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Mike Stoker gripped Kelly's shoulder tightly while his other glove handed Chet the trickling hose. "Here. Just hold this and don't watch, Chet. " Kelly closed his eyes in spinning horror as he fought his montrous inner fear and just willed himself to breathe to prevent himself from passing out. Mike's voice was almost soothing and cut through the roaring in Chet's head like a balm. Kelly anchored onto it like a lifeline. "I'm pulling a tarp over this and someone else now. I got the hose fully drawn up to us. Just go. The fire's out." Mike said gently. "Appreciate it, man.." Chet said making tracks for the rising daylight they could see flickering above the clouds of ash and soot coming from the devastated neighborhood and hospital parking lot. He could barely contain his nausea. "Why is it always the photos which get me?" he asked himself. "I'm a rock with anything else.." ::Because you have photos of friends and family just like they do in your wallet..:: came his own ruthless conscience silently. ::Sorry I asked..:: his mind whispered to itself as Kelly finally found balance in an unscathed flower pot still sitting where it rested next to a dewy copper metal watering can on House D's white porch railing. Water drops from his hose made the shasta daisies inner eyes glow in the dawn sunlight. "Who's the second one, Stoker?" "Pilot." Sighing and shaking, Chet Kelly raised his HT to his lips and reported the finding of two more air plane victims. Then his firefighting cool reestablished itself when his brain began working again. "Stoker..." "Yeah?" "If we found those two, the cockpit can't be far away. Won't officials want to get their hands on the flight recorder as soon as possible?" "They sure would." "What color is one from a Boeing? I can't remember." "Red, I think." "Terrific.. I wonder what the lame brain who thought up that shade was thinking when he designed it." "Don't be morbid." "Kinda hard staying positive just about now. I'd do anything to find someone with a pulse." "Reach over and feel mine then. Anytime. I'm really glad you're here with me, too." he said sarcastically, barely abreast of his own fear and stress. |
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Kelly chuckled and groped for Stoker's carotid. "Just so you check mine, too, periodically. I feel like I'm numb all over." "Numbness is bliss at a disaster scene. Wish for that pure emotional novocaine each time at one, Kelly.. What's my rate at now? Feels like 180 just slamming into my chest." Chet's hand never touched Stoker's skin. "Would you look at them?" Chet said, his grin at Mike's rejoiner falling away once again into deep tortured pain. "Look at who?" Stoker coughed, peeling off his hot helmet to let the hot wind dry his hair. "Them..." Kelly said pointing. A rescue searcher and his dog crouched tightly in an embrace, comforting each other across the street on a block of concrete raised slightly above the level of the dead. As yet, the human had made no sound. But the labrador was trembling. "Come on, let's give them some privacy." Chet said. "Looks like they've already checked that last side of the block ahead of us. Let's try and find that recorder thing like good little fast firemen, hmm?" --------------------------------------------------- |
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---------------------------------------------------- Roy looked up to see what row of cars they were currently next to in comparison with the hospital's outline looming above. He could just see the fourth floor and Johnny and Megan's patient room window. It was one in the shatter zone. ::Be safe, junior. We're coming. Just whatever you do, don't get the crazy idea in that idiotic head of yours to move around with the girl to free yourselves from what you think is danger. I never versed you on the realities of a large plane crash scenario and about the fires that come from one. Magnesium burns can't be barreled through, Johnny. They're far far hotter than you can ever hope to expect ..or survive.:: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unseen, behind a preoccupied Cap and Chief McConnikee, Boot wormed his way out of the Ward and went arrowing towards Ground Zero and Rampart as fast as his hairy legs could carry him. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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***************************************** From : patti keiper <pattik1@hotmail.com> Sent : Wednesday, February 11, 2004 11:55 PM Subject : [EmergencyTheaterLive] One Step At A Time... Johnny Gage coughed, and pushed a fallen bedstand table off his shoulders. He immediately looked down. "Megan?" The tiny burden in his arms stayed quiet, her eyes half lidded around tinges of blood. Gage bent close over her nose and mouth and he sighed gratefully when he felt slight puffs of warm wetness dampen the stinging cuts on his cheek from her strong even breathing. He eased the nine year old off his knees and onto the floor gingerly, his eyes sweeping her body for the reason why she was unconscious. Apart from places where the window glass had sliced her skin, his hands only found her over full coloring pen pouch bag that she was still wearing around her waist like a fanny pack and no other sign of serious injury. The hallway outside their patient room door was amass with shouts and seniors crying down the hall. Hustling nursing staff around the central desk were trying to regain control of the crowd of patients awakened by the plane crash. An orderly's voice was loudest, and it was coming nearer, checking the one room down the construction scaffolded hallway that he knew was occupied and facing the direction of the crash. "Hey! Anybody still down here?!" boomed an African American voice. "You gotta move to a room across the hall to get away from those broken windows.." Gage wiped a trail of blood out of his eyes and looked up at his room's door, scratched and impaled by the shards of glass that had been driven there from air pressure. |
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The light over Megan's bed sputtered fitfully from debris that had damaged its ballast. It only enhanced the pale color of the little girl's cool skin. "Yeah! In 415. Me and a little girl! Get us out of here! The smoke's coming in." "All right, I'm almost there. Stay put mister!" came the unseen voice of the orderly. "I'm coming in. You two hurt any?" "Megan's out but I've got a good airway on her. She's gonna need some serious O2. She took some glass into her eyes and yes, her IV line's intact." "How about you?" ::Yeah, how about me?:: Johnny thought. He hadn't even considered himself. ::I must look a sight right about now.:: He ran experimental hands over his chest, head and back and they came away bloodied but sharp pain or areas of numbness didn't announce themselves. "Not finding anything at all. Just some leftover dizziness from a sleeping pill I took an hour ago. I'm not shocky in the slightest." "Sounds like you're very certain of that." came the voice and soon came rough aggressive noises that showed the hospital man was pushing aside construction tarps, shelving and paint carts out of his way right by Gage and Megan's room. "I should sound certain. I'm a fireman paramedic. *cough* Hurry, the air's going to turn real bad. We gotta get her out of here." Gage got back down onto the floor and rolled Megan onto a sheet he ripped free from his bed and he started dragging her behind him across the floor towards the door just beneath the oily smoke layer that was pooling into the violated room. "Working on it. Looks like people panicking out here pushed an equipment cart over into scaffoulding and the whole lot's tipped against your door! See if you can crack it open." came the man's exerted voice. "I got most of it gone." Johnny felt once more for the quality of Megan's carotid pulse before he crawled nearer to the wooden door that he could see bouncing in its hinges from the impacts the orderly was making trying to free more space around the door's handle latch. New stabs of pain bit into his blue jeaned knees and his bare palms as debris shards cut them. He moved closer to the orderly's position getting ready to rise.Johnny kept his head down in the clear air pocket near the floor only long enough to snatch a breath of untainted air. He decided to risk standing up into the blinding smoke's gasses to try his luck at speeding the escape from their room. The rush of air that sucked in from the window when Johnny cracked the door slightly open, rapidly caused an awful stench of death to gush inside the room. ::Too close. The plane's too close to us. Aw, man..:: Briefly, Johnny saw the tangling jumble of equipment and the construction rack that still blocked his way as the fetid wind from outside finally picked a direction to flow. It decided to flow inside the hospital, thickly. Gage shouted, not being able to see the orderly at all around the smoke that suddenly came billowing out of 415's open portal that lay between them. "This is gonna take too long, *choke* This door can't stay open, the toxic fumes are flooding in and that's the last thing we need in the hallway with all those sick patients out there, all right? Is there another way out of here for us?" "What?" "Just- Just think on it. We've got a minute or so to get out of here." Gage said calmly. |
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" Yeah.. Yeah, I think so. In the bathroom, straight back. There's an adjoining access door with a lock. Yeah, I know it for sure. Take this to open it." Johnny felt a key ring and chain being pressed into his hands. "After you get through that door, go left along the service hall. It runs behind a surgical store room. The firedoor at the end leads to the glass elevator. You can get out that way. ..uh, wait a minute, no you can't. D*mmit! I just remembered. That whole outside shaft might be damaged and non functional. It's on the crash's side." the invisible orderly quailed. "Good enough for me. I'll take my chances. If not, I'll park us in that store room and we can wait it out safely enough. Now seal us off again so we can save what good air we have left. It's enough to get us out of here." Gage commanded. "Just be careful, man. I'll tell security you'll be showing up anywhere along that route. Oh, and don't try to leave Rampart. We've been ordered by the fire department's city dispatcher to keep everybody inside no matter what." "This is why. The powerlines in the area have to be down just about everywhere. Now, go. We'll be fine. You gotta continue your search for others who may still be trapped. We'll get out fine now that we know how." "But,.." "Don't worry about the little girl, she's stable.. Just go." "Ok." The door thudded shut and Gage slid gratefully back down into the good air around his knees to try and breathe regularly. Already, biting jet fuel was swelling up his throat and lungs. ::I'll worry about that later.:: Johnny said, clenching the key in his teeth. ::Thank G*d I'm used to eating smoke.:: he sighed. "Megan,...we're getting out of here. If you can hear me, just keep breathing real shallow all right?" he said coiling up a corner of her drag sheet around the better of his two lacerated wrists. Then he remembered, his station's gang would be looking for him just as soon as the whole disaster scene had been given a quick once over for survivors. "I know Chet, he'll try ta sneak some of the guys in here at their first rest break to try and look for me for sure. But d*mmit, how can I tell them I got out ok?" Then a brainstorm. Johnny reached and pulled out a handful of Megan's markers and quickly patterned out an arrow with them on a patch of floor he cleared free of black dust with an edge of Megan's sheet. "That'll clue them in.." he grinned. "I remembered my boy scouting days just fine.." Johnny wormed his way into the bathroom with Megan's limp crevat and slammed the door shut behind them, sealing off the choking fumes. As promised, the other door was there. Gage reached up and turned on the wall light. He startled when he saw himself in the mirror. There wasn't an inch of him that wasn't dusty with black and blood. Quickly, he unlocked the service door with the orderly's key and the two of them fell into the still pristine air of the brightly lit hall that lay beyond it. It was utterly quiet in there and everything was eerily devoid of any sign of the ongoing disaster outside. Johnny pocketed the door key into his jeans and bent down to recheck Megan's status. "Megan...sweety.. You with me yet, hon?" He dug a knuckle into her breast bone. Megan didn't stir, but her chest still rose and fell regularly. "That's all right. It's ok that you're unconscious, I'm gonna be happy your heart's still beating, kid. Let's go." Gage gathered her up into his arms, holding her grimy IV bag in between his teeth as he barefooted it on tender, wounded feet down the corridor towards the surgical store room he was told to watch out for. He paused only long enough to make another arrow of markers showing the direction that he and Megan were traveling in. As he looked for the next door, his other hand turned up Megan's IV port to wide open when the carotid pulse beneath his finger skipped a beat. The way along was not hard to find and the next light switch Gage flipped on, revealed a stainless steel and tiled walled anesthesia gas bottle store and a cart full of surgical dressings. "Bingo.. but no phone." Gage coughed. "Oh well, Nothing says we can't take time for a rest stop. We're safe now." |
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Johnny carried Megan over to some crates and dug around a few of them until he found the right bandages to dress her eyes and her bigger still oozing wounds and even some of his own lacerations that refused to clot up. The markings on one of the huge gas bottles surrounding them caught his eye. "Wait a minute.. That one's green. I'll just bet that's oxygen!" It took a search but soon, Johnny located a regulator that fit the giant O2 tank. He snatched an anesthesia mask and tubing from a blue surgical paper wrapped bundle that he recognized from working in ER treatment rooms. And a child's oral airway just the right size for Megan from a plastic covered recharging crash cart. He rapidly set up the apparatus and tested it on himself, breathing deeply from the O2 to make sure it was the right gas and that the gas flowed well. He took a short while longer working on the mask to clear an alarming, rising congestion in his chest. Then he secured Megan's airway with the oral tube and strapped the too large adult black rubber mask as well as he could over her face. Then he tended the child with a more thorough exploratory exam. "Looks like just your eyes, hon..as I thought." he concluded, wrapping both of hers up carefully with kerlix around her head until they cushioned them thickly. "These cuts are nothing." He grabbed a BP cuff from the defib cart and took a quick palpated reading on the child to further ease his paramedic worries. "72. Fair enough for me.." he sighed, coughing as traces of acrid smoke lingered his chest. "A few minutes of this oxygen and I promise we're gonna get you out of here lickety split. We got a date with our coloring books to keep and we sure can't do that in here." Grogginess from an unexpected quarter made Johnny sway and suddenly, there were two Megans lying sheeted swathed on top of the cleaning boxes. "Well maybe after I treat myself too." He set a cannula off the regulator and strung it onto himself, breathing in the rich oxygen it delivered to try and clear his head. He leaned on the crash cart as his head sagged down to his chest. "Maybe I'd better sit down on the floor." And suddenly, he was there, his butt bruised from falling. "Terrific.. a smoke inhalation downer already? D*mn.. W- wonder what my pressure's sittin at..." Groping, he felt his own wrist. "No radial pulse.. that's ..that's...lower than ninety.." he gasped, suddenly air hungry. He felt a little higher up his arm and pressed down under his bicep at the pressure point. "Just a weak brachial.. that puts it.. somewhere near the low 80's ...*cough* systolic. Just...just wonderful. Last thing I need is to black out. And Megan needs to get to a doctor asap." ::And so do I..for that matter..:: his inner voice added. The bright blue tile and steel room swam before his eyes chaotically and Johnny slid the rest of the way down the crash cart, slumping onto his back. On the way down his elbow caught the cart and it tipped over on top of him. He grunted as a drawer of drugs shot out from their housing and hit him in the chin, making him see sudden stars until he rolled over to try and get some blood back into his head. One packaged syringe rolled by his nose and it begged a familarity to his foggy senses. "What the h*ll is that one? Can I even guess? I'm feeling pretty crappy here..." Johnny drew in another deep breath on his O2 and strained to read the labelling. "A..t...r...o.. *cough*..p...i.. oh, atropine. Point five milligrams. Easy one.." he grinned as his consciousness faded. "I sure could use some of that right about now.." Gage's world went black before his hand obeyed a mental command to try and reach out for the medication. ------------------------------------------------------- |
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Dr. Brackett looked up from the smoky, fire lit emergency doors as neighborhood residents and rescue personnel brought in highway and residential house victims in a steady stream, with annoyance. "Where's Dixie?" he snarled at a rushing candy striper, her hands full of trauma packs. "She picked a h*ll of a time for a coffee break!" The young teenager just shrugged and fled from his rage offering a tidbit from the hospital grapevine. "Dr. Morton said she was headed up to Pediatrics for some reason. Hope that helps you, doctor." And she was gone amid the jumble of screaming patients and calming hospital staff in seconds. "Yeah, I'll say it helps. It helps me raise a little blood pressure..." Dr. Brackett mumbled. He peeled off his pair of bloody gloves from the last hallway patient he briefly examined, who had been tagged triage yellow, and dropped them, without thinking, onto the floor. He spied Mike Morton standing with a puzzled look in front of strangely quiescent silver metal elevator doors. "Aren't these running?" he asked Kel as the senior physician sought him out to find out why. "Nope. Compliments of the Los Angeles County Fire Department. They want no one getting any bright ideas in their heads about heading down to ground floor trying to escape the hospital. A control measure I guess. " "It's a d*mned stupid one if you ask me.." Mike flared. "It's hampering our patient room checks." "I'm on your side, doctor.." Kel said, holding up defending hands. "Ease off a bit." Then he fell to guessing why Morton was still staring at the closed doors. "Why are you here, Mike. Isn't there plenty that you should be doing?" "I just got a call from Security. They say they saw someone in white getting in the elevator before the lockdown, trying to ride it after the prohibition on use announcement. Only now, they report they can't tell on camera whether or not someone's still in there." Morton said. "A panicking patient?" "They don't know." "That's odd." Kel said. "Usually the camera has a pretty good view inside the car, doesn't it?" "Key word, pretty good." "What's the disparity?" Brackett wanted to know. "Anything knee high or lower,. Probably because some crazy designer thought the emergency floor phone was good enough to cover for the oversight." That sent a chill up Kel's spine that he didn't like. "I now see why you're over here." Morton nodded gravely, folding his hands over his arms. "Maintenance is on the way with a service key so I can get in there. Everybody else is busy." "How about trying to get a fire captain? They always carry universal elevator keys." "No one's around, Kel. But someone did report a fire dog running around our floor somewhere.. Is that close enough?" Dr. Brackett made a face, "Hardly.." Kel heard a shout down the corridor from a nurse calling his name. He started off to handle the problem. "Let me know what you find out." "I'll do that.." Morton said, drumming his fingers impatiently on the inoperative buttons in front of him. The phone at the unattended desk across from him started ringing. Morton tried to flag down a nurse to answer it but everyone was too busy with patients or crying visitors to notice. The sound finally grated on him and he jogged over and picked up the receiver. "Emergency. This is Dr. Morton." ##Doctor! We've been trying to reach anybody we could. This is Carol from Pediatrics. Is Dixie all right? We saw her take some glass in the arm when the windows blew out. I wanted to help her but she just wrapped a towel around her arm before I could see anything and said she could handle it on her own. Then she got into the elevator and I lost track of her.## "How long ago? Just now?" Morton demanded. ##No, maybe ...five, six minutes ago..## Carol reported. "What? She never arrived down here!" ##Doctor? I don't understand..## Morton dropped the phone and grabbed the maintenance man he finally saw wandering aimlessly through the frightening sea of casualties.. "Come on, mister. Move it.. We have a nurse who may be down in here." Mike almost opened the door through sheer super human strength as the chastened worker slowly cranked the doors ajar using his spanner jack as fast as he could get his shaking hands to turn it. Mike jammed his skinny torso inside the growing crack in the doors and both feet almost slipped on the tan carpet that was almost completely soaked in fresh blood. A huddled unmoving female form, just as red, lay in the center of it. "Dixie?!" "Oh my G*d." gasped the maintenance man. Morton dropped to his knees and carefully turned Nurse McCall onto her back as he opened her airway to listen for any sign of breathing. She was doing so, very well. ::Point for us. Now..:: Just as fast, he felt her neck pulse and found it tachycardic. He looked up to the maintenance man and said, "Get in here and hold her head back so she can breathe good enough." "Doc, I-I can't.. There's gore all over. I'll check out." Mike eyed the man's name tag quickly with anger. "Do it, Jenkins ! She's bleeding to death from somewhere and I'm gonna need both my hands to find and handle it!" He did so in seconds, grimacing at the warm sticky wetness soaking his knees. Morton cut away the sleeve on Dixie's left arm and located a glass shard protruding from a gaping laceration. Blood was spurting out of it. "The main artery's been cut." Very pale, but still upright, Jenkins offered Morton his office jacket for a compress. Mike shook his head and just pointed to the knife of glass embedded in Dixie's arm. "Won't work that way, don't wanna push that in anymore." And he lifted up her arm high enough to reach its pressure point and rapidly bore down with both sets of fingers, pressing the vessel beneath tightly against the bone. Then they both began shouting for all they were worth to summon some very fast help. ------------------------------------------------------------- |
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------------------------------------------------------------- "Mr. Gage..? Mr. Gage? Can you hear me? Stop playing dead and talk to me.. I'm really scared.." "M...Megan?" Johnny's voice was a croak. "Oh thank G*d. I woke up and heard you breathing funny down on the floor. What happened to us and why are my eyes all wrapped up?" "Plane crash in the lot outside.. Glass dust in your eyes. Keep those on..." he said, trying to lift his hand to stop Megan's from pulling them off. "Ok, I will.. What's that tube doing around your face? I felt it checking you out." "Oxygen.. I got us out of a lot of smoke..." Gage said weakily without moving from where he lay. " Do me a favor huh? Do you hear that hissing sound on your right?" "Yeah,, what is it? Gas?" "No, it's the oxygen mask I gave you when you were.....uncon-- uh,...sleeping.. Give it to me for a sec..." Gage saw Megan's groping hand locate it through blurry vision. He took it, foregoing the nasal cannula for its use instead. Johnny curled around the mask, sucking in great breaths from it, waiting for his head to clear enough and his body's resources to push his increasing state of shock away. |
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"Mr. Gage...Mr. Gage.. are you all right? What's wrong with you?" she said, shaking him. "Took in some bad air hon.. I'm...just gonna be a little sick right now for a little w--" He face went slack and Megan felt her fireman friend go limp. "Mr. Gage?.. Wake up...." She started to cry. "Don't scare me like this.. I...I don't know what to do..." But then she picked up the flowing surgical mask and held it over Johnny's nose and mouth when she figured out that he must have done the same for her earlier. "Maybe this'll help him get better." -------------------------------------------------------------------- "Dixie.. Dixie.... Try to wake up." McCall moaned, the sensation of still being alive coming back slowly to her spinning senses. " We've managed to stop all the bleeding in your arm. You're going to be just fine.." Dr. Brackett soothed as Dixie opened her eyes to blink up at him blearily. "W-Where am I? Oh... my head.." "Easy.. Just lie still." Kel suggested, and slowed down the flow rate of her Ringer's IV. Mike Morton grinned, taking a blood pressure reading on his patient. "You're in Treatment Three. Pressure's up to 94 over 70, Kel." Dixie was too muzzy to analyze much of anything. "What happened?" "We found you in the elevator." "How'd you find me in there?" She said through an annoyingly dry mouth from her nasal cannula. "Security spotted you going down on the camera. Err,, rather, they didn't spot you passing out." "What was I doing in there..?" "I guess you were headed here from the fourth floor after you got hurt, judging from readout panel. But then further explosions caused the FD to use the emergency stops to control our supposedly panicky people flow and that unfortunately trapped you inside." |
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