Commencement

Chapter 3

She stepped gingerly over him, trying not to slide backwards on the pile of debris. Then she followed the beam along its length, calling back to Reid every few feet, and switching on the flashlight as she went further into the darkness.

"I'm about twelve feet away, and there's another beam sitting across this one. It looks like there's another six feet of the first beam after that."

He shouted to her. "Take a photo. Is the crossbeam mobile? Are you able to push it at all? Don't do it now, just test it, and tell me!"

She called back to him. "It's heavy, but I might be able to push it! Taking a couple of photos now!"

"Take one up the crossbeam, as far as you can see!"

Reid's head fell back, eyes closed, as he tried to visualize what she'd described along the way. He would have to wait for the photograph to confirm, but he thought there might be a way to free him.

If she's strong enough. She's been doing all the work, and she looks exhausted. Maybe I should make her rest a little longer.

Then he realized, and smiled to himself, in spite of the situation.

Yeah, right. Maybe if I asked her nicely.

The sound of someone panting told him she was returning, and within a few seconds he saw her materialize from the darkness. She stepped over him once again, landing in the small clearing next to him. She pulled the phone from her pocket and called up the camera roll.

"Here. See? There's some debris right along it. I didn't touch it, but it looks like it would be easy to brush it off. And then….." sliding through a few more photos…."…..here's the crossbeam."

"Did you.."

"Yes, here…." Swiping once again…"the rest of the beam, to the end."

He studied it. And studied it. And studied it, for so long that JJ grew impatient.

"Well, what does it tell you?"

He took another few seconds to answer. "I think…I think we might be able to use it as a lever. If you can get the other debris off it, and then push the crossbeam up along the beam, almost to the end, it would lift this end from my leg, and I might be able to push it off me."

"How? You can't even sit all the way up without displacing the one above your chest."

"With my good leg. I can try to kick it away once it lifts."

JJ tried to visualize it, and what she saw wasn't encouraging.

"What if it falls again? What if I can't hold it up? Or what if I push too hard, and the crossbeam goes off the back end?"

He conceded, nodding. "Then it will fall back onto my leg again."

"And it could hurt you worse." And we don't even know how badly hurt you are now.

"JJ, we have to try. This building came down around us, they don't even know where we are, and without the phone, they can't even use GPS. We have to be prepared to save ourselves."

He knew she was emotionally spent as well as physically, when he saw her hands cover her face. It was her way of hiding herself from the world, a child's way to hide weakness, and it was oh, so familiar to him. He gently tugged at one of her hands, which fell into his. He grasped it tightly.

"I really think I'm okay. The pain is too superficial. We'll be careful, but I think it will be fine. And, once I can move, I think I might be able to actually slide myself out from under this thing." Using his chin to point at the beam hovering above his chest. "Then it's just a matter of making our way out."

She snorted. "Easy as pie."

He smiled. "Maybe not so easy. But not impossible."

"If you say so. But, in case you hadn't noticed, we're losing the light."

Spaces in the debris had permitted the sun to provide small, spotty areas of illumination, but the light was, indeed, fading.

Reid had noticed. And he'd noticed something else as well…..the silence that told him it was unlikely a rescue effort was underway. It had been a weekend, and they'd been in the middle of a remote industrial park. They'd only told Emily they were running an errand as a favor to the victim's wife, but hadn't thought to mention where. And Garcia wouldn't be able to ping them without cell service. Unless there was a security detail scheduled to come by, or unless a distant neighbor had heard the sound and become curious, it was unlikely they would be discovered until tomorrow.

Correction. It's unlikely the explosion will be discovered until tomorrow. Who knows how long it might take them to find us?

He'd already calculated that they would have to spend the night. It was too dangerous for them to try to walk through the debris without being able to see their way, and his cell battery would only last so long. He would have to shut the phone down soon, hoping for a connection tomorrow.

But I have to be able to move. That much, we have to accomplish tonight.

He gave her a few minutes to catch her breath, and insisted that she drink more water. As she did, he worked his belt out of its loops, trying not to cry out when he had to raise himself a little. But he couldn't hide his grimace.

"Spence, are you sure?"

"We have to, JJ. Help me get this around,,,,umph….I can't reach around my leg." Trying to do it himself.

She immediately leaned over him, and took over the wrapping of the belt, apologizing for any pain she was causing, and watching his face to estimate how bad it was.

He was doing the same to her, as she was using the hands flayed open by debris, and only lightly covered by the fabric of her blouse. But both of them knew that it really didn't matter. It had to happen.

Once they were satisfied with the tightness of the tourniquet, she was ready to go.

"Wish me luck."

"You have no idea how much luck I wish you!"

He'd made her laugh. She was about to set about doing something that, if she didn't succeed, could seriously harm him, maybe even kill him….and he'd made her laugh. But her laughter came through tears, which he felt, when she knelt to kiss him on the forehead.

"I'll be right back. Don't go anywhere."

She started to move away, when she felt him tug at her hand. As she turned around, he lifted it to his lips, and kissed the back of it.

"I'll be here. And…..JJ…"

Eyes locked.

"I know."

She set off, needing to power the flashlight a little sooner this time, and brushing debris from the pinning beam as she went along. Once she'd reached the crossbeam, she searched for an effective perch for the cell phone flashlight, and called back to Reid.

"I'm ready! Are you?"

"Ready!"

I hope.

For a few seconds, nothing seemed to be happening. But then he heard what sounded like a shower of debris, and he called out to her again.

"Are you all right?"

"Ummph…fine…ummph"

Another few seconds, and he felt a just the slightest bit of lightening of the pressure on his leg. He had the time to be grateful for the tourniquet, because it was keeping the leg relatively numb. If sensation had begun to flood back in with the removal of the pressure, he might have been too distracted to do what he had to do.

Which was to bend his right leg and bring it back until it touched the chest beam, and lift his foot, and….when the beam on his leg finally raised a few inches above his left thigh, he used his right foot to kick it away from him. It tried to swing back into place, but he caught it with his foot, held it for a second, and then gave it a great shove. Before it could swing back again, he used both arms to push off from the ground and shimmy himself out from under the propped chest beam. Then he sat there, chest heaving from effort, and adrenaline, and pain.

"Spence? I don't think I can hold it!" Sounding panicked.

He gathered enough breath to respond to her. "I'm out! Let it drop! You did it!"

He was still panting when he heard the thunderous sound of the beam dropping, followed by a cacophony of lesser, but equally concerning, noises, and he became panicked that she's somehow been struck by it.

"JJ! JJ! Are you all right?"

In the minute that followed, he could hear only the sounds of minor debris falling, like sand from a pail. After what seemed like eons, he heard her moving through the debris, and released his breath. He spied her before she spied him, uncertain footing requiring her to carefully choose where she put her feet. He released the breath he'd been holding when he saw her easily moving all four limbs. Finally, she looked up, and saw him, and her hand went to her chest in a gesture of gratitude. It was all she could manage at this point. Exertion and stress had taken her breath. She climbed over the belligerent beams and fell to the ground next to him.

With difficulty, he managed to perch himself awkwardly on his side, and leaned over her, inspecting for evidence of new injury.

"Are you all right? Are you hurt?"

She lay there, eyes closed, for a long minute.

Too long.

But he waited her out, and her breathing slowed, and she became able to speak once again. Still panting, she answered him.

"I'm all right. I'll probably have a pretty impressive bruise here…" Using her left hand to gently probe her right arm, "…..but nothing feels broken or out of place."

"The beam?"

She nodded. "I managed to push it up the other one, but I was trying to hold it in place with my arm, and it kept sliding, and I kept pushing, and it kept hitting. But I did it! You're out!" Grinning.

He smiled in return. "Morgan would have been proud of me. He always thought my reflexes were too slow. Turns out they're pretty good when my life is in danger." Remembering several other times they'd proven the same.

He straightened himself and tried to bend forward to look at his leg, but his body wouldn't quite fold in that direction after the prior trauma to his chest.

Noticing, JJ pushed herself up. "Let me."

Reid leaned back on both elbows while she bent over him. She pushed aside the torn material of his pant leg, and probed the depth of his wound with the cell phone light.

"It's deep, but it's not to the bone. And it's not bleeding, but that could be the tourniquet, couldn't it? Should I loosen it?"

He suspected the tourniquet was providing some needed pain relief, but they had to know how bad it was. So he agreed.

"Give it a couple of minutes. In fact…." He started to push himself off from the floor, but JJ stopped him.

"What are you doing?! What if it's broken?"

"No time like the present to find out. If it needs splinting, I want to do it while we still have some light."

That brought JJ's eyes back overhead. "It is getting darker. And I don't hear anything going on outside. Do you think they even realize we're here?"

He caught her gaze, and suddenly she knew that he'd known it all along. Reid shook his head.

"I don't think they realize what happened. They probably won't even miss us until we don't show back to the hotel. Maybe not even until the morning."

The plane's departure had been delayed because of a storm in the DC area.

JJ looked dejected. "Or until Will realizes I didn't call to say good night to the boys. He knows we'd already wrapped up the case. He won't just assume I'm working."

Reid stated the obvious. "I'm not so sure we did wrap up the case."

"You think this was planned?"

He shrugged. "I don't…..I don't actually have much memory of what happened. I don't think it was a gas explosion, because there's no evidence of fire. The odds of us being hit by a meteor are…." His eyes went up and to the left, "…..twenty trillion to one. So, statistically, that's unlikely."

"Aren't we already sitting under a ton of 'unlikely'? Doesn't that put everything back on the table?"

"It should. But there's one other thing."

"What?"

"The fact that I'm alive. If that beam had fallen on my chest with the force of a single explosion, it would have killed me. But all of it fell slowly enough to trap me under pressure without doing any major damage."

He'd said it so matter-of-factly, but just the idea of it still frightened her, even after the fact.

He could so easily have been killed! And on today, of all days!

And then she processed the idea he'd put forth.

"You think it was more of a demolition? Do you think we were lured here? That it was directed at us?"

Another shrug. "I guess, technically, we were lured inside the building, when we saw the door open and no cars in the parking lot. But how could anyone have known we were even coming here? It was just a favor."

Before she could respond, he started pushing himself up again, and she immediately placed herself under his right shoulder. Then he very carefully put some weight onto his left foot. JJ watched his face for any sign of pain as he increased the pressure on his foot.

"Does it hurt?"

He hesitated a second, then responded. "Probably no more than your knee or your hands. I think….", hopping on his right foot, and using her for balance, "…..maybe I need to wrap it. The edges are getting pulled too far apart. I think that's where the pain is coming from. I don't think it's bleeding….is it?"

She bent to take a look. "No. But are you sure it's not broken? That beam did some pretty good damage to your flesh."

"I can localize the pain now. It's all from the laceration. I have good stability with my leg."

She wasn't quite satisfied that he wasn't minimizing, but there was no point in arguing. What they needed to do was to get it wrapped, while there was still light.

"Okay," she said, raising her hand to her remaining sleeve, "I can wrap it for you."

"No, don't! I've got sleeves too, and it's going to be a cold night. Here….can you help me…"

She slipped his jacket from his shoulders as requested, noting his difficulty in accomplishing anything related to using his chest muscles, and wondering if he'd been hurt more than he'd let on. Then she helped tear his sleeve and, after washing out his wound with the remaining water, she wrapped the sleeve as a bandage around his thigh, sitting back on her heels to survey her handiwork.

"Okay. I think this is the clearest area for us to stay, but I want to get us more water before we lose the light completely. Then we can try to figure out exactly what happened and how we're going to get out of this."

He was glad to hear the note of optimism, but not happy to think of her carrying another heavy load.

"Let me get it."

"Uh-uh. You stay put. I'm not the one tied together….well, I guess I am, too, aren't I? But I at least know where I'm going, and it's getting darker by the minute. I'll be quick."

He had no choice but to let her go. In her absence, he pushed aside more debris to make a space for them to lie, and he replaced his belt. He wanted it handy in case he really did need a splint. Then he sat and tried his best to work through their situation, discomfited by the fact that there was a short gap in his memory, during which he had either been unconscious, or awake, and praying for his next breath.