Scars

by Patience Prence

  “Becky,” he said. “I need you to crawl through the doorway—something is jammed against it. I can’t open it all the way.”

  He carefully hoisted Becky up in his arms and guided her through the small opening.

  The room was completely black. Heavy curtains hung over the window and blocked out the early morning light. Becky felt glass and books under her feet as she groped in the blackness. The heavy dresser was wedged between the bed and the door. Her muscles strained with urgency as she grabbed the corner and pulled with all her might. The dresser creaked, and the drawers rattled. She felt the contents shift as the monolith’s weight transferred to its side and it came to rest on its shoulders, leaving enough room between it and the door for Mr. Johnson to squeeze into the room

  “Daddy. . .I’m here! Daddy! Where are you?”

  “I’m over here, Rebekah.”

  The antique sleigh bed squeaked beneath his weight.

  The giant painting of the San Antonio de Padua Mission had fallen from the wall and buried her dad beneath it.

  The famous artist had painted with great detail the rugged mountains that backdropped the historic adobe brick church laden with Spanish arches. Ancient oak trees surrounded the church, with webs of Spanish moss dangling from the branches.

  “Joe!” Mr. Johnson called. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes,” Becky’s dad answered. “I can’t move. I think my face is cut badly.”

  Mr. Johnson carefully lifted the large expensive painting framed in barn wood and set it on the ground beside the bed.

  The room filled with light when Becky pulled back the heavy curtains. She gulped at the sight of blood flowing freely from a large gash over her father’s left eye. Dazed, he sat up and looked around him. He seemed to be waking up from a deep sleep.

  “Quite an earthquake we had, eh, Joe?”

  “Yeah. . . .” Confusion seized him for a moment, and then his mind cleared.

  Mr. Johnson grabbed a pillow off the bed and pressed it up against his head. “Here, Joe, this will help stop the bleeding, at least until you get to the hospital. You have quite a gash over your eye.”

  “Thank you.”

  Becky felt tears well up in her eyes as she took in the sight of her father. He sat there disoriented in his disheveled bedclothes, blood covering his face, neck, shoulders and chest. The wall above him, where the beautiful and valuable painting once hung, was now shockingly empty. Becky’s insides ached. Her world had changed forever. Nothing would ever feel safe and secure again.

  Mr. Johnson looked at Becky. His eyes focused on her for a moment; then he turned to her father. “Aw, it ain’t so bad, Joe. Looks like you’ll only need a couple of stitches! You and Becky and little David will all be just fine. I better go and check on the others in the neighborhood.”

  Mr. Johnson turned to leave.

  “Thank you, Art!” Dad smiled gratefully while sliding his legs over the side of the bed, his white T-shirt stuck to his chest with blood. “Thank you so much! Please tell Susan I said hello!”

  “Will do!” Mr. Johnson disappeared down the hall.

  His blue shorts clinging to his waist, Becky’s dad clutched the goosedown pillow to his throbbing head and stood up. He looked down at Becky. A grin spread across his face, and he patted her gently on her head with his free hand. “Good job, Princess. Good job!”

  The grin faded. “We’d better call your mother and see how she fared at the hospital and let her know we’re coming over.”

  After Dad stepped into the master bathroom and replaced the blood-soaked pillow with Momma’s good hand towel, he picked up the phone off the nightstand and held it to his ear. He clicked the receiver a few times before tossing it on the bed in frustration.

  “Come on, kids!” he yelled. “Go get dressed. We’re going to the hospital!”

  They all scooted into the dusty grey cab of his dented white truck. “Joseph Silver Construction” was painted in bold crimson letters on the cab door along with his contractor’s license number and telephone number. Black rubber bungee cords fastened a silver aluminum ladder to the rusty red lumber rack.

  Becky smiled to herself as she thought back to the hot summer days before Dad put the pool in the backyard. He had lined the bed of the truck with clear heavy plastic and used the garden hose to fill it with cold, refreshing water. Clad in their bathing suits and bubbling with excitement about the prospect of having “their own portable swimming pool,” she and David eagerly jumped into the icy cold water only to dart back out again. “IT’S FREEZING COLD!” they shrieked and shouted out loud, their teeth chattering and goose pimples popping out all over their bare skin.

  * * * * *

  Avoiding the large mounds of earth spewing gas in the middle of the street, Dad pulled his beat-up work truck out of the driveway and headed straight to the hospital.

  As the big truck moved slowly west on the Ronald Reagan Freeway, Becky’s gaze took in the destruction lining both sides of the empty eight-lane highway. The city she called home now resembled a foreign war zone. She had only seen this kind of disaster on the nightly news. Buildings burned unchecked while bright orange-and-red flames kicked into the air sending thick, black smoke high into the early morning Simi sky. Neighborhood streets had become wild rivers as broken water mains sent rapids washing through homes, strip malls, school yards and out toward the Pacific Ocean. Blue flames shot out of broken gas lines in the middle of streets and parking lots like little volcanoes. They passed an apartment building where the second-story walls had fallen down and buried the cars below it. Sirens screamed in every direction, and everywhere people stood with looks of confusion and anguish on their faces.

  They rode in silence and surveyed the damaged landscape. Dad’s tools clattered in the metal toolbox when the truck swerved to avoid a large gaping hole in the middle of the street. They exited the freeway and drove down Orange Boulevard to the main entrance of Orange Valley Community Hospital.

  “What the—?” Dad’s startled voice broke the silence, but he didn’t finish his sentence.

  Becky turned to see what had caused her father’s exclamation and felt her stomach rise to her throat the way it would in a fast elevator.

  A portion of the building’s second level had fallen onto the first floor. The walls had crumbled to the ground and exposed the sanitized, whitewashed rooms like a child’s doll house. In one room a single over-the-bed table stood next to a white-sheeted adjustable bed hanging precariously over a jagged edge, suspended in midair.

  Shocked and dismayed, several people stood at the edge and peered over, shaking their heads in disbelief.

  Fire trucks and ambulances screamed in every direction, and people ran frantically in and out of the corridors.

  Dad pulled into an empty parking space and stepped down on the emergency brake with his foot.

  The cab doors slammed as Becky and David jumped out of the truck and followed their dad to the broken hospital building.

  He bypassed the elevators and headed straight to the stairs.

  They waited as two strong male nurses in light-green scrubs carried a gurney down the stairs with a terrified male patient clinging to the stainless steel side rails.

  The metal stairs echoed loudly as they hurriedly climbed to the second level. At the top of the stairs they passed through another door and turned into the nurses’ station. Becky fought to catch her breath.

  Doctors and nurses clad in solid-white and solid-green scrub uniforms ignored them as they rushed frightened patients up and down the halls in wheelchairs and gurneys.

  With one hand still pressing the blood-soaked towel against his head, Dad lifted his other hand and pushed through the large door marked “Pediatrics,” Becky and

  David in tow.

  At the sound of swinging doors swooshing open, Momma looked up, her blond tresses twisted in a French braid hanging freely down the middle of her back. She was visibly frightened. The large room Becky had always associated with quiet, m
edical discipline was in chaos. The sound of a generator hummed in the distance. Alarms buzzed. Orderlies swept broken glass against the linoleum floor. Dusty sunlight poured through broken windows. Heaps of bandages, bedpans, syringes and blood pressure cuffs lay at the feet of open and tilted cabinets.

  Momma’s pale and drawn face lit up at the sight of her family, but she did not leave her patient, a young Hispanic boy in traction. Both of his legs were suspended in midair vertically at a ninety-degree angle, his hips and knees slightly flexed.

  “Oh, Joseph, kids!” she exclaimed softly. Her eyes filled with tears as she quickly finished tending to her patient’s bandages.

  Once she was sure the young man was resting comfortably, she ran to her husband and children. Her close-fitting violet scrubs flattered her figure. A gold nametag, “Kirsten Silver—LVN,” was attached to her breast pocket.

  “Boy! Am I happy to see you guys─and thank God you’re all okay!” She stretched her arms wide and embraced all three of them in one big hug.

  Momma stepped back, suddenly aware Dad was holding a bloody rag to his forehead.

  “Joe! What happened? Are you all right?”

  “Yeah. . .I’m fine. . .just a small cut.”

  “Here, honey, sit down.” She directed him to an empty stool.

  Dad sat down and peeled the rag off his head. A large two-inch gash stretched wide over his left eye.

  Momma stared at the bloody towel embellished with delicate lavender roses. Her brow creased in disapproval. “Joseph, not my good hand towel. . . .”

  “I’m sorry, Hon. . .I’ll buy you a whole new set!” Smiling, he winked at Becky.

  Momma studied his cut closely then said, “Joe, it looks like you’re definitely going to need some stitches.”

  She hurried over to a cabinet drawer and pulled out some supplies.

  Dad flinched when Momma squirted sterile water from a bottle into the cut, washing out dirt and soot. She carefully dabbed over his thick brown eyebrows with a cloth soaked in disinfectant. She then numbed the area with a needle soaked with anesthetics. She threaded another tiny sewing needle.

  “Momma, wasn’t that a big earthquake?” David said as he stared wide-eyed at the intriguing procedure.

  She stopped what she was doing and looked at her son. She stared at him for what seemed to Becky like a long while. “Yes, David, it sure was!” She turned back and continued stitching.

  Becky noticed a young redheaded girl peeking at them from behind a dark green curtain in the corner of the large room. She smiled and waved at the girl who continued to look at them with curiosity.

  Momma continued. “I was all by myself when it hit. I heard a huge roar, and then the entire floor swayed back and forth knocking me off my feet.

  “All of the kids—I was caring for about twenty of them─were screaming and crying and carrying on something terrible!

  “Then I heard a terrible cracking sound. I thought the floor was going to collapse underneath us─I found out later the north wing had collapsed.

  “Anyway, I knew we were having an earthquake so the first thing I did was turn off all the oxygen tanks. Then I tried to calm the kids down.” She added, “I didn’t think it was ever going to end. . . .”

  Momma stopped and picked up the scissors then snipped the end of the thread hanging from Dad’s brow and tied a knot. She turned and walked over to a counter and pulled a bandage from the drawer.

  IV bottles, bandages and colorful medicine containers lay spilled out of the cabinets.

  She crossed back to where Dad was sitting and fastened the bandage to his head.

  “I tried to call you on the telephone, but I couldn’t get through.” She put her hands on her hips and sighed. “Thank goodness, you’re all okay!”

  As days passed, Becky and her family learned from news reports that the earthquake measured 8.0 on the Richter scale. It was centered in the Hollywood Hills, not far from their home. Both the Hollywood fault and Santa Monica fault slipped simultaneously, causing one of the most devastating disasters ever to hit Southern California; more than twelve thousand people were killed, and more than fifty-six thousand were injured. The economic loss had been estimated at about five hundred billion Ameros.

  Freeway interchanges collapsed, and damaged reservoirs threatened to give way, forcing thousands living in their shadows to evacuate. Fires burned out of control for weeks throughout the city. Sixty-five thousand homes and businesses were without electricity for months; 40,000 were without gas, and more than 78,500 had little or no water.

  About 58,500 structures were moderately to severely damaged, leaving thousands of people homeless. In addition, damage to several major freeways serving

  Los Angeles County choked the traffic system in the months following what would become known as the Hollywood Quake. The severely damaged freeway structures forced closure of portions of the eleven major roads to downtown Los Angeles.

  Orange Valley Community Hospital suffered an estimated 45 million Ameros’ worth of damage. They had safely evacuated 615 patients and 300 staff members. Fourteen lives were lost: four were patients who died when they were cut off from their positive-pressure breathing equipment, and three staff members and six patients were killed by falling debris when the second-story floor collapsed.

  Many patients and staff members including Momma were transferred to Valencia Community Hospital about forty-five minutes away.

  The aftershocks continued for months. Every tremor wore on frayed nerves and triggered fears of another great quake. Millions left California forever. Many had lost everything, while others were simply too frightened by the ever-moving ground. Many areas would never be rebuilt. Much of the once-great metropolis of greater Los Angeles would stand as an empty and decaying shell for years to come. Dad kept busy for months providing reconstruction estimates.

  Becky spent days combing through the mess in her room, salvaging what she could. She was thankful she and her family still had a roof over their heads. Eventually Dad found a nice two-story home in a quiet and comfortable neighborhood in Valencia close to Momma’s new hospital. Becky started at a new school and played with neighbor kids in the park behind the house. Slowly life returned to normal. Little did they know that the former government, the “United States of America,” had built a prison death camp just over the hills from their new home. . . .

  And there will be famines, pestilences and earthquakes in various places.

  Matthew 24:7

  4

  THE VISITORS

  Since his dramatic debut on the world stage at

  St. Peter’s Basilica, Maitreyas appeared in public more and more. He often appeared with the president of the North American Union. The media followed his every move, and the paparazzi prized his photograph more than that of King William.

  He met with the ten leaders of the World Union13 and spoke before the World Parliamentary Assembly. He pushed hard for his ideas on sharing the planet’s resources, and a popular movement called World Share sprang up in all the big cities.

  The movement lobbied for a new agency to allocate the earth’s resources based on need. Protests and marches calling for a redistribution of wealth became common in every capital. World Share launched a major media campaign to pressure world leaders into taking action on their ideas.

  Within months a bill authored by Maitreyas was brought to a vote before the World Union. The bill passed by an overwhelming majority while Maitreyas carefully watched from the gallery of the World Union Parliament. This bill created an agency for the World Share movement, even naming it the World Share Agency. Maitreyas was tapped to run the new bureaucracy, and he was given unprecedented powers and resources to confiscate personal assets and redistribute them in an effort to create an equal society.

  Maitreyas immediately deployed an army of World Share agents to record and tag personal assets of individual citizens with GPS (global positioning system) microchips. Everything from houses to cars to jewelry and televi
sions was painstakingly recorded as agents methodically moved from neighborhood to neighborhood, from street to street, from home to home.

  It was called the Great Pre-Allocation Survey, and the media hailed the effort as one of the greatest undertakings in the history of mankind. Maitreyas’s agency was given unbridled authority to enter private homes and search for any item of value. Many people resisted the intrusion and even tried to block the agents from entering their private property. Few of these resisters were ever shown on the news, and when they were, the swift action of the police was also shown. Doors were kicked down, resisters were handcuffed and arrested, and their property was systematically documented and hauled away in large trucks bearing the World Share Agency’s logo.

  Maitreyas’s plan included calculating the value of each union’s total wealth and then redistributing the assets to achieve more equality between the wealthy unions and the less fortunate unions.

  If a union’s wheat or sugar crop was destroyed by drought or flood, then other unions would be compelled to provide food from their own storehouses to fill the demand. According to Maitreyas, every union would eventually both give to and receive from the World Share Agency.

  Many felt the program violated their rights to their property. Stories circulated in the newspapers and on the internet about farmers in the North American Union who had worked hard and produced more from their crops than was needed to feed their own families. The World Share Agency prohibited them from selling their overages for a profit. Instead they were forced to hand their crops over to the World Share Agency to be redistributed to others who did not have as much.

  In the North American Union this program met with much resistance from those used to profiting from their personal labor under the old United States government. Many disgruntled farmers quit farming in protest and let their crops spoil which added to the growing food shortage.