Nine Minutes

by Jacqueline Druga

  “See,” Kevin said. “One minute in this dust, away from the oxygen, he’s dying all over again.”

  “Oh my God.” I looked at Kevin. “He’s not dying.”

  “I could be,” Ted said.

  “You’re not dying,” I told him.

  “Mommy, is Ted gonna die?”

  “No.” I widened my eyes to Kevin. “See. Stop.”

  “I can see,” Kevin said. “Thanks to those lights. But they aren’t oxygen.”

  “There’s oxygen there. I’m sure of it,” Mark told him. “Lots of other things, too. Including a radio so we can call out.”

  “Call who?” Macy asked.

  “Anyone,” Mark replied.

  “What for?”

  “To see what’s out there. Eventually find a better place, one we can stay at,” Mark said.

  “Is there one?” Macy asked.

  Her simple question brought silence, even to Kevin. And it stayed that way, until we crossed from the hospital wing into the garage pay lobby, then finally the staircase.

  “We’re walking down to two,” Mark instructed, leading the way down the very dim stairwell.

  “Why not three?” Kevin asked, “There are three sub floors. Why stop at two?”

  “We have the supplies on two.”

  “Why can't we bring them to three?”

  “No, why so wound up, were you eating sugar?”

  That comment made me smile. Kevin did seem hyper. Maybe subconsciously he knew things could turn good for him.

  Like a kid at Christmas, he continued to ramble fast. “I would think the farther we go down the better.” Kevin paused. “Wow, that coughing sounds even worse in the stairwell, Ted. It’s loud.”

  “Everything’s loud,” Mark replied. “Walking … talking.”

  “Are you saying I’m loud?” Kevin asked. “It’s just the echo in here and … do you hear that?”

  Mark had nearly reached the second level. “I can’t hear anything with your mouth working.”

  “Sounds like someone is running. You don’t think they’re running to attack us, do you? Like in Mad Max. Footsteps against the …”

  The second sub-level door to the stair well swung open with a bang, causing not only Kevin to scream but Macy and myself as well.

  Lit by Mark’s LED light, Nisie stood there in the doorway breathing heavily, she heaved out an emotional and relief filled, “Kevin!”

  “Mom?” My guess was because he was behind me, he didn’t see her at first, only heard her, but it was enough to send him barreling through the darkness. Clumsily making his way by me and Macy, and after nearly tripping when he reached the second level landing, he grabbed hold of his mother, almost knocking her over as well.

  With all the bad that had happened, the depressing thoughts, the darkness, finally, I witnessed something good. Something uplifting, and for the first time I felt a little hope for what was ahead.

  <><><><>

  Devon had to be frustrated, but he hid it well, only grunting and getting a little snippy once and a while.

  I suppose Nisie broke the stay safe rules.

  But, hey, it was her son.

  She was overwhelmed to see and hold him, rightfully so. I could only imagine the fear as a parent she must have felt and the relief to find out he was alright.

  “What happened to your face?” she asked.

  Hearing her ask that, I forgot how bruised he was, and that his head was sutured by Adina.

  “It’s fine, Mom, I was stuck in a police car,” he told her. “I was trying to find you, they forgot about me. These people … her.” He pointed to me. “Henny, especially, she saved me. She helped me. If it wasn’t for her, I’d be dead.”

  Nisie briefly stopped holding her son to walk over and hug me.

  “Oh, goddamn it,” Devin said. “Quit touching the contaminated people, please.”

  She chuckled, then spoke softly near my ear. “I will never forget this. Ever.”

  “It was all of us,” I said. “We’re a group.”

  Lips tightly closed, she produced a partial smile and stepped back. “You gave me my son. I’ll always be grateful.”

  Maybe her premature gratefulness was the reason they just didn’t give us a space, they gave us much more than we expected.

  By the time we had returned, they had set up a small perimeter of lights, encircling what would be our little camp placed in the far corner opposite the ramp going down.

  Little blue mattresses were neatly stacked waiting for us to determine how we’d set them up, blankets were in sealed plastic bags, and a square white table was there as well.

  Before we entered the area, we had to decontaminate.

  It was for our own good.

  We did so on the other side of the room, taking water from this huge container, rinsing, then washing with this special soap, and rinsing again.

  We wore these outfits that reminded me of light colored hospital scrubs. Ted said they were more like prison wear. But they felt fresh and comfortable, for the first time in days I think I relaxed.

  I set up Macy next to me and she was the first one examined and given a clean bill of health. Nisie for some reason felt it necessary to bandage my hand and fingers. It didn’t make sense to me, they didn’t hurt and were only a little red from irritation.

  To top it off, she put both me and Mark on an Intravenous drip.

  “No arguments,” she said. “Devon said to do so. You’re dehydrated and the medication will help your body process any radiation you absorbed.”

  “Devon?” I asked with surprise. “He said to do this?”

  “Yeah, he knows best.”

  “Really?”

  “Devon was the chief of staff at the hospital. When he was practicing, he was one of the best oncologists in the business.”

  “Wow. I would never have known. I thought Devon was the maintenance man.”

  “No,” she shook her head. “He was the big wig. Like the captain, he stayed with his ship. So, he says IV, you get an IV.” She placed the final strip of tape over the shunt. “Kevin said you already took potassium iodide tablets?”

  “Yes,” I replied. “The thyro something or other. We took them right after we got back from the hospital and again before we left to come here.”

  “Good. Good.”

  “Why aren’t Kevin, Ted and my daughter getting an IV?” I asked.

  “They may,” Nisie replied. “Right now, by my assessment, the doctor wants you and Mark on the drip. Humor us.”

  She made me relax on the mattress next to my daughter. I just didn’t get it. I felt fine. I liked her, she was a warm woman, young, too. She promised to stay on our level with us. Others below offered as well. Kevin speculated that they were so healthy down below that all the health professionals were bored.

  The world didn’t seem so bad in that garage. Not near as bad as it seemed in the basement. It smelled better, we smelled better. We ate a warm meal and drank juice.

  The next day, or when we got the medical go ahead, we would get Joan and the others.

  I dozed off for a little bit, it was the first quiet night since the bombs dropped. I hadn’t a clue how long I was sleeping when I woke up. My IV bag was still half full, my mouth was dry and I downed some water.

  My hand started to itch pretty badly, I attributed it to the bandages. Grabbing my small flashlight, I rolled over to check my daughter. She was curled on her side, the blanket over her shoulders as her head rested on the paper pillow. I inched over to her as much as I could and reached for her dosimeter. Using the flashlight, I checked the readout.

  “The boiling water thing,” Mark whispered.

  “Yeah, it’s not boiling. That’s a good thing.” I released the dosimeter, kissed Macy then sat up carefully on my own mattress. Mark was seated on his right across from us.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “Good. Tired. My hand is itchy. Guess it’s the bandages.”

  “Hopefully it
won’t get that bad, right? I mean we both have these IVs,” His eyes shifted downward to the tubing. “It’s supposed to help get the radiation out of us. Devon said we shouldn’t get as bad as Duncan and his dad, or even Boris. He has meds in case we need it to feel better. That’s a good thing.”

  “Yeah, that’s a good thing.” Admittedly, it was an automatic response. What he said hadn’t sunk in, when it did, I hurriedly looked at him. “Wait. What? Why would we get bad? Why would you say that?”

  Mark lifted his dosimeter.

  When he did, I grabbed ahold of mine. I had forgotten about it. I honestly didn’t give my dosimeter a second thought. I illuminated my meter and read the digits, taking in a sharp breath.

  “This can’t be right,” I said.

  “It is.”

  Neurotically and constantly I had checked Macy’s. Maybe subconsciously, somehow, I thought looking at hers constituted looking at my own. That her numbers would be the same as mine. But they weren’t. She had been protected. I wasn’t. I was out more, I had touched the radioactive dust on the walls. It never dawned on me how much I was exposed. Had I just looked at mine every time I checked hers, I wouldn’t have been so ill prepared when I discovered how high my absorption numbers actually were.

  TWENTY-NINE – BIDING TIME

  When I woke up the next morning, my hand had swollen to the point I couldn’t move my fingers, and even if I could, I didn’t want to. The burning sensation was so severe, it felt as if it reached my bones.

  I focused on that pain, it kept me from dwelling on the headache, nausea and stomach cramps.

  My absorption of radiation came mainly from the dust I had touched.

  Mark’s was more from exposure, and he fought showing how ill he felt as much as I did.

  While we wanted to leave and check on Joan and the others and give them a radio, we couldn’t. We couldn’t risk taking in anymore radiation.

  So, the following day, an older male nurse, named Walter, from the third sub-level volunteered to go. He brought them stronger medication and a radio.

  I felt useless again.

  Funny thing about radiation, it doesn’t work the way one would think it would work. I always believed once you get poisoned with it you immediately get sick, and you either get better or die. Not that I ever thought much about it before my crash course of survival by watching the news or listening to Adina.

  That only happened in acute lethal doses of over ten gray or 100 roentgens. We believe that was what Boris, Jeff, Duncan and Tim all had.

  Less lethal doses of four to six gray worked differently. Sickness within days, sometimes hours, and then the person feels better … for about a week or so, then more severe symptoms would kick in. They either get better after several weeks or they die.

  That is the dosage Devon believed Van, Adina and Beth received, since, even though they were sheltered, they were above ground for the first four hours. The heaviest time for radiation.

  Radiation lesson two point five came after Walter radioed to say Van was doing better.

  I was relieved to hear that.

  “General rule of thumb,” Devon said, “With the exception of those who receive a fatal dose, the faster you get better, the higher the dose you received. With lower levels your body tries to process it, get rid of it and fight it. With higher doses it processes and fights what it can and stores the rest, that is the reason for the second round of symptoms.”

  So, there was a chance Van could still get sick again.

  Devon felt the need to explain it to me again, using the term ‘my friends’, trying to give me comfort and some sort of reality when Walter stated Beth wasn’t doing all that well.

  Truth was, they weren’t my friends.

  Most of those nine people who joined us were just names.

  Names that meant nothing to me. Like secondary characters in a book that pass by in a scene, or red shirts in a television series brought on to just to be killed.

  Like the reader or viewer, I felt nothing for them, I wasn’t invested in them enough to care and that was just sad.

  They were faces that came into our shelter and added a burden.

  Just like I was to the people on level three.

  A nameless, face that was sick and needed help.

  The world had fallen apart. Millions, if not billions, had died, and I couldn’t take the time to know the few that lived around me?

  No wonder karma was delivering a radiated blow to me.

  The memories of people, who they were and what they did, was all we had left.

  Millions of deaths would be in vain if no one was to remember a name, a face or a story.

  I had survived.

  There had to be a purpose for it other than just to protect my daughter.

  If there wasn’t a reason, I’d make one.

  It wasn’t too late.

  I didn’t want to be a nameless, faceless person. I didn’t want my daughter to remember the bombs and how her mother didn’t care about anyone or anything but her. From that moment on, I vowed to change. No one else would be nameless or faceless to me. I would do what I could to remember a name, a face and the story of every person I met.

  The buildings were gone, life as we knew it … gone.

  The memories of those who lived in this world and their contributions didn’t have to go, too.

  We all had to make a difference, and I would do what little part I could.

  For my daughter’s sake, I needed to make sure she knew civilization may had died, but humanity hadn’t.

  THIRTY – LOOSE ENDS

  In a way it was a good thing that boredom set in. The hours that slowly slipped by, the confusion on whether it was day or night.

  They all kind of just lumped together.

  I tried to keep as much structure as I could for Macy, sleeping at night, staying awake during the day. Trying to get her to do some sort of activity, whether it was reading, writing or drawing.

  It was difficult because I ended up going down for the count. Not due to the radiation sickness, I was handling that, my hand, however, was a different story.

  The burning turned to blisters, which then transformed into sores, which eventually ended up as ulcers.

  There were times I just wanted someone to cut it off. When I felt like screaming and crying, I refrained simply by thinking of those in the basement and how they had cried out.

  Mark had more dignity with his illness than I did. He kept going, helping when he could, moving items, counting, and dropping with his stock, ‘My bad’.

  I knew when he was feeling really bad because he would disappear for a spell. I always believed it was to throw up or nap in a corner without looking weak.

  I wished I was like that. Sadly, I depended on my daughter.

  She brought me water and cool clothes, wiped my head and cuddled when I felt horrible.

  I was supposed to be protecting and taking care of my daughter, but she ended up being my own private nurse. She was so strong, I envied her.

  There were two other children there, I wished she would try and make friends with them, but she stayed by my side.

  Like mother, like daughter, I guess. But I stayed true to my word. I was able to finagle a logbook from Devon and I took notes on the people I met. No interviews, just interesting facts. Did they have family, were they searching for someone, worried about someone?

  Who knew, maybe in the future we’d run into them.

  I took notes.

  I started with Beth.

  When Van, Adina and Joan arrived four days after we settled into the garage, Beth wasn’t with them. She had passed away.

  I asked what they knew about her, I honestly wanted to know, wanted to care about something in regards to her. Unfortunately, she was the wrong person to start with.

  In Adina’s words, “She really had no redeeming qualities.”

  She wouldn’t go into details.

  I just made a note that she died, and no one liked her
much. I guess my logbook needed negative as well as positive. After all, good and bad is what made us human.

  And there was bad out there, fortunately, we hadn’t encountered it yet.

  Joan told about seeing groups of people salvaging from stores, she refrained from using the term looting. She, Adina and Van waited outside before heading into the garage because they didn’t want to be seen.

  Eventually the city and urban areas like Bloomfield wouldn’t be safe at all.

  We would have to leave.

  To go where, we didn’t know, or even how we would leave.

  Other than Ted talking about growing plants and food, nothing about the future was discussed. The radios were useless outside of our garage. Even the bigger radio failed to reach anyone.

  Our plan was to head out after nine days, but we stayed below. On day sixteen, on the day I started feeling like myself again, we discussed the next step.

  I think the big reason it wasn’t talked about was the problem of moving sixty-three people.

  Not only moving them, but where to go.

  “Some of these people have family,” Devon said. “They want to search them out. Others, well, this is it.”

  “Where do we move the others?” I asked. “We can’t stay down here.”

  “We are our own community,” Mark replied. “There are enough people down here to start our own camp.”

  “Find an area,” Ted added. “Start building from there. Plus, really, think about this. The government had warning. There’s a plan. They’re out there somewhere, they’ll emerge again.”

  “Do we want to wait for them?” Mark asked. “Sit down here and wait for looters to find us?”

  “Like I said before,” Ted stated. “Start with the evacuation centers. That would be the first arm of the government. Head there”

  Sarcastically, I asked. “Just load everyone up and move on out or create some sort of post apocalypse pilgrimage?”

  “That won’t work,” Devon said. “Loading us all up will. But realistically we need a destination.”

  “We need a scouting group,” Mark said. ‘Transportation though, is gonna be an issue. We can’t walk, even with low radiation that’s dangerous.”