Ohana Read online

  Ohana

  Dustin Stevens

  Ohana

  Copyright © 2013, Dustin Stevens

  Warning: All rights reserved. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work, in whole or part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, is illegal and forbidden, without the written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, settings, names, and occurrences are a product of the author’s imagination and bear no resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, places or settings, and/or occurrences. Any incidences of resemblance are purely coincidental.

  To Podge, for reminding me that

  sometimes, in literature and in life,

  a little cheesiness is a good thing.

  ‘Ohana means family. Family means

  nobody gets left behind or forgotten.

  -Lilo & Stitch

  Prologue

  It started with rain. A torrential downpour that began around midnight and waged throughout the next day. Occasionally it would ease off for a few minutes, only to come back even stronger.

  Step two was the temperature drop. Rapid and even, it took only a matter of hours for the mercury to dip below freezing. Once it did, the rain gave way to heavy, wet snowflakes.

  Dr. Hardy Nicks stood just outside the front door of the Vanderbilt Medical Center. He checked his watch repeatedly while hopping up and down on the balls of his feet, hoping to stay warm. A plume of vapor extended from of his mouth, each breath hanging like a cloud in front of him.

  As an attending surgeon at the center, Hardy had been on the floor for twenty hours straight. Enormous bags hung beneath each eye and his thinning hair was plastered to his head from being smashed beneath a surgical cap. He hadn't bothered to change out of the light blue scrubs he'd been wearing all day, the shapeless togs doing little to hide his slight frame.

  An airlock released behind him and a familiar voice said, "Whew, brr. What are you doing waiting out here?"

  "I'm hoping this cold air will wake me up," Hardy said. "I'm just not cut out for these twenty hour shifts anymore."

  "I keep telling you to cut back," his wife Carol Anne said, sliding up beside him and kissing him on the cheek.

  As the Director of Nursing for the facility she was also dressed in scrub attire, though the similarities stopped there. Despite being the same age she looked almost a decade younger than Hardy, her face unlined and thick hair still dark throughout.

  "And what do I keep telling you?" Hardy asked, taking her hand in his as they walked out across the parking lot. Although it was inching towards eleven at night, the lot was still over half full.

  Overhead security lights shone down, illuminating the snowflakes as they hung suspended in the air before disappearing into the white blanket covering the ground.

  "Maybe next year," Carol Anne said, her voice mimicking the tone she'd heard her husband use a hundred times before.

  "Yeah, but this time I mean it," Hardy replied, releasing her hand and unlocking their black Lexus SUV. "I think this academic year might just be my last go round."

  His wife looked at him, her expression hopeful. "Well, you know the only reason I keep coming to work every day is so I can keep an eye on you. You're done, I'm done."

  Hardy snorted at his wife's recurring joke and bobbed his head, starting the car and using the wipers to brush away the snow. A moment later the defrost kicked on, piping warm air into the car as he put it into gear and departed.

  Snow was a rare occurrence for the state of Tennessee, annual accumulation quantified on a single hand. In the few instances each year that it did fall, the town went into lockdown. Schools were closed, business shuttered tight, snow plows sent to begin working the roads.

  At the rate it was coming down, the town would be out of action for a week, if not longer.

  Traffic was extremely light as Hardy angled them away from Vanderbilt, swinging south from town and on towards their home in Murfreesboro. Outside the snow continued to fall in steady fashion, the flakes coming so fast they blotted out everything beyond the few feet in front of the car.

  "How's she handling?" Carol Anne asked, reaching out and patting the dashboard of their newest purchase.

  "I don't think the snow's a problem," Hardy said. "It's all that frozen water beneath it I'm concerned with."

  "Black ice," Carol Anne whispered, nodding her head.

  The two fell silent, the only sound the heater circulating warm air throughout the car.

  The lights of Nashville fell away behind them. Without the ambient glow of the city, the sky darkened above. The storm seemed to close in around them, punctuated only by the occasional highway exit with its cluster of gas stations and restaurants.

  "We don't often get snow like this here," Carol Anne said, concern in her voice. "Never this early in the season."

  "Not in all the time I've lived here," Hardy agreed.

  "Thank God we're done for the weekend, I don't think we'd make it back tomorrow."

  "Ah, I'm sure everything will be fine by morning," Hardy said. "They'll get the plows out, throw some salt down. Be clear by noon."

  "Oh," Carol Anne said, pursing her lips. "That's too bad. I was kind of hoping for an excuse to spend the day cuddled up inside."

  A smile grew along one side of Hardy's mouth as he reached across and squeezed his wife's hand. "Since when do we need snow for that?"

  Carol Anne matched the smile and leaned over towards him, drawing him closer. Keeping his left hand atop the wheel, Hardy checked the road and turned to his wife, pecking her on the lips. He pulled back and smiled, went in for one more kiss.

  Neither one saw the skid marks in the snow. They didn’t see the semi-truck with a trailer attached lying on its side across the road. They didn’t even see the load of soda bottles strewn about, strewn about like blue dots atop a carpet of white.

  Instead the last thing either one ever experienced was each other, followed by a flash of light, the crunch of steel, and a cold, interminable darkness.

  Chapter One

  The Delta ticket counter at the Bozeman-Gallatin Airport offered five outbound choices, all grouped together in a cluster departing before noon each day.

  Minneapolis was the first flight every morning, taking advantage of the eastward time change and leaving right at eight. Soon thereafter were Denver and Salt Lake City, each pushing off on the subsequent half hours.

  Seattle went fourth, offering a ten o'clock direct flight that landed in the Pacific Time Zone at an earlier time than when it took off.

  The fifth and final flight of the morning was a short jaunt over the border into Calgary, a little used route that allowed tiny BZN to maintain its status as an international airport.

  A pair of counter attendants was already busy at work preparing for the morning ahead when Dyson Nicks walked through the airport's lone set of double doors. He dropped a single duffel bag on the tile floor beside his scuffed boots and scanned the list of outgoing options.

  At just half past six in the morning, the sound of the bag hitting the floor startled the attendants, both of whom turned to regard Dyson standing before them. On the far end of the terminal a janitor emptied the last of the trash cans from the night before, but otherwise the place was deserted.

  "Are you here for the Minneapolis flight?" the woman on the left asked, her demeanor already exuding caffeine-induced perkiness.

  Furrowing his brow, Dyson made another pass over the departing flights. "Are those the only choices you have?"

  The woman turned towards the older man to her right, who shrugged and raised his palms to the ceiling before retreating into a back room.

  "Excuse me?" the woman responded.

  Leaving the bag where it lay, Dyson ambled f
orward and nodded towards the list of departing flights with his chin. "Those five? That's it?"

  A practiced smile creased the woman's face, revealing even white teeth beneath her bright red lipstick. "Well sir, those are the only destinations we offer direct from here. We can route you most anywhere in the world you want to go though."

  "Hmm," Dyson mumbled, his eyes never leaving the board above her head.

  "I take it you don't have a reservation this morning?" the woman pressed.

  For the first time, Dyson slid his eyes from the list to the woman in front of him. Her thick brown hair was pulled into a tight bun atop her head and a nametag extolled her name to be Robin.

  "No. Not yet."

  "Oh," Robin said, resting her hands on the keyboard in front of her. "Well, where would you like to go?"

  Dyson couldn't help but smirk. It was a question he'd asked himself multiple times a day for the past week.

  He was still no closer to an answer than when he first started.

  "Anywhere.”

  Robin drew her mouth into a tight line and said, "Hmm, that doesn't help us much. Christmas is only a few days away, is there anybody you would like to go see?"

  "No," Dyson said, her question barely registering in his ears before he shoved out the answer.

  "Oh," Robin said again, pulling her hands back a moment. "Well, as it is December in Montana, I always find myself wanting to be somewhere warm. How does that sound?"

  Dyson rolled the idea around a moment, thinking back to the single bag on the floor behind him. "Warm works. What have you got?"

  A smile broke out on Robin's face as she began pecking away on the computer in front of her. "First, let me ask you this, do you have a passport?"

  "Dammit," Dyson muttered, turning his head to the side so she couldn't hear him curse. In his haste, he had left his passport sitting on the old roll-top desk in his bedroom at home. "No, not with me."

  "Okay," Robin said, frowning. "If you want warm weather, we can do a whole list of options you can get to without needing a passport. Los Angeles, Phoenix, Houston..."

  "What are the furthest?" Dyson asked.

  "Excuse me?" Robin asked, looking up from her screen.

  "Which one is the furthest away?" Dyson reiterated.

  “From here?”

  “From everywhere.”

  A questioning look passed over Robin's face, but she said nothing as she slid her eyes down to the screen before her. "It looks like the furthest warm weather destinations we offer are either Miami, Florida, which is about 2,850 miles away or Honolulu, Hawaii, which is just a shade over 3,000 miles."

  "Huh," Dyson said, working his jaw around as he digested the information.

  "But do bear in mind," Robin inserted, "Honolulu's on an island. If distance is what you're after, there's no way to get there without a plane or a very large boat."

  The left corner of Dyson's lips turned up. "When's the first flight?"

  Robin again checked her grid. "I can get you on the 8:30 to Denver, connecting through San Francisco and on over to Hawaii, or you can wait until the 10:00 to Seattle, connecting straight to Honolulu."

  Dyson shot his eyes to the digital clock in the corner of the departure board behind her and began digging his wallet from a back pocket. "I'll take the 8:30 please."

  "Okay, and when would you like to book the return flight?"

  "I wouldn’t," Dyson said, slapping a credit card down on the counter and turning on a heel to retrieve his duffel bag from the floor behind him.

  Chapter Two

  In his haste to get out of Montana as fast as he could, Dyson forgot the golden rule of traveling in the Rocky Mountain west.

  Always, always, avoid Denver in the winter time.

  Notorious for unforeseen squalls and total white-out conditions, the airport spends half of the annual calendar at a complete standstill followed by frantic stretches of playing catch up.

  True to form, Dyson landed in DIA just after ten o'clock local time and spent the next thirty hours curled up on the floor alternating between cat naps and a slew of paperbacks he picked up at Hudson News. With his boots propped on the edge of a bench and his head nestled against his gym bag, he remained motionless save a couple of food and restroom runs.

  Otherwise, he sat and waited.

  Just shy of four o'clock the next afternoon the overhead speaker announced that the runways were clear again and Dyson joined a throng of bleary-eyed passengers headed to San Francisco. As the last one on the plane and first one off, he kept his face buried in the latest Lee Child novel and two hours after leaving Denver behind he touched down in San Francisco.

  On the way in the captain pointed out Alcatraz looming in the Bay outside their window, an irony that wasn't lost on Dyson.

  He'd finally managed to escape a metaphorical prison only to find himself airdropped in beside a real one.

  The gap between connections afforded him enough time to make two quick laps around the concourse before boarding for Honolulu. A sense of dread filled him as he approached the gate, settling in his stomach as he watched a throng of passengers jockey for position in line. Already bedecked in garish aloha shirts and flip-flop sandals, many elbowed their way through the crowd as if boarding first somehow made the impending five hour flight that much shorter.

  "Shoot me now," Dyson muttered as he settled onto the tail end of the line and shuffled up to the ticket agent. A polished young man gave him a harsh once-over before tearing his ticket and making a final boarding call over the loud speaker.

  A half smirk pulled up at Dyson's mouth as he took in the other passengers around him. Many were dressed in bright colors and wore the results of tanning for weeks in anticipation of their trip on their skin.

  He, on other hand, was dressed in faded jeans and a pearl snap flannel, a tan Carhartt jacket pulled atop it. His shaggy hair fell just past his eyebrows in loopy curls of sandy blonde and his jaw wore a few days of growth. The back of his hands were tinged olive, though still far more pale than many of the people around him.

  Bending at the waist, Dyson stooped his 6'2" frame through the front door and down the length of the plane, settling in on the aisle side of a row three seats across. Despite the plane being almost full, the middle seat was unoccupied.

  He soon realized why.

  Seated against the window was an older man in jeans and an orange and blue striped polo. A tangle of silver hair was slicked straight across the top of his head and glasses with thick lenses were perched atop his bony nose. Even as he peered over at Dyson, his lips moved without sound across over-sized teeth.

  Dyson recognized the guy right off, not as someone he had met before, but as someone he'd met in many different iterations over the years. This gentleman had all the tell-tale signs of a talker lying in wait.

  He dug straight into his duffel bag in search of his iPod, but the old man beat him to it.

  "Simon Willaby," the man said, extending a bony hand across the empty seat towards Dyson.

  "Dyson Nicks," Dyson mumbled, grasping the feeble shake before stowing his bag and settling into his seat.

  "Coming or going?" Willaby asked.

  A handful of responses came to Dyson's mind, but he bit his tongue. "What do you mean?"

  Willaby waved his hands at the plane around them. "Are you coming to visit or are you going back home?"

  Dyson made a face as he chewed the words, realizing the two could have been just as easily used in reverse. "Um, going to visit." He paused for a moment in hopes that the conversation would be brief, but Willaby's expectant face indicated otherwise. "And yourself?"

  "Going back home for the winter," Willaby said, clasping his hands in front of him. "My wife and I have a place above Makaha that we rent every year on the leeward coast. Just the nicest place with the warmest people."

  "Hmm," Dyson said.

  "Have you been before?" Willaby pressed.

  "Never," Dyson said, staring with longing at the headphones in
his lap.

  "Oh, you're in for a treat, a real treat," Willaby said. "I've been coming here every year for over thirty years and I have to tell you, it never gets old."

  As the wheels lifted from San Francisco, it was apparent that the conversation was not going to end anytime soon.

  "I spent thirty-five years in the airline industry, working for Delta," Willaby pressed on without prompting. "When I started I was young and single, so I told them I didn't mind being moved around. As luck would have it, I got settled into a schedule that let me spend every winter in Hawaii and every summer in Boston. I got to surf all winter and watch the Sox all summer!"

  Dyson couldn't help but crack a smile. It was a schedule similar to a great many of the ski bums and fly fishermen he'd left behind in Bozeman.

  "I have to tell you too, there's just no place on earth like Hawaii. You're going to love it. Amazing people, great food, so much to see and do."

  Without realizing it, Dyson took the bait. "Oh yeah? Such as?"

  Like a sprinter firing from the starting block, Willaby launched himself into a monologue that stretched through the entire showing of Monsters University and into an episode of How I Met Your Mother. Two hours later, Dyson had a list of suggestions scribbled onto the back cover of his paperback and a pounding headache.

  Somewhere over the Pacific, Dyson drifted off to sleep with Willaby still prattling on beside him.

  Chapter Three

  A gentle nudge in the ribs jolted Dyson awake, jerking him upright in his seat with a clatter. Little bursts of light popped before his eyes and he could feel his heart pounding in his ears.

  "Sorry," Willaby said, holding up a hand on either side in apology. "We're coming in to land. You're going to want to see this."

  Dyson mumbled a small thanks and nodded, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. He balled his hands into fists and pressed the curve of his index fingers against his eyes, then ran his hands over a sweaty brow and back through his hair.