"A Work In Progress"
Chapter Two
Midway up the ladder to the loft, Hank Stanley got smacked—hard—on the helmet by a falling fire hose. "What the—?" He released his hold on the charged line and gazed up at the catwalk in confusion.
Somewhere to his left, he'd just heard the sound of wood splintering—closely followed by a muffled 'splash!'. Somewhere to his right, something else must've fallen, for he had also heard a dull 'splat!'—and now, the hose! "What the heck is goin' on up there?" he wondered aloud.
Then, as if in response to his inquiry, Hank heard Marco calling him—and heard him say that Chet…fell! The Captain experienced—what his paramedics would undoubtedly have diagnosed as—a cardiac arrhythmia. He whipped the radio from his coat pocket. "HT 51 to Engine 51…"
"SOMEONE ELSE FELL TOO, CA—"
"—Stoker here. Go ahead, Cap…" his Engineer suddenly cut in.
"Mike, shut down the pump! Then, I want you to don your gear and get in here! Bring some rope and some security belts—oh, and, if our guys are still around, bring one or both of them in with you!"
"Aye, aye, Cap!"
Hank lowered the radio and looked up. "Marco! You okay up there?"
"Yeah, Cap!" came back Marco's muffled reply. He had wisely replaced his air mask. "But I can't get my right arm to move! I don't think I can climb down!"
"Sit tight, pal! Somebody'll be up to get you in just a few minutes!" Hank lifted the radio to lips. "HT 51 to Battalion 14…"
"Battalion 14. Go ahead, Hank…"
"Chief, I've got three victims needing medical assistance. Two are Code I's—one from a fall, the other has suffered an injury to his right arm. The condition of the third victim is…unknown."
"10-4, Hank! Help is on the way!"
Stanley pocketed his hand-held and headed down the ladder. Along the way, he fervently prayed that Chester B. Kelly was the 'splash!' and NOT the 'splat!' that he had heard.
Gage had just seen his partner—and their patient—off in the ambulance, when his Captain's call to Engine 51 came across the Squad's radio.
He'd removed a couple coils of rope, some safety belts, and a TRAUMA box from the Squad's side compartments, and was pulling his own air-pack's chest straps up snug, when his Captain's call to Battalion 14 came through. The paramedic stiffened and his blood ran cold.
Mike Stoker came trotting up just then and the two of them exchanged looks of abject horror.
The pair picked the requested rescue gear up and started heading for the refinery at breakneck speed…well, as fast as their cumbersome boots and bulky bunkers would allow, anyway.
If 'rapid ladder descent' were an Olympic event, Captain Hank Stanley would have been standing on the medal podium! In just seconds, his boots hit the refinery's concrete floor. An instant later, his flashlight was in his hand and its beam was searching the immediate area…to his right.
Speaking of hitting the refinery's concrete floor…Hank had seen the…remains…of 'jumpers' before. Still, he was sickened by the sight his light's probing beam revealed. If he hadn't been so relieved to find that the bleeding and broken—and lifeless—body was NOT that of his friend's, the gruesome sight would have caused him to 'toss his cookies'. He exhaled a silent sigh of relief and quickly turned his head—and his light's beam—away.
There were five 50,000gallon steel-lined storage vats sunk into the refinery's ground floor. Hank ran his flashlight over the first one to his left. There was a small hole in its wood-slatted cover—right near the very edge of the vat! 'Talk about the 'luck of the Irish'!' Hank mused as he dropped to his knees and aimed his light into the hole's jagged opening. The vats were all fifty feet deep. Luckily, this one seemed to have some water in it. The surface of that water was barren of any floating bodies however, and seemed perfectly undisturbed. "Damn it, Kelly! You can't survive the fall…and then drown!"
Gage and Stoker literally stumbled upon the missing workman's body.
It didn't take a paramedic to see that the poor fellow was dead. The guy had, what was grimly referred to in the medical community as, 'injuries incompatible with life'.
The pair heard their Captain curse and swung the beams of their lights in his direction.
Their Commander's next words: 'Kelly' 'fall' 'drown', were all it took for John to get the 'gist' of things.
Before his Captain could even say, "Hold on, pal! Where the hell do you think you're going?", Gage had stripped and slipped through the little jagged hole that had been busted in the vat cover's wooden slats.
Not that Hank EVER had any intention of saying those words.
John dangled from the vat cover just long enough to fill his lungs with air. Then he held on to his breath and let go of the wooden slats.
The paramedic plunged into the murky water thirty feet below. The frigid liquid filled his nostrils and the cold took his held breath away. Somehow, he managed to fight his way to the surface. John stayed there just long enough to snort the water from his nose. Then he sucked in another deep breath and dove.
The diver crisscrossed the vat a few times, blindly groping about, but could find nothing. He burst to the surface just as his lungs were about to. The rescuer sucked in some more air and dove again—this time, going much deeper.
In fact, John didn't stop until he touched bottom. He swam along the floor of the vat, waving his rapidly numbing limbs through the icy blackness that surrounded him. Suddenly, his right hand struck something—something besides just the other side of the vat. He groped further and found an arm. He grabbed onto the motionless body it was attached to and tried towing it towards the surface.
No matter how hard he tried, John just couldn't make any headway.
Kelly's facemask and helmet were missing, but his heavy air tank bottle was still in place.
Gage unbuckled the air-pack's waist belt and began fumbling for the clamps on its chest straps. His frozen fingers finally got them to release.
The SCBA fell from his friend's shoulders and landed on the vat's bottom with a dull metal 'thunk'.
John latched onto the back of Chet's bulky coat and started struggling towards the surface again.
Even without the heavy air bottle, the fireman still had an incredibly difficult time dragging his waterlogged buddy up from the bottom of the vat.
Just when John thought they would never reach the surface, two tiny beacons of light appeared—two small rays of hope.
Gage got a sudden surge of adrenaline and swam towards those lights with renewed energy.
The first thing John heard, when his face finally broke the water's surface, were the cheers of his shift-mates.
If his lungs didn't hurt so much, if his brain wasn't experiencing oxygen deprivation and if he wasn't positively dreading what he might find when his numb fingers felt for Kelly's corotid, the paramedic might have been tempted to join them. Instead, he gave his sopping wet head a quick shake, opened his mouth wide and began gulping in air.
The oxygen brought him back from the brink of unconsciousness, but he remained pretty light-headed. So he just kept right on gulping and gasping and coughing…and treading water, until he finally felt like he wasn't going to pass out at any moment.
As soon as he had enough air in him to keep him going, he braced Kelly's body against the curved outer wall of the vat, opened his airway, pinched his nostrils shut and then tried to get enough air into him to get him going—period!
Finally, the moment he'd been dreading arrived. The paramedic halted his AR and forced himself to press two of his half-frozen fingers over the corotid artery in his friend's extended neck. John's vision blurred and he choked back of sob of relief. It wasn't very strong and it wasn't very steady, but damn, Chet had a pulse!
Before resuming his mouth-to-mouth, Gage glanced up into those two beams of light. His grin told the guys what he couldn't spare the air, or the time, to say.
This time, his shift-mate's cheers were drowned out by the sound of a K-12.
Sawdust continued to sift down and the paramedic continued to give his drowning victim AR.
"C'mon, Chet!" he encouraged, speaking between breaths. "Yah gotta breathe…for me, man!…Give me a break…will yah!…I'm hyperventilating…here!" The hyperventilating fireman heard a 'clink' and glanced up.
Reinforcements were arriving.
Stoker had stripped down to his skivvies and was rapidly descending upon their position with a Stokes. "How is he?" the Engineer anxiously inquired.
"His pulse is," Gage began, again speaking between breaths, "a little stronger…but he still hasn't…started breathin'…on his own."
Mike's dangling legs finally entered the frigid water. He gasped involuntarily, as the cold caught his breath away.
"Not exactly…bath-water…is it," Gage commented, upon hearing him gasp.
The Engineer flashed the paramedic back a rare smile. "Not exactly." The stretcher drew level with the water's surface. He reached up and gave its rope a tug. He tugged twice on his own safety line and was rewarded with some more slack.
"Get his gear off…for me…will yah?" John requested, as Mike swam over, towing the Stokes.
The Engineer undid the clips on Kelly's turnout coat and carefully slid it off. Then he unsnapped the flap on Chet's bunker pants and slipped the suspenders from his shoulders.
The unconscious fireman's water-filled boots immediately began to sink, taking the bottom half of his turnouts with them.
"That's more like it!" Gage exclaimed, as his burden became a good fifty pounds lighter. "Now we're gonna need…a C-collar…and the backboard." The paramedic gave his patient another breath of air.
Suddenly, Kelly retched.
His rescuer was rewarded with a mouthful of vomitus. Gage grimaced as the nasty-tasting stuff filled his mouth. He immediately swung his head to the side and started spitting—and gagging.
The paramedic could watch people puke, he could pick up puke, he could even tolerate being puked on!
Hell, none a' that bothered him a bit.
The one thing he couldn't stomach was having his mouth used as an emesis basin.
John kept right on gagging until he finally tossed up the contents of his own tummy.
He then dipped his head down, scooped some water up, rinsed his mouth out—and went right back to work.
The paramedic cleared Kelly's airway and then resumed AR.
Chester B.'s bruised brain gradually began registering information again. The first message it received was that his head hurt—something awful! His body was all wet—and extremely cold! His nose was being tweaked—very hard! Somebody kept kissing him—on the mouth! Oh yeah—and his lungs were feeling 'gurgly'—really really 'gurgly'! He really needed to cough! And so he did.
"Ahh-ahh!" he cried out in agony, as a sharp, searing pain suddenly tore through the right side of his chest. "Ohh-ohh!" he cried out a second time, as an even more excruciating pain shot down his right leg. The pain took what little breath he had away and somebody began kissing him again—on the mouth! He moaned and tried shoving whoever it was away. "Knock it off…will yah!" he gasped. "An' let go a' my nose!"
John obligingly released Chet's nostrils. "I…uh…believe respirations are now spontaneous," he declared and turned to swap grins with Mike.
"Sounds more like complaining is spontaneous," Stoker came back and their grins broadened.
Mike slid a backboard under Chet's bobbing body and began loosely securing the straps.
John got their drowning victim's oxygen set up and flowing and then examined him for other possible injuries. A task not easily accomplished whilst treading water and suffering from hypothermia.
Kelly squelched back a cough and squinted up at all the bright lights overhead. He seemed to be either looking down a long tunnel…or up a deep well. "Where the heck am I?…What the heck am I doing here?…And why was somebody kissing me just now?" he demanded between gasped breaths.
Gage finished his initial assessment of Kelly's physical condition and turned to Stoker. "Did you bring any traction splints down with you?"
The Engineer nodded. "You want a long or a short?"
"Short."
Mike passed him a C-collar and then turned toward the Stokes.
The paramedic applied the cervical collar, along with some sage advice. "Lie still. The sooner we kin get you packaged, the sooner we kin all get the hell outta here. I'm tired a' treading water. Now, are you hurting anywhere besides your head, your right ribcage and your right leg?"
Kelly was in a whole lot a' hurt…waaaay too much hurt! His brain needed a distraction. He needed to give it something else to focus on—something besides pain.
Chet's favorite pastime, in the whole wide world, was dreaming and scheming up ways to drive John Gage bonkers. So he determined that he would use that as his distraction. "Gage…was that you…kissing me…on the mouth?"
Gage managed an amused gasp. "I wasn't kissing you. I was giving you mouth-to-mouth."
"Why?"
"Because you were drowning."
Kelly vaguely remembered the fire. The last thing he recalled was crawling along a catwalk fifty feet off the ground. How does somebody drown…when they're fifty feet in the air? "I don't believe you."
"Okay. Have it your way. You weren't drowning," Gage conceded. One should never argue with someone suffering from a head trauma.
A smug smile appeared on his patient's pain-filled face. "I knew you were kissing me."
Gage managed another amused gasp.
Mike handed John the traction splint.
The paramedic's expression suddenly sobered. "Chet…I have to splint your leg…and it's gonna hurt like hell."
"Sometimes we hurt…the one's we love," Kelly quickly came back.
Gage managed his third amused gasp in as many minutes.
Chet's pursed lips formed a wry grin—which vanished the moment the paramedic started pulling on his busted leg. "Uhh-humm!" he groaned, through teeth clenched tightly in pain.
John fastened the splint's Velcro straps in place. He snugged the backboard's straps up as well and then turned to Mike. "Okay, let's get him outta here!"
Stoker tugged twice on the dangling Stokes. The stretcher was lowered into the water. They floated the backboard into it and then started strapping everything down.
Satisfied that the stretcher's precious cargo was secure, John gave its line a final jerk.
They watched as it slowly began its ascent.
John exhaled an audible sigh of relief and began shivering uncontrollably.
Stoker removed his security belt and passed it to the shaking paramedic. "You first."
Gage flashed him back a grateful grin. "Th-Thanks, M-M-ike." He tried to attach the belt to his waist, but his frozen fingers were no longer responsive.
Mike reached out, buckled it for him and then gave the rope a tug.
The paramedic was pulled up out of the icy water and then hoisted up out of the vat.
Moments later, the line was re-lowered. Stoker secured himself to it and was hauled up out of the storage tank, as well.
TBC
Author's note: AR stands for artificial respirations. In other words, mouth-to-mouth…or, as Kelly calls it, kissing…on the mouth! Remember: One should never argue with someone who has suffered a head trauma. ;)