I placed some ice cream on the spoon and brought it to his mouth.
He was timid at first, wincing as he took it in, then he smiled.
“Think you can eat that?” I asked.
Duncan nodded.
“Here,” Joan said. “Let me feed you.”
I handed the bowl to Joan, then lingered like a bad odor until I realized I was just an observer serving no real purpose standing over them.
I was headed back to the cooler when I paused and went back to the chocolate ice cream.
Yes, it was three in the morning, but I got a little bowl for myself, Macy and Joan.
Joan smiled and thanked me, I set her dish on the floor next to her and took mine and Macy’s back with me.
It didn’t take much effort to wake my daughter or anyone else in the cooler. As soon as I told Macy, “Hey I got you chocolate ice cream. “It was like a loud alarm clock. Everyone woke up.
“Ice cream?” Kevin asked. “Who has ice cream?”
I told the others where I had left it and one by one, they went out to get some.
Macy smiled as she ate hers. She needed a treat, something good amongst all the bad.
The ice cream worked on Duncan as well.
Mark told me when he went to get ice cream Duncan looked happy sitting on Joan’s lap, eating.
It made me happy that in some small way I had helped him.
The poor child who suffered in pain and sickness, found solace and relief in that ice cream.
It calmed him down. So much so he didn’t cry or scream the rest of the night.
I was able to fall back to sleep in the silence.
It was only after I woke again Joan told me Duncan had found another relief from the pain.
Not long after he finished his ice cream, Duncan passed away.
TWENTY-ONE – JOURNEY
The little boy deserved so much better than we gave him. He deserved some sort of a sendoff rather than being placed in the back room of the basement. There was nothing more we could do other than bow our heads in a silent prayer. What made it more sad than placing him there was the fact that his father never noticed he had passed away. Maybe that was a good thing. Duncan’s father was not far behind him. I suspected no medication we got would help him. He was too far gone. It would, however, help Adina and Beth. They seem to be moving in their sickness at a slower pace. We also needed the antibiotics as well. Some sort of cough or bacteria was making its way through our basement. I don’t know why it was. But all of us seem to be coughing just a little bit more.
We were ready to go. We had been preparing since the early hours of the morning. I told Kevin to stay in the cooler with my daughter and not let her leave his side. He agreed.
There wasn’t a single one of us that got on that evacuation bus without a bag. We were able to pull from whatever we had with us and I just set a clothing. The basement of the restaurant became the improv of apocalypse ware. Tablecloths were cut for scarfs and facemasks. Freezer bags were placed over our shoes. Silicone cooking gloves on our hands three or four gloves thick. There were two coats in the freezer. The walk-in freezer. I took one and Joan got the other. I offered to share, and I guess the men were being chivalrous. Adina gave us instructions, very detailed instructions. I worried at first, I wouldn’t remember until I saw Joan. While we couldn’t use the phones to make calls or anything, she pulled out her voice memo and recorded everything that Adina said. They were a lot of items, and I worried about carrying them all. Then it hit me. The produce bin that we use for catering. It had a handle and wheels, it was a good size case. It would work and roll across the debris if needed. We could put the items in there and keep them relatively safe.
I was nervous about going top side, yet curious. We had no idea what was ahead of us. We hadn't seen any of the destruction. Only the aftereffects of what it did to people. I gave my daughter a hug and kiss goodbye, and along with the others I ventured up the steps.
I wanted it to be my job to pull the catering bin. Although I doubted, once we loaded it that I’d be the one pulling it on the way back to the basement. I knew it would be full and heavy as well, considering some of the items on the list that Adina gave us. Mark was confident he could find those items and knew what they were, that was, of course, if anything remained at the hospital.
We discussed what we would experience when we left the basement. Dark to light. The basement seemed less dark, and that told me my eyes were adjusting.
Mark had sunglasses in his pack and led the way up the stairs.
When he opened the door and tossed the bin through, he blurted out a soft, “fuck” I figured it was bright or smelled bad.
It was both.
It started before I even crossed the threshold of the basement door. I was last and I watched as Joan and Ted lifted their arms, moving blindly like prisoners released from solitaire.
“Look down,” Mark instructed. “It will have less effect. Keep your eyes down.”
Well I did that, and it didn’t matter. It wasn’t even that bright, but it was enough.
The contrast of stepping into day hit my eyes and they not only instantly watered, I went blind. It reminded me of when I got my pupils dilated at the eye doctors or coming out of a movie theater in the middle of the day, only worse.
There was no way I could move. I stumbled through the door, kept my head down and eyes closed.
The “Oh God” and groan of pain from Ted expressed what I felt.
Mark said something about carrying the bin out of the restaurant. I was fine with that.
We had to stay there in the kitchen though, not move until our eyes adjusted. It took a few moments, not long.
I almost wished I didn’t have to see it.
If the kitchen was a small indication of the world outside the restaurant, I wasn’t ready.
When I had left the restaurant, it was in it’s usually prestige condition. The black and white checkered floor always spotless, were smeared with a gray substance. The pots and pans were everywhere, a piece of the ceiling lay sideways across the salad counter, and a huge section of the wall and the stove was black and charred
Bits of food were on the ground, open cans scattered about. But that wasn’t where the smell came from.
I recalled that smell as the same one in the basement, it was now mixed with another and the moment I recognized it, I realized in horror what it had to be.
Death and decomposition had a rotten smell, indescribable, but the other odor that laced with it was sulfur.
As the last from the basement, I took the lead out of the kitchen.
Turning the corner from the kitchen into the main dining room confirmed my thoughts.
Ezzie hadn’t made it far.
What looked like a puddle of slimy, blood laced vomit, was the beginning of a trail that not only led to an even bigger and bloodier puddle, but to Ezzie’s body as well. She made it halfway across the dining room, dying on a pile of shattered glass from the windows and doors.
I turned my head slightly when Joan moaned out an, “oh my God”
I watched her whip the cloth from her face, back up and vomit on the floor.
I thought it was the sight of Ezzie, but it wasn’t.
I guess my focus was on the trail leading to Ezzie, and I didn’t see until I watched to make sure Joan was okay.
The tiny baby.
He lay on the floor not far from the first puddle. The blanket has unraveled from him. He looked so tiny, helpless and sad.
I guessed in her desperation to flee the basement and die with her child, she didn’t think about what the drain cleaner did to her. It left her not only horrendously sick, but unable to do the one thing she wanted to do, leave this world with the baby in her arms.
Her death was horrible.
It was evident by the mess on the floor and Ezzie’s body.
I thought by drinking drain cleaner the poison of it simply would kill her. It was so much more.
I stared
down to Ezzie, caught in some sort of bizarre mesmerizing moment. She didn’t look real, she smelled it, but didn’t look it.
Her lips and mouth were a greenish gray, the color covered her throat and her chest. Her clothing looked as if it had been burned off of her. There was a hole in her throat as well.
Mark must have noticed my engrossed stare.
“Drain cleaner has lye,” Mark said. “It’s caustic. It started eating away the moment she drank it. I’m surprised she made it this far. It destroyed her from the inside out.”
“There were other ways to die.” I said.
“This was the easiest I suppose,” Mark said. “You alright?”
I repeated the word, “yeah” a few times as I nodded.
“Can we go?” Ted asked. “Please, can we go?”
A verbal answer didn’t need to be given, after looking once more at Ezzie, I moved toward the broken front door.
At least a thousand times over the years, I walked from the restaurant.
I knew not to expect the same, but somehow I was still shocked.
The street had been previously blocked off, it now had cars scattered about, tossed about from the force of the blast.
I was surprised the buildings were still standing.
Looking toward my right, toward where the blast would have come from, I could see more destruction, big piles of rubble. A dark gray, looming cloud hung over the destruction of the city.
I firmly believed the designs of some buildings saved them. Long structures with business store fronts were all connected. Every eight or so business began a new building, the first of the row took the brunt of the hit.
“Here,” Mark handed me the handle to the rolling bin. “Or do you want me to pull it?”
“No, I’m good. Thanks.” I took the handle, trying to figure out a path as we moved to the street.
The sidewalks were useless.
It was an obstacle course either way.
Furnitures, glass, chunks of concrete and bricks scattered about the road. That I expected, but not the vast amount of bodies. They lay not only on top of the mound of debris, but they seemed to be folded inside. Sometimes it was a whole body, but for the most part, arms and legs protruded, a face here and there.
Some were void of color, some covered in dry blood and some looked burnt.
“My God,” Joan said. “Where did they all come from?”
“Yeah,” Ted added. “There weren’t this many people here when we ran from the bridge. They didn’t all run after, did they? Why didn’t they take cover?”
“They were probably on the bridge,” Mark replied. “Or in their cars tossed from outside when the blast hit, some were carried a ways with the blast winds. Duncan and his dad were lucky that hadn’t happened to them.”
“We’re they really lucky?” I asked. “Doesn’t look like these people suffered.”
“You don’t always,” Mark said. “We’ll never know what they felt or knew, it’s just sad.”
We drew silent in our walk. Saving our breath, trying not to inhale too much of the air. The rattle of the empty bin hitting bumps was the only sound. I pulled it behind me, trying to clear a lane with my foot, scooting rocks and debris out of the way.
It wasn’t long before we were to the street that was lined with busses waiting to take people out of the area.
Oddly enough the four of us who got on that bus together were now in a sense full circle.
The three block hike didn’t seem quite impossible once the hospital came into view.
It was still standing, which was a good thing.
The windows of the north end of the building were completely busted and it appeared the top of the building suffered damage. We would know the shape the hospital was in once we got closer. I just knew that if we didn’t have to, I didn’t want to walk to Children’s. Aside from being father way, it was so much larger.
Adina made it sound easy to find what we needed at West Penn. It was smaller, but it wouldn’t matter if it was destroyed.
Every step I took, I kept looking for people. Signs of life or something.
There was none.
They had to be out there.
Maybe they were like us buried in a basement somewhere. Only they didn’t have an Adina to help.
We weren’t totally helpless. Admittedly, I knew some of the things that I had learned from the news and I was certain I wrote a lot in my notebook.
I just didn’t need to retrieve it with Adina there. If I recalled, a lot of my notes dealt with long term survival.
Long term seemed ridiculous to think of, I was trying to just get through each day.
Maybe that was my problem. Like focusing on the hospital in the distance and getting there, I needed to focus on the future of me and my daughter and achieving that.
Instead of baby steps to living, I had to take great strives so we could survive.
TWENTY-TWO – SAFETY
Mark had stopped twice as we neared the hospital, I questioned him neither time, but when he stopped again right before the entrance, I had to ask.
“What’s going on?”
He peered over his shoulder at me, I was unable to read his expression because of the cloth covering his mouth. “Just … looks like footprints.”
“Someone is here?” I asked.
“Was. I think. They look like they go both ways. In and out. Hard to say.”
“I’m sure,” Joan said. “Someone probably came for supplies like we are. Should we worry?”
“We should always worry,” Mark replied. “Just be on your toes.”
Ted stepped forward. “Unless they have a medical person, they aren’t coming for what we are. I know I wouldn’t.”
“Me either,” I said. “I'd come for other things. Actually, I would have hit Murphy’s Pharmacy. It was still intact.”
“Exactly.” Ted nodded. “Probably didn’t know where to begin here. We do.”
According to Adina, she knew the hospital well and told us where to go when we entered.
The farther away from the windows we go, the darker it would be. Any emergency lighting would have long since passed its ninety minutes before they went out.
We were ready for that.
The lobby was dim, scattered debris and glass throughout.
There were two departments we needed to visit, and if time permitted, the Emergency Room. After listening to Adina’s instructions once more on Joan’s phone, we separated, putting a time frame on returning and meeting in the lobby.
Joan and Ted were headed toward a stairwell to make it to the third floor. They were searching Oncology for a medication given to those being treated for Cancer and other items.
Mark and I had the first floor, radiology. The entire way there, Mark kept looking down, as if looking for more footprints.
It wasn’t dark, the corridor was lined with broken windows and that gave us light.
In all my visions, not that I was psychic, but any time I thought of nuclear war, it looked nothing like the reality I currently faced.
The ceiling tiles had dropped, some lay on the floor, while wires dangled from the ceiling all down the hallway. That was a disaster event, not nuclear war.
It was hard to believe the bombs had dropped and Mark and I walked as an invisible killer seeped into our bodies with every tick of the clock.
It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, maybe because we were some distance from ground zero.
“The hall will wind around, seems like forever but you’ll get to radiology,” Adina had said.
Sure enough we did.
I thought about how easy we found it and wondered about Joan and Ted. How were they faring? They had to go up two floors. We hadn’t heard from them, so obviously they found a way up.
We entered the waiting room for radiology. A large spacious room with a huge window, which of course, like every other one was broken.
We found the corridor that led to the different imaging rooms, X ray a
nd MRI.
As soon as we did, we pulled out our flashlights. It grew darker with each step we took.
“Find the diagnostics room,” Adina said. “It would be the room where they read the results. That’s where the emergency exposure kit is and everything else you need.”
That wasn’t hard to find, it was the only door that was slightly open, and it was at the end of the hallway.
We tried to leave the door open to allow some light in. Propping it open with the catering bin.
The room wasn’t very large and it had a pane of glass separating it from another room. That was the only glass I had seen so far that hadn’t been broken. She had instructed us to find a metal cabinet that would be along the far wall.
“You’ll see the exposure kit. It should be easy to spot. It will have all kinds of items in there. Check to make sure there is something called potassium iodide. It might be marked thyrosafe of KI. It won’t help what me and Beth and Tim are going through, but it will help us not absorb any more.”
Mark opened the cabinet, the doors of it were thicker and heavier than they looked. On the top shelf was a silver case marked CDC For Emergency Use Only. He unlatched the lid and looked inside.
I heard the rattle of the pills and he closed the lid.
“This is it,” Mark said and handed me the case. “Put that in the bin,”
“Are you looking for the other thing?”
“Yeah.”
I took the emergency kit over to the bin, as Mark shone his flashlight into the cabinet.
Adina had described what we needed as a long, black, narrow box. It would be heavy.
“I think this is it,” Mark said, sliding a case from the cabinet.
“Just peek, don’t look long,” I told him. “Remember she said …”
“I know, I know, these are person meters, this box is shielding them from the radiation, and not to expose them. We need an accurate reading in the basement.”
Mark set down his flashlight. “Come closer and shine your light in here so I don’t have to leave it open long.”
I inched forward aiming my flashlight.
He lifted the lid.
“Is that them?” I asked.
Nine Minutes Page 10
