“Your wedding day?”

“Nope.”

“When she found out she was pregnant?”

“Nope.”

I thought about it for a while. “Not even happy tears?”

He shook his head.

“What about the women you pull over? Do you let them go if they tear up?”

“It makes me uncomfortable,” he said simply. “I don’t like it.”

“Good thing you married a woman who doesn’t cry.”

“Lucky. Very, very lucky. She’s not overly emotional.”

“Doesn’t sound like she’s emotional at all,” I teased.

“You’re not far off.” He laughed once. “I wasn’t sure she even liked me at first. It took me two years and a lot of hours at the gym to even get up the nerve to ask her out. I didn’t think I could love anyone more than I loved Alexandra until a few weeks ago.”

“When Maya was born?”

He nodded.

I smiled. “I was wrong. You’re not a jerk.”

A shrill tone came over the radio, and the dispatcher began rattling off a weather report.

“Another tornado?” I asked.

Then the sirens began to wail.

“The National Weather Service is reporting a tornado on the ground within Emporia city limits,” the dispatcher said in a monotone voice. “All units be advised, a tornado is on the ground.”

“How is she so calm?” I asked, looking up at the sky.

Dark clouds were swirling above us.

Reyes slowed, looking up. “That’s Delores. It’s her job to be calm, but also, nothing rattles that woman. She’s been doing this since before I was born.”

Delores’s voice came over the radio again. “All units be advised, a tornado is on the ground, traveling north, northeast. Current location is Prairie Street and South Avenue.”

Delores continued to repeat the report while Reyes’s eyebrows pulled together, and he began frantically searching the sky.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“We’re a block north of that location.”

Shepley

The wind blew in clusters of rain, soaking the tile and toppling chairs. Several men with hospital badges rushed over with a large piece of plywood, hammers, and nails, and then they got to work covering the broken glass. A few more swept up the glistening pieces of glass that had scattered onto the floor.

Chief stood and started to walk over to where the maintenance men worked. Just as he began to chat with one of the men, he glanced out the window. Then he turned on his heels and yelled, “Everybody, move!”

He grabbed a woman and leaped just as a compact car punched through the plywood and the remaining windows, coming to a halt on its side in the middle of the waiting room.

After a few seconds of stunned silence, wailing and yelling filled the room. Brandi turned the children she’d been holding over to me, and she ran over to the car, checking the workers and some patients who had been mowed down.

She held her palm on the forehead of a man, blood gushing down his face. “I need a stretcher!”