“Uh, okay, Jenny, strap him down, yeah? Uh, okay, let’s cut the rest of this off.”
Matthew thought he heard someone gagging.
“Jenny, stay with me. Carla, you got this? Okay, let her go. We’ll do it. Someone get that fucking thing off him.”
Matthew felt something lifted off his skin, and a soft thump from where it must have been thrown. He wondered what it was. My wallet? he thought, then forgot about it as a mask was placed over his nose and mouth, and clean fresh oxygen was pumped into his lungs.
“Gary...”
“I know! Keep it together. We’ve got to bandage this. And the foot. Christ.”
Matthew opened his eyes, looked around. He could see better now. He saw the young man’s face bent over him, staring at his now very naked body.
The young man was wearing a white shirt and pants. Like an angel. He looked right at Matthew, met his eyes, smiled. His eyes were brown and wide. He had a crew-cut and he looked young and strong, clean and whole.
“You’re awake, that’s great,” Gary said. “We’re just gonna bandage up some areas where you’re, uh, bleeding. Looks like you’ve been through hell, my man. But we got you now.”
Lying on the smooth, hard board, Matthew felt layers of bandages going firmly around his midsection, a cold pack of something resting on top of his stomach. Someone bound up his hand and was now wrapping down by his foot.
“What am I wrapping here...” the second man said.
“Just do it, he’s awake.”
Gary turned and looked into Matthew’s eyes.
“We got you now, we got you. We’re gonna get you to a hospital and they’ll fix you right up.”
Matthew nodded, feeling a little strength returning to him with the sun on his skin and the IV doing its work. He could feel the fluid racing to all points inside him, cleansing him, filling him with vital moisture.
After a few more moments, they strapped him firmly to the board. He was wrapped like a mummy in blankets, but felt a chill run through him despite the warmth.
“Okay, here we go, sir. On three, guys. Yeah? One, two...” and then Matthew was lifted into the air. They were taking him away. He was saved.
As they walked him carefully down the hill of broken concrete, Matthew had a moment to reflect on his last hours buried in the dark. There was something nagging him, something he was forgetting.
Dee.
Matthew’s eyes sprang open, and Gary noticed right away. Matthew searched left to right, almost in a panic. He saw the other medics, and they looked back at him with sickening glances, as if he were too horrible, too monstrous for them to look at for more than a second. He turned back to Gary, tried to move his good hand but was strapped down. He tried to talk, but the mask was in the way. He began to convulse, shaking his body, pleading at Gary with his eyes.
“Hold on, damn it,” Gary said, but looked at Matthew calmly, with the patience and fortitude of a saint. “What is it?”
Matthew pointed with one finger, and Gary turned to look.
Someone said, “The woman.”
Gary looked back to where Matthew was pointing. Matthew used his new-found strength to lift his head and see the spot where he had lain dying. With Gary turned, he had a clear view of three other rescue workers lifting a frail woman from the rubble.
Her head, Matthew saw, was caved inward. Almost flattened. The way her legs hung he knew they were shattered. The cornflower blue dress that clung stickily to her body was entirely saturated with blood. One of the workers tried for a better grip and her head lilted backward limply, and he saw what was left of her face as long black hair fell downward off her sagging skull, the neck nothing but stripped muscles as the head rolled and dangled in an impossible position.
Then Gary stepped back in front of Matthew, blocking his vision. “You can’t help her, sir. She’s been gone a while. I’m sorry.”
Matthew settled back and let his eyes travel to Gary’s face. His mind went numb.
He tried to find answers in the faces of the medics, but they were looking away from him, toward the oncoming ambulance he heard backing toward them, a steady beeping alarm coming as it moved closer.
Gary was talking to another medic who had just approached, and they were using hushed tones so Matthew couldn’t hear what they were saying.
While the two medics exchanged notes, a tall, haggard man walked into Matthew’s field of vision. He looked directly at Matthew, expressionless, then nodded. He patted him on the shoulder. “Atta boy. It’s all over, you hear? You take care now. You take care.”
And then the tall man turned away.
As Matthew waited to be loaded into the ambulance, he lifted his head once more, trying to see the ruined building that had been his prison.
Standing at the foot of the board, just past his feet, was Diane. Her face was just visible over the shoulder of one of the medics helping to carry him. She was holding a wrapped bundle in her arms. He saw gray skin, a sagging weight dangling from her. She was smiling.
Matthew wanted to smile back, but as his brain started to kick into higher gears, and reality infiltrated his senses, his desire to smile fell away, replaced with something close to dread.
Why was she here? Was she a hallucination?
None of them are real. Kelly was dead. Diane was... Diane was...
Sullen, he forced himself to stop thinking. He wished he could hold Dee’s hand again, but knew that was impossible. That hand wasn’t warm at all, was it boy-o?
He let his head rest back against the board, and the voices surrounding him faded away, the world slipping into a cone of muffled quiet. A firm, cold hand rested on his forehead, and he knew it was his dead friend back to save him. His guide.
Matthew closed his eyes, breathed in the fresh oxygen, his brain sparking to higher plateaus of life with every inhalation.
It’s not real.
