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30 Feet Strong

Page 7

by Hannah Paige


  Finding Jill again wouldn’t be hard; it was finding the courage to actually see her that was the hard part for Ian.

  Ian didn’t sleep a wink that night. He’d spent the past nine hours staring out his front window at the street corner that would take him to the coffee shop. He was pacing across the kitchen floor when a moment of clarity struck him as cold as the slate tiles under his feet and he realized just how insane he’d been acting for the past twelve hours.

  One woman for twenty minutes. And he was losing his mind. He tried to reason again, this time telling himself that he was acting this way because he needed to get out more. She was a beautiful woman and he spent all his time in a hospital. Maybe he just needed to see more women that weren’t confined to an IV or sheathed in hospital gowns. But he knew that wasn’t true. He was a man of truth and honesty, and if he was being honest with himself this was not just him being a lonely, even horny, man. This was something else and it annoyed the hell out of him that he couldn’t pinpoint how or why he was feeling it and what ‘it’ was.

  His mind was so jumbled that at seven-thirty in the morning, he somehow convinced himself that was a reasonable enough time to go knock on her door—the action that he’d been driven to do all night, but thankfully had resisted doing prior to now.

  The coffee shop had just opened an hour earlier. The pungent scent of fresh coffee grounds burrowed into Ian’s nose. The foam machine screeched as Ian ducked behind the storage shelves to the stairwell upstairs. There was a long hallway at the top of the stairs, and a single wooden door at the end of it. Ian stood there for a second outside the door. He wiped his palms on his jeans, hoping the clammy, jittery feeling would maybe rub off on the denim, then knocked.

  “Coming!” the chipper voice called from inside and the door was ripped open in a second. Her hair was down this time and Ian could see the coppery highlights in the blonde strands. Standing in front of her, he noticed how petite she actually was. She couldn’t have been more than five-three, maybe, and her face, her legs, her hands were all thin, pale, and covered in freckles.

  Ian couldn’t say anything.

  Unbelievable, he thought, making all this trouble, and you can’t even say a word. Probably disturbing her from an uninterrupted, peaceful breakfast. Ian imagined she was one of those people that cooked perfectly poached eggs and made her own jam for toast

  “Ian, hi again,” she greeted, giving him a bright smile that lit up her pink cheeks, “Did I not pay the cabi enough last night? You know, I never know how much to give them, if there’s tax or tip. Here, come on in and I’ll reimburse you.”

  She left the door hanging open and Ian joined her inside. Cardboard boxes were built up like Tetris blocks. They sat on the kitchen counter, the wooden table, crookedly positioned beside it, on the floor in mazes. They were stacked in columns around doorways, like brick walls. Jill stepped over a small book box and reached for her teal purse. “Sorry about the mess,” she excused as Ian turned around to close the door behind him. Moving on a conveyor belt of rituals built up over years of living in the city, he reached up to pull the chain but there wasn’t a gold, rusted, or silver one on the door. He looked down at the handle for a deadbolt, but there wasn’t one of those either.

  “You don’t have a lock on your door,” brilliant first words to her, if he did say so himself. His astuteness astounded him at moments like this. Fantastic. Hardware was Ian’s chosen conversation topic. He resisted the urge to smack himself in the forehead.

  She stood up with her wallet in hand, “Oh, yeah. That’s one of the reasons that this place didn’t sell for so long, I guess,” she shrugged.

  “That’s really not safe, living alone with a door that doesn’t lock,” he stuttered, jamming his hands into his pockets.

  She cocked her head at him, “What makes you think I live alone?”

  Ian’s eyes widened. Of course she wasn’t single, a woman like her had probably been dating the same guy since eighth grade. He didn’t see a ring on her finger, but that didn’t count out a significant other, “Oh, I didn’t mean—”

  She let out a burst of laughter, “I’m just kidding. I do technically live alone, but I have a dynamite watchdog.” She turned around and whistled behind a wall of boxes; towards the bedroom, Ian assumed. He heard the jingle of a collar, and a gray terrier with a crooked nose and one ear that didn’t stand up straight trotted around the corner at her call. Jill knelt down to scratch the chin of the pint-sized dog. He responded by flopping over on his back, giving her his belly for adequate rubbing.

  “This is Baloo. He’s just a puppy, still, so I’ve got a lot of training to do, but he’s going to be a great watchdog.”

  Ian chuckled and scratched his hair, “Yeah, I don’t know why I was so worried about the lack of a security system.”

  She winked and held her eyes on him for a second too long before snatching her wallet up again, “Right, you wanted the money.”

  “Actually, I didn’t come for money. You paid the cabi fine, over, actually, I just came to…to um, well I wanted…I wanted to ask you if you might, maybe consider—Did you feel something in the cab, last night? I mean, was that just me, or…” she didn’t say anything, and Ian scrambled to turn around to the door, “Or it was just me. Okay, that’s what I thought, I just—”

  “No, Ian, wait.”

  He whipped back around at the slight prospect that he might have been wrong about her and smiled. Her eyes softening like two paint swatches shifting hues, she took a step closer to him.

  “You’re nervous, aren’t you?” she asked and he simply nodded, a little too shakily for his taste, “Good, that means you feel something. And I’m flattered, I am, but I can’t talk about it right now. I actually—I have to get ready to leave soon. My dad has an appointment at nine and it takes me at least half an hour to walk down there, the foot traffic past the towers is unbelievable. Anyway, I promised I would go sit with him,” she sighed.

  “Oh. Oh, yeah, I understand, I do. I’ll just go. It’s early, I know that. And I, you know what? I have to go to work too, now that I think about it. I was supposed to take a shift this morning and I…I forgot, so unlike me,” he stuttered all in one breath.

  He didn’t really have to be at the hospital until this afternoon, but when he got nervous, his mind went straight to his job: his safe place. He grabbed for the doorknob behind him. “You, you might want to look into investing in a lock. Seriously, it’s…” his voice trailed off as Jill took another step towards him, only centimeters away now, and she nodded up at him.

  “I’ll get right on that,” she whispered and raised up, slowly, too slowly, on tiptoes and kissed Ian. It was the gentlest kiss he had ever experienced, like a whisper, a whisk of warm air across his lips that spread through his chest. His heart beat in his ears and the obnoxious screeching of the foam machine downstairs, the loud curdling of the coffee pots, fell away. And all he could hear was his heart beating and the sound of Jill pulling away; that one came all too soon.

  His hand finally landed on the doorknob and he twisted it, letting the door swing open. He grinned at Jill, stepping backwards into the hall. “So, I’ll see you later?” he asked, still not sure that the events in the last five minutes were real.

  Her cheeks flooded with a rose hue and she flashed her own pearly white teeth, “Hmm, I don’t like to waste time, carpe diem, and all that.” She laughed at the tip of her teacher-hat and winked at Ian, “Let’s make that sooner rather than later,” she said and started to close the door when Ian’s brain kicked in.

  “Jill!” he shouted, even though she was still right in front of him.

  The door creaked open again, “Yes?”

  “I…I don’t know your name, your last name. I mean you kissed me, and I don’t know your full name. Shouldn’t I know that? Shouldn’t a rational person know that?”

  She chuckled, “I guess so. It’s Adkins. I’ll see you soon, Ian.”

  Ian lived three blocks from the World Tr
ade Center. He passed it every night and day on his way to and from work. They were massive buildings with thousands of people that filed in and out of them at all times of the day. He never paid them much attention until that day when he heard the explosion from three blocks down and four floors up. He swore his apartment shook and he snapped his blinds open to see smoke and fire pouring out of the buildings in billows big enough to be parachutes. His mouth gaped open as the city fell silent for a split second. It was only a second, then the screaming started. It was like someone had hit an alarm throughout the downtown area. From his window, he could see Murray street completely gridlocked. Ian ran to the kitchen and grabbed the phone. His first call was to the hospital to tell them that he was available to come in early, and he was told to ‘stand by in an event like this’, though Ian wondered where they were finding such instructions. Ian’s second call was to his sister, but she didn’t answer.

  He shoved his feet into a pair of shoes and ran outside to join the groups congregating on the sidewalk. People were shading their eyes to look at the red and orange blooms shooting out of one of the towers. He tried to get closer and saw someone in green scrubs—he’d probably been on his way to work when this had happened; it was a normal Tuesday, after all—pushing his way through the crowds to get closer to the scene. Ian was following close behind him when the sirens started. It only took a few minutes for the firetrucks and police cars to pour onto the scene. They traveled in packs, the giant vehicles, and first responders marched out in organized swarms, filing through to get down to buildings. Finally, Ian and the man in green scrubs got close enough to really see the buildings close-up. Chunks of debris had broken off of them and were lying in heaps on the ground. Cement had crumbled like stale cookies and littered the sidewalk.

  Ian lost track of time, feeling the heat coming from the top of the building, hearing the sirens still trailing in and the thwop, thwop, thwop of choppers circling overhead. Probably news choppers; there’s no way something like this happened and didn’t at least make the morning news. He heard the distant noises of people behind him, shouting, running, shoving each other aside. They shouted in shrill, raw voices and left forgotten demands on the sidewalk beside the rubble, let them pile up. They asked for information, but they really wanted reassurance. He watched the police officers string up a neon caution tape and press people back. Ian stood at the front of the tape beside the other doctor.

  “Are you setting up a triage center?” the doctor next to Ian asked, attracting one of the officers on the other side of the tape.

  The officer shook his head, “We don’t know yet, right now we’re—”

  He never finished his sentence as a deafening rumbling bombarded everyone’s ears. Ian could have sworn it sounded like a plane flying overhead, but that was crazy, there wasn’t a major airport for miles. People’s hands flew to cover their ears and another explosion shook the ground. Ian could feel the heat even from where he stood on the sidewalk. A cataclysm of screams erupted, and Ian heard the officer in front of him try to yell into the radio, but Ian couldn’t make out his words. Ian craned his neck to look up, only to see that now both of the towers were on fire.

  The doctor beside Ian shook his head, standing up, “All those people,” he breathed.

  Nothing feels worse than knowing nothing. A few other doctors had congregated at the edge of the caution tape and exchanged titles: an anesthesiologist, a trauma surgeon, two nurses, another resident besides Ian, and the man in green scrubs—Ian learned his name was Lee—was a pediatrician. They had all informed the nearest police officers that they were here to help out with any injuries. So far, they weren’t needed yet, since the first responders hadn’t retrieved anyone that could be saved. Ian guessed that most of the injured wouldn’t even make it out to their cluster of various doctors, let alone the hospital.

  The smoke was toxic. It had thickened since the first explosion; Ian could only assume that this initial event had been caused by a plane crash, like the second. It sat like a veil, cloaking everyone that surrounded the buildings and it snuck its way into Ian’s eyes, his nose, the fibers in his clothes. Every inhale spurred a coughing fit. It even interfered with his hearing, which made finding information problematic.

  He was pacing in front of Lee, who was sitting down on the sidewalk, when he heard someone yell, “Oh my God, look! Look, up there, in the building!” Ian squinted in the general direction of whoever had bellowed into the void of smoke. He vaguely saw the charcoal-tinted outline of a person pointing up at the skyscrapers. His first thought was yet a third plane must be crashing into the buildings, but when he looked back to the burning towers, all he saw was a black mass diving out of the building and down to the ground. One of the nurses next to Ian shrieked as the black mass hit the ground not twenty feet in front of where Ian’s group stood. A breeze, low and hot, blew by, taking some of the smoke with it, and turned the black mass on the ground into a heap of blue, tan, and red. Ian leaned over the caution tape as far as he could without falling into the area that had been identified as Ground Zero and rocked back on his heels once his eyes matched the colors with objects.

  The blue was shredded denim, now in a heap.

  The tan was skin, lying in pieces, chunks here and there on the sidewalk.

  And the red.

  The red was the blood that splattered a foot out in all directions from the mass on the ground.

  It was a body, a person, a human being that had been reduced down to a pile of colors, of unrecognizable body parts that were contorted in unnatural directions.

  “Oh my God, another one!” someone yelled.

  Ian didn’t look up this time. He turned around, but heard the impact of another person, another jumper. He looked to his right, where Lee sat, and saw him with his head cradled in his hands. A single tear drew a skin-colored line on his face, dripping through the sooty layer that had thickened on his cheeks, his forehead, and across the bridge of his nose.

  Ian knelt down to him, gripped his arms, “Hey, hey, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay, Lee. Come on, come on, stand up with me. We’re going to be okay.” Ian didn’t know if it was true, in fact he had a strong feeling that his words were probably the farthest thing from the truth, but right now was not the time to embrace his brutally honest nature. Not today.

  He helped Lee to his feet and gripped his unsteady shoulders, “There, good. Just look at me, just look at me.”

  Another amplified thud thundered from Ground Zero and out of the corner of Ian’s eye he saw a third black mass hit the ground. Lee flinched, almost turned around, but Ian held his shoulders, “No, no, don’t turn around. Look at me, just keep looking at me.”

  Lee’s face started to crumble, “My wife—”

  “No, Lee, you can’t think about her right now. You have to be here, you need to be here. Focus, Lee. Come on, we need you to focus, now—”

  Ian felt the sidewalk beneath his feet vibrating before he heard the building shake and collapse. Piercing cries surrounded him as he hit the ground, covering his head. He felt more smoke settle on his back. He felt the clouds of ash that grazed his fingers interlaced across the back of his neck. When he opened his eyes he had to look through clumps of grime that had blown onto his eyelashes. He couldn’t identify what it was, just that it was grey, and it was everywhere. He shook his hair and saw the dust fly off. Ian remembered how much time he once spent making sure that every hair was in its place; now he was just thankful he could still feel the follicles on his head. When he looked up, he saw only one burning tower rising into the sky.

  “What was—” Lee started, and he tilted his neck up as well, “Oh my God,” he breathed.

  Ian couldn’t speak as he lowered his eyes to see the south tower broken in half, as if it had been as fragile as a set of building blocks that was stacked too high and had wobbled too far, tumbling to the ground.

  A surge of firemen shot into the other tower, as if rejuvenated with a fresh wave of energy. Evacuation,
Ian thought; they were hurrying evacuation along.

  He turned to Lee, “Earlier you mentioned a triage center. They don’t have one, but we can set one up, right?”

  Lee nodded, standing up beside Ian.

  “Good, they’re going to need it,” Ian said. He was about to try his hand at calling over a police officer, but they were so consumed with the recent collapse he didn’t bother. “Where can we do it? Anywhere?” he asked Lee.

  Lee didn’t answer.

  Ian took his eyes off the stunted building and jostled Lee’s shoulder again. “Lee! Hey, pay attention! I need you to focus, remember? We need you, they all need you. Now, I need your help. I don’t know how to set up a triage center, but something tells me you do.”

  Lee nodded, and with the object of a goal in front of him, he seemed to stabilize, “Okay, okay, we need some place that still has power. It needs to be an intact, sturdy building, close to the site. We need permission from the officers so that we can get closer. We need supplies, lots of them.”

  He looked around, trying to wave some of the smoke out of the way with one hand, then pointed to the other side of the caution tape, where Ian could just make out red and white masses. “The ambulances, they’ll have some supplies. Not as much as we need, but they’ll have the essentials: IVs, bandages, antiseptic.”

  “Okay, you go get the supplies, spread the word to the EMTs and I’ll tell the rest of the group and see if we can find a suitable place. Okay?”

  Lee nodded and ducked under the tape. He was only a few feet away before his body was reduced to a fuzzy, grey mass moving towards the ambulances. Ian gathered the rest of the doctors and passed the plan along. They stayed as one group and circled the caution tape, looking as best they could for a spot to camp out. Lee made it back to them before they had found a good place.

 

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