The Tsunami Countdown

EPILOGUE

One Year Later

Kai sat back from his laptop and stared out at Mount Rainier from his new house as he lost his concentration yet again. Even this late in the spring, the lower slopes of the peak were still covered with snow. The cool weather of Seattle didn’t bother him nearly as much as he remembered. He actually liked the crisp air now, but that wasn’t why he had moved back to Washington. And it wasn’t the fact that Puget Sound was a hundred miles from the Pacific. Despite the move, the ocean was never far from his mind, nor were the images of that terrible day in Honolulu.

It always struck him as odd that, with all the videography available from these kinds of time-stopping events, the most iconic images seemed to come from photos.

The sight of the USS Arizona, exposed to the air for the first time in over sixty years after it was sunk on the day that pulled America into World War II, washed inland and coming to rest alongside the USS Missouri, the ship on which the Japanese surrender was signed, ending the war.

The photos of Honolulu taken from the lip of Diamond Head the day before and the day after the tsunami hit, one showing a bustling metropolis, the other a landscape laid bare for miles.

The aerial photo of Punchbowl National Cemetery, a memorial to those who have died in the service of their country, teeming with the life of those who were protected and saved from the tsunami by its very location.

It was the Punchbowl image with which Kai identified most, and the one he had framed on his wall. It represented everything he did right on that day. He could honestly say that those people would not be alive if it weren’t for him and Reggie. It didn’t let his conscience completely off the hook for all the thousands who had died, but it was what let him sleep at night now.

He had come to terms with some of the decisions he made. Not all of them. But enough to let him not just mourn the dead but to celebrate the survivors and remember the sacrifices some made so that others would live.

Survivors like Harold and Gina Franklin, who, when seeing the utter destruction of Christmas Island, improbably sailed with the rest of the Seabiscuit passengers all the way to the Hawaiian Islands after they realized no one would be coming to rescue them. They and the nine people with them remained the sole survivors of that lonely atoll.

Max Walsh, the assistant manager responsible for saving the lives of sixty-three veterans and their wives, who couldn’t have known that staying for just a few more minutes on the Grand Hawaiian rooftop might have made such a difference in Kai’s life.

Sheila Wendel and her mother Doris, who touched down at Tripler Army Medical Center only a few minutes after leaving the Grand Hawaiian. Jerry Wendel—for whom Rachel made the ultimate sacrifice—who survived surgery to relieve a subdural hematoma.

Paige Rogers and her children, who couldn’t return to their home in Los Angeles until two weeks after the tsunami hit.

Tom Medlock, who was reunited with his parents after three days of searching.

Others had not been so fortunate.

Darryl and Eunice Gaithers, the elderly couple from Mississippi who Teresa had met on the beach, probably returned to the doomed Hilton and stayed in their room until the hotel collapsed. They were never heard from again.

As Kai suspected, the two videographers who had filmed the collapse of The Seaside never got to sell their tape to the networks.

The body of Jake Ferguson washed up on the beach five days later. His family, who lived in Michigan and had sent Jake on vacation to visit his friend Tom, finally made it to Hawaii to claim his remains six weeks after the disaster, consoling themselves only with the details Kai could tell them about Jake’s heroic efforts.

These people endurance under extraordinary circumstances was a testament to the spirit of humanity, a spirit he saw in his own family.

Rachel and Brad stood proudly in his memory as representatives of the best the human race can offer, as symbols of why people would want to go to such great lengths to protect civilization from harm. He wished he could have understood everything that went through their minds on that day, their last day. But he took pride in their actions, the same kind of selfless deeds so many others performed on that terrible morning.

Kai took the same pride in his team, that their warnings saved countless lives around the Pacific Rim. Even though the effects of the tsunami on the rest of the Pacific weren’t as powerful as they were in Hawaii, many island nations were devastated and suffered horribly. Over 125,000 lives lost in total, 36,000 of them on the Hawaiian islands, but far fewer than had died in the South Asian tsunami. And although the structural damage along the coasts of the mainland United States, Australia, and Japan was catastrophic, only fifty-seven people in those locations lost their lives.

The recovery of the Hawaiian economy had been stronger than expected. Construction cranes from all over the world dominated the Honolulu skyline. Not surprisingly, people had short memories and were rebuilding huge new hotels and houses right along the reconfigured Hawaiian shoreline, certain that such a disaster would never again happen in their lifetimes. Kai hoped they were right. But he was hedging his bets, and he knew others were too.

One of them was Reggie Pona. In his new post as assistant director of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, Reggie gave Kai a tour of the facility where it was rebuilt inside Diamond Head crater, right next to the Hawaii State Civil Defense bunker. With more foresight and more money, that’s where it should have been located all along. Now the money was plentiful, and when the next tsunami comes for Hawaii—and it will come—they will be supremely ready and able to handle it.

After the disaster, Kai felt the pull to teach. There was nothing left for him in Hawaii, and he enjoyed working with students. He had applied for a position in the University of Washington’s geology department, and they gladly welcomed him. The job didn’t allow him to forget about the past, but it did let him focus on the future.

“Kai,” he heard from the doorway, “we’re going to be late for the movie. Shut that down and let’s go.”

“Yeah, come on, Dad.”

He turned to see Teresa in the doorway, flanked by Lani and Mia. Teresa had finished her residency and continued on at the University of Washington as an attending physician. Kai and Teresa were good friends, and they saw each other often, especially because of the girls.

The emotions of that day were still too raw for him to date anyone. Someday, maybe, when the time was right, when his grief for Rachel wasn’t so sharp, he’d be able to love someone again. But that time still seemed a long way off.

Kai often had doubts about what was right, that what he was doing with his life was worthwhile. He struggled with it every day.

The night before the tsunami, Rachel and Kai had listened to Teresa’s stories about her experiences as a doctor with rapt attention. Teresa dealt with death on a daily basis, which had affected her profoundly. Kai would never forget one thing she said about it during that discussion, when she was telling them about a daughter who made it to her elderly mother’s bedside in time to say her last goodbyes.

“She said she was happy that she was able to talk to her mother one last time,” Teresa said. “She said she was happy to see her mother pass away peacefully.”

“You sound like you don’t believe her,” Rachel said.

“Oh, she smiled, and she seemed relieved to be there, but happy? No.”

“Why not?”

“Life never has a happy ending,” Teresa said. “It always ends in death. Death can be dignified or wretched, agonizing or painless, horrifying or serene, untimely or welcome. But it’s always sad. Happiness comes from what you do with the time between the beginning and the end.”

Now that Rachel was gone, Kai often wondered what she would want him to do with the rest of his life. As he closed his laptop, he looked at Lani smiling at him, and he thought he knew.

Rachel would want him to be happy.