by RJ Blain
The smoke and the crackle of flames somewhere nearby killed what was left of my hope. He wouldn’t be meeting me near the gate. He wouldn’t be meeting me anywhere.
It was a miracle I had survived.
What could I do? Beside the rubble, lost in the haze of fire and smoke, I felt tiny, insignificant, weak, and alone.
There were people alive in the rubble. I found the first woman by tripping over her. Like me, she was partially buried beneath what had once been part of the security gate. My hands shook as I touched her neck, searching for a pulse. I couldn’t tell much about her, but her eyes were closed and her heart beat strong beneath my fingers.
I kicked aside debris so I could kneel beside her, taking in the twisted and broken metal and glass pinning her legs to the floor. Like me, cuts and scrapes covered her, leaving her skin darkened and smeared, probably from her blood.
Would pulling the weight off her help? I didn’t know, but I couldn’t leave her.
She lived, and like me, she was alone.
Grabbing hold of my sleeve, I gave it a few yanks where it had already been torn during the explosion, ripping it away in strips. Holding my sleeve over my mouth and nose so I didn’t breathe in extra smoke wouldn’t work, not if I wanted to use both hands, but I could at least fashion a makeshift mask for myself.
If I let the woman breathe in unfiltered air, I didn’t know what would happen to her. Her blouse was a thin, gauzy fabric like mine. I ripped the material and draped it over her mouth and nose, waiting long enough to watch the fabric flutter with her breaths.
It wasn’t much, but I hoped it’d help her a little.
Like earlier, the exertion took a toll on me, requiring me to stop and pant each time I shifted the debris away. She had fared better than I had; while her legs were pinned, the metal and concrete had fallen around her instead of directly on top of her.
Once she was freed, I stared at her, wondering if it was safe to try moving her. If there was fire, I couldn’t tell through the smoke, but I had no idea why she wasn’t conscious. Had the smoke gotten to her, or was there some injury I couldn’t see? Would moving her hurt her more?
She still lived, but if I moved her, I didn’t know if I’d kill her trying to help her.
Never had I been so far out of my depth. I knew CPR; Dad had insisted I learn if I planned to go anywhere near a swimming pool so long as I lived. In reality, it had been for his sake as much as mine.
When Dad tried to drown himself being an idiot in the pool, at least someone could beat the life back into him.
I didn’t think what worked at the pool would help the woman lying prone beside me. She was still breathing, so CPR wasn’t necessary. I needed a real doctor, someone who actually knew what they were doing, to come help her, but there was no one. Sirens still sounded, but they were so, so far away.
I had moved the debris. It was a start. If others were trapped, I could free them, too.
When—if—help arrived, they’d be easier to move. My doubts piled up and threatened to crush me beneath their weight.
Was so little enough?
I didn’t know, but there was nothing else I could do.
Others had survived, and they wandered through the rubble. Some tried to help the people trapped in the debris, but one person couldn’t do much alone.
I knew because I had tried, and I had failed. The debris weighed too much, and the smoke did too good a job choking off my breath. I had helped some, although I had no idea if they would survive.
Every person I stumbled across, trapped in the aftermath of the blast, woke my fear and left me cold and shivering. The first time I touched someone’s neck—a man’s—and found his skin cold and his body lifeless, I shuddered, and I checked four times to make sure he wasn’t Dad.
The smoke blinded me, turning the familiar grays into a singular shade outlined in darker shadows. I had to draw close—within inches—to make out the man’s features.
He wasn’t Dad. The man’s opened, sightless eyes stared into mine. Death left his mouth slack, and the charcoal of blood trailed over his lips.
I recoiled, shaking. There were others nearby just like him, gone beyond help. The hope Dad lived died away. If the blast hadn’t killed those deeper in the rubble, the smoke and flames likely had—or would.
My mouth opened, but I couldn’t force out a single sound. I staggered away from the man’s body, covering my mouth with my hands. Others stood, staring at the ruins. They did nothing despite those still trapped in the rubble. Through the ringing in my ears, I could hear them crying out for help.
The thought my father was one of them chilled my blood. Alone, there was no hope of finding him, dead or alive. With others, the chance I could find him existed, however slim. I shivered, turning to the people avoiding the rubble, staring and doing nothing to help those trapped.
I headed to the nearest person. Through the haze, I couldn’t tell much about her, just that she was a woman. She stood and stared at the debris, and I wasn’t sure if she saw anything at all. Her clothes were torn and stained with dark splotches. I feared it was blood, but I couldn’t tell for certain.
I never could, and the limitations of my eyes hit me hard. How could I help anyone when I couldn’t tell the difference between ash, soot, and blood? I couldn’t even tell if the charcoal-colored stains covering me were from my blood.
For a long time, I stared at her, wondering what to do or say. All I could think about was how Dad would handle the situation. He’d take control, browbeat people into doing what he wanted, and be as quick with a smile as he was with a rebuke.
Dad wouldn’t have hesitated. Silence wouldn’t serve me, not if I wanted to find him.
I took the last few steps to close the distance between us. “You okay?” My voice was hoarse from the smoke, and the itch in my throat intensified to a burn. The first cough tore through me, and by the time I smothered the fit, I gasped for breath.
“How could this happen?” The woman kept staring at the debris. Like me, her voice was hoarse, but she didn’t cough.
I didn’t have an answer for her. Shaking my head, I followed her gaze. Her attention was focused on the dead man’s body.
We couldn’t save him, but he was a start. Swallowing back my queasiness, I wondered if I really wanted to take the next step. Even if I searched, would I find Dad?
Worse, what would happen if I did?
“We should move him.” The words came out with far more confidence than I felt.
The woman frowned. “But he’s dead.”
“There might be others alive in that mess.”
“But he’s dead.” The doubt and disgust in her voice annoyed me. As always, I hid my thoughts behind a veil of silence. Sometimes we ran into people at work who balked at certain tasks, and I couldn’t blame her for her hesitation and horror at the prospect of moving a body. I wasn’t thrilled with the idea, either. Instead of forcing her, I considered my options.
Remaining quiet wouldn’t work, and it took every shred of my courage to say, “Go find others who are on their feet and able. Send them over and come back.”
I kissed my word quota for the year goodbye, wondering if it would make a difference. The woman’s dark eyes focused on me, narrowing in thought. There were so many ways someone could react to such a blatant order, but instead of the protests I feared, she nodded, turned on a heel, and headed for the nearest group of people.
Sometimes, people just needed a little direction in a crisis to help them focus their efforts. It didn’t take long for the woman to recruit several people who weren’t as squeamish to help with sorting through the rubble and dragging the bodies we uncovered out of the way. I took a few minutes to scope out the area, finding a section of wall near a half-destroyed shop.
At first, there were only seven of us struggling to dig through the debris in search of survivors, and I was the only woman. At my hoarse, clipped orders, several of the men dragged the dead to the wall, laying them together.
The entire time, I doubted. Was it wise moving the bodies? Would it help anything, or were we struggling through the choking fumes for no reason? My breath wheezed in and out of me. Others coughed, but the complaints I expected didn’t come.
New Yorkers were tough like that. Later, the shock and anger would settle in. We still remembered. We’d never forget the day our skyline forever changed in a cloud of smoke, flame, and dust. Why were airports and planes so often targeted?
When I wasn’t barking orders, I wondered, and I found no answers in my thoughts. Would we ever know the reason why? Did it matter?
I lacked a man’s strength, but I moved the pieces I could, and the darkness hid my tears. Minutes slipped by, and I feared we would only find more bodies. When we found a woman alive, sprawled on top of smoking concrete, I held up my hand to stop anyone from touching her. “Is anyone a doctor? Nurse?”
My question was relayed through those gathered.
“I’m a paramedic.” The man who approached had half of his face covered with a stained shirt, and his deep voice was muffled by the fabric.
“Your show.” Stepping back, I gestured for him to come closer. “What can we do?”
“We’re going to need supplies. Clean cloth, first aid kit, water. We won’t find many left alive. We’re long past the golden hour.”
I’d heard of the golden hour before, the precious sixty minutes the injured had after an accident. As the seconds ticked away, their chances for survival plummeted. How long had I been unconscious after the blast?
Too long. It had been near noon when Dad had called and I had chosen to head for him instead of listening. LaGuardia was a place of glass and metal, a modern airport for a modern world. The lack of sunlight proved the paramedic right. At least seven or eight hours had gone by, and we were long beyond the golden hour. For one woman, however, we defied the odds. The chance we could save her—save just one more—drove me to face those who had shied away from our gruesome task. Most of them were women, although a few men dressed in the ruins of suits hung back as well. “Supplies. Find it. Cloth, water, first aid kits.” I gestured to the half-destroyed store.
“Why bother?” one of the men snapped. “You heard him. We’re past the golden hour.”
I turned to him, looked him in the eye, and considered if I had the energy to find a window and commit the act of defenestration. Under normal circumstances, I would have settled for a glare, staring until my opponent looked away, unable to withstand my scrutiny.
Silence was a weapon as much as it was a shelter, but I didn’t have the luxury of time, not anymore. “This is her golden hour. Help, or shut up and get the fuck out of the way. There’s no room for a lazy coward here.”
Heels were terrible shoes for ground zero of a detonation, but I pivoted without falling on my ass, sidestepped the bodies, and headed into the store. The first act of larceny was mine, but it didn’t take long for others to follow my lead. I loaded my arms with tourist t-shirts, water bottles from the dead fridges, and found travel first aid kits scattered on the floor.
It wasn’t much, but I’d make it be enough.
Chapter Three
By expanding our efforts, we learned we were caged between two detonation points. The terminal’s glass windows near the first gate had shattered, offering cold but fresh air through the cracks to those in the lounge. I wasn’t sure how the thick windows kept together despite the damage from the explosions. Even with exposure to cleaner air, my lungs still ached. I fought for each breath, requiring me to breathe deeply each time I tried to speak.
When I wasn’t wheezing, I was coughing, which made my task of organizing listless and confused victims all the more difficult.
Maybe the textbooks claimed the golden hour was only an hour long, but we kept finding survivors trapped in the destruction. Some were injured beyond our ability to help, and the pain in the paramedic’s expression matched the tightness in my chest.
It wasn’t much, but I ordered them to be made as comfortable as possible and found someone to sit with them near the broken glass windows overlooking the tarmac. Huge lights illuminated a sea of tents, rescue vehicles, and stoked the hope of rescue.
Several stories up, all the intense glow did was offer us illumination to work by. One of the lounge stores had flashlights, but I doubted those below noticed us. The building still burned in places, forcing us away from where I wanted to be the most.
Someone touched my elbow, pulling my attention away from the flashing blue and red lights below. “What now?”
The woman was one of the later survivors we had found, pinned by wreckage but otherwise uninjured. Turning to face her, I took in those looking at me for guidance. In truth, I had no idea what to do. I made it up as I went, hoping my choices didn’t cost someone—all of us—our lives.
“Set up a rotating shift. Hunt for survivors. Gather supplies; we might be here a while. Break holes in the glass to let more air in. Slowly.” The last thing I wanted to do was provide more fuel for the flames, but we all needed to breathe. “Let’s not stoke the fires.”
My body burned with the need for air, as though I had run a race despite standing still.
“Where should we start?”
It was a good question, and one I didn’t have the answer to. What else could we do that we hadn’t done? I grunted, which led to a body-wracking cough. “Restaurants. There were a few mostly intact. Loot their supplies. See what they have that hasn’t spoiled since the power went off. No dairy, no eggs. Likely spoiled. Nothing needing cooked. First aid kits.”
“The employee-only doors were locked.”
“Break in.”
“How?”
How, indeed.
“I can help with that.” Smoke did a lot of things to someone’s voice, but I recognized the silky voice of the bare-chested man I had treated more like an object than a human being. Whirling around, I faced him. My cheeks flamed, and heat spread down my neck.
He wore a dress shirt, which was unbuttoned, partnered with a classic suit jacket. Dark smears stained the material, and I didn’t want to think too hard about the source. Like almost everyone else, he wore a cloth mask over his nose and mouth to help protect against the fumes in the air.
“Thanks,” I croaked through my mix of horror and embarrassment.
“You’ve got quite the head on your shoulders.”
I wondered if he recognized me as the crazy woman who had taken pictures of his perfect chest without bothering to look up any farther than his chin. “See if you can find a cart.”
“Sure. Anything else?”
“A time machine,” I muttered, shaking myself free of the fugue clouding my mind to see what I could do to organize teams to brave the debris to look for anyone still alive.
In normal society, names mattered. Introductions were made, forms of address established, and the way conversations and meetings played out were all founded on the initial greeting. A first impression could make or break negotiations, and I was a card my father had played early and often.
My presence worked in his favor, establishing him as far more than a businessman to those he worked with. I became his first impression, and he always took pride in introducing me.
In the ruined terminal, names no longer held weight or importance, so I wasn’t concerned with them. If I remained a ghost in the smoke, it wouldn’t bother me.
Hours had gone by without us finding a single survivor, and I put an end to the search.
It had been a miracle we had yanked so many away from the brink of death, but our extended golden hour was over. The paramedic had been joined by a doctor and a nurse, and they fought a different battle, one I could only help by making sure they had everything we could find for them to use.
They fought to save the lives still on the brink, extending precious minutes into hours. My body ached, and the worst of my pain was in my feet. Sweeping the debris, the dust, and broken glass out of the lounge had kept some of my fellow survi
vors busy.
I could have taken my heels off, but I left them on. Turning to one of the women who had a gift of browbeating people into cooperating, I said, “Gather everyone here. There’s nothing more we can do but wait.”
While the spotlights had turned the night into day, the dawn offered us a view of the ruins of LaGuardia. Terminal B hadn’t been the only one hit; smoke rose from the distant buildings, and the other wings of Terminal B likewise burned. Grounded planes littered the tarmac, as did countless emergency vehicles.
“Jesus,” someone gasped. The man staggered to the window. The blast had cracked the thick glass, blowing out some chunks of it while leaving enough to offer some protection from the late winter chill. In a week or two it’d be spring, but I had a difficult time believing in spring in the gray haze smothering the airport. “The whole place was bombed.”
The scope of the destruction stretched as far as I could see in the early morning light, and I trembled. How many people were trapped in the other terminals of the airport, hoping for rescue?
How would those below even get to us? The boarding ramps had been destroyed by a second explosion in our terminal, cutting us off from the easy routes out. Until someone came for us, we were stuck.
A large hand pressed against my back. “You need to rest.”
It was the man with the smooth voice, husky from the smoke. I turned to escape his touch, but my feet decided they had had enough of my abuse. Pain lanced up both of my legs, and before I could catch myself on the back of one of the lounge’s bolted-down chairs, my knees buckled.
He caught me under my arms, lowering me to the carpet. Shifting one arm to support my back, he swept his gaze over me, staring at my heels. “Daniel?”
The paramedic made an appearance, narrowing his eyes as he took in my sprawled position on the floor. Crouching, he rested his wrists on his knees. “What happened?”
“She fell. Maybe her shoes?”
I watched the two men. Daniel was older, which surprised me. He was older than Dad by far, old enough to be my grandfather. There’d been no sign of age in the tireless way he worked.
