The Tsunami Countdown

TWENTY-NINE

11:04 a.m.

18 Minutes to Wave Arrival Time

After leaving the clothing store where she had watched the first tsunami wave engulf the hikers on the Big Island, Teresa had returned to the beach to check the note in her bag. To her dismay, the bag was still there, with no sign from the girls. Her first thought had been to find another phone so that she could call someone for help. But without the phone book in her dead cell phone, she didn’t know any numbers to call. When she finally convinced an obliging tourist to let her use his cell phone, her calls to information went unanswered, as had her calls to the Grand Hawaiian. There was no way for her to contact anyone she knew.

By this time, the evacuation had reached its peak. People walked and ran in all directions, some calm, others crying or screaming. Many of them were families, the children struggling to keep up with their parents. Teresa hadn’t taken the time to get an update on the tsunami, but whatever people were seeing on TV was spurring them to get out fast. When she tried to stop passersby to show Mia’s photo, most people brushed her aside, immersed in their own problems. Of the ones who did take the time to look at the picture carefully, none recognized Mia.

Numerous possibilities for where Mia and Lani had gone fluttered through Teresa’s mind. The most likely explanation was that they were in one of the hotels or condos lining the beach, either oblivious to the mass panic below or dismissive of the danger. Or they could have gotten a ride in someone’s car. Teresa didn’t think Mia would do something like that, but given her own state of dread, she wasn’t ruling out anything.

If the girls were in a vehicle or a hotel room, she’d never find them in time. Her only hope was that the girls would become aware of what was going on and come back to find her.

Teresa’s search led her back to the east end of Waikiki Beach, where she came to a stop at the corner of Ohua and Kalakaua. While the midday sun blazed unimpeded by clouds, the ocean breeze kept the temperature to a comfortable eighty degrees. Nevertheless, sweat glistened on Teresa’s arms and brow, more a result of her anxiety than the climate.

She scanned the two blocks between her and the end of the developed part of Waikiki where the Kapi‘olani Park began.

“Mia!” she yelled. “Lani!”

A few heads turned, but none of them belonged to her daughter. She was about to turn and head back in the other direction when a muffled sob caught her attention.

Tucked in an alcove was a little boy no older than six. He was hunkered down against the wall, tears streaming down his pale face, the wind tousling his ash-blond hair. The people hurrying by were so engrossed in the evacuation that he had escaped attention. If Teresa hadn’t stopped there, she most likely wouldn’t have seen him either.

She knelt down in front of the boy, forgetting about her own lost child for a moment.

“Hey there, kiddo. Are you lost?”

He nodded glumly between sobs.

“What’s your name?”

“David.”

“Hi, David, I’m Teresa.”

He looked at her dubiously, as if he had already told her too much.

“My mom said I shouldn’t talk to strangers.”

“That’s usually a good idea, David. Where is your mom?”

He paused. Teresa could see that he was unsure whether to trust her.

“David, I’m a doctor, and doctors help people, right? And all I want to do is help you find your mom.”

“You don’t look like a doctor.”

“What do doctors look like?”

“Like my doctor, Dr. Rayburn. He’s old, and he has a funny nose.”

Teresa smiled at that.

“I swear I’m a doctor. Here, let me show you.” She plucked her medical ID from her wallet. It showed her in her white lab coat. Apparently, that was enough for David, and the information poured out.

“We’re from California and we heard about the tsunami, so we were running out of our hotel with some other people and I let go of my mom’s hand by accident and I couldn’t see her or my dad, so I followed the other people. But she wasn’t there, so I turned around to try and get back, but I got lost and now I don’t know where she is.”

The last statement set off another round of tears, and Teresa gave him a hug.

“We’ll find her, David. Do you know the name of your hotel?”

“Hana.”

“The Hana Hotel?”

“It’s pink.”

“Your hotel is pink?”

He nodded.

This being Teresa’s first trip to Honolulu, she had no idea where the Hana Hotel was. She looked each way along Kalakaua Avenue but couldn’t see any pink buildings lining the beachfront road.

“Is your hotel right on the beach?” she asked, wanting to make sure she hadn’t missed it.

David shook his head. “We had to walk down a street to get to the beach.”

Since she was at Ohua Avenue, Teresa thought that was as good a street as any to try. She led David by the hand and hurried along the sidewalk away from the beach, joining the other evacuees.

“Tell me if you see your hotel,” she said to David.

The boy trotted at Teresa’s side, occasionally tucking behind her to get out of the way of another fleeing tourist. She asked a few people if they knew where the Hana Hotel was, but none of them did. She spotted a phone booth across the street and angled toward it.

“I don’t see the hotel yet,” David said.

“I know. We’re going to try to get the address.”

Teresa tried not to think about what would happen if she couldn’t find David’s parents. She certainly couldn’t abandon the little boy, but his plight was derailing her search for Mia.

A yellow pages hung from the bottom of the phone booth, and she flipped it open to the hotel section. She scanned the Hs until she came to the place where Hana should have been listed. It wasn’t there.

“David,” she said, “are you sure it’s called the Hana Hotel?”

The boy screwed up his face in concentration.

“I’m pretty sure.”

The hotel section of the yellow pages was huge, but she didn’t think David would have invented that name on his own. She quickly scanned down the list until she got to the Ws. There it was. The Waikiki Hana on Koa Avenue.

The front of the phone book had a map of the Waikiki area. Koa Avenue didn’t intersect with Ohua, so she would have missed it heading in this direction. She took David back down to Kalakaua and jogged the two blocks to a road that would intersect with Koa. In another minute she spotted the pink façade of the Waikiki Hana.

Stragglers still emerged from the hotel. She went into the hotel lobby, and even before she could ask David what his mother’s name was, a woman screamed “David!” and swept the boy up in her arms, weeping with joy at holding her lost son. She turned to Teresa and clasped her shoulder.

“Thank you for finding him,” the woman said. “I don’t know what happened. One second he was there, and the next he was gone.”

“You’re welcome. Now you need to get out of here.”

“But my husband—he went out to find David! I don’t know where he is!”

“I’m sorry. But—”

“How will I find him?”

Teresa saw the woman’s desperation and realized that her own search for her daughter was futile. There was no way she would find Mia or Lani running around on the streets. She needed to go where they might go.

“How will I find my husband?” the anguished woman repeated.

“I’m sorry,” Teresa said. “I don’t know.”

She took one last look at the little boy and mother she had reunited. Then she sprinted out the front of the lobby and ran toward the Grand Hawaiian.