Flight #116 Is Down (12 page)

She looks as if she’s the one who lives here, thought Heidi.

“I need the phone,” said the fireman sharply.

“I’m using it,” said the girl, even more sharply.

For a moment Heidi and the fireman waited their turn.

Then Heidi said to him, “Why are we being polite?” She put her finger on the phone buttons and disconnected the girl. “Give him the phone,” she said.

“Who do you think you are?” said the girl, furious and imperious.

“I’m the owner of the phone,” said Heidi. “And I say the firemen use it first. How come you’re not in the back helping?”

The fireman savagely punched his numbers.

“Because I have a plane connection to make,” said the girl.

The fireman and Heidi looked at each other in perfect harmony, and for once in her worthless little life, Winnie did a good deed.

She bit the beautiful girl’s ankle.

S
ATURDAY: 7:01 P.M.

Flight #116 was really quite late, but people accustomed to meeting planes didn’t get worked up about it. So what else was new?

They heaved large sighs every time they looked up at the arrival-time screen, as if hoping airline personnel would be humiliated by all this sighing and quickly land the plane.

It was not a strategy that worked.

Teddie’s parents were laughing. They had walked back to one of the wall pay phones and called Gramma and Poppy. The details of Teddie’s departure had delighted them.

“I can’t wait to see that quarter taped to her palm,” said Teddie’s mother. “Let’s get her hand on the camcorder. Our daughter’s first solo air flight, complete with Mickey Mouse Band-Aid assist.”

“I wish there was a place where I could film the plane actually landing,” said Teddie’s father, circling a row of chairs for at least the hundredth time. He had enjoyed the two weeks alone with his wife while Teddie visited her grandparents. Yet it had been a long two weeks. Maybe next year they would make it one week. When you had only one child, you needed all the child time you could get.

Come on, plane, he thought irritably, get a move on.

Near them, a child bounced around, zinging with sugar energy. The parents had so far kept him patient by letting him drink all the soda and eat all the candy bars he wanted. “I haven’t seen Aunt Louise in a whole year,” said the little boy excitedly. “Do you think she brought me a present?”

“I’m sure she did, dear. Aunt Louise always brings the best presents. But don’t ask Aunt Louise, because that would be rude. Wait until Aunt Louise gives it to you.”

“Aunt Louise doesn’t mind if I’m rude,” said the little boy. “Aunt Louise likes me.”

People close by hid smiles. They had either been an Aunt Louise themselves or had one.

Shirley Foyle phoned her parents. “The plane’s late. Wouldn’t you know? I’m a wreck.”

“Now, honey. We told you we’d get Carly.”

“I have to be the one. We have to start over again. I have to be here when she lands.”

Shirl had done her hair for the occasion; as if Carly had ever cared how her sister’s hair looked. Carly, who had been the type a year ago to shave her head and tattoo her skull.

“Chin up, darling,” said her parents. “We’ll see you both in a few hours.”

Shirl hung up, savoring their voices. She pictured the homecoming. Carly and I, Shirl thought; we’ll come in the front door, and Mom and Dad will—no; they’ll be out on the lawn, yanking the taxi door open. They won’t wait for us to come up the steps and cross the porch. Not when both their daughters are coming home together.

Carly. Coming home.

Shirl had not known how much she would miss her sister. The bathroom jostling, the giggles, the shared clothes, even the fights. Nobody could be as thoroughly satisfying or as thoroughly obnoxious as your only sister.

My sister. Coming home.

Saturday: 7:09
P.M.

Patrick had not looked at his watch in some time, but as he maneuvered another victim onto a backboard, and he and another man began the uphill struggle to carry the stretcher without tilting and terrifying the victim any more than he already was, somebody shouted out the time to somebody else.

The Golden Hour was up. Had been up for a long time.

He felt a queer chill around his eyes. It was not a physical sensation he had ever had before. It was as if his body said to him—
don’t look, don’t think, tune that out.

It was like a horse wearing blinders: look straight ahead, keep working, keep believing you can save them. If you believe hard enough, you can make it work.

Patrick thought that maybe he knew what his mother meant: that the Golden Hour was similar to the Golden Rule. For in this grim night, he had seen only decency. He could not get over it, the way people were helping. It was almost as if they were glad to have the chance: as if the walking wounded were saying, So what if I’m a little bloody? I can still help. As if the neighbors were saying, So we had plans for Saturday night. So big deal. This is what matters.

We’ll save them, he said to himself, very strongly.

And thought, in the corner of his mind that was calm and scientific, It’s like clapping for Peter Pan to keep Tinker Bell alive. It’s a fairy tale. These people we’re taking out last—how can they make it? No matter how hard I clap, how can they make it?

Saturday: 7:09:30
P.M.

From the hall phone came a voice full of wrath. “Where the hell is Life Star?”

Heidi had not heard much swearing. Now the absence of swearing struck her. The horror of the plane crash was beyond foolish four-letter words. Or perhaps swearing took energy, and nobody had any to spare.

So why was the fireman swearing?

He’s helpless, thought Heidi. We’ve done all we can. Now we need something else. It isn’t here, we can’t get it, we can’t make it happen, and he’s afraid.

She had always thought of swearing as hostility. This was not. It was fear. It was like cold sweat.

“We’ve got the stretchers lined up!” yelled the fireman. “We’ve got the hospitals notified. We’re Go. So where are the helicopters?”

She could not help with helicopters.

She could not bear listening to the rising pitch of the fireman’s voice, either; the tone that said,
People are dying and where are you?

They’re probably busy, thought Heidi. They didn’t know a plane was coming down any more than I did. They’re probably ferrying somebody else to a hospital. What are they supposed to do? Chuck him out and turn around?

A disaster is not just what happens, thought Heidi. It’s also what comes next. Part of this is a second disaster.

She moved on, only to find herself next to Mr. Farquhar. He was yelling at some newly arrived volunteers. “Assume every single passenger has back injuries and internal injuries,” he shouted angrily. “Impact does that. Move nobody without proper support. You wanna kill ’em yourself? What’s the matter with you?”

I moved eight people without ever thinking of that, Heidi thought. What if they die
because
I moved them?
What if I killed them?

She swallowed a horrible-tasting swallow, like poison, hemlock, arsenic. But then, she had expected the rest of the plane to burn. She had thought speed mattered more than back support. Not that she had even known back support mattered at all.

These later rescue workers have more time than I did, she thought. I thought we had only a few seconds to work in. But the fire never went anywhere, and if there was more fuel, it’s just sitting around in its tank.

Time.

A weird and perhaps meaningless thing. For the people in pain and terror, minutes were centuries passed in screaming. For the rescuers, the minutes were fractions—nothings—zeroes—in which they could hardly even get downhill, let alone move debris, slice through seat belts, get the backboard down, strap the patient on, and move him up the hill to where the medical teams could actually work.

There is no such thing as time, thought Heidi. Man invented it, but pain and fear are not acquainted with it.

It seemed to Heidi that the doctors on the scene were doing very little. She was rather angry at them. The ambulance volunteers were doing much more of the work.

I want to do this, thought Heidi. I want to do emergency work. I want to know what they know! I want to understand what they understand.

It occurred to Heidi that neither her brilliant father nor her successful mother would have had any idea what to do here, either. How they would have hated being helpless! They probably would have gone outdoors and directed traffic rather than submit to the sensation of not knowing what to do.

It came to her that it must take terrific courage for these volunteers: to walk right up to the unknown and start. She, Heidi, had been so demoralized by the unknown—like the piercing broken bone of the little girl Teddie—that she had fled. What courage it took not to flee. To do the best you could, however simple, and keep going. They are people who dare, thought Heidi. People who can take risk.

From somewhere had come large brightly colored cards with which each patient was tagged.

“Triage,” explained the doctor.

Triage. Pronounced like tree: tree-ahj.

“French word,” he said. “You divide the living into three groups. There are the ones who are going to be okay whether they get looked at quickly or not; we’re putting them in the house, where it’s warm and dry and they can take care of each other. They have a broken arm, or their forehead’s split. It’ll be too bad if they have a long wait, but none of them is going to die. Then we have the badly wounded. We divide those into the ones who are probably going to die no matter how much attention they get and the ones we can save if we get them help fast.”

A hefty woman named Robyn was actually running triage.

On top of each patient’s tag was writing space, and on the bottom were rip-off color strips. Robyn fastened tags to a button, a sleeve, a wrist. “Yellow,” she said of one patient, ripping away the green strip and letting it fall to the ground.

“Red,” she said for the next, ripping off both yellow and green.

“Black here,” she told Heidi, who obediently ripped off green, yellow, and red, leaving that passenger with a tag and a black strip.

After a dozen taggings, Heidi understood.

A man who said his name was Gorp was sorting the patients like boxes for shipping: red guys here, yellow guys there.

“Why’s he named Gorp?” Heidi asked Robyn.

“It’s all he eats.”

“What is?”

“Gorp.” Robyn had better things to do than define nicknames, and she moved on.

Heidi was not clear. What was gorp? Some sort of fish? A European breakfast cereal?

Heidi and the doctor leaned against a wall, out of the way, sipping hot coffee. There was a whole group of people serving food from Heidi’s kitchen. One of the patients whispered. “I’m thirsty, please; give me something to drink,” but the doctor said no. “You’re going into surgery as soon as we can get you there,” he said. “Empty stomachs are better.”

Heidi hated that. The poor man was wetting his dry lips with a dry tongue. Couldn’t they do
something
for him? Maybe he could at least suck a Popsicle. Mrs. Camp had always been a great believer in the restorative power of Popsicles.

“We’re waiting for the helicopters now,” said the doctor, who had lost interest in the thirsty patient. “We’ve got a bunch we could airlift out. We have too many wounded for any one hospital to handle, and we’re not particularly near any hospital anyway.” The doctor looked pensive. “’Course, helicopters have a limited usefulness. Weather has to be right. Wind. Lots of times an ambulance is quicker.” He frowned, and said to Heidi, “I could use another coffee, honey.”

She took off to fetch it for him, thinking that she did not like that doctor much. He wasn’t doing anything else, he could have gotten his own coffee. Going past Robyn she said, “Could the thirsty man at least have a sip of water?”

“Ice chips.”

A woman of few words. Heidi liked that in a person. In the kitchen she flipped the exterior refrigerator door switch to
CRUSH
and stuck a cup under the opening. Instantly she had an inch of crushed ice for her man.

Mrs. Camp, wrapped in her robe, was giving orders, “Tuna fish,” she was calling. “Frozen bread! Cans of soup! Get a move on. What are you people doing, anyway?”

The beautiful girl declined to get involved.

Heidi had learned her name. Darienne. The girl pronounced it leaning on the last syllable, making it rich and foreign. She had actually complimented Heidi on the furnishings and paintings of Dove House.

“Make sandwiches at least, Darienne,” said Heidi sharply, leaving with her ice chips. “Everybody’s been here a couple of hours and we have plenty to go.”

The coffee shop, either being neighborly or being drafted, had come with every single food item they possessed at that hour on a Saturday night, mostly doughnuts and a whole lot of coleslaw. There weren’t very many takers on the coleslaw. But they had several loaves of frozen bread, which Mrs. Camp was defrosting. There was not much left to make sandwich filling with now. Mrs. Camp tried to hand Darienne the peanut butter.

Darienne asked where the television was.

Heidi thought surely there was a plug somewhere to force Darienne’s fingertips into, give her a much needed jolt. Here they thought the dog bite would whip Darienne into shape, but no, it had just put Darienne into a suing mode: Darienne sounded as if she were in court quite regularly, suing the entire world for getting in her way.

“Teenagers,” said one passenger with loathing. He stared after Darienne as she walked toward the Gallery, looking left and right for a TV. “They’re all like that. Teenagers today are disgusting. The most self-centered, worthless generation America has ever produced.”

“And their music!” said another passenger. “These kids nauseate me.”

Heidi was outraged. “I beg your pardon! What about me?” she demanded. “What about Patrick?”

“There are a few exceptions,” the first passenger said, “but as a rule—”