Cascadia

by H W Buzz Bernard

  The rescue swimmer, ignoring the drama, had the sled and Alex in the patrol boat within seconds. The same deputy that had pulled Shack aboard got Rob into the vessel and slammed the bow door shut. He flashed a signal to the boat’s operator who gave full throttle to two big Mercury outboards for the short run to shore. The boat seemed to move almost as fast as the Cessna had on landing.

  Seconds later, the operator slowed the vessel and nosed it onto a rocky beach. The deputy on the deck dropped the bow door. Together, he and the rescue swimmer, now out of his dry suit, ferried Alex through a narrow stand of trees to an EMS vehicle waiting on an access road. Rob and Shack, shivering, followed.

  The med techs in the truck got Alex settled and quickly reattached IVs to her.

  Rob stood outside near the rear of the vehicle. He spoke to the deputy who’d worked the deck.

  “I can’t thank you guys enough. I gotta say, you know your stuff. I’m Rob, by the way.” He extended his hand.

  “Travis,” the deputy answered, shaking Rob’s hand. “The rescue swimmer is Kevin, the operator, Todd. I’m just glad we were in position to help out.”

  “Well, thanks to all of you for pulling us out of the drink.”

  “It’s what we train for. Sorry about your plane though.”

  Rob shrugged. The realization hit him that his loss would be minor compared to everything else that had transpired today. Lives, homes, and businesses had been destroyed across tens of thousands of square miles.

  And he wondered, now that he’d had a chance to decompress from the tension of the last couple of hours, whether his own house still stood. He thought about trying to call Deb, but knew with communications out all over the Northwest, that would be futile. He patted his pockets. No matter anyhow. He didn’t have his phone. It likely rested on the bottom of the Willamette with the Cessna.

  Hey, I hope your lady friend will be okay,” Travis said.

  “I guess it’s up to the trauma docs now.”

  “It is. Anyhow, gotta get going. We got dozens of more calls queued up.”

  Rob noted the absence of the muffled roar and rumble of traffic that normally filled Portland on a busy summer Sunday. In its stead, only the wail of sirens and alarms rode a smoke-tinged breeze.

  “Good luck,” Rob called after Travis. But the deputy had already disappeared behind the trees, headed back to the rescue boat.

  Rob clambered into the EMS truck. Someone threw a blanket over his shoulders. Shack, already wrapped in one, sat next to Alex while a pair of EMTs worked on her. Rob sat opposite them.

  “Hey,” Shack said, “hell of a landing, partner. Nobody could have done it better.”

  “Almost ended up like a torpedo.”

  “Almost doesn’t count against you. You know the old saying, any landing you can walk away from, or in this case, swim away from, is a good one. Ya done good. In my book, you’re a hero.”

  “Yeah, some hero. I got a pissed-off wife and a plane-turned-river reef.”

  “Why pissed-off wife?”

  “Because I went public with my vision about the quake and tsunami.”

  “But you were right.”

  “Not entirely. I got the day wrong.”

  “Jesus. BFD. I can’t help but think the event is what should have mattered, not the fact you missed the timing by a few hours.”

  “I don’t know if I saved any lives though.”

  “Not up to you. You did your part.”

  “Hang on, guys,” one of the EMTs said.

  The truck took off. The driver didn’t bother with its siren—not much traffic to warn—he merely turned on the emergency flashers. The vehicle wound its way through a maze of debris, cracked roads, fallen power lines, and at least one structure fire, as yet, un-fought.

  “Apocalypse,” Shack said. “It’s like the damn Apocalypse.”

  “I guarantee you, it’s the same in every city from British Columbia to northern California.”

  Shack shook his head, slowly, sadly. “But worse where we came from, on the coast?”

  “The tsunami flattened everything near the water. And I still don’t know if they got hit by a second one.” He paused and looked down at the steel-plated floor of the EMS vehicle. “I guess it doesn’t make much difference. There probably wasn’t much left to wreck.”

  Alex mumbled something and Shack reached for her hand, leaned his head close to her mouth.

  The EMTs stepped back. “Should be about five more minutes and we’ll be at the med center,” one of them said.

  ALEX TURNED HER head toward Shack. She glanced at Rob and the EMTs. “Who are these people? Where am I?” The words came out with surprising clarity and strength. Maybe something in the IVs had rejuvenated her, at least temporarily.

  “You’re in an ambulance,” Shack said. “You’re going to a trauma center in Portland.”

  “Portland?”

  “You were flown here from Manzanita.”

  She fell silent, perhaps trying to process the information.

  “Yes,” she said, her voice slightly lower in volume. “I remember. I was trapped in my house. Something fell on me. Then the water came.” Her eyes seemed to soften as she stared at Shack, gripping his hand. “You stayed.” Her voice fell to a whisper. “You stayed with me. You didn’t leave.”

  Shack didn’t respond, merely nodded, struggling to keep his emotions in check.

  Alex stopped speaking but kept her gaze locked on him. After a few moments she said, almost inaudibly, “Did you love me?”

  Did I? Maybe I did and was too fucking stupid, immature, and self-absorbed to realize it.

  “I always loved you,” she whispered. “But I always hated you, too.”

  He choked back a lump the size of a lemon in his throat.

  “Yes,” he said softly. “I always loved you.”

  She managed a weak, fleeting smile, then closed her eyes and seemed to fade into unconsciousness.

  The truck jolted to a stop at the emergency entrance of Legacy Emanuel. A latticed steel tower, perhaps one that had supported a satellite or microwave relay, lay crumpled on the roof of the entrance’s portico.

  Attendants from the medical center sprinted to the truck and within thirty seconds had Alex on a gurney rolling toward the ER. Rob and Shack, looking like half-drowned refugees, draped as they were in heavy blankets and without shoes, trotted behind.

  A male nurse waylaid them at the entrance to the ER. He directed them to a waiting room where they sat with throngs of others, many of whom appeared injured and were likely waiting to be seen, or at least processed.

  ROB WANDERED OFF in search of coffee. When he returned, without his quarry, he joined a small crowd gathered around a TV, obviously satellite fed and running on the hospital’s auxiliary power. He watched as dire report after dire report came in from CNN. Videos of the unfolding disaster remained unavailable, but the network reported they had crews en route despite the challenges of actually making it into the Pacific Northwest.

  The grim news seemed endless. All major airports west of the Cascades were closed. I-5 was reported impassable, except for short stretches, from the California-Oregon border to British Columbia. I-90 east out of Seattle was shut down, the Interstate severed by numerous land-and rockslides. I-84, a near-sea-level route through the Columbia River Gorge, was closed to traffic until the integrity of Bonneville Dam could be assessed.

  At least for the near future, and no one knew whether that meant days or weeks, the Northwest, west of the Cascades would remain cut off from the remainder of the nation. The government, for once, didn’t drag its feet. The region already had been declared a federal disaster area.

  National Guard troops and resources from all fifty states were being mobilized. Utility companies from coast to coast and Canada were
in the process of dispatching teams. Search and rescue crews, not only from the U. S., but from such diverse and earthquake-experienced nations as Japan, China, Chile, New Zealand, and even Iran were reported as ready to go.

  Rob had no idea, and he doubted anyone else did either, how all of the assistance that was prepared to move into the region would actually be able to. And if and when they got here, where they would find staging facilities.

  As a start, an unsubstantiated report indicated active duty military personnel were already at work attempting to repair the runway and expand emergency communications at Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Washington. The sprawling base housed an airlift wing and an Army corps.

  More credible information, CNN reported, indicated rescue and recovery equipment and forces, including civilian first responders and reserve-component military personnel, were being marshaled east of the Cascades at undamaged bases in Washington state. Sites included Fairchild Air Force Base near Spokane, and Grant County Airport, a former Air Force Base, near Moses Lake.

  The headlines continued. From across the globe, pledges of financial assistance already were flooding in, from Germany, France, Great Britain, Australia, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, and on and on. Rob remembered one report he’d read on the loss estimates for a magnitude-nine strike on the region: thirty-two billion dollars for Oregon, forty-nine billion in Washington.

  But this had been a nine-point-three followed by an eight-something.

  Rob, tiring of the dirge for his homeland, began a search for Shack. He found him curled into a chair in a corner of the waiting room, still wrapped in his blanket, seemingly alone with his thoughts and fears . . . or maybe his prayers.

  “Nothing from the ER yet?” Rob asked.

  Shack shook his head. His gaze appeared lost and hollow, focused on nothing.

  Rob sat beside him. “Let’s go see if we can find some food.”

  Shack shook his head again, declining. “She didn’t deserve this,” he mumbled.

  “Nobody did,” Rob answered, keeping his voice low, attempting to add a modicum of comfort to Shack’s obvious misery.

  “True. A lot of folks are suffering today.” Shack looked around the waiting room. He extended his arms between his knees, clasped his hands together, and hung his head, staring at the floor. “It’s a shitty world we live in.”

  Rob thought the assessment harsh, but didn’t counter it. He supposed he might feel the same if it were Deb or Tim or Maria in the ER. Everyone has a different frame of reference, one often twisted and cracked and sometimes broken by life’s events.

  A young doctor dressed in blue ER scrubs, a surgical cap patterned with fir trees and raindrops, and a surgical mask dangling beneath his chin, entered the waiting room.

  THE SURGEON SPOTTED Shack and Rob and walked toward them. Shack arose and shed his blanket. He studied the face of the approaching physician and his soul imploded.

  He’d seen that expression before, on the faces of surgeons in the Air Force. After a young captain, “Wild Bill” McIntosh, had crashed his A-10 Warthog on the runway at Bagram Airfield; after Lieutenant Art Rolloff had bailed out of his crippled F-22 Raptor at too low an altitude near Langley AFB; after Wiley Overton, the young son of his ops officer at Langley, had been hauled from a grinding motorcycle crash.

  Shack stood on wobbly legs as the surgeon stopped in front of him and Rob.

  “I’m Doctor Danny Wolcott,” he said. “I wish I had better news.” He dropped his gaze to the floor.

  Shack, unable to remain standing, sank to the ground on his knees. Rob and the surgeon pulled him erect and helped him to a chair. His eyes misted over, blurring the people and room around him into an impressionist’s painting. Pain from his cracked ribs jabbed at him like a prize fighter’s punch.

  Rob said something to him, soothing words, but he didn’t understand them. The surgeon took a seat on one side of him, Rob on the other.

  “I’m sorry,” the surgeon said, “my fault. I should have chosen my words more carefully. I didn’t mean to come across as the Grim Reaper. Ms. Williamson is alive.”

  Shack jerked his head up and stared at the doctor. “Yes?” Hope, like an antidote to the physical and emotional pain that overwhelmed him, surged through his being.

  The doctor rested a hand on Shack’s arm. “There is a ‘but,’ however.”

  Shack waited, knowing “buts” seldom brought good news.

  “I’m afraid there was just too much damage to her spinal cord. It’s unlikely she’ll be able to walk again.” He kept his voice low and controlled, professionalism tinged with compassion.

  Shack, on an intellectual level, recognized the report as devastating. But it didn’t dampen the elation he felt that Alex had lived.

  “I heard what you gentlemen went through to get Ms. Williamson here,” the doctor continued. “I know you did everything you could to save her. I just wish we could have done more.”

  Shack nodded, trapping an incipient sob in his throat.

  “She had massive hemorrhaging from the iliac artery in the pelvic region,” Doctor Wolcott said. “That was our primary focus, to repair the rupture and stanch the bleeding. To save her life. I wish we could have addressed her spinal cord injuries, but—”

  “I know you did the best you could, doctor,” Shack interjected, his voice burdened with stress.

  “Maybe we need to take a look at you, too, sir. You’ve winced a couple of times. Ribs?”

  “Nothing I can’t live with. I think you’ve got more serious issues on your plate.”

  Doctor Wolcott stood. “Sadly, that’s true.” He paused. “Ms. Williamson will be in ICU for quite some time while her vascular damage heals. She’ll also be heavily sedated. So it may be several weeks before you’re able to visit her.”

  “And after the ICU?” Shack asked.

  “She’ll be transferred to a spinal injury rehab center. Probably initially here in Portland. There’s an excellent one, RIO.”

  Shack shot the surgeon a questioning look.

  “Oh. Rehabilitation Institute of Oregon. It’s located at the Good Samaritan Medical Center. I’m assuming it survived the quake. It’s on the northwest side of town.” He shook his head, a signal he still couldn’t quite accept what had happened to the city . . . to the region. “Then, after things get back to normal”—he sighed heavily and looked around, perhaps wondering if things would ever get back to normal—“she may need to be moved to a regional facility. There’s one in Eugene, and a great one in Seattle, but that may have to wait until the transportation infrastructure is cobbled back together. Anyhow, Ms. Williamson has a long, hard road ahead of her. Let me say this though, if she’s got more friends like you two, I think she’ll do just fine.”

  Shack stood and shook the surgeon’s hand. “Thank you for all you did, doc. I know this is a trying day for everyone.”

  “Yes. It’s one we’d trained for, but also one we hoped would never come.”

  “You did good,” Rob said, standing beside Shack.

  Dr. Wolcott nodded and retreated into the ER.

  Shack drew a deep breath and leaned against Rob. A blizzard of emotions swirled through his soul.

  ROB RESTED A HAND on Shack’s shoulder and allowed him to deal with whatever thoughts and feelings had flooded into his psyche.

  Shack remained silent for a long period, and Rob allowed him his space. He watched the dozens of others crammed into the waiting room and tried to imagine how many times and in how many places a scene similar to what he and Shack had just gone through would be played out today. How would you describe it? Gut-wrenching? Heart-rending? Excruciating? Tragic? No. No words could handle it.

  Finally, Shack sighed heavily, sadly, and spoke. “All I wanted to do when I came here, to Oregon, was apologize to her.”

  “
To whom?”

  “Alex.”

  “Why?”

  “Like I said, a long story.” He let it go at that.

  “Maybe we should go in search of something to eat,” Rob suggested. “I heard the Red Cross has something set up in the parking lot.”

  Shack didn’t acknowledge the recommendation. Instead he said, “Do you suppose the innocent are punished for the sins of the guilty?”

  “I don’t think that’s doctrine in any religion I know of.”

  “Perhaps it should be.” He seemed to reconsider for a moment, then said, his words subdued, “Or maybe it’s just that the sins of our youth inevitably come back to haunt us. I mean, here’s Alex, full of fire and vitality in one moment, then facing life confined to a wheelchair in the next.”

  “Shack, the Northwest just got clocked by probably the worst natural disaster in the nation’s history. It’s something that’s happened in the past, and something we knew would happen again. No one was targeted. Not the innocent. Not the evil. It wasn’t God’s wrath directed at anyone. It’s something that’s been going on for millions of years and probably will continue for millions to come. The restless Earth.

  “It’s just that when we get caught up in a cataclysmic event, we, as humans, tend to take it personally and try to read something into it that isn’t there. In the end, we were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Dust in the wind.”

  Rob wanted to believe they were more than that, but maybe not. Maybe all of us, he thought, are mere specks of dirt riding the unpredictable currents of life, and ultimately death, in a vast, dark universe.

  Both men didn’t speak again for a time until Shack broke the silence. “All that,” he said, his voice low and hoarse, “all that.”

  Rob stared at him. “All what?”

  “What Alex went through. What we went through. Crashing. Losing the plane. Then Alex ending up so badly injured. It’s not right. Just not right.” His voice faded.

  “Nothing is, not today.”

  “She’s a beautiful lady, Rob. She didn’t deserve . . .” Shack’s voice faltered again. He brushed his forearm across his eyes, and stood. “I guess I am hungry. Let’s go find the Red Cross.”