Disclaimer: suzanne Collins owns the hunger games.
warning this chapter is a bit gruesome.
For a moment I'm not sure what to do. When I arrived in twelve I had a brief introductory speech and there were a few words said about what to do in the event of a mine collapse but I can't remember any of them now.
Quickly I grab my helmet from the counter in the kitchen and race off in the direction of the mines. If in doubt, go to the source of panic.
When I reach the end of my street I can already see the smoke and the dust from the mines and I know that this is a really bad collapse. There are people running with me towards them, as they try to help with buckets to help move the stones so that the miners can get through the blocked tunnels and out above ground.
The looks on their faces say that they've done this many many times before. When I reach the edge of the Seam it's almost deserted except for a few children huddled on a porch, settling down for a long wait for news.
People from the seam are closer to the mines and would have run the fastest towards them. The men in those mines are their families and their livelihoods. Fathers, brothers, sons, uncles, cousins they all work in the mines to bring home the bread. Not all of them will come home.
The air is thicker here, filled with smoke and dust and powdered coal and it hangs in the air like a shroud. It makes me cough as the heat and the thickness of it rush down my throat into my aching lungs. It burns. If it's this bad here I feel there's little hope for the men trapped below the ground. Some will already be sealed in their tombs.
Up ahead I can see a mass of people, worry in their eyes but fierce determination etched on to their faces. Most of these people are women from the seam so they will all most likely have someone down there. I think about mr Hawthorne. Is he down there? Did he make it up to the surface? ... Is he dead?
There's a line off to the side where rubble is passed from the entrance of the mines to a place out of the way where it's dumped. I see mrs Everdeen to my left, she's treating some of the miners that managed to get out in time for minor cuts and bruises. They're the lucky ones and by the looks on their faces they know it.
The man she finishes treating gets up and goes to join the rest of the people that are helping to clear the rubble and I make my way over.
"What I can I do?"
She looks at me. "Nothing at the moment, won't be until they get the rubble cleared that I can really do anything. The quicker they can get them out the more chance there is that they'll live. You can help out over there first and come back to me when they start bringing the men out."
As I start to walk away she shouts "mind the rocks, some of them can be hot." I nod my head in thanks and carry on walking.
It isn't until two days later that most of the rubble is finally cleared and the first men start making their way out. The stench is almost unbearable. The smell of burnt flesh and infected wounds, some that are already weeping puss, turns my stomach. All around me I can hear wails of happiness and sorrow as the men bring their fallen comrades out with them. Tears of relief and grief mingle until it's all just one mass of crying people and I can't take it. I go to search for mrs Everdeen.
I find her with Katniss, who didn't know about the mine collapse until a few hours after it had happened as she was out in the woods hunting game.
"Darius can you grab his legs and then we'll take him back to the house." she says in relief when she sees me.
I can't see what injuries the man has, but he's moaning in pain and there's bold trickling down his head.
As we carry him back to the Seam I can see other injured miners waiting outside the Everdeen's, which now has a yellow rag on the door.
"Help me put him on the table."
I'm about to ask which one as there have to be at least five, probably borrowed from worried neighbours, when she guides me to the one closest to the wall.
In the far corner I can see Katniss gathering supplies and bandages before heading outside to heal the men sat on the steps.
I spend the rest of the morning with mrs Everdeen fetching buckets of clean water or helping roll men over and whatever else she asks of me. There's a constant stream of injured miners being brought to her door and while Katniss heals the minor wounds, or what look like minor wounds to the ones mrs Everdeen's treating, she is eventually needed inside for some of the more complex procedures that need two sets of healing hands.
This mining disaster has been a bad one. More than 56 miners have been injured with over 39 dead and that number was still rising. My hands are sore from shifting all the sharp jagged rocks and my stomach aches from not eating. Every time I think about the stinging blisters on my hand though I think about all those men and what they must be feeling and then I feel like the worlds biggest ass for whining over my overworked hands. After all, this is what most men in the seam do all day everyday, wielding an axe till their hands bleed and they don't complain... much .
You can still see the smoke rising from the entrance of the mines, reminding people of what has happened. It's like a giant festering scar on the sky.
"Darius" Katniss pokes her head out of the door and motions for me to come over.
I follow her up the stairs in to one of the rooms where there's a man laid on the table. He's black with coal dust and he's moaning in agony. His trousers have been stripped off to reveal a small burn that looks slightly blackened on his left leg. His right leg however had not been so lucky and is mangled beyond recognition.
The skin, what's left of it, is a bright angry red and in most places you can see the white of the bone which looks cracked in several places. I gag at the sight and turn away.
Katniss drags me over to a corner and whispers to me urgently " his legs already infected and there's no way we can fix it, there's not enough skin and he wouldn't be able to walk on it. The family has given us permission to amputate it."
I don't know what I'm thinking it will be like but when a man comes in with a blunt garden saw I blanch.
"You're going to cut it off with that?" I ask incredulously.
She looks back to the man quickly before answering "it's the only thing we've got."
I sigh, of course it is. They don't have a proper doctor and if they did they would have already written this man off. I forget sometimes that everyone in twelve is dirt poor and that mrs Everdeen isn't a real doctor. Both women have done so well today fixing people up that I forgot they were just working with whatever they had, cotton that came from old clothes and herbs that were harvested from the woods.
I call them both women because a mere girl couldn't go through what has happened today and handle it so well. Katniss should be proud of herself, I know I am.
"What did you want me to do?" I ask softly.
"We need you to hold his legs, so that he doesn't move."
I really shouldn't have asked because now I am certain that what little is left in my stomach is going to come right back up. Oh god.
I slide down the wall and put my head between my knees. When I woke up three days ago I never imagined doing this. I look at Katniss and then at the man who's still crying out. They need me. All the other men out there probably know this man and wouldn't be able to stomach it, holding him down, and out of everyone else I'm definitely the strongest.
I nod my head just a little bit and her shoulders drop as she sighs in relief.
They drape some old rags over his legs so that I can get a firmer hold on them and scrub what's left of his legs clean to reduce further chance infection. I'm shocked that his family has agreed to this but then I realise that this is the only way he's going to live and if they don't do this then he's dead anyway. They don't have a choice.
They don't start with the saw straight away, they first cut through the skin and muscle with a sharp knife before setting the blunt saw to the bone. I have to breath in several deep breaths to steady myself before I can reach out and grab his legs.
They have given him some sleep syrup to help dull the pain but it doesn't seem to be working. His screams of absolute agony permeate the air and they seem to echo around the small room, filling it with a constant howl of pain.
The sound is excruciating. Even over his wails I can hear the repetitive motion of the saw scraping away layer after layer of bone ever so slowly. I don't look at him. I can't. Instead I close my eyes and recite everything I ever leant in school in a vain attempt to block everything out. But even when the screams stop as he passes out, the dull grating sound of the saw remains.
As my hands sweat with the effort to keep the man still it makes it harder for me to grip him tightly enough and the blood has long since seeped through the cloth making my hands sticky.
Katniss holds his shoulders down and they've strapped his arms to his chest with spare belts. Occasionally she takes over with the saw when her mother get tired or wipes her mothers brow.
When the leg finally comes free mrs Everdeen carefully places a rag that had been soaking in a bucket with some kind of herb over the open wound. Even in the mans unconscious state he moans.
After cleaning it with the cloth which is now a deep red she shouts for a man outside the door and he brings in a hot piece if metal. To the mans credit he doesn't hurl at the sight of the patient but he really looks like he wants to. You and me both I think.
After the wound is cauterised, mrs Everdeen shoos us away and tells us to go take a rest and that she'll finish up. We don't argue and we shakily make our way down the rickety wooden stairs. On our way outside we pass many people wanting to know how their loved ones are but when they see our pale faces they let us pass.
I make my way to the sink first and scrub at my hands, trying to get the memory of the last four hours off my skin. The sink ends up red and the blood stays in the cracks in my hands so I give it up as a bad job and fill two glasses instead.
When I get outside I can hear the sound of retching. I can see Katniss's legs poke out from behind the only tree in the back yard and I wait on the porch for her, closing my eyes and leaning back against the old planks.
Eventually she comes over to sit next to me and I offer her the water silently. She takes it gratefully and we don't say anything for a long while.
"My dad died in a mine explosion." She says quietly looking down into the bottom of her cup.
I freeze not knowing what to do. This is the first time Katniss has ever volunteered information about herself or her family before and I don't want to stop her by saying something.
"It was a few years ago" she whispers looking up to the sky.
In this light Katniss has never looked so vulnerable or so small. She's always so fierce and guarded that when I see her now it's almost as if she's a different person.
"I was eleven," she continues. " I was in school when the alarms went off. I remember thinking 'it's ok he'll be fine, he always is'... I sat by the entrance all day, waiting for him to come out. It was only when I got home and I saw mr Hawthorne there with my mother who was crying into his shoulder that I knew he wasn't coming back, not this time."
"I remember him seeing me at the door and walking over to me and saying that he was sorry and that my daddy was a brave man... He was working the end of the line with mister Hawthorne when the bird stopped singing and he shoved mr Hawthorne to the exit straight away. He saved all those men's lives." Her eyes fill with tears until they spill over and run down her cheeks, making tracks in the dirt.
I never knew John Hawthorne knew Katniss's dad. He never speaks about it, though most people here tend to ignore the things that hurt them. I had thought that he was kind to Katniss because everyone was, but now I understand that everyone is so nice to Katniss because her dad saved a lot of lives, even at the cost of his own.
"I had to be the one to tell my sister."
This startles me. I had thought Katniss was an only child.
" she was only 7." Her breathing hitches and I grab her hand to give her silent support.
"I had nightmares for days afterwards, still do. My mother was devastated with the news. She didn't eat, she didn't sleep. She just sat there, it was l-like life didn't matter anymore... like we didn't matter anymore. She just stared off in to space a-an-and n-n-nothing I did w-would wake her up."
"She let us starve! Prim did starve! I couldn't get enough food and I tried e-everything I could but I wasn't enough!"
She's openly crying now, venting all her frustration and anger and hurt and I want to tell her it's ok but I don't, because it's not.
"I was supposed to protect us and I didn't remember about the woods until it was to late and she's dead and I hate her, it's-it's-it's-it-"
I pull her over on to my lap and cradle her to me gently rubbing her back as she sobs. She clings to me like a lifeline and buries her head into my shoulder. It's hard to picture the mrs Everdeen that she describes to the one I saw today. I just can't imagine it.
What was her name?" I whisper gently stroking the top of her head.
"Prim" she whimpers and breaks down all over again.
I have a feeling that Katniss has needed this release for a long time as her tears continue well into the night. We stay like that till we fall asleep.
please tell me what you think.