"What part?"
"The waiting and the uncertainty." He stared at his coffee cup. "I can give people all the data but in the end, we won't know the real impact until it hits. And by then, it's too late to prepare."
"You've done everything you can. More than most meteorologists would."
"It doesn't feel like it."
I understood the weight of responsibility and the knowledge that people were depending on us to get it right. "We're doing this together. You're not carrying it alone."
He looked at me, and I shivered. His gaze was different somehow.
"Your coffee's cold," he said.
"So is yours."
"Want to go make more terrible coffee?"
"Absolutely."
We hauled ourselves up, and my knees protested, before trudging to the break room. The coffee maker was working overtime, and someone had left out a box of stale donuts. I grabbed one and Dawson raised an eyebrow.
"What? I'm stress eating."
"That donut is at least two days old."
"I've had worse." I bit into it. It was like chewing sweetened cardboard. "Okay, maybe not worse."
The corner of his mouth twitched.
"Did you just almost smile? During a hurricane?"
"No." But it happened again.
"You did. I saw it."
"You're delirious from exhaustion."
"Maybe. But I witnessed it." I poured two fresh cups of terrible coffee and handed him one. "We should get back."
"Probably."
But neither of us moved immediately. The break room was small and fluorescent-lit and smelled of burnt coffee, old donuts and chips but somehow, standing here with Dawson in the middle of the night, it felt like the eye of the storm. A moment of calm before we had to go back out there.
"Parker?" His voice was quieter than usual.
"Yeah?"
"I'm glad you're here for this." He shuffled his feet and I could have sworn it cost him something to tell me that. "You're good at what you do. I don't say that enough."
My mind went blank for a minute and I let the words sink in. My pulse sped up which was unrelated to the caffeine. "Thanks. That means a lot coming from you."
We headed back to our respective stations. The night continued its relentless march forward. Zara snapped at one of the other camera operators. Someone dropped a coffee mug and it shattered spectacularly. Isla came through in the middle of the night looking as though she'd aged ten years.
"Everyone still alive?" she asked.
"Barely," I said.
"Good. Keep going."
