by A. R. Shaw
10
Kitty
“Mom, I don’t know. I don’t know what caused the explosion. What you see on the news is as much as I’ve heard. Are you guys standing in food lines there? I saw that on the news.” Anything to change the subject. “Yes, they give us extra rations here because we don’t have time for the lines. I’m not starving, Mom. I have plenty to eat.” Kitty hated the sharp voice she used with her mother over the phone, but she was already exhausted, and her work day was just beginning in less than an hour.
“Mom, I love you. I’ve got to go now. Yes, I’ll text you later when I’m home. Don’t…don’t worry, Mom. I’m fine. I love you…I’ve gotta run. I love you, too. Bye.” She pressed end before another word could wedge itself in between the final goodbye and then checked the time on her phone. She had fifteen minutes before she had to leave.
It wasn’t that she lied to her mother; she just needed to get into the right headspace before she left for work. Her mother would never understand, always clinging to her child to the last second. So she lied. Every now and then she lied to her mother. She lied about being late for work because she didn’t want her to worry. She lied about going out with friends when she was actually going out with an online date for the first time, because she didn’t want her mother to worry. She lied about having enough money in her account even though her rent just increased and she’d taken to skipping meals and letting her auto insurance lapse to make up the difference. She lied to her mother to keep her from worry.
But right now, she’d seen too much in the past few weeks and knew she needed to shut everything off—the television, her phone, the lights, the returning flashes of the dead she’d seen in the recent past—everything, and sit down on the tile floor, shut everything out and think of nothing for a few minutes before she left for work each day. That nothingness steadied her, brought her peace when the world around her was chaos. It was a mindfulness she clung to now. There was no escape from her treacherous life, only this peace before the storm.
She closed her eyes and listened to the passing cars outside her apartment. A skateboarder rolled by. She could hear the smudged conversation of two women walking along the sidewalk below her front window, and then Kitty focused on her own breath and looked inside herself and found the comforting darkness. Then dead Ed’s eyes appeared, and she let that recent memory float away and again returned to the soothing black as she listened only to her breath’s cadence. It happened this way in the beginning and in time she let the few distractions come through, noticed them and let them float by, always returning herself to the dark. All it took was refocusing on her own breath; that in and out always brought her back to where she needed to be. Then her timer went off and this time she really did need to leave for work. Though each time she meditated, it always went by so fast. Before this, her heart would race before she even closed the front door. The anxiety she felt each day was getting to her. Finding meditation helped and made all the difference, although even that didn’t keep her from crying herself to sleep at night after she’d lost a patient, or when things got hairy, as Eleanor would say. And now every day…things got hairy.
Grabbing her keys from the console table by her apartment door, Kitty rushed down the three flights of stairs to the ground floor. On her commute to work, she always listened to the local news to get a heads-up on any incoming matters…things she might be a part of later in her shift. As she drove down Tuscarawas Street toward Highway 77 she heard:
“Authorities have confirmed yesterday’s explosion was a part of the coordinated attacks on oil refineries, pipelines, fracking operations and the like by EPA Fundamentalists.”
“They’re calling themselves EPA Fundamentalists?” Kitty said as she neared her exit.
“In other news today the Free DNA Database Bill passes the Senate, food lines were temporarily shut down in New York City due to riots, and the entire surviving law enforcement staff of those killed in Maricopa County, Arizona, while in a funeral procession last week, are under investigation for threatening federal officers today.”
“Everyone’s crazy,” Kitty said as she stopped in a line of backed-up traffic waiting to exit onto the highway.
“Unrelated, the trial in Chicago against former chief of police Herold Milpa continues as the family of slain black teenager Taylor Dinnings prepares for court. The heinous beating death of the fourteen-year-old child by police officers has prompted renewed protests outside the police headquarters. Several arrests have been made by officers in riot gear.”
The radio continued to drone on, but her attention was now diverted. “What in the hell?” she said, watching, barely inching along in traffic, as protesters blocked traffic carrying signs reading ‘Put Kids First’ and ‘Honk for Teachers.’
Honking her horn, she yelled, “Please move. I’m running late to work. I’m emergency personnel.”
Ignoring her plea, they walked on between the cars held captive. She was only two car lengths from exiting the off-ramp.
“Dammit!”
That’s when she heard the gunshot coming from directly behind her and ducked as her back windshield shattered.
“Wha…” she began to say but again another shot rang out, this time hitting the protester nearest the hood of her car. Later, in the dark of night, when things were quiet, Kitty wondered why her brain read the blood-spattered sign as the woman went down—Tweet Teachers with Respect—instead of seeing if the condition of the woman was viable.
It all happened in slow motion. Kitty began taking off her seatbelt automatically, going to the aid of a stranger. Her medical training was kicking in when she stopped herself from opening the door as a man, running with a handgun aimed straight ahead, passed by her driver’s side window.
Gunning down two more people as she was forced to watch, he then turned and lowered the handgun. “Okay, move, now...I’m tired of this shit!” he said and directed the cars in front of her to take the off-ramp. Everyone complied with his orders immediately. She followed them too, as the gunman got into his car and also exited.
Shaking, she drove through the entrance of the highway and then exited and circled around through an older neighborhood, trying to calm her breathing, and watched as the gunman took a left turn over the highway. Not even getting his license plate, Kitty doubled back and parked near the highway along Harrison Ave, grabbed a medical bag out of the trunk of her car and ran for the gunned-down victims still stranded between parked cars in the street.
Already she heard sirens in the distance coming from Mercy Medical, just north of them, but went ahead and assessed the five shooting victims, not knowing how in the world the EMT crew would navigate through the congested traffic to get to them in time. “Is there a doctor?” she yelled as she worked. Many of the motorists remained in their cars, too afraid to leave, and many even inched their vehicles around her as they tried to make their way back into moving traffic as many of the protesters continued their efforts to block traffic. Their chants, despite the chaos, went on as if on autopilot.
Kitty looked up at the protestors as they passed by like zombies in some trance. The gunman was right about one thing; she was also tired of this. There wasn’t a day that traffic wasn’t stopped or blocked by various causes. Or by bombings in protest. Some of us of are just trying to do our jobs, she thought. And then, despite the sirens and emergency vehicles in the distance, Kitty kept pressure on her wounded victim in an effort to stanch the flow of blood but from her position, kneeling there on the ground, she glimpsed the peaceful green park lawn of a fallen president. Bill McKinley’s Tomb sat to the right of her, surrounded by weathered white tombstones. From one end, she existed in utter chaos with those barely living, and within her line of sight, complete peace with those in death.
11
Dane
“Listen, here they come,” Matthew said as the boat rocked back and forth in the night.
Dane didn’t care; she held Tuck’s head in her lap, rewetting the cloth sh
e placed over his face occasionally to help him breath without inhaling so much smoke. They all did this, these cowards of land taken to the lake, as they bobbed with the wake. A few of the nearby boats had radios and sent for help. No rescue was planned until the fire was beat. That’s when Matthew told them they’d send for the air tankers soon and perhaps if the Canadians felt up to it, they’d send a waterbomber or two as well. And that’s what they heard coming next, buzzing on the horizon, something unnatural from the roar of the flames.
Matthew put his hands around his mouth. “Everyone get down!”
Even Dane ducked for cover over Tuck as the waterbomber flew low and began dousing the flames from a little yellow airplane. Accuracy wasn’t an exact science with the briskly changing winds. Injuries often occurred to individuals in the general vicinity of fluid dropping from an air tanker. Depending on the size of the plane itself, having anywhere from a little less than six hundred to over three thousand gallons of flame retardant dropped on your head proved lethal. Often, the choice of death was by fire or waterbomber for those trying to escape the area. This time, it was a smaller Air Tractor AT-802F, which carried a little over eight hundred gallons of fluid.
“Nah, that’s not going to work. I hope to hell they bring in more for this. Barely make a dent with that tiny thing,” Matthew said as the plane disappeared into the smoke.
“It’s getting lighter. I have no idea what time it is. Must be around four in the morning. You checked all the cupboards? There’s no bottled water on this thing?” Dane said.
“None, I checked. Lake water it is…if you need a drink. How is he?”
Placing her fingers to Tuck’s pulse along his neck, she replied, “He’s still got a steady beat and he’s breathing. He’s probably got a concussion and with those burns on his leg, I hope he stays out of it. He’s going to be in a lot of pain if he wakes up here like this.”
“Yeah, we need to get the hell out of here.”
Again, the sound of the boat sloshing in the water. “Matthew, did you see what direction the others left? You think they made it?”
She watched as Matthew pressed his fingers against his eye sockets, then opened them again and blinked several times. His face was blackened, and it made the crystal blue of his eyes glow in contrast like headlights. They all knew better than to do this…the pressing. The stinging would return with a vengeance, but she knew he couldn’t help it.
Shaking his head, he said, “Hell, I don’t know. They had a better chance of making it than we did seconds later. The path closed up pretty quick. Hope they made it out.”
Again, the rippled waves of water slapped the side of the boat in the silence that followed.
“Yeah, me too.”
That’s when Tuck suddenly jolted and started coughing, startling Dane.
“Oh crap,” Matthew said and stepped down to help Dane sit him up. Then another plane flew overhead, the same one as before, hitting the fires again.
“Turn him to his side. We’ve got to get him out of here. They know we’re here. Why don’t they send a chopper?” Dane said as Tuck coughed and tried to catch his breath.
“Calm down, Tuck,” Dane said, trying to keep him from hurting himself with the wracking coughs. Already his arms were flailing in a panic, as if he tried to get hold of something to steady himself.
“It’s all right,” Matthew said and helped the man to sit up. “We’re on a boat.”
It took another several minutes for him to breath in and out easily, and then he started shaking in obvious pain.
“Besides your leg, are you hurting anywhere else?” Matthew said.
But Tuck only glared at him with his lips shut in a firm line and groaned out as if he were metering the pain.
“Dam…mit,” Matthew said, “Where the hell are they? You already checked for a first aid kit?”
She could have rolled her eyes but didn’t. She knew he was frustrated. “Of course.”
Although she suddenly remembered the oblong powdered packets were in her pants and she slapped the side of her leg, feeling only skin where the pocket resided typically. She realized her pants were on the distant shore of the lake or…more likely they were in ashes in a little gunmetal gray pile on the distant shore of the lake by now, blowing away in the hot wind. The fact that she was nearly naked wasn’t a concern. It didn’t matter anyway; if they had the packets, she’d have to reveal what they were before she could mix the powdered alcohol with lake water to give to Tuck as an escape from some of the pain. Just to take the edge off.
“Ask the other boats if they have anything.”
“The only thing they might have is no stronger than an anti-inflammatory.”
“You don’t know that. Just ask, dumbass. He’s got to have something. Look at him. His blood pressure is probably skyrocketing.”
Why they were yelling at each other made no sense to Dane. She was only trying to match Matthew’s tone of voice. He was clearly upset when he was powerless to help others in pain.
“Hey, we’ve got an injured man over here. We need pain medication. Anyone?” Matthew yelled between cupped hands.
The waves lapped against the boat’s side as a response.
“Ass wipes. They probably have something but don’t want to give it up,” Matthew said, then suddenly another waterbomber flew by and everyone ducked again. This time the spray landed too close when the wind changed direction and one boat knocked into another.
“Everyone all right?” Matthew shouted after the cursing ended.
They gave him a thumbs-up.
“Serves them right,” Matthew confided.
Dane had to laugh. “Because they’re not willing to share their opioids with us?”
“Damn straight. Not even an aspirin? I hope he dive-bombs them next time.”
But she knew he didn’t mean that.
Then those who’d waited out overnight on the lake water like immigrants began cheering as the smoke cleared. Moments later a very bright light and shouting from a megaphone came from shore.
Dane quickly laid Tuck down and grabbed her oar, as Matthew did his, and began paddling their boat to the water’s edge.
“At least the other boats are letting us go first,” Matthew growled.
“Stop complaining, Matt. Since when did you ever have hope in humanity? I’m surprised you’re just now disappointed. I never expect anything from anyone. Learned that a long time ago.”
“You’re such a hard ass, Dane. At least I still have hope.”
“Have you turned on the news lately?”
“Just row,” he said and glared at her.
She felt like stopping just to prove a point. But then again, why did she even care to teach him a lesson? That was the interesting part for Dane. She cared about only one person in the world and he was no longer with them.
12
Kitty
“Did they catch the guy?” Eleanor asked as they prepped the ambulance with supplies for their shift.
Kitty shrugged. “I don’t know; it’s only been around four hours since it happened.” The warmth of Eleanor’s hand landed on her shoulder.
“Kitty. You should take some time off. That was a lot to witness already in one day and it’s barely past lunch. You can’t possibly go out again today.”
Shaking her head, Kitty said, “I don’t have a choice. I can’t afford to take any time off. And even if I did, they’d give me a hard time about it. Essential employees have rules.”
“Jeffrey will cover for you. I’ll call him now, if you’d like. He can be here in five minutes.”
She huffed, “Not in that traffic. It’s hell out there. Don’t worry, I’m fine. I need to work. Otherwise, all I’ll see is the gunman shooting down people and then making us move in traffic as if he helped us escape prison camp or something.”
Eleanor giggled a little; her blond curls bobbed up and down.
“It’s not funny. It was a freaking nightmare.”
With her hands up
in surrender, Eleanor said, “I know…I know. It was just a weird mental picture. As if traffic were a prison camp you were making a break from. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“He just ended the life of three people, Eleanor. I doubt the fourth one will make it either; she’s still in ICU. And the teachers…they just kept walking through the vehicles like zombies, shoving their signs up and down.”
That reality check was enough to sober Eleanor, though Kitty was a bit sorry for changing the mood. There were times in this job that only dark humor saved your soul. As crass as it was, it was a coping mechanism.
“You’re sure you’re ready?”
“Yes, let’s do this.”
That’s when their ambulance driver came out and nodded to the two of them in the back. They closed the doors, said little else and they were on their way already with their first call. At times Roland, the driver, played the latest Chris Cornell songs as they drove along, sometimes humming or chanting along with the tunes. Maybe that’s why he did it, she suspected. Despite the chaos around them, they had to maintain some kind of normality to keep up their inner strength.
“We got a call,” he lowered the music and yelled back to them.
“What kind of call?” Eleanor asked.
He shook his head like a wobbly top. “Something jacked. Not that we ever get anything considered a regular call, like a simple heart attack or drug overdose, anymore. Those were the days…”
That pang in the center of Kitty’s chest burned again. Now, it was one escalating event after the other and no end in sight. They were all worn out, never knowing when their shift might end or when they might end in peril.
“We don’t get paid for this crap,” Roland said as they backed out.
Kitty noticed the reddish hue rise from under his shirt collar as he spoke. “Freaking government’s bankrupt…they even took our hazard pay. Seriously? With this job?” He looked at Kitty as if he expected an answer. His hand lifted open on the steering wheel. She could see his eyes were dark, soft pools of black.
