The ship surgeon sent two passengers back to work with the nurses to bring blood storage and needles, tubing, saline bags and hangers.
The man on the bar left the ship surgeon to organize the medical team.
He faced the two junior officers from the ship who had come down, as well as six military officers and dozens of soldiers and reservists. The man on the bar asked them to wait while he addressed the crowd.
“Okay, everybody, we have good news. The ship’s surgeon is here, he has his staff nurses and a whole team of doctors and nurses volunteering from the crowd. We have nurses going out right now to do triage. Please do as they say, the doctors will be following them. We should have medical supplies from the clinic starting to come in around ten minutes. We have some of the ship’s officers and some folks with military experience. We’re going to have them come up with a plan to assess our situation as quickly as possible, and assess our food situation as well which I think everyone here is probably starting to wonder about.”
Hundreds watched his face and wished for him to know what to do next.
“Firstly,” he continued, “does anyone here know of any fires going on, or, well, just any information that anyone has that they think is important, I guess this is the chance to shout it out.”
“Who are you?” someone shouted.
“I’m John Hesse,” the man on the bar said.
Travis was watching the triage nurses approaching the first few groups where hands were still held high. The nurses took their time. Travis was aware that the crowd was yelling at John Hesse on the bar, but he continued watching the nurses. Checking vitals without instruments. Asking the questions. Then the first wave seemed to break across the room, and the nurses moved on and hands held up turned to fingers counting numbers in the air. There was a three.
Travis was familiar with this kind of work. He saw two outstretched hands go down, and Travis knew what that likely meant.
“Does anyone here know about the power systems, or about propulsions? Do we have any of the engineers or anything like that?” John Hesse yelled.
One of the junior officers huddled in front of the bar spoke up, unsure of himself. “I don’t think we can get propulsion back. If they damaged the engines, we can’t fix them now. I haven’t seen any of the engineers. This emergency lighting we have is from a separate generator. I have no idea where it will be working or how much total power it has. But it means something’s still working, at least.”
“What happened to New York? Does anyone know?” someone shouted.
“We have enough to worry about here,” Hesse said. “We have to consider shouting as how we communicate as a group right now, so I guess we all need to be judicious. Don’t yell out information or questions unless it directly affects our activities and understanding of our situation… right now.”
“I have a dead body,” someone called out. “What should I do with it… right now?”
John Hesse looked down at the ship surgeon.
“We’ve only got two body compartments,” the surgeon said, “and they won’t be cooled even if there still is emergency power in the clinic. We could be here days, this could be a health hazard. Bodies rot quick. We need bodies off the ship, I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry,” John Hesse said back to the crowd. “We have no facilities here for bodies, and they will become a health hazard very quickly. The dead will have to be buried at sea. Please everyone see to your own family members, enlist the help of others in moving them if needed. Everyone is really going to have to get used to helping each other. When we take care of the more urgent matters we’ll have some organized body removals around the ship, but… take care of your own.”
Hesse took more questions, shouted out more vague ideas about assessing the situation, and then he called off the discussion and came down to talk with his second volunteer group. It was a crowd, but he could see that officers and some civilians had sifted themselves to the front while crew and some other civilians were just behind them.
“Which of you is the highest ranking ship officer?” he said.
“I’m a second officer,” a young man said. “I think that’s the highest.”
“Do we have any senior military officers?” Hesse asked.
“I was a colonel in the Army,” an old man said, adding, “I didn’t have too much experience at sea.”
Hesse looked from one to the other. “You two need to talk. We need an assessment of our power, our danger from fire and leaks, our food situation, our communications… that’ll do. We also need an assessment of the best way to get some food down here this morning, you might want to get a team together for that effort. You,” he pointed at the second officer, “you let the Colonel take charge, you tell him anything he needs to know about the ship. Colonel, you can take volunteers from the crowd here if you need to send teams out. I suggest you use the other men here-” indicating the officers and military men, “-as team leaders. But I’m sure you know what you’re doing, Colonel.”
“Before we do any of that,” the Colonel said, “we need toilets. The toilets aren’t flushing. Folks need toilets.”
“OK,” Hesse said. “You should have some crew here who can help.”
The Colonel looked behind at the crowd of volunteers.
“That should do. If I need more help, I’ll come back. And ask people to piss of the decks until we get the johns going.”
Hesse nodded.
“One more thing,” Hesse said. “Anyone you send out there, if they find any bodies, they have to be dumped.”
Hesse looked at the Colonel, and his eyes wandered across the other men gathered round him. As he looked at the men, there was nothing in his eyes that asked their permission. Like that, he became the general.
18
As supplies came down, the medical team worked in high gear. The crashing of the ships had caused scores of accidents, from flesh torn open to sprained ankles to bodies and bones crushed under falling structures. There were burn victims who had hung on through the night but could never be saved this morning. They mostly spoke of fire in stern areas and someone told of the power room exploding. There were heart attacks and bullet wounds, and one man who had left New York without his insulin in a diabetic coma. Travis, bringing morphine, occasionally heard the shouts of the crowd around him and the responses from John Hesse.
There were missing family members, and Hesse designated a landing on one of the staircases as a meeting place for those split up. The staircases didn’t glow green anymore. In the dull daylight, the emergency lighting was drowned out as well. All around, the fantastical lighting of the day before was gone, and now the Romanesque columns and shapes seemed an ancient, abandoned site just found in the fog.
As the morphine went out to the injured, the screaming echoing in the belly of the ship was snuffed one voice at a time.
Colonel Martin Warrant, long retired from active duty, first formed teams to construct and install porta-johns. They considered using water buckets to flush the existing toilets, but there was no way they could keep up with the demand without running water, so a whole lot of porta-johns would be needed. He put an old Air Force officer in charge of the john-crew, mainly Festival crew members, including some tradesmen and others familiar with the materials and tools available.
Only when the john-crew was organized and out did Colonel Warrant turn to his other priorities, assessing the ship and planning food delivery. He spoke to the other ship’s crew and military men and women after a brief discussion with the Festival’s last Second Officer.
“We will need to break up into teams. Because of the ship’s size and decentralization of food and key equipment, we will split by area. We are going to do this fast, but we are going to do this thoroughly and get it right. We’ll need information on damage, fires, communications equipment, power, remaining lifeboat capacity, other passengers onboard, and of course, food.”