by Lou Cadle
The medical director led the news team on a quick tour while Gale found Bash. “I can take the girls to school when I leave here,” Gale said.
“Great. So who are those two?”
“News team from Denver, Faye something and David something. Giving them the tour of town.”
“Be careful.” He studied the newspeople. “And stay away from that David. He’s awfully cute.”
“I have the only man I want,” said Gale, and he was rewarded with Bash’s smile.
The two girls crowded into the car’s backseat with David and his equipment, and Gale dropped them off at school, explaining how many teachers had died, how they’d organized this, and why. Faye seemed less interested in this, so their visit was quite short — which no doubt the teachers appreciated — and Gale drove them down to the levee and let them interview a backhoe and dump truck driver while he checked in on radio to the EOC and asked how the exodus was going. Noon, was the word. That was as soon as they could realistically get some people going, though a few had already started on their own, wearing backpacks.
He flashed on how a news report would look about this. Three minutes tops, edited, ten seconds with the focus on a few of the people she had interviewed, half of it Faye narrating, turning the mess of the city into a coherent story. He hoped she’d call them all brave and hardworking, because they were, but he hoped just as much she’d call them victims and helpless, people who needed a lot more help from the federal government than they were getting. They were that, too.
He took the news team by the tent cities, which were in chaos, and back to the EOC just before noon. On a whim, he mixed up some cold potato flakes for their lunch. Faye loved it. That is, she nearly gagged at the cold, saltless, lumpy potato flakes, but she loved the shot of the paper bowl, loved mugging her disgust at the camera while she explained this was all some people had been eating for a few days.
Gale tried to imagine the 90% of the country who hadn’t been hurt at all seeing this, sitting in their recliner chairs, bags of Doritos in their laps, central heating keeping them warm and dry, feeling safe and taking that entirely for granted. In his imaginary scene, the viewer grabbed the remote, flipped to ESPN 2 for an rerun of Highly Questionable, and sighed in contentment. Cold potatoes and stinky refugees might not compete very well with that.
Did people out there have enough empathy so that the images would make them realize, “Gee, that could be me”? Had it happened during the Indonesian earthquake? During Katrina? Would it help white people to empathize if they saw mostly white faces here? He realized that catering to the mass media this morning was making him dislike humanity. And himself.
By two that afternoon, the newspeople were done, anxious to get to a news station to edit their reports before the early evening broadcasts, and Gale breathed a sigh of relief to see the news copter take off.
He drove to the edge of town, where families were still leaving, pushing carts over the rubble of the interstate highway and along the edges of the state road that would lead them west. Those who had left early this morning, who were young and fit and not weighed down by kids might make it to transportation in two days. The ones just setting off now with children or a grandparent, the out of shape ones and the injured would probably be there in five or six. With aching muscles and blisters all over their feet, he thought, but rescued.
With a sigh, he turned. Time to get back and check in on water, the tent cities, and how the controlled police looting was going. Now a full day’s worth of work had to get done in four hours.
Chapter 15: Bash
“Be still,” the father snapped at the girl Bash was trying to examine. She was six years old and so wrapped around a filthy stuffed tiger that Bash couldn’t see what was wrong with her.
He got down on a knee in front of her chair, trying to meet her eyes. “What’s your tiger’s name, sweetie?”
She made a noise, but if it was an answer, he couldn’t catch it.
“Can you tell me where it hurts?”
The girl squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head.
Bash looked up at the father. “Can you tell me where she’s hurt?”
“Her stomach, I think,” said the father. “She won’t talk and she won’t eat.”
“Is her mother here?”
“Her mother got taken, the second day.”
“Taken,” Bash asked. He flashed on a scene of alien abduction, but of course that was ridiculous. “She passed away, you mean?”
“No, no,” the man said, impatient. “Taken away from here. In a helicopter.”
“Oh, evacuated,” said Bash. “I hope she’s okay.”
“How the fuck should I know? Nobody tells anybody anything,” said the man.
Bash saw the little girl flinch away from his anger. “That must be really hard,” he said.
“Stephanie, let the doctor examine you.”
“I’m a nurse,” said Bash. Sometimes “doctor” was too scary of a word. “Just a nice nurse who wants to make sure you’re okay.” He reached forward and patted two fingers on the head of the tiger. “And maybe we should make sure your tiger is okay, too.”
“Hey, are you a faggot?” the father said.
Save me from this nonsense. Bash stood up and met the man’s eyes. “I’m a nurse,” he said, patiently. “And your daughter needs to be examined.”
“I don’t want no fucking faggot touching my daughter!” shouted the father. Heads turned toward them. “You’ll give her AIDS.”
Oh for pity’s sake, AIDS, really? Then he noticed the little girl cringing away from her father and wondered, is this a child battery case? Even more, he wanted to examine the child, see if this creep had hurt her. “Sir, we just want to see if your daughter’s okay.”
“You don’t touch her,” the fellow said, his face turned ugly by his anger.
Nearly as ugly as his insides, thought Bash. “Fine. I’ll get another nurse. Just stay right here.”
He turned, but Dr. Eisenstein was not ten steps away, coming toward the commotion. “Sir, please lower your voice. We have other patients here.”
“I don’t want this faggot touching my daughter. It’s because of people like him that we had this earthquake. It’s God’s vengeance.”
Bash lost it. “Then why are me and my husband fine and thousands of straight people dead? What’s that say about your god’s opinion of me?”
Dr. Eisenstein held up a hand to shut him up, which was probably good, as he wanted very much to add, “you ignorant, inbred, Midwestern troglodyte” to the end of that sentence. It wouldn’t have helped anything.
The doctor lowered her head and said firmly to the troglodyte, “I’ll take a look at your daughter. Why don’t you have a seat in the waiting area?” She turned to Bash. “Take the next patient, will you?”
Bash was gratified to see the girl look up toward the doc. When Dr. E. reached down for her, the girl actually reached back. Aha, he thought, maybe she wants a female. That didn’t bother him at all. The father, on the other hand? AIDS, really? Was it 1985? And God’s vengeance instead of plate tectonics causing quakes? More like 1785, such people and their backwards craziness.
He set up another triage station and called the next patient, a fat middle-aged woman with very little wispy hair covering her head. She walked slowly to him and sat heavily on the exam chair.
“What’s the problem today?”
“I was hoping you could get me my thyroid meds. I took my last pill the morning after the first quake. I’m so exhausted without them. And there’s so much to do.” Her eyes welled with tears, and she didn’t seem to notice as they spilled over.
Did they have any thyroid drugs? “I’ll check what we have. I might have to order them in tomorrow’s delivery. What were you taking?”
She handed him an empty pill bottle.
“I’ll be right back,” he said, and went to the pharmacy, which was in a blue camping tent off to the side of the temporary hospital grounds. They ha
d a real pharmacist now, working days, a man still sporting bandages on head and right arm but soldiering on despite his injuries. The controlled substances were now in a key-locked safe; though two strong guys could probably lift it and carry off the whole thing, it deterred casual thieves. Bash and the pharmacist tried to solve the thyroid med issue.
And so the day went, patient after patient, the emergency cases tapering off until there were mostly minor injuries sustained through trying to function in this strange new world, with no lights or electricity, with open cook fires, and people scrambling through the wrecks of their homes trying to find enough supplies to survive the frigid nights and hungry days. He saw a kidney stone, a chest pain, a probable miscarriage. Pain was exacerbated, Bash suspected, by people trying to function without medication — including regular booze drinkers missing that. Pain might feel worse for other people poleaxed with grief.
And everyone was running out of adrenaline and the initial “we can do it” spirit. We’re all understanding we can’t do it, Bash thought, that we don’t have the skills, that everything we once took for granted, like running water and flush toilets and telephones, is as lost to us as if we were time travelers visiting the Dark Ages.
He took a break midmorning and checked with Dr. E. about the little girl from earlier, the one with the bigot father. “Did you see any signs of abuse?”
“Not physical. The guy’s an ass, but I don’t think he’s beating her. She says her stomach hurts, but I’m relatively certain it’s anxiety. She sure is skittish of him. And she misses her mommy.”
“Thanks for stepping in.”
“I’m sorry he yelled at you like that. You’ve been working your ass off for these people, and the last thing you deserve from them is abuse.”
Bash felt his throat closing at the words of sympathy, but he steeled himself against the urge to well up. “I hope he didn’t realize you’re Jewish.”
She snorted. “No shit.”
“Ah well, Southern Missouri,” said Bash with a shrug.
Dr. E studied him. “Have you had a day off yet?”
“Since the quake? No. I was on for — well, you saw me that next morning — 22 hours straight, a nap, then another six-hour shift. I’ve worked ten or twelve hours a day ever since.”
“You need a break.”
He felt a stab of guilt. “Am I screwing up?”
“No, no, not at all. We’re just slowing down here, and there are staff who didn’t start until the second afternoon or third morning. It’s your turn for a day off. Past your turn.”
“But can you staff it okay?”
“Let me worry about that. You go home today at lunch, and take tomorrow off, too.”
“Really?” Bash could feel relief washing through his body, heightening the exhaustion he’d been working overtime to ignore. He could feel himself wanting to collapse and nap right here. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. We’ll get it done without you for a day.”
“Thank you.”
“Unless there’s another big quake, in which case, I’ll have to ask you to come right in. I’m sorry about that.”
“Please, no more big quakes,” he said. He wished he knew some effective magical sign to ward off bad luck when people said that. They all were thinking about it now, after the second big quake, but he wished no one would say it aloud. It seemed like tempting fate. He realized that sort of superstition was another symptom of his emotional stress levels. Maybe he wasn’t so different than the bigoted man in that way…though he’d never blame another human being for what was clearly a geological event.
When he got home, it was raining, a steady, light rain, and he had a urge he couldn’t ignore. He stripped off his clothes in the kitchen, grabbed a bar of soap from the guest bathroom sink, and stood outside naked, taking the coldest shower of his life. He had to stand in the rain for a good five minutes to feel sufficient rinsed. Shivering, he checked the indoor-outdoor thermometer when he went in and it said it was 52 out there, 54 inside. The number made him shiver harder, but it felt great to be thoroughly clean, from his scalp on down. He took his clothes to the overflowing hamper and pulled out fresh jeans and a thick sweater.
Outside, the rain sped up, the pattering growing to a steady drumming, and he thought, hell, there won’t be a better chance for this. Quickly, he stripped both his and the girls’ bed sheets, hurried to the laundry room and grabbed liquid detergent and bag of clothespins and ran outside. He set everything on a deck chair, strung the clothesline, and hung the sheets. Once they were thoroughly wet, he doused them with soap and squeezed it through the fabric. He left them hanging to be rinsed by the rain. It was a crazy way to do laundry, he thought, but you worked with what you had.
For the next two hours, he straightened the house with renewed energy. He dusted with a rag he dampened in the rain, cleaned up messes remaining from the second quake, picked at little pieces of paper and fluff on the carpet, and dug out boxes from the garage and packed away the few breakables that had survived two big quakes. He wouldn’t risk them in a third. He took a broom to the kitchen and bathroom floors and wiped them with his damp dust rag. He made sure the plastic box by the latrine had plenty of toilet paper.
At quarter to three, he drove into the school to pick up the girls. The rain had let up, the kids were still in class, and so he parked and walked up to watch from a distance. McKenna sat with a group of other teens, writing in a notebook. Haruka was with a group of younger kids, maybe eight or nine years old, and as he wandered nearer, he could hear her giving them Japanese language lessons. Her voice was quiet and the kids attended closely to what she said. She held up a pencil, and the kids said something like “enpitsu” all together Then she held up her notebook, and they said “noto,” easy to understand. She stood and pointed to her chair. Bash smiled as he listened to the children obediently naming items in Japanese.
A teacher in the distance blew a whistle three times and the kids all jumped up as one, happy as kids always were to hear the end-of-school bell. Bash waved hugely to get McKenna’s attention — Haruka was listening to one of her charges. McKenna wound her way toward him and Bash felt a warm glow at the simple family moment. Soon the three of them were in the car.
“I want to get you girls more clothes. From your house, McKenna.”
“It’s pretty wrecked after the second quake.”
“I know. But I’ll do what I can, okay? Where is it again?”
When they got to McKenna’s home and he saw the leaning walls, Bash almost changed his mind. But no, he wanted the girls to be as clean as he was now. It really improved the mood to be clean and have clean clothes, at least every other day.
“Where’s your bedroom? Or did you each have your own?”
“I’ll show you,” said McKenna.
“No, just point it out or describe it. I’m going in alone.”
“But I know where everything is.”
“I need you two out here in case I get in trouble. If I do, you can go get the fire rescue guys to pull me out.”
McKenna got the stubborn look he was getting to know well. But when he handed her his car keys, she relented.
“If I scream or you hear a crash, drive to get help. If I’m not out in twenty minutes, or if I don’t answer your shouts, do it.”
“Okay. Don’t, like, paw around in my underwear for too long. That’d be disgusting. We should go around back,” said McKenna. “There’s a window with a broken lock.”
At the back of the house, McKenna pointed to the window. Bash pushed at it, but it was well and truly stuck. The earthquakes had not totaled the house yet, but they had not been kind, either. The window may have been perfectly functional a week ago, but it was out of square now. “Is there something I can stand on? I need more leverage.”
McKenna went to the back side of the detached garage and came back with a couple pieces of firewood. “We can stack some of this up, maybe.”
“Okay. But I need more than that
.” And, he thought, we should take that wood with us. It could fuel the hibachi.
In ten minutes, they had a stable stack of wood piled under the window. Bash climbed onto it and pushed at the window. Nothing. He took a breath and went at it fast, shoving the thing. With a screech of wood against wood, it moved almost two inches. After two more hard shoves, it was open far enough for him to wriggle through. As he made it halfway, his bum catching against the window, he could hear Haruka stifling a giggle. He probably did look ridiculous. With an ungainly wiggle, he slipped inside.
The house was a mess. Plaster dust coated everything, and furniture had fallen. Small items littered the floor. He moved through the house, skirting broken glass, opening drapes and blinds to light his way. In McKenna’s room, the roof had half-fallen, so that he had to carefully clamber over a lot of damp debris. At least the hole in the roof let light in.
Damn, he should have brought trash bags or something to carry the clothes. He dug around in the debris until he found pillows, stripped off the cases, which were slightly damp but not mildewed yet, and started pushing in what clean clothes he could find. He had to move fallen ceiling panels and a tangle of wiring to get the closet open, and he grabbed more clothes, grabbing up a skirt and finding a set of old sneakers on the floor. As he walked back with two full pillow cases, he could hear McKenna calling, “You okay?”
He popped his head out the open window. “I’m great. Sorry. Took longer than I thought it would.” He handed out the pillowcases. “These are yours, McKenna. I’ll go get Haruka’s now.”
The guest bedroom was in, if anything, worse shape, though the roof was intact for now. Again he used pillowcases as luggage, packing clothes — she had many fewer than McKenna — and then a pile of small Japanese comic books that had slid off some surface or other and were scattered across the carpet. The closet door was stuck shut. He yanked at it and finally kicked it until it popped open. At the back of the closet, he found a suitcase with international flight stickers on it and grabbed that, too. At some point, she’d get out of here and fly home, and at least he could get her one piece of the luggage she came with. As he transferred clothes into the suitcase, he wondered where her passport was. He should find it now.
