When the sun shines in the Sunshine state

When the sun shines in the Sunshine state

Edgar Echeverria

4/22/2023

As the metal from the enormous wall came crashing into the ocean's tide there was a rigid silence that followed. The darkness of the night slowly fades away to reveal a beautiful and mellow sunrise. My granddaughter, May Echeverria, being one of the first people to see the sunrise in Florida after twenty-six years. Admiring the splendor of Mother Nature's artwork, she takes a seat on the warm sand of Miami Beach and lets the sunrise fully envelop her.
I wish for nothing more than for this to be her reality, but fate is a cruel mistress.
Each day May wakes up just like everyone else does, faced with a bland, gray wall that is in desperate need of a fix-up. Its panels creaking as the ocean breeze pushes against it, the iron it was made with slowly gaining rust with each passing day. Walking through the dreary streets of Miami she passes by Baptist hospital and is forced to remember how her father died. Lying in a hospital bed, unable to be treated since there was not enough medication in supply.

Unfortunately, Florida has been in this abysmal state ever since the Coastal Barrier was built. This gaudy, misuse of taxpayers' money was made as a one-time solution for rising sea levels. What the government did not seem to realize is that the water wasn’t simply going to disappear. Instead, as the wall kept getting built the water slowly crept its way up Florida’s shoreline. This displacement caused the wall to continue to be expanded until the displaced water was no longer Florida’s issue. The real issue came after the wall was fully encasing Florida’s oceanic borders.

Due to Floridians no longer having access to the oceans' plentiful bounty, all fisheries were immediately shut down. Not only that but since there were no longer any beaches, tourism took a very steep fall. Within a few months Florida’s economic standing was nearly non-existent. Many of Florida’s residents decided to move away, myself included, but my son foolishly decided to stay because of his girlfriend.
That damn fool.

As May continues down the street she passes through the Mega Complex, a residential area where a majority of Miami’s residents now live, herself included. She walks up fifteen flights of stairs, and down a seemingly endless hallway to her apartment. She has to try unlocking the door three times due to the corroded lock. When she’s finally able to open the door she’s welcomed by the flickering of her living room light, which she decides to ignore, and beelines for her bed. Which she collapses on with a heavy sigh.

“I wish I didn’t have to keep working on that damn wall.” She said aloud to herself.

A year prior May was enlisted to a mandatory job of maintaining the wall, just like a majority of all people above the age of eighteen. Day in and day out they would all work together to make sure that the gargantuan wall that is hindering their livelihoods was in a functioning condition. Working twelve hour shifts that they are poorly compensated for, many of May’s generation are having a harder and harder time putting up with daily life. Each day that she goes into work she sees less and less of the people she grew to know thanks to their awful predicament.

She rolls over on her bed to face the one window within her entire apartment, which has the best view of the expanse of the Coastal Barrier. As she lies there, she watches as the sun slowly falls behind the wall and can only wonder as to what the sunset looks like. She holds out her hand in an attempt to grab onto the sun so that it would stay for just a second longer, but just as the waves recede during low tide the sun pulls away from her so fast that the emptiness of her home starts to feel all the more larger. With her apartment no longer lit up by the suns rays, and with the darkness slowly creeping towards her, she decides that it would be best to get a good night's rest so that she at least is not tired for her shift in the morning. Whether it is fortunate for her or not, May would not be going in for her shift.

Rather abruptly, May is woken up from her sleep by a shrill siren that is unnecessarily eerie, and reminds her of nails scraping against a blackboard. Slightly in a daze from having just woken up, May recognizes this dissonant alarm as a severe weather alert. Having not heard one in a few years she immediately gets out of bed and turns on her television. She flicks through the channels until she reaches Channel 7 News, where she is greeted by a weatherman dressed in a bright yellow poncho. He seems entirely out of breath and is completely drenched due to a heavy downpour. What he is saying is almost completely inaudible until he finally puts his microphone close to his mouth.

“To all citizens of Miami-Dade county and all surrounding counties and cities, a severe weather alert has been sent out due to the current hurricane that is brewing directly east of Miami Beach.”

As he finished a sentence a map showing the real-time image of the hurricane was pulled up to the side of him. Showing a hurricane that was large enough to cover all of southern Florida.

“As you can see here this hurricane is one of the largest in history, clocking in as a Category Five this hurricane shows no signs of slowing down.”

The map next to him now changed into an image showing the estimated course of the storm.

“From what we know the winds are currently blowing North-Northwest, what this means is that this storm will hit the Coastal Barrier and then start moving straight up the shoreline. Now this could potentially cause a lot of damage to the barrier due to the excess build up of oceanic debris along the base of the wall. For now all residents of the Mega Complex are told to bunker down as this is going to be a long ride, and for anyone who is not currently living within the Mega Complex: unless your house is farther away from the Coastal Barrier then it is recommended that you report to your nearest storm shelter. If you do not know where you nearest shelter is located you can go ahead and cal-”

But before the weatherman could finish what he was saying May quickly shut off her television. Completely dumbfounded by what she just heard, May sat motionless on her couch staring blankly at the television screen. Racking her brain for what to do, May started panicking, because she knew something that most people did not. The Coastal Barrier had a hole in it.

While working one day about two months ago May was assigned to work on the lowest part of the wall along with a handful of her coworkers. They each decided that it would be best to split the workload and so that's what they did. May was given the task of inspecting the lowest part of the foundation, which was easily the most important part of the Coastal Barrier. If the foundation of this section were to break in some way it could result in a domino effect that would cause a multitude of the adjacent sections to collapse as well.

So with her assignment, May trudged through the metal maze, and upon reaching its darkest depths she was shocked to hear running water coming from somewhere nearby. As she traveled further into the darkness with only her headlight to provide her with some vision she could feel the water level slowing creeping higher. When she eventually reached the source of the leakage she found a hole that was no bigger than her fist. From what it seemed, the iron that was used to build the wall had oxidized to a point where the crashing waves eventually broke through. Scared as to what this could mean, May hurriedly told her supervisor about what she had found, but to her surprise he was at all worried about the news.

“Oh, that happens all the time. This wall is so old by now that I’m surprised it is still standing. The iron the government used was poor quality due to the cost of construction being so high in the first place. So it is common for holes to appear here and there, but don’t worry I will file a report to have it patched up. You can go ahead and take your break now by the way, good work so far.”

This was the last time May had heard of the hole for the last two months, that is until yesterday. She was reassigned to the same section and was given the same job as she was two months prior. This time however she was not able to make it to the foundation. With about ten minutes until she reached the bottom she came to a halt as her foot was instantly soaked by sea water. She looked down towards the floor to see that water had risen all the way to this point. She rushed back to her supervisor to tell him what happened, and as she finished explaining what she saw his face went from looking unfazed by anything to looking as if he had seen a ghost. May and all her coworkers were told to head home for the day as the supervisor made a very panicked call.

May now almost completely paralyzed from fear. She knew that the hole was not fixed by now and that if what the reporter said is true then the wall would not survive this hurricane. She sprung off of her couch and bolted out of her apartment, not even caring to lock the door behind her. She practically leapt down each flight of stairs until she finally reached the ground floor. Her legs were already burning but she did not care, she had to get to the barrier before the storm hit.

She sprinted from the safety of the Mega Complex and let it disappear behind her. As she got closer to the Coastal Barrier she thought to herself how funny it is that something so large could be taken down by a hole small that it did not even make up one percent of the totality of it, but she knew it would. She knew that if she didn’t confirm that the hole was patched that it could be disastrous.

As she reached the foot of the wall she could hear that the creaking from yesterday was much louder than before. She swiped her employee ID and ran into her work site. On her way deeper into the barrier she ran past her supervisor who was still wearing the same frightened expression on his face which gave her all the information she needed. May gathered whatever welding gear she could find as well as much welding material as possible and headed towards the hole without even exchanging a word with her supervisor. All she heard as she ran away was her manager shouting at her.

“May! Stop! You won’t be able to do anything! It’s too late, just come back and head back ho-”

Before he could finish his sentence May had already run out of earshot of her manager. As she headed down towards the inky blackness she realized the water had risen even more during the night, but she didn’t care. She had to try and fix it. She quickly put on her respirator and dove head first into the slow rising water. Her headlight provided even less visibility than usual thanks to the sea water that was nipping at her, yet she continued on. Diving deeper and deeper down until she eventually came across the hole, which was now about twice the size of her. Instantly May knew that she did not have nearly enough material on her to patch it up completely, but she had to at least use what she had. So as quickly as she could, May did a patchwork job of trying to seal the hole. Anyone with skill in welding would be able to tell that it wouldn’t do much, but she had done it. The only issue now is that she was in the most dangerous place she could be during this storm. So just as quickly as she patched up the hole, she swam back to the upper part of the barrier, dropped all her gear, and ran straight out of the wall.

As she reached the outside she could tell that the hurricane had come much faster than she thought it would. The winds had severely picked up their pace, so much so that she felt as if she could be blown away at any second. She has to get away from the wall as fast as possible so she starts sprinting as hard as she can, her legs feeling as if they are about to fall off, but she keeps running. Then she hears it. CRASH. The hurricane finally makes contact with the Coastal Barrier and it sounds dreadful. The metal of the wall now sounds as if it is being torn off piece by piece. The debris that was building up at the base of the barrier is now being picked up and thrown against it. The metallic clangs that reverberate sounds like a drummer that has no rhythm trying to perform a solo. May turns around to look at what is going on, and to her surprise the hurricane is almost perfectly stationary. It is not moving up the shoreline like the weatherman said it would. Instead it is slow digging through the layers of the barrier. All May could do was sit and watch as the hurricane slowly died down until it came to a complete stop.

The Coastal Barrier had held out. Seeing the wall still standing after taking a beating like that gave her a sense of immense relief. Unfortunately, this relief was short-lived. Not long after the storm ended parts of the wall started to fall to the ground, and as more pieces came hurtling to the ground the faster the wall started to fall apart. Eventually the entire section completely crumbled down causing its adjacent sections to collapse as well. Almost as if some higher power was listening to her wish, May would no longer have to work on that damn wall. Now, as the metal from the enormous wall came crashing into the ocean's tide there was a rigid silence that followed. The darkness of the night slowly fades away to reveal a beautiful and mellow sunrise. My granddaughter, May Echeverria, being one of the first people to see the sunrise in Florida after twenty-six years. Admiring the splendor of Mother Nature's artwork, she takes a seat on the warm sand of Miami Beach and lets the sunrise fully envelop her. But just how this higher power granted her wish they also made sure it came with a price.

While enjoying the serene beauty of the sunrise, May could hear the ravenous ocean water forcing its way up the shoreline, ready to enjoy the meal it has waited 26 years to eat.