The Wreck of the Greyhound Flip'em Us
(A 'Changes' Short-story)
She groaned quietly as she became aware of her surroundings again, noting that while she was all over sore, but only her left arm really hurt and and a quick personal check made her pretty sure her upper arm was busted, but nothing was numb, her guts and head didn't hurt, she didn't think she was bleeding and she didn't seem to be pinned. There was a lot of yelling around her though and the passenger bus seemed to be upside down.
"M' on my back on the ceiling, explains the sore and the arm. Glad it ain't muchova drop." She said, looking up at several blank-eyed people hanging by their seat belts. Her guardians had warned her not to use belts on an overland bus, told her the new law was a stupid one. She wondered where the wreck was, hoping she was at least in their district. She wasn't staying put though, not with dead people hanging from their seats in here, instead moving to the emergency windows, popping the latches with her good hand and kicking them until they opened right. Then, calling the only two teens and a half dozen battered, bruised small kids outside, along with such adults as she and the other teenagers could get moving under their own power.
Soon she detected distant sirens, so she got the rest of the little kids to sit off to one side and out of the way of the arriving crews by doing so herself and calling them to her. The older kids, both of them teenagers joined them wearily. She didn't bother dealing with the hysterical adults as her arm was swelling, it hurt and it wasn't her job. There was a ton of trained extraction crews coming and the last thing they'd need was kids in their way.
"How do you know what to do and did you stop?" A boy that looked around sixteen asked her, saying his name was Luis Santora. "You're just a little kid."
"My legal guardians both work for the Los Angeles County Fire Department's station 51." She said simply. "I knew about what my approved limits were going to be. Any more that what little we did, John, Roy, their shift Captain or all three would scold me for. Getting the loose adults calmed is not my job; that's for the department and the cops to do. We're in the county, I recognize the area we're in, so the nearest squads will be on the way and the CHP along with the nearest deputies should be here soon. No city cops though, cuz we're not inside the city limits yet."
"How old are you?" The older girl asked after introducing herself as Clarisse Gaant, age fourteen.
"Eleven."
"What's your name?"
"Jane. Can't say more, got a protection order on me for some stuff. I don't never tell my last name."
"Yeah, we both know a couple kids in our middle school like that." She sighed. "My dad said that some people's parents should be shot."
The younger girl just shrugged. "The department's pretty good about it and Johnny and Roy are wonderful. They've had me since I was six."
"SIX!" The teens both sounded outraged and the older girl was in tears now."
"It's okay now, I'm fine. I've got the best people in the world looking after me. Anyway, my guardians are on duty, though, so if they don't get dispatched to 'The Wreck of the Greyhound Flip'em Us," she said, punning a Gordon Lightfoot ballad, I'll just borrow someone's county issue radio and let central know I came a cropper on the way back from camp, and to ask them to respond 51 to the location of whatever unit I borrowed a radio from."
"'The Wreck of the Greyhound Flip'em Us', I like that." Clarisse laughed.
"Thing is, we needed to get out of there cuz I'm pretty sure some of those dangling people died. The last thing they need is kids in the way when they're removing the rest of the living, but injured...maybe seriously injured...people and bodies of the ones that didn't make it." The eleven year old told them soberly. "They'll send us in first, to one of the hospitals, especially the youngest ones. Except me, one of them'll splint my arm, give me something to stop it hurtin' and likely knock me out for a bit, then I'll have to wait in the squad. I don't need an ambulance because my gut is fine, I'm not bleeding, I don't have a head injury, I don't have fluids or fuel from the bus on me and I'm breathing just fine. So I don't need to tie up an ambulance for a broken arm when there's sixty plus people in that bus that will need them a whole lot more than I do."
"Hey." The teens looked up, startled, but noticed the younger girl hadn't jumped. "Sixty plus?"
"Yeah, John: there were a few empty seats, but it was mostly full. Guys, this is John Gage, one of my guardians. He ties with Roy for being the best field medic in L.A. County." She pointed at her left upper arm, above the elbow. "Is that as busted as it feels? And the rugrat right next to me has something funny going on with his right leg so I kept him close. He can't walk." She told him.
He checked both children gently. "Yes. Feel like a clean break though. Should heal fine; him too."
"So, splint, shot and squad, right?"
"We'll start with the splint and a shot and you can wait while we get the rest of the kids out, then the squad when you get woozy enough from the shot, for a nap."
"See? He's wonderful. Always knows the best stuff, my Johnny does. And so does my Roy."
"He's also blushing." Luis told her, grinning.
"Oh, hush." John admonished the boy gently as he went over the rest of the kids, only having the toddler that sat next to Jane wait until he'd had called it in, then he got the bandage box opened up. He splinted the five-year-old's right lower leg first, then his girl's arm.
"Glad I didn't fly, y'know?" She told him and made him wince. "I did came up with a really neat Incident Name for this one though."
"You did?" John raised an eyebrow at her and braced himself mentally.
"'The Wreck of the Greyhound Flip'em Us'." She deadpanned and watched him pinch the bridge of his nose, before he dutifully started the incident report, then handed it off to his captain when Stanley stopped by to check on the station mascot and the other children.
"Seriously, Gage?"
John simply pointed at his ward. "Her idea, Capt. Has a certain ring to it."
John and the teens watched the man struggle, lose, give up and sigh. "Right." And he started adding his bits of what he had so far without changing it.
"Poor man." Clarisse giggled.
"Yeah. She does that sort of thing to him a lot." John grinned a little when he saw Hank hand it off to a grinning Ponch as the first CHP officer he saw and point at Jane. "And everyone else." He added when Ponch gave in without even trying.
"Johnny? Did Dr. Joe let me have a pill or something? It's starting to throb now that I've calmed down."
"Nah, I've got your shot right here and another one for the little guy, too." He told her as he waved an ambulance crew and another squad for the toddler. "45th can handle the tots, I think, there's only six...and since Luis and Clarisse aren't injured, I'll ask Ponch to get child services out here to take them home. You sit still for a bit and I'll get Marco to bring the squad to you. Roy's already in the bus and I need to get in there."
"Johnny." Her voice was low, stressed out and held warning. "There's a lot of dead people in there, overhead, just hanging there...like great big bats. Saw their eyes. I got the windows open and talked the ones that were loose and moving into coming outside. Told the older kids and they got the little kids out. I think the adults already know, but...I didn't want you to go in blind."
He nodded and sighed, ran his fingers through the girl's hair, gave her a tight hug and wordlessly kissed her hair. He radioed Lopez and disappeared into the bus now that the engine crew had peeled back one of the sides, hosed the area and laid foam down. One glance told him she hadn't been wrong.
It was a while before all of the living had been located and extracted, but by that time, the rest of the children had been removed from the scene and their ward was sound asleep on the seat of the squad. When they started to bring out the dead to load them into the specially dispatched ambulances for the coroner's office, at least she wasn't watching. The force of the flip had caused the seat belts to snap most passengers' necks from violent whiplash and one wearer's abdomen had been utterly destroyed. He'd died long before their arrival, quickly, but nastily. Jane hadn't mentioned screaming so she might not have been conscious yet. They'd talk to her about it later and find out for sure.
"I'm glad we told her not to wear the belt on a commercial bus." Roy said quietly as he watched her sleep.
"Yeah." John blew out a breath. "She said she was glad she didn't fly."
Roy flinched. "With her luck..."
"Let's get her in, she still needs a cast for that break." John took her bare feet in his lap and moved her shoes from where they were on the floor with one foot, while Roy set the steering wheel in it's high position before he slid under her head. Usually, she lay the other way, but with the break, she couldn't lay that way right then.
Roy carried her in over his shoulder, still asleep. That wasn't the shot anymore, though: The medicine had mostly worn off by now. That was just how the girl was...if she was already asleep when they got where they were going, be it hospital, the station or anywhere else, she stayed that way until one of them woke her up. Being moved made little difference, except that when one of her guardians held her, she relaxed a bit more and slept a little deeper.
"She's been drooling on you again." Dixie told Roy with a smile when he laid her down on the gurney in treatment 2.
"Don't care." He replied gruffly. "She's had a rough day, she was coming home from summer camp on that bus. She also got to name the incident, so don't try to pin it on one of us."
"Hank lost another one, did he?"
"Oh yeah," John chuckled. "So did Ponch and the section chief when he saw it."
"What on Earth did she name it to make you sound like that?" Early asked, having entered the room in time to hear most of the conversation.
"She punned the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."
"With?"
"'The Wreck of the Greyhound Flip'em Us'."
"Oh, that's..."
"Yeah."
"It is."
"It will certainly stand out in the memory." Dixie mused.
"Yeah. Unfortunately, out of sixty seven passengers, there were only twenty survivors including the children, so it also fit. I think she was trying to warn me about how many people had died. She told me outright there were a lot of bodies in there. She said she didn't want me to walk in blind...going from laughing kids into that...would have been a rough mental switch without that warning. Instead, I got to make the switch right there before I even got up."
"Yeah." Roy nodded. "It was unpleasant enough without that. She tries to take care of us, too, when she can."
~ Finis ~