by Lou Cadle
Bash was already inside anyway, so he leaned over to double check.
And his heart dropped. It was Trevor, his six-year-old leukemia patient. The boy’s head was covered with blood, and it was pooled around his head where it lay on a stretcher. Bash reached out without thinking to touch his hair but stopped short of it. Can’t afford to contaminate the glove, and the boy was beyond feeling any comfort.
Bash moaned with the pain of it. This tough little guy, with his awful last months of life, was gone. He’d never grow up or fall in love or have little guys of his own. The world swam before him, and he realized tears were leaking from his eyes.
Backing out, he stood on the sidewalk, too shocked to move. The paramedic from the back passed him on the way back to the ambulance, took a look at his face and said, “I know. The kids are the hardest.”
“Wh — “ Bash started, but his throat closed. With an effort, he cleared it. “Where are you taking the body?”
“Up to the Founders cemetery. Can’t use City any more. It’s flooded, they say.”
“Thanks,” Bash said. As the ambulance sped off, he grabbed his scrub shirt collar and lifted it up to wipe away his tears. He went over to the fire truck and pushed the grief to the back of his mind. It was time for more triage, for helping those who could still be helped.
It wasn’t as bad an influx of patients as the first day, but it was bad enough. With half the town already dead, or in tent cities, or having walked away to the west, there weren’t as many to get hurt, and not nearly as many in buildings. He had two cardiac arrests, three asthma crises, a serious mental health break, many broken bones and head injuries, and contusions and cuts galore. He knew in an hour, they’d start seeing the bad crush injuries as victims were dug out from under whatever had fallen on them. They’d all learned a lot about such injuries, but the main lesson was, evac them as soon as possible.
When the rush temporarily slowed down, he scanned the scene, looking for the girls, but he didn’t see them. The first free second he got, he’d hunt them down and make sure they were okay and away from the blood, if possible. His name was called by a dentist taking vitals, and he had to turn back to work. He hoped the girls hadn’t wandered off. Surely they’d have more sense.
He was finishing with emptying a church bus pressed into service as an ambulance, filled with mostly minor injuries, when he turned and saw, at the edge of the sidewalk, Trevor’s mom scanning the crowd.
Degloving, he walked slowly toward her, trying to form the right words to say. She turned in a circle, craning her head. When she caught sight of him her face lit up for a second, but then the expression faded as he came closer. By the time he reached her, she was shaking her head.
“No no no no no,” she said, backing away from him.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
A wail was torn from her throat and she fell to her knees. Bash went down on his and held her, crying on her shoulder as she wept on his. “I’m sorry,” he kept whispering.
He had work to do with the injured, but he couldn’t bear to leave her like this. After long moments of weeping, she pulled away. “It’s not fair,” she cried.
“It’s not.” He wiped his tears again, knowing that you’re not supposed to show patients and families your own feelings, but these many hard days had destroyed those walls. “He was such a wonderful little boy.”
“Was,” she said, so awed by the word her tears stopped.
“I’m sorry.” Such a stupid phrase. It didn’t help a thing.
“Where is he?” she said.
“They took him to Founders Cemetery.”
She shook her head slowly. It was too much to grasp, he could see. Trevor had probably been playing two hours ago, and then the quake, and the ambulance taking him. And before she could even say goodbye, they were talking about cemeteries.
“I guess I’ll walk over there.”
“No. No — I’ll find you a ride.”
The church bus was still there, and he walked her over, explained to the driver where she needed to go, and the fellow nodded a reluctant okay.
A last squeeze of her hand, and Bash needed to get back to work.
He turned to see Haruka and McKenna staring at him from several yards away. He managed a wan smile, called “stay out of trouble” to them, and turned back to check a car with just two walking wounded. More minor injuries. He tagged them green, gave them four by fours to hold on their bleeding bits, and looked around to see McKenna was standing behind him.
“What’s up?” he asked her.
“You’ve been crying,” she said.
“It’s been a sad day.”
She opened her mouth to say more, thought better of it, then shook her head. “You need to see something.” She jerked her head off to the left and started to walk that direction.
“What?” He had patients to triage.
When she saw he wasn’t following, she turned. “That guy I killed? He’s not dead.”
“No?”
“He’s here.”
“The — “ oh crap. “The drug thief.”
“Uhuh,” she said, indicating again with her head where to look. “Blue hoodie. Black boots with jeans tucked into them.”
He scanned people until he saw him. The kid was loitering, trying to look casual and failing. This didn’t look good.
“I, uh,” he said, looking around, wondering what to do. Okay. What not to do was let this guy get his hands on their drug supply again.
“I guess I could hit him again,” said McKenna.
“No!” Bash felt faint at the thought. “You stay well away from him.” He turned and saw the person directing traffic. “You both walk in the other direction, and don’t make eye contact with that kid. Go do something useful over there — way over there.” He strode over to the traffic person. “Are you a cop?”
“Auxiliary,” said the man.
“We need a cop. There’s a drug thief here, stole some stuff on day one, and he’s back again.”
The face before him smiled. “You don’t say?”
Oooh boy. “We don’t need any more patients,” said Bash, sternly.
“I’ll take care of it.”
Bash was not trusting this person’s tone and attitude. “I do not want some sort of shoot-out at the hospital. You hear me?”
“I don’t have a weapon on me,” the man said, sounding as if he regretted that.
“But the kid might. Maybe you can radio the — the regular police?” Bash had almost said “real” but knew that wouldn’t have gone over very well.
“I don’t have a radio, either,” the man began, and just at that moment, a fire truck pulled up.
“They will,” said Bash and hurried over and explained what was happening to the fire crew.
“We’ll deal with it,” one said.
“Save me from cowboys,” Bash muttered, but he felt more confident in them than in the auxiliary cop. He described the boy and where he was, watched their eyes scan the crowd and catch on him, and they looked at each other. “Hey, wait,” Bash said, “what’s the injury you’re carrying?”
“Crush,” one said. “Compartment injury. Pretty bad.”
Shit. He’d have to wait a minute to get to that person, though. He went back over to the girls, who hadn’t moved far enough away for his taste.
He said, “You two, come with me,” and he walked them behind the fire truck, out of sight of the loitering druggie, and he hoped out of harm’s way.
“We can’t see anything from here.”
“Exactly. You can’t catch a stray bullet from here, either,” Bash said. He needed to give them something to do, to distract them, but he couldn’t think of a thing. “Just stay right there.” He climbed up the side of the truck to check the injured person. Adult woman, young, crushed arm up past the shoulder, broken clavicle, dazed but conscious and clearly in agony. The arm looked very bad. They’d evac this one, maybe first load. Come to think of it, where are the first helicop
ters? Have we arranged for that? He’d ask Liz what the schedule was on evac, first chance he could spare. He grabbed a red tag from his pocket and tied it on the woman.
A shout drew his attention, and he looked up to see the drug thief leap off the curb and the fire fighters take off after him.
They were all running this way.
Bash jumped to the edge of the truck and called down to the girls. “Get underneath.”
They both looked up at him, confused.
He motioned them down. “Get under the truck!”
But he was too late. The thief came tearing down the street, came up the side of the fire truck and pulled up short, seeing the girls. “You!” he said.
Bash grabbed the rail at the side of the truck and held to it while he flung his legs off. His back was to the street for a split second and he let go of the rail, dropping, hitting the pavement hard, his knees collapsing. And then he was up again and had his balance. He whirled, and there was McKenna, wrestling with the drug thief. Damn that girl!
He leapt on the kid as the fire fighters came around the truck and joined the fray. For a moment, Bash was pressed into a rugby scrum, and then he popped loose and the firemen had the kid’s arms and were forcing him to the ground.
Bash turned to McKenna. “You crazy girl!” he said. “It’s not a movie. It’s real life. He could have had a gun!” He grabbed her and hugged her hard, but she wriggled out of his grip, anxious to see what was happening. She seemed fine, at least. Bash’s heart was going so fast, he might have a cardiac incident.
The auxiliary cop was there now, too, trying to figure a way to make himself part of it, Bash could see. The fake cop no doubt would make himself the hero when he told the story later on.
One fireman had the kid firmly penned. The other was digging through hoodie pockets and came up with a handful of syringes. “Ha,” he said. “That’s enough for the cops to hold you.” Then he said to his partner. “I’ll get some line to tie him with.”
The thief was struggling, and the auxiliary cop got down and held his legs. Between the two of them, the kid wasn’t going anywhere.
The other fireman jumped down — much more gracefully than Bash himself had — and they got the prisoner tied up and up on his feet.
The kid looked right at McKenna and lunged at her, but four hands held him fast. “This is your fault, you bitch. You’ll be sorry you ever fucked with me.”
Bash stepped forward and got right in the kid’s face. “You’ll leave her alone.”
The kid snorted. “What you do going to do with me, faggot?”
“That’s Mr. Faggot to you, dickhead, and I could fill those syringes full of potassium and insulin and shit that will kill you dead in ways that they’ll never be able to figure out. And you’ll leave these girls alone or I swear I’ll jab you with every one of those drugs.” He was so mad he was losing his peripheral vision.
“We’ll take him to the jail,” one firefighter said.
“The jail is flooding,” said the other.
Good, thought Bash. He could drown there for all Bash cared. That people like this lived and Trevor died? What a world.
Then he felt a stab of guilt. Some nurse he was, wishing death on people. He should be wishing the kid drug treatment and a good therapist. But he couldn’t get there right now. He’d be nicer in his thoughts later, when he was sure the girls were safe from this little jerk.
Turning to McKenna and Haruka, he searched their faces to make sure they were okay.
Haruka looked pale, but McKenna grinned up at him. “That was pretty badass of you.”
“Oh, well, you know. I have my moments,” he said. “Now let’s all get back to work.”
The thief was taken away, the crush injury was moved to treatment, and ninety minutes later, the first helicopter came and took her and two other redtags away.
McKenna was swaying on her feet by then, probably exhausted by the dual adrenaline rush of quake and fighting the drug thief. Supporting her arm, Bash walked them over to visitor’s area and made them sit down while he hunted for food for them. It was getting sparse, he knew.
Over at the sandwich shop, Nathan was minding the store once again. Bash smiled to see him. “Hey! How is your family?”
“My gran died. In the nursing home, in the first quake.”
Bash’s smile fell. “I’m sorry.”
“But the rest of us are okay. We did pretty well. Better than most.”
“I’m glad. What food is left?”
“Not much. Salami and Swiss cheese, no bread, and some crushed bags of pretzels. All the good chips went early. And we’re out of stuff to drink.”
“Anything will do. I have two hungry girls to feed.”
Nathan put two wrapped packages on the counter and added two sad-looking bags of pretzels.
“Where do I sign for it?”
“Don’t worry about that,” he said. “The jerk owner wants me to charge twenty bucks now for this pitiful stuff, and I’m not going to do it.”
“You’re a good guy,” said Bash and gratefully took the packages.
He passed the food to the girls and got a small bottle of drinking water from staff supply. People can’t eat, especially not this salty stuff, without water to wash it down and process it. He left them sitting and eating, warned them not to wander away, and got back to work. He wanted to give them a chance to talk to him about whatever they were feeling about today, but that’d have to wait until tonight.
Chapter 12: Gale
As Gale pulled up to George and Marilyn’s house, he saw that they had taken some damage this time, with the front picture window of their house riddled with cracks. And the whole house looked out of true, the rectangle no longer square to the ground. He hoped he wasn’t walking into a death trap, but he had to talk with FEMA. Now.
When he knocked, the door opened two inches and jammed. George’s voice said, “Back up. Don’t want the door to hit you when I pop it open.”
The door shuddered once, twice, as George threw himself against it, and then it banged open and slammed back against the frame.
“Should I use a different door?” Gale asked.
“No, this is as good as it gets. We took some damage, and I barely got things set up in time for you.” He led the way into the living room.
Gale drew up short when he saw several pieces of radio equipment strewn around. “What’s up?” he said.
“I don’t trust that the basement is safe. If the house falls on me, I’d prefer it to be the roof only, not the roof and the main level.”
“You should move, maybe.”
“To where? And besides, all the antennas are here.”
“I guess we’re lucky they’re still up.”
“They won’t fall until the house does,” George said with confidence. “Anyway, here’s the radio.”
Gale stood while George contacted FEMA — or not simply FEMA now, a joint state-FEMA force, but the same contact person. When the connection was made, he took George’s chair and began to talk.
“Water,” he said to the director, first thing. “You get us water tomorrow morning, or we abandon the town to looters and vagrants. And become vagrants ourselves and bring twenty thousand thirsty refugees down on the nearest town to the west.”
“We’re doing our best.” She sounded short-tempered, a hint of a whine in her tone.
“You have to do better. This is a life and death situation — or will be within hours.”
“We have some filtration units coming for St. Louis. I guess I can divert one load to you.”
She guessed? He bit back an angry response. “It’s a start. What time?”
Twenty seconds of dead air passed. He was starting to think something had gone wrong with the radio when she spoke again. “No later than nine. You know, we’re buying loads of water microfiltration devices, like they used — still use — in Haiti, but the scientists say even with those, you don’t want to drink the river water. They won’t filter
out chemicals. Sewage, or water out of a lake, yes, they’ll work on that.”
“We have two small lakes. And the reservoir at the water plant.”
“We can get you six suitcase-sized filters. Assign someone to operate them full time, and they’ll give you five hundred gallons per day. Each.”
“We need more than three thousand gallons. A lot more.”
“We’ve had to start all over with clearing the river after the second quake. But there’s a loaded barge at Davenport that has your name on it, cans, juices, vitamins, the equipment for the water facility you asked for, generators — all the heavy stuff. As soon as the Corps dredges a path through, you’ll have it.”
“When?”
“Not for at least a couple days, and possibly a week.”
“And until then?”
“We’ll have something for you tomorrow by air. I don’t know what yet, but I’ll get you something.”
Gale explained his other problems. The levee breach. The hospital not having running water any more and the growing sanitation problems because no water could be spared for anything but drinking. The new medical director at the hospital requested antibiotics, as the rate of infection was climbing and she expected it to climb more. Lists of equipment everyone else had requested followed. It took nearly an hour to get through it all.
“I can’t get you all this in only a day, but I’ll do what I can.”
When he signed off, he felt as if he’d run a marathon. Slumped at the chair, he closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind and remember what he had to do next.
A hand touched his shoulder. Gale opened his eyes and saw George, looking at him with furrowed brow. “You look done in,” the man said.
“I’ve had better weeks,” said Gale, and they smiled at each other.
“You’re doing fine, son,” said George.
“Do you two have everything you need?”
“Yeah. The new priority-only gas rationing means there’s plenty for the generator, still. We’ll have food problems in a few days, but by then, I guess everyone will.”
“At least you don’t have little kids. If I had a dollar for every temper tantrum I’ve seen over kids not wanting to eat what’s there. ‘Why can’t we go to McDonald’s?’ “
