"An Equitable Trade"
Chapter Four
The old woman lay there, still cradled in the young fireman's arms. It was dark—pitch dark, and the air was filled with pulverized concrete and plaster dust. The fine powder burned her eyes and nostrils and irritated the lining of her lungs, resulting in a constant cough.
She was shaking. The sudden fall—coupled with the unbelievably loud sounds of the building collapsing, over and around them—had scared her about half to death. But that wasn't why she was trembling.
The young fireman wasn't coughing. In fact, he was barely breathing.
And, the thought that he might be dying scared the living hell out of her. She buried her face into the young man's no longer heaving from exertion chest and blinked fresh tears from her already watering eyes.
Her rescuer's fire coat smelt of wood smoke and burnt electrical wiring. There was a hint of tuna fish and onions on his breath and he was wearing the most amazing men's cologne.
"Please don't die," she pleaded, between coughs. "Please…don't leave me all alone down here."
The fireman didn't respond.
So she shut her irritated, tear-filled eyes and extended her heartfelt plea to a higher authority.
Sometime later…
The dust had settled quite a bit.
Alas, her rescuer's respiration rate had become so dangerously slow and so ridiculously shallow, the woman was convinced his death was now imminent. She hated to disturb the dying young man, but the front brim of his fire helmet was pressing, rather painfully, into her left boob. "Mister Fireman?...Mister Fireman?!" she repeated, upping the volume.
Not surprisingly, there was no response.
Her fingers fumbled blindly with the buckle on his helmet's chin strap and she finally got it to release.
There was a light 'tink'ling sound, as the fireman's helmet fell away, and his hanging head flopped, lifelessly, to one side.
The old woman was startled when, just moments later, her rescuer's chest heaved with a gasped inhalation. 'His dying breath,' she sadly surmised, and quickly scrambled out of the young fireman's arms.
But, instead of being his last breath, it turned out to be just the first of many deep breaths, the most recent of which was exhaled with an accompanying moan.
With the increased oxygen supply to his brain, awareness gradually returned to John Gage. He came to completely and coughed. He could tell by the sound of his cough that he was in an enclosed space—a very dark and very dusty enclosed space.
He reached inside his coat, pulled the penlight from his front shirt pocket and clicked it on. He was lying in a V-shaped collapse void. His back was up against one of two enormous hunks of the lobby's fractured terrazzo floor.
One of his long legs was directly in front of him and bent at the knee. The sole of his left boot was resting on the other hunk of slanted flooring.
There was a ten-inch wide slot in the bottom of his V-shaped tomb. His other leg had managed to find it.
Which meant that he was pinned, right up to his hip, between the two slanting slabs of concrete and granite.
The 'exit' rope was still attached to his lifebelt and it was holding his hips up at an unnatural and very uncomfortable angle. He somehow managed to get his belt unclipped from it.
He wrinkled his dust-encrusted nose up a few times and then reached, instinctively, for the aching left side of his stiff, sore neck. His hand hit something that caused a 'clink'ing sound. He directed the narrow beam of his penlight at the 'clink'ing object and discovered that one of the lobby's enormous, crystal chandeliers had accompanied him into the basement. The chandelier had taken a huge hunk of the lobby's ceiling with it, and that hunk of ceiling had served as a protective cover for the little V-shaped void.
One of the chandelier's shiny brass arms must have been pressing into his neck, because there was a bruise and some swelling right below—and just in front of—his left ear. Humph. That was a new one. He'd never been 'chandeliered' before.
"Are you all right?" a vaguely familiar voice suddenly inquired.
It was the woman with the broken ankle. The one they'd been sent in to get 'down and out'.
Gage took a couple of seconds to compose himself. "Yeah. I'm still a little woozy, is all." He directed his penlight in the voice's direction and exhaled an amused gasp. "Man, I cannot believe we survived that! Mister Munson must've loaned us a couple of his lives. What about you? Are you okay?"
The woman could not believe her eyes and ears. In no time at all, her rescuer had gone from near death to cracking jokes. As for his question? He'd sheltered her with his own body and kept her from harm. "You saw to that."
"You sure you're not hurt anywhere?"
"Well, I have a broken ankle. But that was busted before the earthquake hit and the whole damn building came down on us."
Gage flashed an unseen smile at his 'feisty' fellow captive. "How long was I out?"
"I don't know. My watch doesn't have a luminous dial. A half hour—forty-five minutes, maybe?"
"Have my firemen friends out there been honking at any more passing motorists?"
"No. Why?"
"Two short blasts tells everybody to stop working. They even reroute traffic so that there's total silence. Then, the guy on the LDP—Life Detection Probe—listens for signs of life. It's a portable, battery-powered victim locator. A sort of acoustic listening device with a super-sensitive microphone attached to the end of a long probe. The mic' is hooked up to an amplifier with an ambient noise filter and the guy monitors the sounds through a set of headphones. Voices only travel a few feet through the rubble. But tapping and banging carries a long ways. So, when we hear the 'all quiet' signal, we need to bang my helmet on one of these slabs, and keep on banging it." A nerve in his numb right leg was really beginning to kill him. He recalled that amputees often report experiencing phantom leg pains and suddenly wondered if his right leg was even still there. "Could you do me a favor?"
"If it is within my ability to do so…"
"There's a flashlight in my right coat pocket. Could you flick it on and let me know if my right leg is still attached to the rest of me?"
The old woman was taken aback by his request. But she obligingly crawled back over to her rescuer. She fished around in his pocket, removed the flashlight from his fire coat and flicked it on.
The chandelier's crystal prisms caught and refracted the light, so that the entire void lit up with a warm, soft, glittering glow that was real easy on the eyes.
"Far out!" Gage declared with a grin. "Sort a' adds a certain 'ambience' to the place, don't yah think?" He took a longer, better look around. "I wouldn't care to hold a dance in here. But, as collapse voids go, this one is downright 'roomy'."
The woman gazed in amazement at the 'transformed' young man and then reluctantly aimed the flashlight's beam down through the ten-inch slot in the bottom of their V-shaped void.
The fireman's right hip was pinned between the two slanting slabs of concrete and granite. His right leg was caught between two jagged pieces of the floor's reinforcing rods. A third piece of rebar had penetrated his right thigh, just above the knee. "The good news is, your leg is still there. The bad news is, it appears to be bleeding."
"Okay. Thanks. Now, I'm gonna need you to move as far back as you possibly can."
She did.
There was a smaller, two-foot square hunk of the fractured floor digging into his right shoulder blade. He got it dislodged and then situated it so that it would act as a wedge, to keep the slot on the bottom of the V-shaped void open…in the event of another # $! aftershock.
"You made me a seat. How considerate of you." The woman crawled over to the makeshift wedge/chair, sat down and extended her right hand. "Eleanor Johanna Rigby. I was obviously not named after the song, nor was the song named after me."
John took and shook the woman's proffered appendage. "John Roderick Gage. I, uh, don't have any Beatles' songs named after me, either."
She returned the young man's grin—and flashlight. "Everybody just calls me E.J. Would you mind if I just call you J.R.?"
John replaced his penlight and then proceeded to drape his flashlight's wrist strap over one of the chandelier's shiny brass arms. "As in J.R. Ewing? The villain on 'Dallas'? Well, I guess that's better than Junior. When my buddy and I first started working together, he saw JR GAGE stenciled on all my gear and started calling me Junior." Junior noticed that his entire body was wringing with sweat and started to remove his hot, canvas coat.
E.J. stopped him. "No! Don't! You're a fireman. I don't have to tell you about 'heat conduction'. This slab is going to suck the heat out of you until you and it are the same temperature." She saw the amazed look on the young man's face and quickly explained, "I have my Red Cross Advanced First-Aid Certificate, and I've taken five refresher courses, so my certification is up to date." She paused to gaze up at the source of the void's soft, soothing yellow glow. "Shouldn't we shut the light off? To conserve the batteries?"
J.R. couldn't seem to stop smiling. "I just replaced them, when I came on shift. My firemen friends out there will get here before the batteries go dead," he confidently predicted.
Speaking of going dead…
"Just a few short minutes ago, I was convinced that you were…dying."
"Yeah. I figure that's cuz one of the chandelier's arms must've been compressing the left vagus nerve in my neck, here…" he paused to point out the affected area. "The vagus nerve is sandwiched in between the left carotid and left subclavian arteries. It provides parasympathetic innertion to the heart and lungs, and compressing it can cause a vaso-vagal response. That's when your BP/blood pressure drops suddenly and results in unconsciousness. Compression of the vagus nerve can also cause relative bradycardia—an unnaturally slow heart rate, and slow, shallow respirations." He swiped his sweat-drenched brow with the sleeve of his canvas coat. "It, uh, also causes profuse sweating."
E.J. picked the fireman's dropped helmet up and studied it in the dim light. 'PARAMEDIC' was emblazoned between the circular white emblems' red and green half moons. 'Airway, breathing, circulation,' she grimly reminded herself. "May I borrow your bandage scissors?"
"Why?"
"Your airway is open, your breathing has returned to normal. That leaves circulation. We need to get that bleeding stop—"
"—You can't go down there!" J.R. quickly determined.
"Why ever not? The opening is a lot wider over the—"
"—Every pipe in this building burst! Both potable and non-potable! There's raw sewage down there!"
"I'm not afraid of a little poo."
"You can't go down there! What about your busted ankle? What if there's another aftershock? It's too dangerous!"
"Where, exactly, is it written that you can risk your neck to save my life, but I can't risk my neck to save yours?"
There was a bout of silence, as J.R. struggled to come up with a good answer to her good question. "It's…one of those unwritten laws!"
"In that case, I choose to unlisten to it."
"Look, I'm fine! If it was an artery, I'd already be dead. At least wait until the next aftershock passes!" He paused to pat her seat. "I'm hoping this hunk of concrete will slip down and wedge the slot open enough for me to pull my hip and leg free."
"We can't wait any longer!"
"Plea-ease?" the paramedic pleaded. "Don't go down there!"
Two short, muffled blasts from an air-horn sounded just then and their attention was immediately redirected.
John snatched his helmet from the old woman's hands and began banging it against the slab of flooring that he was leaning up against.
Several loud banging minutes later…
E.J. saw that J.R.'s arm was getting tired and quickly snatched the helmet back. "My turn," she announced and began banging out a coded message.
J.R.'s eyebrows arched. "You know Morse Code?"
"I worked my way through college in a Western Union off—" she stopped banging as the muffled air-horn suddenly sounded again. One short blast, this time. "Does that mean 'We heard you?' or 'Everybody get back to work?'"
John was forced to smile, a sad, half-hearted smile. "Everybody back to work. But don't worry. They'll hear us next time."
E.J. set their noisemaker down and shoved her hand back into the fireman's right coat pocket. She removed the air-splint she'd seen him shove in there, and inflated it just a tad. "Lift your head up for me," she requested.
J.R. did as directed.
E.J. placed the partially inflated air-splint beneath his raised head, cushioning it from the slab of cold, hard, terrazzo flooring.
"You made me a pillow," Gage realized, with a grin. "How considerate of you." That said, he pulled his pillow-provider from her makeshift seat and took her back into the protective custody of his arms. "We need to conserve heat," he explained, once he'd gotten the woman re-situated in his lap—er, his half-a-lap.
A long, comfortable silence ensued, which was only disturbed by the loud rumbling of the young fireman's empty stomach.
"Sorry about that," J.R. apologized. "We got toned out before we could finish eating."
"Tuna salad?"
"Sorry 'bout that," J.R. re-apologized. "Didn't have time to brush my teeth."
"Or time to check on your friends and families, either, I'll bet."
"The Department has a system in place, in the event of natural disasters. Off-duty firefighters are called upon to perform welfare checks on the families of on-duty firefighters. It works pretty well. Our loved ones are looked after, and our attention remains focused on the job."
"Are you married?"
Another, slight, sad smile appeared. "Only to my work." The look on the young fireman's face suddenly grew even sadder. "E.J….Why didn't you answer us?"
"Because I knew that signal meant that the building was about to come down…because I knew that the two of you would be able to make it out a lot faster without me…because elevators don't 'do' sideways…because I couldn't leave without Mister Munson," the old woman choked back a sob, "and because I couldn't ask you boys…to risk your lives…just to try to save…some stupid cat!"
E.J. was crying openly now and J.R. regretted ever having posed his prying question. "Yeah…well…That just goes to show," he began, his own voice cracking with emotion, "that you don't know Chester B. and me. Cuz', if you did, you'd know that we would NEVER risk our lives just to try an' save some stupid cat." His sad smile returned and he tightened his tender hold on her. "But, to save somebody's furry best friend…and beloved companion? Well, the two of us will do—and have done—just about anything."
The woman returned his smile, but the tears continued their steady stream down her cheeks. "I'm sorry, J.R.. Look at you. You're trapped…and hurt. I'm soooo sorry."
"Hey…I'm a firefighter, E.J. Firefighters flirt with disaster on a daily basis. Sometimes, disaster flirts back. This is just one a' those times. And, I'm the one who's sorry. I was s'posed to get you 'down and out'. Remember?"
"You got me down. I'd be dead right now, if you hadn't. And you would have gotten me out, too, if that damn aftershock hadn't a' hit when it did. I have every confidence that we will get out of here. We're just taking the 'scenic route', is all."
J.R. just had to chuckle at that. "Now that you mention it…The chandelier is kind a' pretty to look at, isn't it…"
And it was E.J.'s turn to laugh. Her laughter was short-lived however, as the chandelier's dangling crystal prisms suddenly began to dance and sway and 'clink' noisily together. The 'clink'ing was quickly drowned out by an all too familiar rumble. She clutched the front of the fireman's coat with both fists, buried her tear-streaked face back into his chest, and resumed her silent—but fervent—prayers.
As the second aftershock came roaring—and rolling—in, Gage re-donned his helmet and then used his body to shelter E.J. from harm.
TBC