"I can't breathe."

"You are breathing. Keep looking at me."

Evan rolled him enough to clear his mouth, then laid him flat again. His respirations came fast and ragged. Lips blue. Skin waxy. Pulse rapid at the neck.

"Get the wet jacket off. Shirt too."

The boy's friend fumbled with the zipper. The baseball-cap man cut through the snagged drawcord with a pocketknife. Evan stripped off his rain shell and wrapped it around the boy's chest once the wet layers were gone.

The stroller mother brought a fleece blanket. Evan tucked it over the shell and beneath the boy's shoulders without sitting him up.

"No walking," he said. "The ambulance is coming."

"My board."

"Your board can wait."

"It was my brother's."

"We'll get it after you get checked."

A floatplane was taking off to the south, climbing beyond the wet roofs with its pontoons bright beneath it. Its wake. That had to explain the change in the water. Wind, pilings, an odd rebound along the seawall.

Evan looked toward shore.

Su stood against the museum wall beneath the festival poster. One hand pressed her ribs. Her other hung open at her side, smoke gray beneath the nails.

At the far end of the dock, a man watched her.

Plain dark coat. Close-cropped hair. Soft face. The same man Evan had seen across King Street while Leon's ambulance pulled away.

His hands hung loose. He had made no move toward the boy.

Evan met his gaze.

The man turned and walked behind the museum.

Sirens rose beyond Mercer.

The boy began to shiver hard enough to move the blanket. Good. Better than the silence beneath the water. Evan kept him flat, counted his breaths, and gave the arriving medics a clean report.

"Submerged under a minute, maybe less. Cold shock, coughed water, never unresponsive after recovery. Wet clothes removed. No walking."

One medic took over the airway assessment. The other cut away a sleeve the teenager had managed to keep on. His friend sat on the dock with both hands over his face.

The man in the baseball cap retrieved the skateboard with the life-ring rope.

By the time the ambulance doors closed, Evan had twenty-one minutes before his shift and no shell.

Su remained by the wall.

He picked up the umbrella and crossed to her. "Can I take your pulse this time?"

She looked toward the place where the man in the dark coat had disappeared.

"You may."

Evan set two fingers to her wrist.

Her skin was colder than the boy's had been.

The pulse moved beneath his fingertips with long spaces between beats. Gray had spread from beneath her nails toward the first knuckles.

"Su, you need to get warm."

"That is evident."

"Do you get this cold often?"

She withdrew her wrist, and he let her.

The shelter emptied around them. Rain struck the abandoned dock. Beyond it, ordinary waves had resumed their argument with the wind.

Evan opened the umbrella and held out the curved handle. "Take it."

"No."

"Your streetcar is delayed. My bus is six blocks uphill."

"You have no coat."

"I have dry scrubs at Harborview."

"You are already late."

He checked his phone. Three messages from Marisol, each shorter than the last.

"I'll survive."

"That is an aspiration, not a plan."

"I own two others."

Su studied the umbrella. "Why?"

"Different coverage requirements."

For once, no correction arrived.

Evan held the handle closer. "Do you want it?"

Rain ran from her hair beneath the collar of her blouse. Her fingers had begun to tremble again.

"Yes."

He gave it to her.

"You will walk six blocks without it," she said.

"I planned to live in Seattle."

She opened the canopy. "This is still idiotic."

"Document your objection."

Evan started uphill.

By Mercer, his glasses were useless. Water filled one shoe and then the other. Marisol met him at the staff entrance with a towel, a spare isolation gown, and the expression she reserved for avoidable disasters.

"I covered the first fifteen minutes," she said.

"A kid went into Lake Union."

Her expression changed. "Alive?"

"Breathing when they transported."

She pushed the towel into his hands. "Good. I covered you once."

"Understood."

"Dry off. Bed Seven is vomiting into a wastebasket and apologizing to it."

At seven the next morning, Harborview's lobby held the remains of a wet night.

A child slept beneath a puffer coat across three chairs. A man with one hand bandaged to the size of a boxing glove argued softly into his phone. The caution sign beside the entrance guarded a puddle everyone walked through.

Su sat beneath the windows.

The navy umbrella rested across her knees in its sleeve. She wore a charcoal coat buttoned to the throat. Her face had a drained cast, but the gray beneath her nails was gone.

She stood when Evan approached.

"What are you doing here?"

"Returning your property."

"You could have brought it Thursday."

"Yes."

"Or sent it with Qing."

"She offered."

The fabric had been dried and folded along its original creases. Su held it out with both hands.

"You came all this distance for an umbrella?"

"It was near the streetcar line."

"It isn't."

"It is near enough."

"So is Canada, according to one school of thought."

"That school has poor standards."

He took the umbrella. Dried peel scented the wool of her coat.

The lobby doors opened. Rain hissed against the pavement. Su's hands were empty.

"Where's yours?" he asked.

"I do not own one."

"Of course you don't."

"I have managed."

Evan removed the sleeve and opened the umbrella beyond the doors. "Do you want to walk to King Street?"

"White Pine is not on your route home."

"No."

"You worked all night."

"I should eat before I sleep."

"That is one correct decision."

He waited beneath the canopy without moving it toward her.

Su stepped under.

They walked downhill in the thin shelter of the umbrella. He kept more of it over her, though rain found his left shoulder. At the first corner, she adjusted her pace to his.

"Why did you come yourself?" he asked.

She watched the signal change. "I came myself."

No explanation followed, and they crossed. At the next corner, Evan said, "Floatplane wake."

Su's hand shifted on the umbrella shaft below his. "Yes."

He had checked the flight schedule during a quiet stretch near four. Then he had checked it again against the dispatch time on his phone.

The floatplane had landed nine minutes after the boy went in. He folded the fact in with the others and held the umbrella higher.