"Mireya Kallas."
"Mireya, my name is Keturah. Are you in a safe location, away from the cloud?"
"Yes. Upwind. About fifty feet."
"Good. Stay upwind. Don't go back toward it for any reason. Is he breathing?"
"He's breathing. Rate about thirty, labored. I'm an RT." I put the phone on speaker and set it on my knee so I could use both hands. I loosened the top two buttons of Everett's shirt. His skin was hot and slick. "Everett, you're doing good. Keep breathing."
"Is anybody else exposed? Are there people in the pool?"
I hadn't even thought about the pool. I stood up so I could see over the oleander hedge along the back fence. There were four or five people, a mother with two little ones in the shallow end, a pair of teenagers on the far side by the diving well. The haze was drifting toward them over the fence, thin and almost invisible.
"Yes," I said. "There are people in the pool, maybe five, including small children. The gas is blowing toward them."
"Can you safely tell them to leave, without going near the cloud?"
I could. I cupped my hands and I yelled, the way you yell in a hospital hallway when somebody's about to walk into a code, and I'm told it was heard four houses away. "GET OUT OF THE POOL! THERE'S A CHEMICAL LEAK! GO OUT THE FRONT GATE! NOW!"
The mother looked up, grabbed both her kids by the arms, and went. The teenagers stared for a second and then went too. I watched them all run out through the front gate toward the clubhouse parking lot.