by Barry Klemm
“How’s it looking up there?”
The paramedic paused, realising her anxiety, and why. Theirs had been one of the first helicopters on the scene—this was their sixth or seventh trip—he had lost count.
“Hard to say. The damage is so widespread—casualties keep seeping in everywhere. But it has slowed down this morning.”
“So the pressure might be off.”
“I’d get some rest now, if I were you. They haven’t reached the chateau yet—it’s too hot up there. They don’t expect to get in there until tomorrow. There’s still forty people known to be missing, at least.”
“Surely there won’t be anyone left alive at this stage?”
“Who knows? There’s been several miraculous survivals that we know of. That woman would have been dead for sure if the bath hadn’t shielded her. There was a helicopter that melted in midair but three people survived the crash. Who knows what lies ahead? But I think it might slow down for a few hours now.”
“Thanks,” Felicity smiled.
He ran to the helicopter and Felicity walked back, ignoring the downdraft of the rotors, stripping off the rubber gloves as she rode down to Level N and crossed to the public lifts. Sure, time to rest.
All they’d done so far was get the patients in the door. Their treatment had hardly begun. Still, she did need something... Coffee. One quick coffee and then a complete tour of the hospital, to update her mental picture of the madness that reigned in there.
Still, it was odd that the black woman was so deeply comatose and yet exhibited no injuries at all...
*
Glen Palenski strolled in and dumped his backpack in the middle of the floor where, Jami knew from long experience, it would remain until she told him to move it. He put on a big grin and struck a macho pose.
“The cavalry has arrived.”
“Too late as usual,” Jami replied languidly. It had been only two days since she left him in Auckland, but it seemed like years ago. In any case, her days of offering him excited welcomes were long past.
“So, you actually eyeballed it,” he said, beginning to move around the room, checking the monitors.
All was calm, there was nothing for him to see, the three volcanoes had been quiet since yesterday morning. But she didn’t bother to tell him that.
“I did indeed. One of the privileged few.”
“One of the very few indeed that did so and survived. Not many vulcans can claim that.”
“The image shall remain burned indelibly on my corneas forever. You took your goddamned time getting here.”
“Rough journey,” he said with a shrug. “It’s as if all Kiwiland has been laid waste by the event.”
“I bet you were being laid all right.”
“Now, now, Jami. One eruption in the vicinity is enough for this season.”
In fact she was happy to see him, if only because it gave her someone to talk to. In the two days since the eruption, she had become the unnominated head of a considerable team with an astonishingly international flavour.
First two Geologists came over from Christchurch; one was Maori and the other Samoan and she quickly sent them out with replacement sensors and charts indicating where they should be placed. Then two team members arrived from Rotorua—an Englishman with a Scots accent and a Frenchman who was Algerian, and finally a pair from Macquarie Uni in Sydney who declared themselves Australian when they were plainly Cambodian.
Jami, a mere PhD student, remained in charge mostly because she didn’t tell anyone her lowly status, because she was there when it happened, and because she was American despite her Indian heritage, from MIT, and could speak the name Harley Thyssen with authority.
“So how are you coping?” Glen asked.
Jami knew it was really Harley asking. “Get your ass down there and see she don’t fuck up completely,” Harley would have thundered down the telephone line. Little else would have got Glen Palenski into motion.
“Fully under control. I’ve got a team of six out there and they’ve replaced the sensors all the way up to the edge of the hot zone. We have everything on the Net. I’ve duped all the CDs and mailed them to Auckland. I’ve faxed all the hardcopy to Harley. And now I’m working on my report.”
“Of the big sighting.”
“Twenty twenty eyeball.”
“Let’s have a look.”
“You’ll see it when Harley sends you a copy. For his eyes only.”
“Hallelujah Harley.”
“You get some rest, Glen. There’s plenty for you to do later.”
“Is that an order, ma’am?”
“Does it need to be? What did Harley say?”
“You know what he said. And he wants you to ring him straight away. He’s been calling hourly and got zip.”
“I haven’t been inside any more than I needed to. You know the north side building is leaning fifteen degrees off perpendicular. You can start the repairs over there.”
“How much equipment fizzled?”
“Fifty percent.”
“And you got a full breakdown already from the rest?”
“Yep. Along with some interesting anomalies.”
“Harley will love you.”
“Harley will hate me just a little less than he hates everyone else. And I will call him, when I’ve finished my report.”
“My, my, how tough and authoritarian you’ve become, Jami. A full-on experience seems to do you the world of good.”
“Watching a volcano blow a hundred people away does that to you, Glen. Especially when you were six millimetres of plasterboard and a pane of glass from being the hundred and first.”
“Hit hard, huh?”
“I have been, of necessity, born again.”
There was a time when she idolised Glen Palenski. Watching him now as he ferreted in his pack, giving her a perfect view of his splendid backside, she could understand why.
They went through college together, he the all American boy, she a skinny little Indian girl who followed him around everywhere like a faithful retriever. He had her and dumped her a dozen times and she kept coming back for more. Finally they graduated and bummed their way here—to her moment of destiny but not his, which was a rather refreshing change.
She tried to diminish him in her mind as she did in her intellect, but there was always his perfect, tanned body, which he exposed proudly to the world at every opportunity. It was ten degrees outside and here he was in shorts and sleeveless shirt, showing off. But this wasn’t the moment and she averted her eyes. Jami realised that she was still as alone now as she was before he arrived.
*
The young man with his thick spectacles and cherubic cheeks tried his hardest to look serious but was in every way unconvincing. Felicity Campbell poured herself an instant coffee and ran her mind through the case history. Christine Rice, Asian in appearance, French according to her passport, resident of Auckland on an extended tourist visa, aged 22, one of the two young women to survive the crashed helicopter, severe contusion to legs and abdomen, minor facial lacerations, three broken fingers, comatose. No head injury evident. It was just a matter of healing time.
But Barbara Crane, the Chief Administrator, brought this young man who insisted on talking to the doctor-in-charge. John Burton. Wrong name.
“You are related to Miss Rice?” Felicity asked him.
He looked guilty and nervous.
“I’m her fiancée. We are to be married on the 25th of next month.”
“I see,” Felicity said wearily.
“The thing is, they won’t tell me what’s happening.”
“Who won’t?” Barbara had to ask, because Felicity didn’t bother.
“The other doctors. I keep asking them about Chrissie’s condition and they keep saying it’s too early to tell.”
“That’s because it’s too early to tell,” Felicity offered. As she sipped her coffee again, she saw Barbara’s frown and so, with a mighty effort, continued. “You’ll just have to be patient with
us, Mr. Burton.”
Barbara’s eyebrows said that was another wrong answer. John Burton shivered all over with exasperation. “You must have some idea of her condition at this stage. Is she going to die?”
“No, Mr. Burton. She will not die. Her injuries in fact are relatively minor and after a few weeks convalescence, I would expect her to make a full recovery.”
That was the sort of thing Barbara Crane liked to hear—stuff she could use later in evidence to the Medical Board if it all went wrong.
“But why is she still in intensive care?”
Persistent little bugger... But, forced to think about it, the answer only occurred to Felicity herself when she said it. “It’s the coma, you see, Mr. Burton. Shock, or something. We aren’t sure. Really, nothing about her injuries suggests a comatose state, but that happens sometimes. We are monitoring her condition. As soon as she regains consciousness, if she remains stable, you can take her home.”
“But what is this coma?”
“We don’t know. But she’s responding normally in all other ways...”
“That isn’t good enough, doctor.”
“Damn it, Mr. Burton! She got blown up by a volcano and survived a bloody helicopter crash! She’s damned lucky to be alive at all!”
The young man reared back in shock and Barbara Crane had an arm around him, leading him away while offering angry little glances back at Felicity. “Just bear with us, Mr. Burton, and I’m sure everything will be fine.”
Her thoughtful hand propelled him out the door but Barbara did not follow. Instead she turned and walked back toward Felicity, frowning deeply. “Nice bit of client relations, Fee.”
“Oh, shut up, Barbara.”
That wasn’t really intended either. She was thinking about something else. “That makes three of them.”
“Three of what?” Barbara asked in a fine display of calm.
“That girl—Christine Rice—and the other girl from the helicopter crash and the black woman. All three are comatose when their injuries don’t justify it.”
“Whereas plainly your own condition almost does, Fee. I don’t know how you keep going.”
“It doesn’t make sense...”
“It will in time. You’re wasting your energy trying to solve something like this in your present condition.”
“It’s not my condition that’s important.”
“Come on, Fee. You know the score. You’re losing your temperament. Next your efficiency.”
“Yes, all right. I suppose I was a bit over the top.”
“Go home. Sleep. Do not set the alarm. Have two full meals. Spend at least three quality hours with your husband and each of your children. This will all still be here when you get back.”
*
When the telephone rang, Jami Shastri lifted the receiver with some trepidation. It had been just six minutes since she emailed her report to MIT.
“What in the name of the four and twenty virgins is this nonsense, Miss Shastri!”
“It’s only a prelim...” Jami began. She held the receiver several inches from her ear as the thundering voice boomed at her.
“It’s not a preliminary anything, young lady. It is mature garbage.”
“Professor, please listen.”
“Why? Don’t you think you’ve made enough idiotic statements for one day?”
“That is what the data...”
“Fuck the data. This is garbage. You ought to be thankful that no one has seen it except me, for which I am anything but thankful. Did every word of my hard-wrought lectures pass straight through your aural passages untouched by neuronal stimulation?”
“I do know how strange it looks, Professor...”
“Thank God for that!”
In these circumstances, Jami found it hard to work out if the usual first name basis applied. If she was Miss Shastri, he was Professor Thyssen, she supposed.
“Will you please calm down and listen to me, Prof...?”
“No. I will not. Let me shout a few things first, if only to restore my sense of proportion. Honestly, Jamila, how could you make these sorts of errors?”
“There are no errors, Harley. I checked and double checked. Glen checked and double checked.”
“Glen let you send this?”
“No. He suggested I smash the machines and pretend there was no data available.”
“Wise of him.”
“It isn’t my fault if the data doesn’t add up, Harley.”
“You do realise that you managed to place three unrelated epicentres within five kilometres of each other, occurring simultaneously.”
“That’s right.”
“And you suggest that these three independent earthquakes each measured exactly 6.3 on the scale and caused all three volcanoes to erupt simultaneously.”
“That’s how it happened.”
“Which means there has to be a god-damned mutual epicentre!”
“There wasn’t, Harley. All systems agree. The thermals and seismos and shifters all indicate the same locations on both systems that were operating at the time.”
“Ridiculous!”
“Tell that to the fucking geosystem.”
“It is the Governing Board of the Earth Science Academy that I’m going to have to tell it to, Jami, and they’ll laugh me out of the place. They’ll strip my professorship and reassign me to Junior High if I try to put this over them. And what about the prelims?”
“No preliminary warning whatsoever.”
“Jami, might I remind you that there has never been a volcanic incident in all recorded history where there weren’t substantial pre-eruption indicators.”
“There has now. The monitoring equipment was all in fine condition and firmly recorded that there was no indication of oncoming activity whatsoever.”
“Then the equipment must be faulty!”
“Glen is going over it. Of course, it’s all knocked around a bit by the percussion but half of it is undamaged...”
“Pity it all didn’t get blown away and...”
“...and me with it?”
“No, I need you despite your obvious shortcomings as a researcher. You drag your ass back here, now!”
“It’ll take me days to fly to Boston.”
“Now, young lady! We have to get this gibberish into a condition that will allow our colleagues to read it without mirthful convulsions.”
“There’s too much to do...”
“Glen can handle it. You.. get.. here.. now!”
“If you say so.”
There was, finally, a pause. When Thyssen spoke again, his tone had softened considerably. “You were actually in the building when this went down, Jami?”
“I was right here.”
“Rather an epiphany, I should think.”
“It was that all right. I should imagine that if the plane to Boston falls out of the sky, I’ll know what to expect when it hits the ground.”
“An enviable experience you know.”
“Not nearly as bad as one of your tirades, Harley.”
This was as close as Harley Thyssen ever got to expressing concern, for anyone, ever. Jami felt honoured, and decided to push her luck.
“There was something else.”
“There couldn’t be.”
“Something that even I, for all my apparent naivety, didn’t dare put in the report.”
“Do you have any idea how close I am to a coronary infarction at this moment?”
“Not as close as I was, if I read the physiology correctly.”
“Meaning?”
“Something else happened. It’s hard to describe. But it was just an instant before the eruption. There was a sensation, like a shock wave or something. I almost passed out. My whole body seemed to... I don’t know. It was as if I exploded internally. I recovered immediately. There was nausea and a minor state of shock, but whatever it was passed through me in an instant and was gone. And it was after that the instrumentation became active.”
&
nbsp; “After... after what?”
“I don’t know. What I described. Some sort of shock wave that the instruments couldn’t record hit me first. Then it started.”
“More gibberish, Jami.”
“But even I knew I couldn’t put something like that in the report.”
“All right, maybe you’re not as naive as I thought. Get on the plane.”
“It all really happened, Harley.”
“Sure. What you are saying, in reality, is that some sort of mysterious physiological episode distorted your perceptions and impaired your judgment, and thereby we have all these improbable results. How does that sound?”
“Like bullshit, Harley.”
“But it is a reasonable explanation, provided, of course, that you are able to offer proof that this mysterious force exists.”
“I’m not using it as an excuse.”
“No, but I will, to explain your insanity, if I have to. Time’s wasting. Go catch a plane.”
“See you in a day or two, Harley.”
*
The nurses had allowed two middle-aged people into the ICU ward where they stood looking down at the girl within the spider-web of tubes and wires, while walled-eye George Hanley, her senior intern, stood by. Felicity, totally refreshed by just two hours sleep and a quick shower, paused at the door to listen.
“We aren’t sure why the coma is persisting,” George was saying. “A shock condition probably—but as soon as she revives, she ought to be able to go home.”
Felicity might have been listening to herself except it wasn’t the same patient. The couple had flown in from Norfolk Island and were the parents of the other girl from the helicopter crash, Lorna Simmons, who had just a few cuts and abrasions. And unexplained coma...
Shirley Benson, the Head Nurse, was going by and Felicity caught her arm.
“I thought you went home,” Shirley said in a not very friendly way.
“Not yet. Just a couple of things I want to sort first. Tell me, how many of the comatose patients are not under sedation.”
Shirley scowled and consulted the list in her mind. “A few.”