"An Equitable Trade"
Chapter Eleven
E.J. was startled awake by a sudden high-pitched whine.
It was that K-12 thing—and it sounded incredibly close!
When the disturbing sound finally ceased, she cleared her ridiculously dry throat and called out. "Hello?! Can you hear me?!"
Five feet down and about fourteen feet over, the two firemen working on the end of the flashlight lit rescue tunnel stiffened.
"I can hear 'em!" Chet called back over his shoulder. "Hang on! We're coming!" He set his heavy saw aside and began clawing at the chunks of concrete he'd just cut, in an attempt to clear the way.
If he were to shed his bulky coat and helmet, the opening he'd just created looked almost large enough for him to crawl through.
Kelly quickly removed his canvas coat and helmet . Then he picked his flashlight back up and attempted to do just that. "Take over for me, Marco," he breathlessly requested.
Lopez did.
The new opening dead-ended in another ridiculously tight crawl space.
The beam of his light cut through the dust and darkness.
A fireman's black work boot suddenly appeared, illuminated by a narrow shaft of soft, glowing light.
"Johnny?! JOHNNY!"
"I'm afraid he can't hear you, Chet. He lost consciousness about," E.J. gave her watch a quick glance, "twenty minutes ago."
Further inspection revealed that he was peering under two enormous slabs of the lobby's collapsed floor.
Mangled rods of rebar were supporting the slabs' weight, so that they were elevated up off the basement's tiled floor.
By twisting sideways, Chet somehow managed to slither between two of the bent rebar rods and into the cramped, incredibly narrow space beneath the slabs.
He found the dangling leg the boot was attached to. The beam of his light illuminated the dried blood pool and the rebar— 'Damn!'
He undid the boot's laces, pulled it and John's sock off, and attempted to palpate a pedal pulse.
It should have been easy enough. He'd watched John and Roy do it dozens of times.
He pressed the tips of two fingers into the middle of the top of John's foot, just below the ankle joint, and waited. But, no matter how many times he repositioned his probing fingertips, he could not locate a pedal pulse.
Another reason for failing to palpate a pulse suddenly occurred to him. 'Damn!'
He unclipped the HT from his belt and thumbed its send button. "Cap, how soon can Roy get in here?"
Five sets of eyes suddenly riveted on the radio in Hank Stanley's right hand.
The owners of those eyes then exchanged extremely anxious glances.
It wasn't so much what Chet had said, as the way he had said it.
Dixie passed the requested paramedic her bag of goodies.
Roy draped the satchel's strap over his head, then he picked their drug box and respirator up and went jogging off in the direction of the rescue tunnel's subterranean entrance.
"He's on his way!" the Captain finally came back.
Chet heaved a sigh of relief and then popped his helmet-less head up into the opening between the two slabs of collapsed flooring.
'The V-shaped void.' Kelly noted his fellow rescuer's current condition and winced. 'Sheesh!'
He had resolved to find his friend—dead, or alive. But he hadn't banked on finding Johnny a little of both.
'That does it, babe! That is the last time I am ever going first!' he silently resolved and finally turned his attention to the woman. "What about you? Are you okay?"
She nodded. "I'm slightly chilled…and extremely thirsty. I'd climb down, but John has me sort of 'buckled in' here, and I'm afraid my fingers are too cold and stiff to unbuckle. Is Mister Munson okay?"
"M is doing just fine. Edward took him home with him."
If E.J.'s eyes weren't so dry, they would have welled with tears. "Does Edward know I'm all right?"
Chet smiled and nodded. "I called to let him know you were alive. He's been waiting with us all night. He's outside right now, still hoping to see you."
The woman couldn't help but smile. "John was right. He said you boys would get here before the batteries went dead."
"Yeah? Well…" Chet gave his unconscious comrade a look of deep concern, but then quickly feigned indifference. "He's not always as dumb as he looks."
E.J.'s smile broadened a bit. "He was willing to bet five bucks that you would be the first one to find us."
Kelly was clearly moved to hear that. "Uhhh...Roy should be here any second, now. I better go help him with his equipment."
That said, the helmet-less head disappeared.
John's sweat-drenched and concrete dust-covered partner appeared moments later. Along with one of Squad 12's paramedics.
There wasn't enough room for both of the new arrivals. So 12's medic waited on the other side of the rebar barricade, while 51's medic slithered through to treat his partner.
Roy couldn't get a pedal pulse, either. The extremely anxious paramedic abandoned his equipment and climbed up into the little V-shaped void, to check on his partner.
"You must be Roy," E.J. greeted.
"Guilty," the really worried looking fireman replied, with a forced smile.
"With the exception of my broken ankle, I am uninjured," E.J. assured John's concerned partner.
Roy took the woman at her word and unbuckled the belt, freeing both E.J.—and his friend's wrists.
"We're ready whenever you are," the guy from 12's called up.
The medic locked his arms beneath the old woman's and she was carefully lowered below. "Watch her ankle, there."
Once below, E.J. was quickly wrapped in some wonderfully warm blankets and lowered onto a bright yellow plastic drop sheet, to await medical treatment.
Roy freed his partner's limp arms from his turnout coat and then began his IPS.
'Airway: Open.
Breathing: Respirations 30 and shallow.
Circulation: carotid pulse barely palpable and too rapid to count. No apparent signs of bleeding.'
His partner's complexion was deathly pale. Capillary refill was well over two seconds.
'Hypovolemic.'
Skin was clammy and cold, deathly cold.
'Hypothermic.'
He pinched the skin on Johnny's limp lower arm. It remained tented up.
'Poor turgor. Dehydrated.'
A sternal rub elicited no response.
He pulled the HT from his pocket and thumbed its send button.
In the back of one of the waiting ambulances…
Dixie and Kel stiffened as their fire department radio suddenly crackled to life.
"Doc, Johnny's unresponsive. Pulse is rapid and weak. Complexion is pale, skin is cold and clammy, turgidity is poor. There is extensive bruising to his left collarbone and to the left side of the base of his neck. He has a penetrating injury to his lower right thigh—a half-inch diameter rebar—reinforcing rod , through and through. He also appears to have a crushing injury to his right pelvic area."
"Do you need me in there?" Kel inquired, and sat there dreading Roy's reply. The doctor did not want to have to amputate.
Roy scrutinized the space between the two slabs of the lobby's collapsed floor, and calculated the distance between his partner's bare right foot and the basement's tiles. "Uhhh…no. No. I'm just going to unclip his life-belt and lower him down to Chet. The rebar should back out. If the wound starts hemorrhaging, I'll apply a tourniquet. We're just 12 minutes from the ER."
"Go ahead and transport, Roy! We can treat him out here!"
They couldn't get their patients out until they could get a Stokes in. They couldn't get a Stokes in until some rebar rods were cut. They couldn't cut the rebar rods until some jacks were placed under the slab, to support its weight.
"It may be awhile before we can transport. We don't have stretcher access, yet."
"Then send me some baseline vitals!"
Chet heard the doctor's order and passed a stethoscope and cuff up to the paramedic.
Roy informed Brackett of his partner's BP, pulse and respiration rate.
Kel listened to their extremely shocky patient's vitals, and Dixie dutifully copied them all down.
Brackett could not believe their young fireman friend was still alive.
Without 'timely' treatment, the shock should have progressed—Johnny should have been dead hours ago.
"Okay, go ahead and start him on O2—wide open, with a non-rebreather. Rapid infusion IVs with large bore needles—normal saline. And send me another set of vitals once he's free of the rebar."
"10-4."
Kelly heard the doctor's ordered treatment and passed the drug box and the respirator up to John's really worried looking partner.
Roy exchanged Johnny's helmet for the equipment. "Thanks. I could use some more light up here."
Chet set the helmet down. Then he pulled his flashlight from his pocket and obligingly provided it.
Roy copped a squat on the chunk of concrete Johnny had been using as a wedge and went to work.
The paramedic got his patient's oxygen flowing, but couldn't seem to get his IV's going.
Due to the degree of dehydration, and hypovolemia, his partner was proving to be an especially 'tough stick'.
Hell, it would have been difficult to get a butterfly into his friend's nearly collapsed veins, let alone an 18 gauge!
"Johnny…don't do this to me. A person can't lose their partner…twice in one shift." The blond paramedic's plea paid off, as his fifth attempt to find a viable vein succeeded.
Roy had never felt so relieved to see flashback. He released the tourniquet and began pulling the enormous needle back out, advancing the equally large diameter catheter all the while. The IV was secured with copious amounts of tape. "Pass me one of the IV bags!"
Chet removed one of Dixie's pre-warmed presents from its insulated satchel and handed it up to him.
The second large bore IV proved equally difficult to establish.
Roy tied the plastic sacks of saline solution together with a 10" strip of gauze and then draped them around his partner's neck.
Once the ordered 'rapid infusion' of warm IV fluids was finally underway, Roy set about readying his patient for transport. "I'm gonna need a cervical collar."
E.J. winced. "I almost forgot. John wanted me to tell you that spinal precautions wouldn't be necessary," she feebly informed J.R.'s firemen friends, speaking from beneath her raised oxygen mask, "because his spine was not injured in the fall. No broken bones—anywhere."
The firemen took their friend at his word.
Ten frenetically busy minutes later, the first Stokes was finally shoved into the ridiculously narrow space beneath the slabs.
"Take him," E.J. told the two firemen who were about to place her in the stretcher's wire basket. "Don't give me any of that 'ladies first' crap!" she warned, when their mouths opened to protest. "I'll be fine with a few sips of water. He needs to get to a hospital. Pronto!"
The firemen took the feisty little lady at her word, too.
Roy slowly slid Johnny's left boot over to the opening in the bottom of the void.
With the aid of some skillful maneuvering by Kelly, Johnny's left leg was carefully unbent and realigned with its dangling mate below.
The paramedic slipped the non-rebreather mask from his patient's impassive face and lowered it and the oxygen bottle down to Chet.
"Ready?"
"Ready!"
DeSoto hoisted his partner's limp form up just enough to get his life-belt unclipped, and then began slowly lowering him down into the increasingly cramped and narrow space beneath the two slabs of collapsed lobby flooring.
"It's working, Roy! The rebar is backing out!"
"Any bleeding?"
"Some. But it's not coming from an artery."
"What about space?"
"There should be just enough for his leg to clear the bar…Okay, Roy. Our boy is down and the rebar's out." Kelly gently placed their unconscious collapse victim into the Stokes. He removed John's lifebelt and pulled his bulky canvas coat out of the way.
Roy climbed down and found his patient already wrapped in one of Dixie's pre-warmed blankets, already back on O2 and already secured into the stretcher. He gave Chet a grateful glance and then began gathering and relaying a fresh set of vitals.
"All right, Roy. Bring him out . A.S.A.P."
Five exhausting minutes of pushing and pulling later…
51's Captain watched as five members of his crew exited the rescue tunnel, the last three face-forward and the first two in reverse.
His dust covered guys struggled to their feet and then carried their no longer 'missing in action' shift-mate's Stokes up the wooden ramp and back to ground level.
Flashes of light exploded from a floodlit area to their right, which was filled with news media cameramen and crews.
The first collapse victim was transferred from the Stokes' basket to a gurney. The gurney was loaded and locked into the back of one of the ambulances. Roy climbed aboard and the emergency vehicle took off, lights flashing and sirens wailing.
Edward hadn't taken his eyes off of the tunnel's entrance for an instant.
The other paramedic from Station 12 had disappeared into the crawl space, shoving another wire mesh stretcher ahead of him.
Five minutes later, the medic's rear end reappeared.
Edward caught sight of the love of his life. He flew out of the Squad and went racing off across the street and down the ramp.
His firemen friends from Station 51 panicked and promptly pursued him.
Hank halted his men at the top of the ramp.
Edward clasped one of E.J.'s ice-cold appendages in both of his warm hands and somehow managed to get his tightened throat to open enough for him to croak out, "Eleanor! Thank God! I thought I'd lost you. Are you all right?"
E.J. nodded and then used her free hand to raise her O2 mask, revealing a trembling smile. "Edward, dear, if your proposal of matrimony still stands, I wish to change my answer to yes. I know now that I could be perfectly content being married to a man who is already married to his work."
Edward returned her smile. "I was just about to tell you that I have decided to 'divorce' my work and devote the rest of my life to loving my new—one and only—wife."
E.J.'s Stokes was picked up and the newly retired business tycoon placed a tender kiss upon his bride-to-be's cool forehead.
51's guys watched as Edward followed along beside Eleanor's stretcher and then climbed up into the back of the ambulance with her, never once releasing his hold on her hand.
Marco sighed. "Muy romántico."
Mike sighed. "That was just like O. Henry's 'The Gift of the Magi'."
Chet sighed. "I love 'Happy Endings'."
"Me, too," their Captain quietly concurred. Hank was staring off into the darkness, in the direction their young friend's ambulance had disappeared. "Here's hoping we all get to witness another one."
TBC