Trent imagined his brother looking out over the city in his three-piece suit and running his hand through his hair.
“The media footage shows total carnage. Is it as bad as it looks?”
The memory of bodies floated in Trent’s mind. “Worse.”
“Thank God you’re OK. Can I do anything?”
Ginger jumped up on his bed and set her head in his lap. “Call Glen. My phone has a charge, but I’m not sure for how long. Power’s out over much of the island.”
“We can be there in a few hours.”
Trent smiled. “I know… but hold that thought. What we need is doctors, nurses, and search and rescue. Not suit-wearing businessmen.”
Jason huffed into the phone at Trent’s dig. “What about another pilot?”
Their father had made sure each of the brothers had his pilot’s license before a driver’s license. “The birds are on the ground at night. The military is bringing in more power.”
“I feel helpless.”
“If you came here you’d feel worse.”
There was a pause on the phone. “You shouldn’t be there.”
Trent shook his head. He wasn’t about to go into that argument again. “I’ve got to go.”
“Take care of yourself.”
“I will. Don’t worry.” Trent ended the call and tossed the phone next to his side. He leaned against the headboard and closed his eyes. His brother’s life… his old life, wasn’t anything like existing in Jamaica.
Existing. Make that living, he corrected himself.
Thirty minutes later, he shook himself awake and forced himself off the bed. He took five minutes to shower and change clothes. This time he grabbed a pair of shoes and filled a sack with food and energy drinks before he headed back out.
Monica ran the back of her hand over her forehead to keep the sweat from dripping in her eyes. She’d stepped off Barefoot’s chopper and straight into hell.
Her scrubs stuck to her skin, her blonde hair was pulled back into a crude bun. Patients were everywhere and on every possible surface. The hospital, which wouldn’t pass as a clinic back home, was only two stories. It withstood the earthquake, which apparently was offshore. The tsunami hit the island quickly. The locals told her the quake had been impossible to sleep through and when the wave came they ran.
Monica’s station was a second level of triage. The first wasn’t even manned by someone with a medical degree. A receptionist of the hospital had been elevated to triage nurse in one day. She separated those with lacerations that could wait outside. Broken bones, so long as they weren’t open fractures or cutting off circulation, were sent to the same holding area. There were thousands of them.
“Help… please. Someone?” The voice rose above the chaos of the room; moans and desperation filtered thick in the air.
Monica twisted toward the voice.
Two Jamaican men rushed in a twentysomething man on the back of what looked like a plank door. A woman stood over the man screaming for help.
Their desperation alone made Monica’s legs move. Behind the band of newcomers was the poor receptionist-made-nurse. “You said to let through cold feet.”
Monica shook her head. “Cold feet?” Her eyes moved over the man on his back. His head shook from side to side. His ebony skin was ashen.
“His leg. It’s cold.”
Monica moved closer.
“You a doctor?” the woman by the patient’s side asked.
“A nurse.” Monica was reaching for her trauma shears. “Do you speak English?” she asked the man on the door.
He nodded, but didn’t say anything.
“He needs a doctor!” the woman screamed.
Monica felt herself folding into the woman’s drama.
“The doctors are busy. Tell me what’s wrong.” Monica started at the feet since that was where the receptionist said the problem was. The man’s right leg, above the knee, was bent in an awkward position. It didn’t take an X-ray to tell it was broken.
Monica cut from the bottom until she exposed the entirety of the problem.
“He was under the rubble. Two days my boy.” The woman hovered over the patient.
“He’s your son?” Monica asked in attempt to get information and calm the woman.
“Yes, just seventeen. Help him.”
He looked much older. “What’s your name?”
“D-Deon,” he said through chattering teeth.
Airway… Breathing… Circulation… Monica placed her fingers on a pulse point below his injury.
Weak. And cool.
She looked around and hoped her poker face was intact.
The kid was pale, his pulse rate at his wrist too fast.
Femur fractures could bleed. Excessively. And what other damage could the rubble have caused? If she didn’t try to correct the fracture and restore this kid’s circulation soon he could lose his leg.
Monica had never had to do this on her own. In fact, she’d only assisted doctors and only in extreme circumstances. Yet paramedics were often put to the task in the field. Life or limb and all that.
“Help him!” the mother cried.
Walt was in surgery and Tina was two rooms away with just as many severe cases as Monica.
“Deon? Does anything else hurt other than your leg?”
He shook his head.
Monica ushered the men holding Deon to a nearby desk and pushed everything on top of it to the floor.
The men holding the door Deon lay on were older, too old to help Monica with what she needed. The mom was hysterical and virtually useless.