Flight #116 Is Down

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Now, at his feet, lay a man whose arm looked as if it had been pushed down in a blender. Now Patrick knew that the book illustrations were clean and neat, meant for inexperienced eyes. “Help,” whispered the man. Patrick and a team of ambulance people—people he didn’t even know; people who had come Mutual Aid from a neighboring town—knelt to slide the man as gently as possible onto a stretcher.

  The textbook had said simply that high-impact injuries, whether from velocity, like a car crash, or height, like a plane crash, meant multiple long-bone fractures, plus head, neck, back, and chest injuries. Patrick had not quite grasped that each victim might have all of those. That it would be visibly, horrifically gory.

  They had had Disaster lectures in EMT training. It had been pretty exciting. He remembered when the instructor had passed around samples of the Disaster tags. When you had only one or a few victims, which was certainly all Patrick had ever had, you didn’t need tags, but when you had hundreds, somebody somewhere had to decide who went into the ambulance first, and who waited for the next trip; who got a doctor next … and who didn’t. Every hurt passenger would be tagged for identification by the ambulances lined up in the courtyard. On top of the tags, you could write down the vital signs, like pulse and respiration. Below the space were large brilliantly colored strips: the bottom color was the one that counted.

  Red—Stop and get this guy; you can save him if you go fast

  Yellow—Slow; this guy can wait a little

  Green—Go past: he’ll be okay on his own

  Black—He’s dead

  Patrick had not realized that—in this plane crash at least—when you divided patients up into the traditional color categories—you could eyeball it.

  This guy was a Red.

  The tags would be tied to buttons or sleeves, and the color panels could be ripped off if the patient’s condition changed. If this patient stopped being a Red, they’d rip off the Red panel. Then his tag would be Black. During training the kids had squealed with giggly horror at the symbols that went along with each color. Yellow was a turtle. Red was a rabbit. But Black—Black was a shovel.

  Stay Red, Patrick thought at the man. Stay Red, he thought at God.

  He and two of the team log-rolled the victim onto the stretcher, while very gently a fourth man braced the damaged arm with a folded blanket. They strapped the man tightly into the stretcher, so his weight would shift as little as possible as it slanted, going up the hill.

  Trying not to slip, the taller of the volunteers carried the lower end and tried to keep it high, keep the poor man as flat as possible. There was a feeling of frenzy among all the teams moving patients: there was still fire several hundred yards away; there could be another fire right here, right where they stood. Speed counted. Getting to the house counted. Having to go slowly on the icy patches made them all want to scream.

  Patrick remembered the Golden Hour. (His mother was partial to that phrase: it reminded her of the Golden Rule. Patrick didn’t see the similarity.)

  Since the Korean War, emergency treatment staffs had known that physiologically, the human body could care for itself from even the worst wounds for about an hour. If you could keep that victim’s airway open and stop his bleeding—if you could do that and get him to the hospital within one hour, you could probably save him. Even if he were very badly hurt.

  But with the worst patients, you had only an hour.

  Sixty minutes.

  You couldn’t say—“Hold the clock; we have to wait for the ambulance!”

  You couldn’t say—“Hang on, fella; we gotta wait till somebody cuts away the plane before we get you out.”

  You couldn’t say—“This isn’t fair; we have to cope with a hill and some ice; give us more minutes this time.”

  The clock ticked, and the Golden Hour ran out.

  If you had only one victim, say a motorcycle accident, and a crew of four to rescue, an Hour was not a difficult thing. Even way out here in the woods, you could get your victim to a hospital in time. Say, three minutes until the accident’s called in; say, five minutes to get a volunteer to the ambulance barn and another five to get the ambulance to the scene; plus the time it actually took to get the victim onto a backboard, into the ambulance, and leave; plus fifteen minutes to reach a hospital … you could make it.

  But say the victim was in a car and couldn’t be cut free for another quarter hour. Say other drivers didn’t make way for your ambulance; or the weather was terrible and you had to drive slowly; or you got to the hospital and they were already handling two other accidents and your patient had a wait ahead of him …

  Your Hour was up.

  Or rather, the victim’s Hour was up.

  Panting, fingers stiff with cold, they reached level ground and went on in the door being held open for them, carefully maneuvering the stretcher through Heidi’s house and out into the courtyard again, into the blaring, blinding lights.

  All these people.

  All these hurt people.

  Sharing the same Golden Hour, the same precious sixty minutes.

  Eight

  SATURDAY: 6:26 P.M.

  The rain came down onto Carly’s cheek. At first it was just cold and awful, but it began to hurt, as if slowly taking her skin off and getting down to the nerve cells. After a while her face hurt more than anything; it was the icy rain that was going to kill her. She could not bear the rain on her face. Just cover my face, she thought. But she could not seem to call out.

  Saturday: 6:27 P.M.

  Ty could have killed Laura. The names he would like to call that girl were short and suitable.

  Inside the barn he put on his orange slicker, with NEARING RIVER RESCUE SQUAD written on the back, and his last name, MARONN, below that. He hated his last name. Laura was not the only one to change the first vowel and call him Moron. Ty donned the hard hat with the cowboylike rim and hoped for a run to join.

  He hoped wrong. The plane-crash call had brought out of the woodwork dozens of grownups who were rarely active these days, but who, like Laura, were going to the head of the line and leaving Ty in the gutter.

  He shrugged, got back in his truck, and headed for the site.

  A full mile from Rockrimmon, he hit traffic.

  There were already so many volunteers pouring in from every town within reach, and so many bystanders pouring in from what looked like half the nation, that there was no going anywhere.

  Ty didn’t want to get caught in it.

  He pulled into the closest driveway, parked in some stranger’s turnaround, locked the truck, grabbed his heavy-duty flashlight, got out, and began running.

  He was going to be a part of this rescue if it included marathons.

  He ran the mile easily, slipping in the slush of the road but not quite falling; jumping between stalled cars when opposing traffic made it pretty stupid to be in the middle of the road.

  He reached the intersection of Old Pond Meadow and Rockrimmon.

  Rockrimmon was two lanes, but barely. Timid and beginning drivers were quite sure it was only one lane.

  The first ambulance was trying to leave but no longer had space to get out. Fire trucks trying to arrive filled the incoming lane. Parked cars and trucks of people who had decided to walk in filled the outgoing lane. Nobody was going to get rescued. They were just going to form a major traffic jam and sit the night out.

  A row of five fire trucks filled the eastern direction down Old Pond Meadow. Backing those huge vehicles up in the dark, on the ice, past the curving stone walls—poor idea.

  But west, the way he’d run—it was possible.

  Ty beckoned the ambulance toward him, recognizing the driver: a fat old guy he’d never liked, a know-it-all who lorded it over the teenagers and grasped every bit of knowledge to himself instead of teaching.

  Ty could hardly stand it that this slob was in on the action and Ty was going to direct traffic.

  He put his feelings out of his mind. Over and over in training, they’d said
, You can’t stuff your head with personal things; think procedure; get the job done. Period.

  He tapped on the closed driver’s window of the car closest to him. “Pull in closer to the stone wall. I’ll direct you.” The driver obeyed him, and a precious three feet were gained. Ty ran to the next car, whose owner gave him a second flashlight, and the next car, and the next, wedging them forward and off to the side, giving the ambulance room.

  They met, of course, an oncoming ambulance trying to pass the stalled traffic; normally an intelligent decision, but not this time. Ty backed and ordered and wedged and pointed and finally got passing room for the exiting ambulance.

  His feet were soaked through.

  He put that out of his mind.

  He worked his way back the entire mile to his truck, getting people out of the road, forcing people to listen to him, setting up traffic directors at every intersection—there weren’t many; only three on this entire backwoods section—until finally, an entire twenty minutes later, he had gotten the road clear for the ambulance.

  Twenty minutes.

  It made him sick.

  Who died during that twenty minutes? What precious life bled away because of cars littering the road like so many useless soda cans?

  But Ty understood the drivers. He too wanted fiercely to be on the site. He wanted to be part of that action, not this action. What was this? It was running vertical parking lots in the dark.

  They also serve who only run and park, Ty said to himself. He entertained himself with thoughts of murdering Laura.

  He got a lot of flak. The newcomers were from the State, they were from the Region, they were from Disaster Control, they were doctors, they were nurses, they were neighbors.

  “Walk in,” said Ty firmly to each one. How he envied them. They’d get there eventually.

  Me, I’ll just stand here for eternity, parking cars. I don’t even get tips.

  Saturday: 6:35 P.M.

  The rain stopped.

  Heidi had never been so grateful to the sky.

  She held up her palms to test her conclusion. The gesture was being repeated all over the grounds of the estate.

  We are like primitive people praying to the gods of weather, Heidi thought. Human beings from time immemorial, ancient Sumerians and Egyptians, ancient Indians and Vikings, held their hands like this. O Sky, relent! Give us a break!

  Instead of waving flashlights they should be holding the holly branches and gathering their offerings at some great hearth.

  But there is a great hearth here, thought Heidi.

  Momentarily she watched a girl about her own age, in an ambulance jacket, along with two others getting a backboard under a patient. Now they strapped the patient carefully onto a stretcher. While the girl took the patient’s pulse, the other two worked plastic trousers up on the victim’s legs and then inflated them. She did not know what that was for, what it did, what it was called. Around the patient’s head they placed two heavy orange slabs, rather like a swimmer’s life jacket, and strapped the head securely down.

  Heidi was jealous.

  It’s my yard, she thought, and I can’t even take a pulse. I don’t even know what to feel, or where to feel it, or what to count.

  And then she remembered something. Something really important.

  Dolt, dolt, dolt! she accused herself. How could you be forgetting that? You’re such a worthless fool, Heidi.

  She tore around the grounds, looking for Mr. Farquhar.

  So many people. So much commotion. And everybody so formless, so faceless, in their huge, enveloping fireman’s coats: just big, moving, yellow blotches. She wanted a bullhorn, she wanted a microphone, she wanted Mr. Farquhar.

  Of course when she found him, he was busy. There were two men and a woman arguing with him, or giving him facts, or just generally yelling. Heidi could not tell. He could hardly believe it when she interrupted him. It was only because she owned the house and the land that he could even bring himself to spare her two seconds. He faced her momentarily, holding in his annoyance, the whole tilt of his head saying—Make it quick, girl, I have better things to do.

  “The fire,” said Heidi. “We have a dry hydrant, Mr. Farquhar. My father had it put in when we built the stables, in case we had a fire from the hay or something.”

  Everybody with Mr. Farquhar spun around at the phrase. Breathless half smiles decorated their faces, as if getting Christmas presents. How often the comparison to Christmas had come to her in this horrid hour: the sparkling lights, the happy gasps.

  They would need two thousand feet of five-inch hose. They would attach it to the never-used hydrant her father had installed at the pond, in case of emergency.

  In case of emergency.

  I guess this is the case, Dad, thought Heidi. And she looked at all the faceless people who had made her feel so rotten because of her courtyard and her stone walls. So there, she thought. We have a dry hydrant. So there.

  Saturday: 6:40 P.M.

  Daniel’s legs were buckled up in such a gruesome position he could not look at his own body. It hurt horrifyingly. Right after the crash he had not seemed to have pain. He had just hung there. Then the pain hit, and he screamed for quite a while, and now for quite a while he had stayed quiet. People kept saying to him, “We’re coming, son, we’re coming.”

  It was amazing how many voices said he was their son.

  A fat woman was sitting with him now. She had a funny little canteen thing with a long curving straw out of which Daniel could drink water. It took a lot of effort to sip from such a long straw. But the fat woman couldn’t get it closer to his mouth. “What’s your name, honey?” she said to him.

  “Daniel.” He knew she was fat because he could see her folded feet. She was wearing a skirt and had very thick ankles and even thicker navy blue shoes. He didn’t know what she was sitting on. He couldn’t see her face, either. She couldn’t twist up inside his prison the way that first boy had.

  “I have a grandson named Daniel, honey. I like that name. Are you traveling alone, Daniel?”

  He shook his head, and great splinters of pain, like flying metal, pierced him. “My brother,” he said at last. “Tuck. He was on the plane, too. He’s only thirteen.”

  “He’s fine,” said the woman. “He’s up in the house.”

  Daniel wondered how she knew. He wondered if she was just saying that to comfort him. If it was a lie. “He was here with me,” said Daniel. His lips were very thick. Had he hit his face causing his mouth to swell up?

  “You’re kind of wrapped in the plane, Daniel. But we’re going to cut you out real soon, honey.”

  He noticed that she did not give him details on Tuck.

  Daniel said to her, “Am I dying? Who are you? Will you tell my mom?”

  She could not reach him very well. He felt her kiss on his lower arm. “I’m Mrs. Jemmison,” she said. “I’m a nursery-school teacher. I have a nursery school in my home, about three miles from here, Daniel. My husband and I are both ambulance volunteers, although we haven’t been active this year. We heard the call come over the scanner, and we got in the Buick and hauled over.”

  He thought, If she kisses me, that means I’m dying. This is it. Oh, well, at least I don’t have to worry about being a paraplegic.

  Daniel wanted to cry so much that oddly enough he had control over it and decided not to. Mrs. Jemmison would be the one who told his mom and dad how he died, and he was not going to have Mom and Dad think he whimpered. “How will they cut me out?” he said, thinking mechanical thoughts to keep away the death thoughts.

  “They’ve got the Jaws of Life. Those are sort of hydraulic scissors that cut through anything, Danny boy. Even planes.”

  His mother hated it when anybody shortened his name. She loved the name Daniel and detested the name Danny. But he didn’t correct Mrs. Jemmison. He wanted her to stay right here. Somehow he felt dying would be easier if he had company.

  “You’re going to be the big excitement of th
e night, Daniel,” said a man’s voice from beyond Mrs. Jemmison.

  “Tell them not to save me for last,” said Daniel, and he and Mrs. Jemmison laughed.

  Saturday: 6:41 P.M.

  “To cross that ravine,” said Patrick, “we need a makeshift bridge.”

  “There are ladders in the garages,” suggested Heidi. “Maybe if we laid a ladder flat and put boards over the steps so we don’t fall through …”

  They were already winding through the crowd in the courtyard to the garages. The buildings were locked. Automatic door openers clipped to the sunshields in the family cars opened these doors. Heidi herself rarely drove. For some reason, it had never appealed to her. Now she was mad at herself for that, too. Why hadn’t she known she would need her own set of keys? Her own way in? “Back in a second,” she said to Patrick.

  Heidi ducked through a crowd of people offloading backboards from a visiting ambulance and ran into the large pantry between the kitchen and the back porch. From the wall she took Burke’s immensely full spare key ring. Each key, thank goodness, was neatly labeled. Otherwise they’d have been there half an hour, stabbing away at the garage keyhole.

  In the garage were two good ladders. “The aluminum one,” said Patrick instantly, lifting it off its pegs. Heidi took one end, expecting him to take the other, but he said, “No, it’s light enough for you to carry yourself. Get it down there and get it in place. I’ll look for boards to lay across it.” He helped her angle it through the doors. “Is there a workshop?” he asked. “Woodworking?”

  She shook her head. “Burke does that at his house, the gatehouse; it’s a half mile down the lane.”

  He stared at the key chain, as if hoping it would suggest solutions.

  Heidi said, “How about the barn? Take a door right off a horse stall. They’re on hinges; you could just lift one out.”

  “Brilliant,” he said. “I love you, Heidi.”