Page 14 of Forever is Now

I didn’t know how long we had. But then the tourists—everyone on the beach was moving now as well. There was a family in front of us and they had five small children, and I remember the dad was just trying to grab all of them. Literally, all of them, in his arms.

I hadn’t realized just how many people were around, until then. And... and Ruari and I got separated. It was... I was shouting for him, trying to see him. Like, doing everything I could, but everyone was panicking. I sort of got swept up in this crowd, and all I can really remember is this roaring in the air. Before the water hit. It was like thunder. And there was a really loud boom.

Then a huge wall of water hit us. It was fast. Really fast. And I could see things in the water—like arms, legs, fish. A deck chair or something hit me, in the water—not hard or anything, but it hurt. My arm. And the force of the water, it carried me.

Next thing I remember I was farther up the shore—farther than I’d realized, I think—and there were people everywhere around me. Soaked, drenched. Um, some were injured. Everyone was still trying to move. Screaming. There was lots of screaming.

I was looking for Ruari, and I was trying to go back, but someone grabbed my arm, pulled me the other way. There was this tide of people then—tide’s probably not the best word to use here. Sorry. But we were all moving. There was a child next to me, injured, crying, and I picked her up. She clung to me, screaming in another language. Spanish, maybe.

I was looking for Ruari, but I assumed that he’d be in the crowd too. I thought everyone was okay.

More water came. Another wave. This was maybe thirty minutes later. That wave was worse. Bigger. Stronger. We were on higher ground then, but it still reached us. It was just this constant battle of trying to move, trying to get away. Choking on the water. And that’s when I saw what I think was my first body.

I... I didn’t get a clear look at it, mind. The person just sort of floated past me, carried by the water. I was clinging to a palm tree at that point, and I just thought something like,Oh, they’re dead.

It was strange. Because I felt calm. It wasn’t until later that...

There were a series of waves. I knew tsunamis come in waves.

All I remember, after, super clearly, is the visuals. Everything was broken. And everything just kind of looked the same color. All this... rubble, I guess you’d call it. It was like this gray-brown. Everything. Broken wood—like, whole houses. Just... collapsed. Either the earthquake or the tsunami. But the water had moved everything, carried it around.

When... when the water receded, it was hard to actually comprehend the whole level of damage. Like, everything was gone.

And people were missing.

People were dead.

I was searching for Ruari.

I... I couldn’t find him.

I didn’t find him.

And I...

We’re going to take a break now.

##

Summer Taylor-Braddon: I had known at twenty-two that I couldn’t live without Ruari. He was my world, and I was his. I’d spin out of control without him, with no one to orbit. We were... well, we were closer than I ever thought two people could be. It’s a cliché to say that we share the same soul, but that’s truly how I felt.

How I still feel.

Everyone was saying he was dead. So many people were—that was the fact of it.

I was looking and looking for him. I joined search parties. We’d find people alive, but mostly we were finding them dead.

You also couldn’t really get to Lombok easily, after all the damage. Like, you just couldn’t. We needed a lot of help, but it took a while for others to arrive, like from other countries. The hospitals were overrun with, well, people needing help. I wasn’t really injured at all, so I didn’t go to one, but they were amazing. Just the way all these Indonesian people pulled together.

I stayed there, in Lombok, a long time. There were parts of the island that were okay. Just small pockets. Everyone was sort of being housed there. Like, hundreds of people in one building. It was a school, I think. Where I ended up sleeping. We had blankets on the floor. We were going out every day to search.

One morning before it was properly light, I got up early and left the school. There was a faint, lingering warmth to the air that managed to penetrate through my thin clothes and keep me warm, though I barely felt it. That was the thing—even though it was hot, suddenly I was cold all the time. Even in the day.

But that morning, I just needed to walk. Walk and walk and keep walking.

Every day, bodies were being recovered. The list of the dead was growing, but also the list of the missing was too. Ruari was on that list, and as time went on, more and more people were also found to be missing. There was just this whole heap of names, so many lives, and I remember thinking how selfish it was to want Ruari back, to beg God for his safe return, when I wasn’t also begging for the other people to be returned, safe.

Ruari was all I could focus on.

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