The Spirit of Steamboat

by Craig Johnson

  “How do I do that?”

  “Don’t drop it.” He pinched one end of the second piece of tubing and made three oval-shaped incisions a quarter-inch wide, starting about an inch from the end in one-inch intervals, and then also handed it to me. “This is the end that we’ll insert into her chest.”

  I motioned with the other tube connected to the turquoise pump. “What about this?”

  “Just don’t drop it.”

  The plane bucked again, and I took the moment to rest a shoulder against the gurney. “Got that.” I looked back at the girl’s grandmother, her eyes wide as she watched us, and I adopted the most professional air I could with only two months of being sheriff under my gun belt. “Routine medical procedure, ma’am.”

  The doc looked at me. “Now I have to make the Pleurovac.” He picked up the opaque plastic jug. “This is perfect, Walter.”

  “I’m glad to hear it, because it’s the only thing we’ve got.”

  With his surgeon’s precision, he used the scalpel to cut two tiny, circular holes in the jug’s plastic cap and inserted the other end of the modified tubing that had been slit into the jug, a couple of inches into the liquid. He then took the free end of the tubing that he had inserted into the pump and pushed it inside the plastic container as well, but only allowing it to reach the air portion of the half-filled bottle. “There.” I watched as he began stripping medical tape from a roll and sealing the tubes where they entered the jug.

  Having done enough drug busts, I knew paraphernalia when I saw it. “It’s a bong.”

  He stared at me. “I don’t understand.”

  “Nothing. Now what?”

  “We insert that end of this tubing into her chest.”

  I handed it to him. “Maybe you’d better do that.”

  “Yes.” We both stood as steady as we could, and I threaded the tubing through my fingers and grabbed the back of Isaac’s pants again. “I’m assuming we need to be steady on this, right?”

  He nodded, peeled the plastic tenting back again, and then pulled on a pair of plastic gloves and pushed the hospital smock up, his fingers searching. “I’m looking for the midaxillary line extending from the middle of the armpit down the side to her hip, bisecting the fourth rib.”

  “Are you telling me this because there’s something I’m supposed to do other than keep the end of the tubing clean?”

  He shook his head. “No, I’m talking to settle my nerves.”

  “Then keep talking.”

  I watched as he rubbed on a local anesthesia. The butt end of the scalpel rose as the doc grunted. “I’m making the incision through the skin and the fat and using my index finger to push through the tissues and down to the rib.”

  I figured if the doc kept talking in detail, I was going to be the one to aspirate, but I remained silent, biting the skin at the inside of my mouth and glad of the respite we’d gotten as far as turbulence was concerned.

  Isaac used a pair of giant tweezers to separate what I assumed were the muscles in the girl’s rib cage. “So far, I’ve been able to avoid the blood vessels and nerves that run to each rib, but I’m having trouble getting through the intercostal muscles and the parietal pleura . . .”

  I swallowed. “If you must . . . English, Doc.”

  “The tough membrane that lines the chest wall.”

  “Right.”

  “I’m stretching and tearing the pleura and intercostal muscles to make room for the chest tube . . .”

  “The one I’m not dropping?”

  He nodded, still intent on the work as another kick came and swayed the aircraft just a little. “I’m using my finger to make sure I’m in the right spot and clearing the hole of any obstructions.”

  I glanced at Mrs. Oda, who had her eyes closed, which I thought was good thinking on her part, with her hands clutched together in what I assumed was prayer. “Let me know when you need the tube, Doc.”

  “I need the tube.” Glad to relinquish the last of my responsibilities, I released his pants and handed him the end, trying to ignore the blood on his gloves as he hunched back over the small girl’s body. “I’m threading the tubing beside my finger and upward into the anterior chest wall, toward her neck about five inches or so . . . This lays the chest tube on top of the lung in the space with the tip up by the highest point of her lung so that the air might drain most effectively.”

  I took a breath, the first I’d been aware of taking for quite some time. “We’re done?”

  “No.”

  “Damn.” I blew out the breath and steadied the doc again as the plane bucked and sashayed a bit more. “Now what?”

  “I’m suturing the incision around the tube and wrapping the ends of the suture around it multiple times, tying the knot so that it’s secure and won’t pull out.”

  He finished the job and then straightened, laying the tools of his trade aside and taping the tubing to the girl’s skin, just a little away from the incision.

  “Now we’re done?”

  “Not quite.” He reached down and flipped the switch on the small pump and reddish bubbles began moving through the chest tubing into the opaque water jug, bubbling up through the water and turning it pink.

  “It’s supposed to do that?”

  “It is.” Grabbling the blood pressure cuff, he wrapped it around the tiny, limp arm again, pumped it up, and slowly released it—and all I could think was please don’t let him pump that thing up twice. Instead, he lowered her arm and just stood there. I was about to say something when he turned to me, tears in his eyes and a smile on his face.

  “Oh, Doc.”

  “Mind you . . .” He peeled off the gloves, snatched off his glasses, and scrubbed his eyes with the thumb and the forefinger that had just been inside Amaterasu’s chest cavity. “The tube end is far from sterile, even if you didn’t drop it, but I’m sure they can deal with that at Children’s Hospital when she is no longer actively dying.” He glanced down at the gurgling bubbles as they flowed into the plastic jug. “Note: none of this MacGyvered contraption is sanctioned by the FDA, the AMA, or any entity with medical knowledge or a modicum of common sense.”

  “I thought you didn’t watch TV.”

  He leaned on the gurney, apparently exhausted. “MacGyver and Alistair Cooke’s Masterpiece Theatre are the only shows I watch regularly.”

  “Thank God.”

  After checking her temperature, pulse, and other vitals before turning to Mrs. Oda and then me, he clarified, “It’s possible that the temperature is helping, but with the complexity of medical attention she needs, an hour will be stretching it.”

  Glancing at the grandmother’s distraught face and smiling at her to try to provide some sort of comfort, I got Isaac back in his seat, and draped the harness over his shoulders and around his waist as more turbulence struck the plane. “You stay here and keep this on. I’m going to check on our ETA.”

  Mrs. Oda tried to look like she might’ve understood what I was saying, and Isaac nodded but looked like he might pass out at any moment. “Hey, you did good, Doc.”

  I pulled out my pocket watch with the Indian-chief fob only to find that the glass face was cracked. It had been a gift from my father from his father before him, and in all the years I’d worn it, it had never broken. Refusing to take it as an omen, I stuffed it back in the pocket of my jeans and dissembled just a little for the sake of everyone’s spirits. “I’m betting we’ll be there in less than an hour—Lucian said we were making good time.”

  Steamboat lurched again as if trying to take part in the conversation, and the doc was quick to grab his seat with both hands. I fell back against the bulkhead but got hold of the railing when the thing righted itself. Straightening my hat, I remembered the headsets. Glancing around the compact space, I finally spotted a set hanging in one of the holes in the fuselage braces. I reached up and took it down, placing a cup against my ear and adjusting the mic to my mouth. “Hey, I want my frequent flyer miles back.”

  Th
e gravelly voice grated over the wires. Static. “Tough.”

  “Isaac bumped his head, and we had a little medical emergency, but everything’s okay back here now. I’m going to hand the headset over to him so he can keep in touch.”

  Static. “Good, then get your ass back up here.”

  I didn’t like his tone. “Why, is there something else wrong?”

  Static. “Fighting this storm, we’re using the hydraulics—I need you to get back up here and pump the handle.”

  “Roger that.” I handed the headset off to Isaac and gave him and the grandmother a jaunty thumbs-up. “Duty calls.” I gestured for the doc to put the headphones on. “Keep those things on, that way we’ll know what’s going on back here.”

  He adjusted them over his head and pulled the mic down to his mouth. “How do I talk?”

  I was about to tell him, with my accumulated knowledge, that it was voice-activated, but could see from the look on his face that the commander-in-chief up front had already conveyed that fact.

  I turned and started up the ledge and over the bomb bay. About halfway across the top, I became aware that the surface felt colder than before and that the tiny crawlspace seemed even louder. Ignoring that and anxious to get back to the red lever, I pulled myself along just as Steamboat decided to do a little more hanging and shaking, until I finally fell into the back of the cockpit.

  This time I rammed against the defunct radio panel, some loose equipment falling from the surface and battering the top of my hat, brand-new no more. There was another pitch to the side and then a sharp drop. I swallowed and listened to the two engines fighting gravity and the wind and could imagine very clearly the fifty-year-old bolts that held on the wings.

  “Well, are you going to get your ass up here and man the pump or are you going to sit back there in coach till we auger in?!”

  He was snapping a look at me when another gust must’ve hit us broadside, causing Steamboat to shimmy, drop a wingtip, and then groan back into a momentary stable position.

  Scrambling forward on my hands and knees, I crawled into my jump seat, attached my harness and headset, and began pumping like an oil derrick. After a moment, I raised my head and could see both Julie and Lucian were now leaning in and staring at the gauge he had told me was the indicator for hydraulic pressure. All I could think as I continued pumping was Please don’t let him reach up and tap that gauge.

  In slow motion, his finger came up and poked the tiny, round glass surface like a suspect. “We’re still losing pressure.”

  Julie’s voice came over the headset as she shook her head. “Why now?”

  The old Raider glanced back at me. “When he pumps, we gain it back, but I’m thinking the engine devices finally gave up, leaks are draining the system, and we’ve picked up too much drag somewhere. The air speed indicators have lessened twenty knots.”

  The plane dropped again as if hit by a blacksmith’s hammer, and I watched as the two of them struggled to straighten out the B-25. As I continued to pump, I remembered the freezing surface of the crawlspace and the extra noise I thought I had heard on my return trip from the back of the plane. “Would having the bomb-bay doors open cause that kind of drag?”

  They both turned to look at me.

  I have, in my time, been the instigator of many a harebrained idea, but none as bad as the one that was now racing through my mind. “Rick was beating on the bomb-bay doors with a rubber mallet to get them closed; he said that the hydraulic pressure leached from the system and that the doors sometimes opened with the lack of pressure and then get stuck down.” The plane rose, then dropped and shifted sideways this time, like we were sliding on a slippery road of wind—my least favorite form of turbulence gleaned from a long list. “While I was in the back we must’ve lost enough pressure for them to open and now they’re stuck.”

  Lucian steadied the yoke and stared at the instruments. “There’s not enough leading-edge on those doors to cause this kind of drag.”

  Julie’s mouth stiffened. “There would be if ice was building up on them.”

  “Is there any way to crank them back up manually?”

  They shook their collective heads.

  “Is there any way to get into the bomb bay?”

  Lucian spoke this time. “No.”

  Julie made a face and then laid a hand on his arm and interrupted. “There is, though; when they retrofitted the plane as a slurry bomber, they put a hatch in the back of the compartment down near the belly.” She glanced back at me. “I’m sure of it. I opened it when we were trying to track down the leak in the hydraulic system.”

  “How big?”

  “Big enough to crawl through.” She studied me. “At least I could.”

  Lucian’s voice carried annoyance. “Then what the hell are you going to do, Troop?”

  I thought about it. “Rick said there was a bar in there, locked to the side . . .”

  Lucian laughed. “The tow bar for the nose gear?”

  “Yep, that’s it.”

  “And what are you supposed to do with that?”

  I started unbuckling my safety harness. “Beat the ice off the doors. You and Julie can take turns on the handle and keep the pressure up while I try and get them loose.”

  Julie shook her head. “Walt, that bar is close to six feet long and it’s locked in the fuselage—you’d have to hang halfway into the bomb bay just to reach it.”

  I tapped Lucian’s leather-covered shoulder and noticed the captain’s insignia on the epaulettes for the first time. “Well, given the limitations of our fuel situation, can we make it to Stapleton with the excess drag?”

  He looked at the gauges and then back to me. “No, but I don’t see how havin’ you fall out the doors at over two hundred miles an hour is going to benefit us.”

  I stood as another shake-rattle-and-roll hit, turbulence that felt as if we were ricocheting down the barrel of a gun that forced me to grab the backs of both of their seats to stay erect. “Look on the bright side; you might lose two hundred and thirty pounds of cargo.” I hung my headset on my seat and started back, just as Julie caught my hand.

  She pulled something from her coveralls underneath her jacket and handed me the elastic headlamp she’d been wearing in the hangar, along with her safety goggles. “You better take these; it’s going to be like the inside of a cow down there and maybe the glasses will protect your eyes from the cold a little.”

  I nodded thanks and then stepped onto the shelf and pulled myself along on the rods into the belly of the beast.

  Thinking about what I was doing, I listened to the wind and noise in the compartment below me and could feel portions of the anatomy between my legs rapidly seeking cover in my rib cage. Hopefully, the compartment would be shielded from the wind enough that I wouldn’t turn into a gigantic sheriff-cicle before I could get the job done.

  Everyone was as I’d left them in the rear compartment of the Mitchell, but Isaac spotted me crawling out of the darkness. “Are we there?”

  “Not exactly.” I stepped down and seated myself, glancing beneath the back ledge at the hatch on the bottom of the bulkhead. It looked just big enough for me to fit through, but the idea of opening the back of the plane to a gale-force blast of arctic air onto the girl didn’t appeal to me. “Are there any more blankets?”

  Isaac shook his head. “No.”

  Steamboat bucked again, and I placed a hand on one of the perforated braces; waiting till the turbulence settled, I cast an eye past Mrs. Oda, still harnessed into her seat, her eyes very wide. I spotted some cloth bunched on the floor toward the back of their compartment. “What’s that stuff?”

  Isaac looked at the discarded fabric. “I think it’s the quilting that used to be attached to the walls before they put up this exotically designed padding.”

  I studied the branded pattern on the seafoam vinyl. “Maybe Eisenhower wanted to be a cowboy.” I stepped past him and inclined my head toward the child’s grandmother. “It is pretty sw
anky though.”

  “I just wish the quilting was still there—we could use the insulation.” He hugged his arms around himself. “What are you doing?”

  I dragged a couple of pieces of the olive-drab material toward the front. “I’m going to need your help.” I grinned at him. “For a change.”

  The doc couldn’t believe what we were doing, and neither could I, really. As I studied the clasps on the hatch, I tried not to think about how much Isaac Bloomfield weighed: probably 150 pounds, moderately damp.

  Pulling the covers up over my shoulders, I turned to him, seated on the floor with me. “Stuff these in the hole after me and then sit on my legs when I get halfway in there. I’d just as soon not fall all the way in, if you get my meaning.”

  “Won’t you be sucked out the hatch?”

  I stared at him. “Nope, that’s just if the cabin is pressurized and this one isn’t; besides, we’re not going as fast as a jetliner, but I can still fall out and be a horrifying surprise to guests on the third floor of the Historic Virginian Hotel in lovely downtown Medicine Bow if you don’t hang on to me.”

  He looked at the hatchway. “I don’t think this is a very good idea, Walter . . .”

  I set my hat on the floor of the bomber brim up—I was going to need all the luck it could hold—and stretched the elastic headlamp onto my head. “If you’ve got another, now would be the time to voice it—I’m not really thrilled about the prospect, either.”

  Preparing to sit on top of me, he grabbed the quilted material and took a deep breath.

  I flipped up the collar of my sheepskin coat tight around my neck and pulled on my gloves and the safety glasses Julie had given me.

  He nodded, his face tense, his eyes wide behind his glasses. “How will I know when to pull you in?”

  I smiled as best I could under the circumstances. “Don’t worry; you’ll be lucky if I don’t climb on top of you getting back in here.” I took a deep breath and then reached up and turned the headlight on. “Ready?”