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"Your wreck bud get out ok?" Chet asked. "Johnson? Yeah, he went out with Carrie." Then the big curly haired fireman met Johnny's eyes. "DeSoto's fine Gage. Just blacked out for a while. His kid's still stable. Bleeding's stopped so I loosened that tourniquet completely before I went looking for you." "Smart thinking." Johnny took in a breath of oxygen off the mask from the tank Chet had retrieved. "Now, where does everybody remember Marco being when the hill fell down on top of us?" Kelly's ears strained in the darkness around the dim circle of muddy light the meager flashlight offered from its cracked lens. "Shh.shhh.. I think I hear something.." Wet slurping sounds from the "roof" glopped onto the silent seats around them. The white covered children's bodies could no longer be seen. "Chet, you're hearing things.." "Gage just ..pipe down a minute. You probably still got mud in your ears.. Listen.. What I heard came from behind you, from where the big rip in the side of the bus was.." All four firemen froze, studying the dripping globs of ooze raining down onto them and the hideously sagging ceiling, that was inexorably crushing down onto them by millimeters from the wet tonnage of the hillside on top of it. The deep mud on the floor suddenly moved in a rippling liquid way and a man's foot poked out of it, heel turned up. In horror, Roy realized the flat section he had been staring at was actually a partially submersed fireman's back. "Marco!! He's on his stomach over there. Get to him. Get to him!" he shouted. "Looks like he's pinned under the mud!" Gage and Detello and Chet splashed through the icy mud on their hands and knees and they both felt up Lopez's body to his head. Detello grabbed the mask from the spare O2 Chet had found and pushed it into the muck until he had it around Marco's face and then he pressed it hard around Lopez's struggling nose and mouth. Detello firmly held the back of Marco's head too, to get around the man's unthinking panic while he willed Marco to just blow out the mud in the mask for some much needed breathing room. Gage and Chet found the heavy section of "roof" pinning Marco's head and shoulders under the now foot deep layer of muck in the bus. It was another bus seat. "Did ya get it to him? Is he getting air?" Johnny asked Detello, as he and Chet fought to raise the metal off of Lopez. The thing wouldn't move. "Yeah, I think so.. I can feel him grabbing onto my arm.." Detello grunted. "We gotta hurry. This mask won't hold off the mud for long.. Water from the rain might still get in. And he'll drown." Marco's head was still completely buried in mud and this, Detello tried to claw away, while he shouted. "Easy man. Relax.. I got ya.. Marco. I got ya." Suddenly, Marco stopped kicking underneath their hands and his limbs settled back down into the slime. But Detello still felt his back move with the small breaths the man was buying from the hastily placed O2 mask. He saw Johnny's shocked look when Lopez went limp. "He's ok. He's ok.." Detello said. "He IS breathing. I can still feel him doing it. Just hurry and get that thing off of him." |
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Chet and Gage rushed to get a piece of seat frame to use as a lever bar. In a minute, the heavy debris was off. Gage and Chet grabbed Marco by the hair and hauled his lolling head up into the air. They lifted and supported him into a sitting position against Gage's chest for lack of better room. Kelly wiped away the mud from Marco's nose and mouth. Lopez was barely recognizable. "Hey. Lopez.. You with us man..? Come on.. say something." Lopez stayed silent, limp as a rag doll soaked in chocolate sauce. "Oh man. He's really out.." Kelly groaned. "His mouth clear?" Johnny asked. Detello hastily looked with the flashlight. "Yeah.. He doing anything?" Gage shook his head when he didn't feel Marco's stomach move at all in his bearhug. "D*mn! Wish this mask were a ventilator." Detello said hastily wiping the muck out of the flimsy but cracked oxygen mask in his hands with his shirt tail. "Yeah? Well what ya had probably saved his life Detello. That was fast thinking.." Roy said from where he lay propped on an elbow. He had Chris's head on his arm and a hand on the boy's neck pulse. Kelly started to grasp Marco's nose and chin for a mouth to mouth seal, when Johnny said."Hang on a minute. Hang on a minute, Chet. Just hold off, we still got a minute or two to assess him. He just may be partially obstructed with mud here. He's not even cyanotic yet. Just let me check his airway first. Don't want you to aspirate anything into his lungs in your eagerness to right things." And he firmly gave Marco a couple of abdominal thrusts in a modified heimlich maneuver. Brown muck flooded out of Marco's mouth after the fourth one and the nearly suffocated man began to bubble actively and right afterwards, his arms and legs stirred in new half consciousness. "Tip him over tip him over!" Kelly said, hanging onto Marco's head as he vomitted frothy sand and water out his nose and mouth. They placed him prone over an upturned seat to drain out his breathing passages and soon, Detello returned the tattered but flowing oxygen mask to the violently coughing man when he started inhaling in air more than he was spitting up water. He held it in place, until Lopez had the presence of mind to manage holding it himself. "That's it.. Welcome back to the land of the living..Marco." Gage said. "Just keep sucking on that O2 a bit." It was a full two minutes before Lopez sat up on his own. Lopez gasped. "Oh, man. Thought I was drowning. Then I felt someone push an O2 mask over my face. I ate a lot of mud but at least, I found something to breathe. Think my nose is broke though." Marco said, gingerly feeling where his nostrils were bleeding around the muddy trails under them. "Somebody had my face in a vice grip." "Sorry. That was me.." Detello said sheepishly. "The seat wasn't playing fair in your mud wrestling match. That mask was a home play advantage I couldn't resist. Had to do something drastic to even the odds." he said, getting to his feet to search for a crevasse leading to the outside or even for one of their lost walkie talkies. "Yeah? Well keep doing it. Maybe we'll all get out of here in one piece. *cough*." Marco rubbed the grit out of his eyes even as Johnny got a pulse off his other wrist. "I'm fine Gage. Leave me alone. Everyone else ok? *choke* Oh no, I see Chris's out." "I think he's sleeping." Roy said. "Though I'd feel better if he had an IV or two running into him." "Oh, you mean you're looking for this?" Detello said, wandering back to the others with a very familiar mud coated rectangular shape. Through the slime, they could just make out the yellow letters "I V" on the still intact gear box. "Detello.." Roy said plainatively. "You're simply a miracle worker, you know that?" |
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"Yeah.. I know." He said a touch embarrassed. "Had to chew phone books to get my cap to accept me taking my promotion to engineer last year. Had to move on,.. cause the guys on the squad shifts were beginning to call me Angel.. Picture a guy my size with a radio nick like that.." he complained. "I'd get all the missing man details then for sure if word of that spread around and I'd use up all my great karma bailing them all outta their rough spots." "Yeah?, well, you definitely still got that halo in my book." Lopez muttered, rolling his eyes. Gage firmly shoved the shattered O2 mask back onto Lopez's face. "Make it in thought only man. In thought only. If I hear anyone here calling me Angel behind my back, I'm putting your man Lopez here right back into that man versus seat wrestling match, is that clear?" There was no trace of humor in Detello's voice as he glared at Chet, Johnny, and Roy. "As crystal man.." Chet swallowed nervously. "You know, " and he cleared his throat like a pinned frog. "You should seriously consider going for a captain's post next, you sure got that glare down.." "I've been practicing.." Detello muttered noisily slamming seats aside in the areas of the bus not holding dead children and carefully piling others in the areas he remembered being occupied. "I'm going for that test next year I'll have you know." "Captain Angel.. Got a nice ring to it.."Kelly whispered. "Chet.." Marco complained. "Exnay on the Oopitsday.." he said from the corner of his mouth as Johnny checked out his bleeding nose with a penlight. Gage grinned but kept out of the banter. He knew his buddies were acting what every FD man called "nuts in a handbasket", to forget the horror in the scene around them. Gage fully knew how fleeting such a false comfort could be. But he was no one to deny them the attempt. "Ohhhh. Marco.. You worry too much. He can't hear me, He's over there.." Chet grinned toothily confident. Detello said silky smooth from the darkness. "I sure can Kelly. Better listen to mud wrestler Lopez over there." Both the men from 51 moused down. Detello went on, angling his head. "And I can hear those bulldozers buzzing around outside. Looks like both our caps are shedding bricks over us being incommunicado." And he placed hands like Atlas on the ceiling and gave it a shove. Chet almost swore he saw the ceiling rise a few centimeters. His mouth flopped open. "He's moving mountains man.. " he jabbed Marco's ribs with a slimy elbow. Lopez grimaced when that elbow caught him on a bruise from Gage's earlier heimlich thrusts. Detello pegged Chet with another stare, this time one of brainstorming regard. "Say, you're not hurt, Kelly. Why don't ya haul off that lazy rear of yours and help me birdeye one of the HT's. DeSoto won't be able to start his boy's IVs without permission from Rampart and I know I'm starting to crave my four o'clock cappucino something fierce right about now." "You got it big guy.." "Detello will do.." |
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****************************** From : "Cory Anda" <andacory@hotmail.com> Subject : And Into the Daylight... Date :Sat, 11 Jan 2003 09:58:13 +0000 Chet quieted down and he patted Marco on the shoulder as he crawled by Lopez as the shivering man slowly gained his equilibrium back. Gage half glanced at him in the dimness of the flashlight Kelly had handed him. "Marco... You need to be checked out? That seat hurt you anywhere?" "I'm fine, Johnny. Worry about Chris ok? Not much you can do for me anyway without the gear." and Marco coughed. "Yeah?" Gage replied with a wry weary look. "Well find something to wrap up in, you're getting hypothermic. And keep that O2 mask on while we look for the talkies." Marco nodded, leaning back on a pile of metal supports behind them both and closed his eyes. He didn't even feel Detello cover him with an overcoat. Johnny watched Marco drift with one eye, but the other was on Roy and Chris. "How's he doing?" he asked his partner. "Chris's out. Vitals are good though." Roy coughed, raising out of the mud and leaning on his elbows, being careful not to disturb his son's position on his chest much. "Don't think it's much more than stress taking hold. But I'll feel a lot better when we both get our legs untangled from this debris here." DeSoto felt the cold mud crawling higher alongside his body where he lay and he was glad his own body heat was keeping Chris somewhat warm. Kelly bent immediately to recheck where their legs were trapped. "Doesn't look too bad. Nothing the K-12 can't handle." Detello stood after taking a quick pulse quality check on the sleeping Marco. "That's IF.. we ever get one.." "Pessimism from the "Angel" himself?" Kelly chuckled to raise everyone's spirits. "More like a reality check..." and Detello once again tried his giant strength on the sagging "ceiling" of the buried school bus. This time, the metal above his head actually gave way under his shoulder lift. "I take that back. Those boys with the excavation crew work fast. Most of the hill is already off of us.." Kelly got to his feet and began to shout and pound on the ceiling and yelling. "Hey!! We're in here. Six meters from the back hatch! Hey!!" In Roy's arms, Chris flinched and startled awake with a sharp moan.. "Dad??!" "It's ok, Chris. You're fine. We're just raising a ruckus so the others outside know where to slice into to get us out.. How do you feel?" DeSoto asked. Chris blinked a few times and winced when he tried to test his legs. "My knee feels real big. Tight. And I'm a little sick to my stomach." |
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| Click the Resuscitator to go to Page Five :) |
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