Lives We Lost,The by Megan Crewe

offered. He shrugged, his chin tucked behind the
broad collar of his coat. “I’ve got the most experience navigating a
boat, and the waves are getting a little nasty. I’ll go to the hospital
and fill them in, and then check on your car. If it’s okay, I can
bring it over on the ferry—if not, I’ll at least bring any supplies
that survived.”
Gav’s jaw tensed as if he was going to argue, but then he closed
his eyes and inclined his head. “If the house is okay, it wouldn’t
hurt to grab some of the food there too. But I don’t want to take
more away from what’s meant for the whole island.”
His gaze slid to me. He didn’t want to leave me, I realized, not
even for a couple hours. That was why he was still coming with
me, even though it was clearly killing him not to go back. The words hurt coming out, but I had to say them. “Gav, I’ll
be okay. If you want to stay on the island and help, you should.
We don’t all have to go.”
“No,” he said. “I already decided back when we first talked
about it. We can leave tomorrow morning, just like we planned.” As Leo headed down to the dock, I tugged Gav to the side. “Are
you really okay with this?” I said, my voice low. “You can tell me
the truth, you know.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “Of course it bothers me,
leaving the island when it’s practically destroyed. But leaving you
would be even worse. From the first day I asked for your help, when
you refueled the cars for the food run, you’ve been totally behind
every idea I’ve had. Now it’s my turn. I want to do this for you.
You need me, I’m here—I want you to know that.”
“Gav,” I said. I couldn’t find the words to express what I was
feeling. The passion and determination I’d watched Gav put into
keeping the island going—to have all of it offered just to me
seemed incredible, impossible. Gripping the front of his coat, I
tugged him to me and tipped my face up to meet his lips, trying
to put every particle of my gratitude into that kiss. He wrapped
his arms around me, holding me tight.
“I know,” I said softly when I eased back, and he smiled and
kissed me again.
“If there’s six of us, we’re going to need more supplies,” he said.
“Let’s see what we can find here.”
So as the sky started to darken with the coming evening, the
group of us raided the harbor office. The concession stand near the
ticket booth now held only a few crumpled wrappers, but Tobias
broke open the locked storage room in the back with a tool from
his truck. Soon we’d added skids of bottled water and boxes of
recently expired chocolate bars and honey-roasted peanuts to his
stores of food. Tobias started shifting around the truck’s contents
to make more floor space. “We’ll be better off sleeping in here,”
he said. “Smaller space to trap the heat.” While he worked, Gav, Tessa, Meredith, and I headed down the mainland town’s major
street, checking the storefronts.
Drew might have come through here, I thought, all those weeks
ago when he’d taken off. If he’d made it across the strait alive. Back
then some of these stores might still have been occupied. Now
everyone was long gone. Most of the doors hung open, swinging
in the wind.
Gav pointed out a knitted-goods shop, and Tessa picked out an
extra sweater and thick woolen hats for each of us. I started grabbing blankets while Gav dug a few plastic bags out from behind
the register to hold our loot.
In the convenience store farther down the street, the last newspaper on the rack was dated November 5. I guessed that was when
the owner had fled. Or gotten sick. The front page headline read,
Friendly flu overwhelms hospitals , the article below describing how
medical centers across the country were running out of room. The
grainy photo of patients crowding the hall of a hospital in Halifax
gave me a jolt back through time. A couple months ago, our hospital had looked like that.
All those people staring anxiously at the