Chrysoberyl
By JoAnn Stuart
"Chrysoberyl" ©2000 JoAnn Stuart. "Emergency!" and its characters © Mark VII Productions, Inc. and Universal Studios. All rights reserved. No infringement of any copyrights or trademarks is intended or should be inferred. The settings and characters are fictitious, even when a real name may be used. Any similarity to actual persons, living or deceased, or to actual events is purely coincidental and is not intended to suggest that the events described actually occurred.
Thank you to my beta readers and, as always, to CJ for hosting this story and creating the blurb. Originally published on Station 51.
"…and the princess lived happily ever after. The end." Johnny closed the book and started to get up off the bed.
"Wait! Let's read this one now, Uncle Johnny!" said the little girl, eagerly reaching for another book from the stack on her bedside table.
"No, no, no, Susan. We've already read seven books. It's time for you to go to sleep." Johnny took the book from her hands and placed it back on the nightstand.
"But Daddy always reads this one to me right before bed. I can't sleep if you don't read me 'Chrysoberyl, The Rainbow Dragon'," she pleaded, her big brown eyes growing bright with tears and her mouth puckering into a pout.
Johnny gently tapped Susan's lips. "We could have a tea party on your bottom lip. No more stories. If you don't go to sleep now, your parents are going to scold me."
Johnny tried to pull the covers up to Susan's chin, but she resisted, wiggling to sit up amidst the pillows and stuffed animals. One fat tear escaped and made a slow, heartrending track down her cheek as she sniffled, "I want to hear Chrysoberyl!"
"But, I've read that one to you five times already!"
Susan's tears began to escalate, her little shoulders scrunched up in soul-deep misery.
"Okay, okay, okay!" Johnny would have done practically anything to shush the woefully whimpering child. Resignedly sitting back down on the bed and pulling the book off the top of the stack, he asked, "Is this the one?"
"Yes!" Susan nodded eagerly, her previous lamentations quickly forgotten in her pleased smile.
"This is the last time," warned Johnny, wagging his finger in mock-sternness, knowing all the while that he'd been had.
"Okay, Uncle Johnny!" agreed the little girl, eyes now shining with anticipation.
Johnny sighed and put his arm around Susan, his irritation melting as the little girl snuggled up closer and opened the book.
"Once upon a time, in a far-away land, lived a beautiful dragon named Chrysoberyl. No ordinary dragon this, her shiny scales glistened with all the colors of the rainbow, and everyone who saw her said she was a most beautiful dragon indeed…"
Once the story was finished, Johnny fetched Susan one last drink of water, vanquished the monsters beneath the bed, retrieved her favorite teddy from the floor where it had fallen, changed the bulb in the nightlight, took her on another trip to the bathroom, scratched the itch on her back, then finally tucked the little girl into her bed. "Goodnight, sweetheart," he said, lightly kissing her forehead.
"G'night, Uncle Johnny," she murmured sleepily, burrowing deeply into her comforter until just the top of her head peeked out.
Before Johnny turned out the light, he glanced around the quintessential little girls' room, done up in white lace and pink flounces, with stuffed animals and rosy-cheeked baby dolls sprinkled about in abundance. He smiled. Raising kids wasn't all that hard, especially if you got to hand them back at the end of the evening.
In the family room, he found Chris watching the adventures of Wonder Woman.
Sitting down next to the boy, he admired the assets on the screen for a few moments before he thought to ask, "Do your Mom and Dad usually let you watch this show?"
"My Mom doesn't like it, she says it's stupid, but my Dad always lets me, if he's home. Mom says he just watches it to see if she'll fall out." Chris turned away from the television to ask curiously, "fall out of what?"
"Uhhh…" Johnny felt himself blush as he verbally scrambled for a plausible explanation that wouldn't get him into hot water with Roy and Joanne. "Uhhh… doesn't she leap tall buildings in a single bound or something like that?"
"No, Uncle Johnny," Chris said in that long-suffering tone children adopt when speaking to especially dim-witted adults. "That's Superman."
"Oh." Changing the subject, Johnny asked, "Want some popcorn?"
"Yeah! That would be neat!"
Johnny stood up. "Come on, and help me make it."
Two hours later, Johnny startled out of a light doze at the sound of a car door closing in the driveway outside. He rose from the sofa, switched off the television, and opened the front door just as Roy and his wife, Joanne, were splashing up the rain-soaked walk.
"Oh-oh. He's greeting us at the door. Did the kids give you a bad time?" asked Roy with a grin, shaking the last drops of water from the umbrella.
Johnny smiled in return. "No, they were good. Chris finished all his homework, so I let him watch TV until bedtime. We made popcorn, too. I hope you don't mind. Susan went to bed around 7:30, but I had to read her eight books before she finally fell asleep."
"Eight! You're going to spoil her!" exclaimed Joanne as her husband helped her remove her raincoat.
"That's okay. She really likes dragons and princesses, huh?"
"Yeah. Especially the one about the rainbow dragon. I think I've read that book a million times. She claims that it's real. What an imagination," laughed Roy.
"I had to read that one six times."
Roy laughed again. "Six times? She's really got you pegged. I usually only have to read it two or three times."
"Yeah. So, how was the movie?" Johnny asked, shrugging into his jacket.
"It was a little silly," responded Roy, while at the same time Joanne said, "It was good." They looked at each other and laughed.
"What did you see again?"
"Saturday Night Fever. Take a date to see it. You'd probably like it," replied Roy.
"Thanks for tending the kids tonight, Johnny. We really appreciate it," added Joanne. "I was going crazy, stuck in this house with the kids and all this rain."
"Anytime. It's no problem," said Johnny. "Good-night, Joanne. See you tomorrow, Roy. Let's hope it stops raining!"
"Good-night! Drive safely!" chorused the couple from the doorway, waving their farewells.
Morning brought no relief from the wet, blustery weather that had plagued the area for the past week. The wind blew the rain horizontally and by the time he splashed from the parking lot into the station, Johnny's shirt was damp and his shoes were soaked, the left one announcing his presence with an annoying squeak.
"Better change your shoes, Gage, or Henry might mistake you for a rubber duckie."
Already irritated about the sodden condition of his footwear, Johnny retorted with ill-humor, "Oh, yeah? Well, you better change your face, or Henry might mistake you for the…" Chet would never know what Henry might mistake him for as one of the Phantom's water bombs caught Johnny full in the chest, ending the paramedic's train of thought in a soggy splat. "Chet!"
"Better change your shirt, now," grinned Chet, as he headed out the door for roll call.
Roy barely suppressed a grin as he tossed his partner a towel. "Look at it this way. You were wet already."
Johnny snatched it out of the air with a glare, and stalked into the shower to change.
"Station 51. Child trapped. Victoria Park. Nearest cross street, Bohnam. Time out 8:45."
The squad and the engine pulled up to the base of a green, grassy hillock, dotted with patches of scrubby brush and grey boulders. Fingers of muddied, flattened weeds streaked down the slope, resembling miniature earthen ski runs. Several children and adults milled about the base of the rise in small groups. One distraught woman with a boy in tow approached the rescue vehicles as the men got out.
"My son is trapped up there! You've got to get him out!" cried the woman in agitation, firmly grasping the shoulders of the squirming child in front of her. "I told them not to play on the far side of the hill!"
"Can you tell us what happened?" asked Cap calmly.
"We were sliding down the hill on boxes and then Danny disappeared in that hole!" said the boy, pointing with a grubby finger to an indentation midway up the rise, where a man crouched on his knees, shining a flashlight into an opening.
"Okay, ma'am, we'll do everything we can," Cap said reassuringly as he gently patted the woman's shoulder.
Chet and Marco rounded the end of the engine, bearing the ropes that would probably be needed to help extricate the trapped child. "We're ready." Johnny and Roy came from the squad, bringing the Stokes laden with supplies.
"Let's go," Cap turned and motioned his men up the hill.
Several adults broke away from the groups of people standing around. "We'd like to help!"
"Right now you can best help us by staying down here. The ground may not be stable."
The firefighters and paramedics hiked up to the spot that the boy had indicated, their feet alternately slipping and sinking into the soggy, rain-slicked turf, the gusts of wind hampering their progress as it buffeted them from first one direction and then another. The fine drizzle stung like so many tiny needles, driven by the force of the wind.
"Wait! Don't get too close," warned Cap, holding up an arm to stop the others when they were about fifteen feet away from their objective. "It looks like the ground around the opening might give way."
"What if we lay a ladder across it to distribute the weight, Cap?"
"Yeah, we'll probably have to do that. Kelly and Lopez, go down and bring it up," ordered Cap.
The wind blowing across the mouth of the shaft produced a mournful moan. Raising his voice so as to be heard above the wind, he called out to the man perched above the opening, "Can you see the boy?"
"Yes! It looks like he fell down a little tunnel to a cave. From what I can see, it looks like the floor is about fifteen to twenty feet down."
"Does he appear to be injured?"
"He's got some scrapes and he says his leg hurts!"
"Tell him we're coming to get him out. And, then I want you to carefully back away from the edge of the hole."
Johnny finished fastening a harness around his waist, while Roy affixed a second harness to another rope. Roy gave Johnny's belt a final check and a tug. "Ready?"
"Yup." Johnny handed Roy his turnout coat. "The boy's name is Danny, right?"
"Right. Be careful."
"You know me. Caution is my middle name," Johnny replied with a confident grin.
After Chet and Marco laid the ladder down across the hole, Johnny slowly crawled across. When he was directly above the opening, he called down to the boy. "Danny? I'm coming down to get you out. It's going to be dark for a minute, okay?"
"Okay," came the indistinct reply.
The paramedic then began to lower himself feet-first through the slats. "It's pretty narrow in here, Cap!" he yelled as his shoulders cleared the opening. "I'm probably going to have to send the boy up alone."
He shimmied down through about eight feet of earth, and then the chimney-like tunnel abruptly widened into a fairly large cave, which proved not to be as dark as he expected. The walls appeared oddly smooth, almost glassy in places, and seemed to emit a slight luminescence. A tumble of rocks looked to have recently cascaded to the floor on one side of the cavern. After his feet touched the ground, he yelled back up, "Give me a little more slack."
Crouching down beside the boy, he said, "Hi Danny. My name is Johnny. We're going to get you out, but first let's have a look at you." Johnny gently palpated the boy's arms and legs.
"Ow!" complained Danny as Johnny touched a particularly tender spot on his foot.
"Sorry about that. Well, it looks like you were lucky. I think your ankle is probably just sprained." Johnny removed his pocket light and shone it into the boy's eyes, then checked his neck and head. "Do you hurt anywhere else?" he asked as he felt the boy's abdomen.
"No."
"Okay. Here's what we're going to do. I'm going to put this belt around you and then we're going to pull you up," Johnny explained as he prepared the boy to be lifted out of the cave.
Pulling the handie-talkie out of his pocket, Johnny made his report, concluding with the words, "He's ready to come up."
Johnny steadied the boy for as long as he could reach. As Danny rose higher, Johnny called out, "You keep your arms down. Wait for the men on top to pull you out, okay?"
"Okay."
"Good deal."
As Johnny watched the progress of the boy up the shaft, the soft, rain-soaked earth at the top began to give way. "Watch out!" he yelled. "It's starting to collapse!" Johnny saw Danny's feet begin to clear the hole just as a shower of mud and rocks began to rain around and on him, knocking the handie-talkie out of his hand. He jumped back away from the downpour, tripped over something and fell, striking the side of his head on an outcrop in the wall of the cave as he went down.
"Hold onto the ends of the ladder!" shouted Cap as the earth surrounding the hole in the ground began to collapse inward, like sand going down an hourglass.
Roy lay flat along the ladder, grasping Danny firmly under the arms, as the lower half of the boy's body dangled through the slats on the ladder. "Don't move! Don't move! I've got you!"
"I'm going to fall!" Danny continued struggling to clamber up on the ladder. "I'm going to fall!"
"No, you're not. I've got you. Hold still! You're not going to fall!" Roy strove to keep his voice calm, masking the surge of fear he felt not only for the boy and himself, but also for his partner still down below.
The panicked boy nodded, eyes wide, his breath coming in little gasps.
"Roy! It looks like it's stabilized. Start coming back slowly," called Cap.
"Okay, Danny. First, I'm going to pull you up on top of this ladder. Then, we're going to crawl back along until we reach the end. I'll be right here with you. Plus, you've got this safety harness on. And that will keep you from falling, too. Okay?"
The two inched their way back to the relative safety of the hard earth, Roy moving backwards while the boy crawled facing forward.
"Could you see him?" Cap asked Roy as the blond paramedic got off the ladder.
Roy shook his head. "I couldn't see anything after the ground started to collapse." He hesitated, wanting to stay and try to help Johnny, but his professionalism won out as he turned his attention on the young victim.
"Gage! Gage! Can you hear me?" Cap yelled, cupping his hands around his mouth.
Silence, save the hissing of the wind.
Cap tried unsuccessfully to raise the downed paramedic via his handie-talkie. Shoving it back into his pocket, he said, "Try tugging on the rope again!"
Mike and Marco cautiously hauled back on the rope, but it wouldn't budge.
Cap rubbed the bridge of his nose and squatted down beside Roy and Danny. "Can you describe the hole you fell into?"
"It's not really a hole. It's more like a cave." Danny described how the narrow tube funneled into a wider cavern beneath.
"What did Gage say? About eight feet down?" Cap thought aloud how best to extricate the paramedic.
"Maybe we can dig a trench perpendicular to the top of the cave?" suggested Mike.
"Maybe there's another opening?" said Marco.
Cap addressed Danny again. "Did you see anything that looked like the entrance to the cave?"
"No. Well, maybe. There was a pile of rocks on one side."
"Okay." Cap stood back up. "Let's do both." He directed Chet and Marco to start searching for a possible entrance to the cave and radioed for more assistance to begin digging the trench.
"Man, I shouldn't have hit him with the water bomb this morning," muttered Chet as he and Marco slipped and slid down the hill to start looking for another way into the cave.
"Why not?"
"I don't want that to be his last memory of me."
Marco cuffed Chet on the shoulder. "Ah, you know Johnny. He'll come out all right."