Page 36 of Signal No. Us

He didn’t know yet, not really. But he was starting, slowly and painfully, to suspect he already did.

CHAPTER 19

Allan hadn’t slept. He’d made it about as far as realizing Robby had the fear backward, that it wasn’t Robby he was scared of, it was the offer, when his phone lit up with the barangay group chat, and every single message in it was about the weather.

Barangay Response Group Chat

Oct 14, 11:47 PM

PAGASA raised Signal No. 2 an hour ago. Sitio Tawog and the riverside houses need to move NOW.

Robby already there. MDRRMO too.

need more hands, sinong pwede?

Allan was already pulling on his shoes before he’d finished reading the third message, some part of him moving faster than the part still arguing with itself about whether he had any right to show up.

Outside, the storm had teeth. Rain came in at an angle that made umbrellas a joke, and the wind carried the particular, ugly sound of galvanized roofing deciding whether tonight was the night it gave up. Allan borrowed Ver’s motorcycle without asking, because Ver was at the reception hall arguing with a caterer about backup power and there wasn’t time to explain, and rode the eleven minutes to Sitio Tawog with his heart somewhere near his teeth.

The riverside houses Allan had sketched a few weeks ago, the grandmother’s hands, the boy who’d criticized his line work, sat lower than he remembered, or the water sat higher. Floodlights from a barangay truck threw everything into hard, shaking shadow. Robby stood knee-deep at the edge of it, radio in one hand, his other arm braced under an old man’s elbow, walking him toward the truck one careful step at a time while an MDRRMO staffer shouted headcounts into a second radio.

“Sector’s not fully clear,” Robby was saying, flat, focused, and none of his usual warmth in it because there wasn’t room for it right now. “Manang Loring’s still on the second floor with her daughter’s kids; water’s coming up the stairs⁠—”

“I’ll get them,” Allan said.

Robby’s head snapped around. For one full second, in the floodlight and the rain, Allan watched every version of Robby’s face happen at once: relief that there were more hands, and underneath it, immediate, naked fear.

“No,” Robby said. “Absolutely not, you don’t know this water, you don’t know where it drops⁠—”

“Then tell me. Fast.” Allan was already moving toward the house because someone’s family was on the second floor with water on the stairs, and this was not a conversation with time attached to it. “Robby. Tell me and let me go.”

Robby’s jaw worked. Then, because there wasn’t a version of this where he could physically hold Allan back and also do his job, he rattled off a path. “Stay left of the mango tree, the ground drops hard past it, don’t let go of the rope, I mean it, do not let go,” and shoved a length of guide rope into Allan’s hands with fingers that weren’t quite steady.

Robby thumbed his radio without letting go of Allan’s arm first. “Base, MDRRMO Two, be advised—single civilian assist entering water, tethered, one line, request spotter posted downstream of the mango tree.” He waited for the crackle of acknowledgment before he let go. “That’s not for you,” he said. “That’s so there’s a record, and so somebody besides me is watching that water.”

The water was colder and stronger than Allan expected, dragging at his knees, then his thighs, the current carrying debris he tried very hard not to look at directly. He found them huddled on a stairwell landing that had maybe fifteen more minutes of being above water: the grandmother from the mangrove sketch, her daughter, and the same boy who’d told Allan he’d drawn Robby’s arms too skinny, now soaked through and gripping his mother’s sleeve like it was the only fixed point left in the world. Allan pulled the boy onto his back, Manang Loring leaning hard on her daughter’s arm, and walked them out hand over hand on the rope exactly the way Robby had said, left of the mango tree, don’t let go, don’t let go, don’t let go.

He didn’t see the current shift near the tree until it had already taken his footing.

For one full, silent second, the rope was the only thing between Allan and the part of the river that had actual opinions about where he should go, and then hands, several sets, someone’s shout of “Kuya, may nahulog!”, hauled him and the kid both back onto solid ground so fast the world blurred.

Robby reached him half a second after everyone else did, and the sound he made when he grabbed Allan’s face in both hands wasn’t relief. It was something closer to what grief sounds like right before it finds out it doesn’t have to happen tonight.

“You said you wouldn’t—” Robby’s voice cracked clean in half. “I told you the current, I told you⁠—”

“I’m here,” Allan said, teeth chattering, the boy still clinging piggyback-style to his back like he had no intention of being anyone else’s problem, one small fist twisted into Allan’s collar. “Robby. I’m here. I’m okay.”

It took another forty minutes to clear the rest of the sitio, Robby working the whole time with a kind of controlled, silent focus Allan had never seen from him, not even at the drill, and Allan staying exactly where he was told to stay, doing exactly what he was told to do, the knowledge landing somewhere lower than his head, in his knees, his locked jaw, the cold still climbing his spine: what it actually cost Robby to do this every single typhoon season, alone, without anyone to come home shaking to, afterward.

They ended up, eventually, in the back of the barangay truck, wrapped in the same scratchy relief blanket, engine running for the heat, rain drumming steady on the roof instead of sideways into anyone’s house anymore.

“You could have died,” Robby said, quiet now, all the adrenaline gone out of his voice and left something rawer in its place. “Right there. In that water. Because I let you go.”

“You didn’t let me. I went.”

“Same thing, from where I was standing.” He exhaled, some of the professional disaster person finally creeping back into his voice, like it was easier to hold onto than the fear. “And it can’t happen again, Allan. I mean it. You weren’t trained for that water. You didn’t have a vest. You didn’t have backup. If Kapitan finds out I handed you that rope, I would lose my certification for it. I don’t care that it worked. It cannot be how we do this.”

“It worked,” Allan said, quieter now, chastened. “I know. It won’t happen again.”