Chapter 3

"Thank you," Mike said for the fourth time since his Captain had left to see to it that the table was set for company and taking the rest of the crew with him leaving Mike and this young lady alone on the running board of the fire engine.

"May I call you Mike?" Laura asked as she turned to face him more directly and scooted just a little bit closer.

"Yeah, Sure," Mike answered nervously and Laura stopped her advance.

"Are you o-kay Mike?"

"Yeah I'm fine," Mike said very quickly as she sat straighter no longer resting against the engine.

Laura knew better but she didn't know him well enough to be sure how to proceed.

"Tell me what happened, from your end." Laura asked as she rested her tired head against the pump valve.

Mike was surprised by her question and had to think for a moment before he answered. "the a, the Department grievance counselor and chaplain came here while I was as work and told me that my dad was DOA after being dug from the rubble at, at that apartment building," Mike said it all.

"That's it, no further explanation, no details?" Laura sat up and leaned toward him resting on her knees.

Mike shook his head and looked to the bay floor. "Cap's been trying to help me find out what happened but we haven't been able to get any information."

"And you've been thinking that he'd been there from the beginning and if only you had been there to help dig him out he'd still be alive." Laura could see right through him now just like she was looking into a mirror. "Damn when are they going to learn they can't do that to people like us?"

"What do you mean by people like us?" Mike looked offended.

"People who dedicate their lives to taking care of other people when everything goes wrong. We expect the same thing for the people we love and need to know they got everything we would give to the perfect strangers we take care of."

"Yeah, sometimes you see how they take care of the bodies of the people in some of these mass casualty situations. And---"

"The workers on cadaver duty are cold and heartless, treating the bodies like a side of beef at a slaughter house

"Yeah," Mike was cringing with every word she was saying.

"You have to remember the workers are people too, with feelings they're not equipped to deal with. Most of the ones who treat their victims like that have reached the point where they need some serious help of their own. And when that happens there is usually a lot more bodies that need to be removed from the scene before they can even think of getting the help they need."

There was a stiff silence as Laura watched Mike think through what she had said but she saw something more something she had seen in the mirror many times but none more than in recent months.

"Mike, may I have permission to hold your hand?" Laura's request startled Mike who looked at her blankly and made no comment but absent mindedly rolled his hand over on his knee and Laura took hold of it.

"How long before they dug him out did he," Mike couldn't form the word.

"Your father was alive and talking when they pulled him out of the hole. I thought he was in really good shape in fact. He made them wait to lift him out so that he could show them how to frame everything up to get me out safely."

"He did!"

"Yeah, he did, your dad was an amazing man," Laura added a smile to her words. "He really knew his stuff too. By the time the dust settled after we fell he was able to tell us how long it was going to take them to get us out and, if I remember right, he was with in fifteen minutes of the actual time. He was also able to convince us that we were safe until help arrived. I dare say the time we spent in that hole was more relaxing than some of the vacations I've had." Laura joked but Mike wasn't able to laugh.

"How did he,"

"I don't know," Laura admitted still holding onto Mike's hand, "It took them another forty-five minutes after your father was removed before they were able to cut the reinforced concrete to get me out. After and hour at the hospital to get my head sewn up I was rushed off to the airport to catch a plane. I'm ashamed to admit that I never even knew your father had passed away until a few weeks ago when I found the letters he'd written and tried to find out where to send them."

Laura knew she had something to share that would help Mike get through what she was seeing in his eyes but she also knew it would be more effective if he was given time to sort through each piece of information and not overwhelmed all at once. So for now she quietly sat next to him on the fire engine's running board and held his hand watching his eyes for the sign that he was ready for his next dose.

"Lunch is ready," the call came out and Mike quickly jerked his hand out of Laura's grasp as he sat at attention for a moment before he could acknowledge the call.

"I'll be right there," Mike responded then corrected, "We'll be right there," Mike then wiped his eyes with his hand and pushed himself to his feet looking again at the order book still in his hands. As his eyes started to fill with tears once again he forced and act of being in control and turned to his guest.

"Shall we go get something to eat?" Mike asked as he offered Laura a hand up.

Laura gave a silent nod to go with her warm smile and reached up to the offered hand but instead of taking his hand Laura reached past it and took hold of his elbow and started to pull herself up causing Mike to grasp her elbow in return.

With both now on their feet Laura kept her hold on the stoic firefighter as she tilted her head still looking in his eyes.

"I'm alright," Mike responded to her attentive yet questioning gaze.

"Not yet, but you will be," Laura responded letting him know she could see right through his act. "We'll get you your answers and you will get through this."

After a couple of deep breaths Mike was able to lead Laura into the common room and held a chair for her to sit at the table before he took a chair around the corner from her and accepted the food that was placed before them.

"Thank you very much, it smells terrific." Laura complimented Marco Lopez, the cook of the day. After a first bite and appropriate "MMM" sounds Laura turned her attention to the leader of the group.

"Captain---"

"Stanley," Hank responded to Laura's questioning pause in his direction.

"Thank you, Captain Stanley, there was a third person in that hole with Mike's father an I, he was a boot just out of the academy by the name of Randy, um Randy Olsen I believe, but I'm not sure if he spelled his name with an en or an on. Do you think you could use your connections to find him?"

"I'll give headquarters a call as soon as we're finished with lunch," Captain Stanley responded surprised that this information hadn't come forward in the last six months he had been trying to help Mike find some closure.

"Also one of the first things they did was drill a hole down to us and dropped in a camera and then a radio for us to communicate with the surface. Do you think they would still have those films and transcripts of the radio conversations?" Laura continued to inquire between bites.

"I'm sure they do." Paramedic John Gage spoke up, "They probably still have the tape of the conversations somewhere."

"I'll ask about it when I call headquarters." Hank was again amazed.

"What about the hospital records and the Ambulance transcripts?" Laura continued to list before taking another bite of lunch and adding, "This is really good," with a smile toward Marco.

"That, we have tried," Captain Stanley answered after chewing the food in his mouth, "We haven't been able to get any information at all. We were left with the impression that he was never transported to a hospital."

"Oh he was transported alright," Laura corrected the assumption, "There's got to be some records out there somewhere."

"Maybe he was taken in a private vehicle?" Paramedic Roy Desoto offered up between bites, "Or maybe a police car."

"I would think that very unlikely," Laura added thoughtfully, "He had an IV going while we were in the hole."

"Well in that case he should have had a paramedic with him," Roy added.

"I'll ask about that too while I'm on the phone with headquarters."

"If you can't get any where then perhaps Mike and I can go in when he get's off shift." Laura offered, "I have the kind of credentials that can get me past the receptionists and secretaries to the one's who can give the orders that will get results and if I take Mike along not only will he make sure I don't get lost six times on the way there but they won't dare turn down a request made by the son of a certified hero."

Mike sat up straighter at hearing his father referred to as a hero and the emotion was again threatening to break through his act. "I'm off tomorrow," Mike offered up with a hopeful sound to his voice.

"Then I'll just let them know to expect you." Hank offered wondering how this stranger had managed to get his engineer's confidence so quickly. "There is one thing I don't understand." Hank moved to get some answers of his own. "How was it that you came to be working at that particular rescue scene? From all this talk about getting lost I take it you don't live around this area."

"No, I'm not from around these parts; home for me is a place called Mountainair, population of around three thousand people, in New Mexico. As for how I ended up at that particular disaster scene, well that's a long story."

"We got time," Chester Kelly responded with a grin peaking out from under his bushy mustache, "Unless we get a call that is."

Laura looked at Mike again and the distant look in his eyes but he was looking at her. "I had just arrived at the airport from Baja, after working Hurricane Liza, over six hundred people died and thousands more were injured and then several more thousands became ill with cholera from the post hurricane conditions. Our group had finally been relieved and everyone was turned over to the locals and a religious group that had come in and I was sent home. I was ready to be released and as soon as I got on the plane I went to sleep, when we landed in LAX some stewardess shook me and I got up and got off the plane but I didn't really wake up, my publicist was there to pick me up, he was supposed to get me to a motel for the night and then I had a meeting with the publisher to negotiate a new printing the next day. As soon as I was in the car I was asleep again. The next time I was shaken we were at the remains of an apartment complex that had suffered some kind of an explosion. They had just found six young men in an apartment and after reinforcing the structure were about ready to pull them out. There were only two paramedics on hand and another team on the way but they were still ten minutes out. I knew that the reason we were there was because my publicist was trying to drum up publicity to increase the sales of my book and hopefully get me a better deal at me meeting the next day, and I was kind of steamed. It was a stunt he'd pulled before and I didn't like it but he knew me pretty well. Just like every other time he'd pulled that stunt before as soon as they brought the fourth victim out of the rubble and I could see that the two medics were being stretched a little thin, I couldn't just sit in the car any more."

"I hear ya," John Gage showed he understood the inability to just sit by.

"Once I flashed my credentials they were more than willing to allow me to help and I was telling myself that with only six patients this was a vacation. The second squad arrived and all four paramedics were loaded in to ambulances with the six victims and they were off to the hospitals and then some of the firemen were assigned to drive the squads behind them.

The last squad was just pulling out when word came in that they had found two more victims and they were alive. It had been just over seventy two hours and they were still alive. The kind of thing that keeps people like me going when there is really no hope left." Laura paused looking at her hands and smiling at the memory that she had made a difference.

"Pardon me," Roy Desoto interrupted, "But we usually don't allow nurses into an unstable structure, nothing personal but you're just not trained for it."

"That's pretty much what the guy in charge said," Laura scoffed, "That's when I did this," Laura then pulled a wallet from a pocket in her jacket and opened it flinging a card holder full of cards that stretched at least three feet.

Each of the men took a hold on part of the holder and started examining the individual certification cards.

"Not all of these are in English," Marco was first to notice.

"I quite often work in none English speaking countries."

"You're a Paramedic?" John Gage was surprised to see.

"You're right being a Nurse is not enough in situations like these, so even though I was already a nurse, after the awakening I got during the earthquake in Pakistan in 1974, I went to Paramedic school. Then I finished some other specialized training and I thought I could handle anything, I even wrote a couple of books. I just wanted to make a difference. When the foreman of the recovery crew saw that rack of cards and heard my publicist telling him about the Indonesia and China earthquakes I'd worked back to back, he just handed me a hard hat and said,"

"Right this way miss, is there any thing I can get for you?" Captain Stanley offered the male voice and feelings.

"Yep, that's what he said, almost word for word." Laura smiled absently then continued. "I managed to squeeze in to the opening to the apartment before the fire captain on sight found out I was there and found not only two but four girls, all room mates, all dehydrated after three days, they called the one squad back and brought me all the medical supplies that were left on it and I was in my element, I started two IV's on each of my new patients and ran 'em wide open. By the time the structural engineer on sight had told them where to cut a large enough opening for us to get out of there the girls were still week but looking pretty good. "

"The structural engineer you're talking about, that was My Dad," Mike asked quietly.

"Yea it was," Laura answered reverently.

"What happened next?" Mike pulled for more details.

"Your Dad was there when they finished sawing the opening and helped kick the slab of concrete away and then Randy climbed through the hole they made. There were no stokes or back boards available because they had used them all with the last load of survivors, so Randy just scooped them up and put the IV's in his mouth and then sort of duck waddled, because of the low ceilings, over to the opening and your Dad took the each girl as they were handed through and handed them over the one of the fire fighters that showed up and they carried them the rest of the way out." "Your Dad was great but he did a couple of things wrong, first he was in a bad position when he took the girls from Randy but the big NO, no was that he twisted," Laura turned in her chair to demonstrate, "When he handed the girls off to the next person."

"He hurt his back," Roy Desoto showed he understood as he placed his hand on his lower back and looking at his face one would almost think his back was hurting.

"Yeah," Laura confirmed, "After handing the last girl over he couldn't move, he was hurting pretty bad. I gave him a once over and was sure it was probably a pulled muscle but the foreman and the fire captain were screaming that the place was unstable and we needed to move him. So I found the last vial of Demerol in the supplies and gave it to him and once the pain started to ease up I climbed under one shoulder and Randy climbed under the other one and picked up the trauma box in his other hand and we started out." Laura paused to look at each one of the men in the room before continuing, "Men had been running back and forth across that very section for over twenty minutes with no problem, it must have been the combined weight of the three of us together that made the floor give way."