Best Practices by Gwen Florio

Author:Gwen Florio [Florio, Gwen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2022-05-06T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-FIVE

The sheriff’s team and the EMTs milled outside the lodge as the girls straggled into the clearing.

A rosy haze suffused the sky, its loveliness incongruous given the inevitable grimness of the coming day.

The instructors headed off en masse to Loraine’s cabin. The girls stopped in front of the bunkhouse. They stared silent and hollow-eyed at Nora. They were on an emotional knife-edge, in danger of tipping into hysteria with the slightest remark.

Nora took a breath and stepped into her still unfamiliar role. Give them things to do, she reminded herself. Keep them busy with manageable tasks. Help them return to normalcy – as much as possible under the circumstances – by degrees.

‘Pick those packs up and dust them off. Bring them inside but put them on the floor beside your bunks when you unpack them. Don’t get dirt all over your bunks.’ Tiny, meaningless details, but better to focus on keeping their bunks clean than flashing back to the horror they’d so recently witnessed.

She’d noted the stretcher poles, the folded body bag, to the side of the sheriff’s group. The fewer girls who saw those, the better.

She talked on, hoping to keep them distracted with orders upon orders. ‘They weren’t planning on us being here for breakfast. Mackenzie, you and’ – she fished for a name and made a wild guess – ‘Jen, please go to the lodge and ask them to put together brown bags of fruit and cheese and bread, and to send along some juice and cups. Tell them I sent you. We’ll eat picnic-style in the clearing. The rest of you, after you’re finished unpacking, please go wash up while we’re waiting for food.’

Ashleigh had finally stopped crying, but her zombie-like state was no improvement. At some point on the endless walk back, Mackenzie had broken ranks to walk beside her, speaking soothingly all the while, nonsense phrases mostly, but just enough to distract the girl from the despair sucking her into a mental void.

Nora called to the group of instructors, crooking a finger to summon one of them back. ‘Stay with Ashleigh,’ she whispered when the young woman came over. ‘I’m going outside to talk with the director.’

The search group had coalesced around Luke and Ennis.

‘I take it there’s no need for Life Flight?’ one of the deputies asked Luke.

‘Afraid not, Jim.’

So they knew each other. Nora wondered if Jim would be so friendly when he found out about Luke.

Luke turned to Ennis and said something under his breath. Nora strained to make sense of it.

The deputy sheriff called to him. ‘Be better if you could come with us.’

Luke’s shoulders sagged and pity briefly gnawed at Nora’s heart. He’d been up for twenty-four hours already and was looking at at least another half-day on the trail and back.

Ennis answered for him. ‘That’s a good idea. Ms Best, I’ll need you in the office.’

She followed him, but craned her neck for a backward glance at Luke, whose muttered comment to Ennis had finally sunk in.

‘It’s Carolee,’ he’d said, before lowering his voice.

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