She gave both numbers, then turned to the incident commanders. “I’m going to help with the evac. I’ll call you if I hear back.”
Another glance at the crane. It had sagged another two degrees.
How much longer?
No point in speculating. She grabbed the oxygen tank from the Torino and a Motorola from the coms van, then ran toward the entrance.
Inside the dim, chaotic lobby, she saw the elevator doors open and the lights above them blinking. Of course, risk of fire. They’d been put in fire service mode. She looked at the stairway, people streaming down.
Stairs.
Steep stairs.
Eight flights.
Oh, man.
Three deep hits of sweet O, and she slung the green tank over her shoulder and started up.
Gasping for breath with every step.
39
The scenario upstairs was worse than she’d thought.
On the eighth floor, the top, thirty patients, visitors and staff remained, clustered at the east and west exits at the far end of the hallway. But then, wait — she had to supplement the count by doubling the number of patients; it was the ob-gyn and delivery ward.
These narrow fire exits were the only routes that could be used since the main exit — the elevators — was not available. The backlog was due to the number of patients who were not ambulatory. Mothers who had given birth minutes before, C-section patients, and several, she was told by a nurse, who were here not as ob-gyn, but had been moved to recovery rooms from downstairs, presumably because of space shortage. The latter two groups were confined to beds. Several were still unconscious.
Sachs joined the other rescue workers, wheeling to the exits chairs and beds of patients who couldn’t walk.
Out the window facing south, the tower was clearly visible, the tubes glowing in the morning sun. It was not very close, but that structure itself was only half of the risk. When the collapse came, the mast would cut through the side walls of the hospital, the jib the top.
As she looked, it eased forward another few feet.
Were the tether straps holding?
Not very well, apparently.
Sachs learned, to her relief, that the evacuees didn’t need to get all the way down to the street. They only had to get to five, where there was a bridge to the east building. There, the elevators were working.
One aide called, “Detective, can’t we just stage everybody where they are? In front of the exits?”
“No. Out of the building. Fire risk.” Nodding to the room directly behind her: the gas storage and supply room the battalion chief had told her about. The HAZARD sign was small, the No Smoking one big, the Danger Flammable Substances the largest of all.
She spotted a new mother and her swathed baby in a wheelchair, in the corner, alone. She was crying as hard as the newborn. Sachs gripped the handles and hurried the pair down the hall and got her in the queue for extraction down the stairs. “Can you walk?” she asked.
In broken English she said, “I can. I wanted to. They say I can’t. I asked. It’s against the rules.”
Sachs smiled to her. “Today’s different.” Sachs helped her up, and led her to the exit, where she handed her off to a nurse who had just crested the stairs. He took the patient by the shoulders and they descended. “One step at a time. You’re doing fine. Boy or girl?”
Their voices were lost as they disappeared into the dim stairway.
Chatter cascaded through her radio.
“LeRoi. I’m on seven. Cleared all the theaters but three. They can’t move. Two are on heart-lung machines, the other is halfway through a kidney transplant. And there’s a brain surgeon refuses to move. She says it would kill the patient. Cutting staff to minimum and getting unnecessary workers out.”
The sixth-floor workers reported similar problems. It was a post-op recovery ward, with a number of patients who were unconscious and in precarious condition from surgery.
Somebody shouted through the coms, “I got twelve fucking beds here the size of double-wides. I need bodies in 6-W to carry ’em down. Now!”
Sachs sped one more mama and infant to the exit and then noticed some activity beside her — in a recovery room, cut off from the corridor with a frosted-glass window. Inside were three patients, sleeping off the anesthetic. An elderly woman, an older man and a teenage boy. Also a half-dozen family members or friends, who had refused to leave those they were visiting.
Or simply didn’t believe the announcement of impending disaster.
Like the others, these beds were on wheels, but they were connected to a half-dozen instruments mounted on the wall and racks. Nurses and orderlies were frantically in the process of detaching the devices and setting them directly beside the snoozing patients.
A groan from outside.
Sachs looked out the window.
The mast was tilting farther.
“You need to go now!” Sachs grabbed some big plastic instrument, probes attaching it to the patient via colorful wires. She shoved it into the hands of one of the male visitors. He sagged under the weight. “You.” She pointed to a woman of about thirty. “Time to put those health club muscles to work. Take that one.” She pointed to another bulky device. It seemed to weigh thirty or forty pounds.
“I don’t know—”
“Take it!”
She did, and managed.
All the equipment was on battery power, so Sachs unplugged the units and pointed.
The three beds cruised slowly toward the western exit, the one with the least backlog.
Coughing, spitting, Sachs trotted along the corridor, checking rooms.
All empty.
Until she got to S-12.
She walked inside to hear a wrenching sound: a groaning scream, if there was such a thing. An extremely pregnant woman lay on her back, pillows behind her head, her feet up in stirrups. Her doctor — the name tag read Dr. A. Gomez — was bending forward and calling, “Push.”
The woman was sweating, her dark hair plastered to her head, uttering unearthly sounds and occasionally firing off some heartfelt swear words.
Assuming Sachs, as a woman, was cognizant of all things obstetrics, the doctor said, “She’s ten centimeters.”
“Okay?”
“I lost my nurse... Push!”
So they really said that.
Sachs had a coughing fit.
“You sick?” the doctor asked.
“No, acid exposure.”
The woman slapped her stethoscope on Sachs’s chest. “Breathe.”
Sachs did.
“Again.”
Once more.
“You’re all right.”
“What?”
“You’re fine. I know lungs.”
Just like that...
“Now, I need your help.”
“Look, you better find somebody else.”
“Oh, who?” the doctor asked, genuinely mystified.
This portion of the corridor was empty.
“Did they teach you this in cop school?”
“I missed that part.”
“Well, Detective, there’re eight billion people on earth and they all got here the same way. It’s not that hard.” A fast smile. “You’ll do fine. Clean gloves.” Then to the woman: “Breathe. Push!”
“Jesus Christ!” the woman wailed.
“Is she... okay?”
“Ah, yes. She’s good.”
Sachs ripped off the blue latex and grabbed clear surgical gloves, thicker than what she wore at crime scenes. It’s nearly impossible to pull them on moist fingers, so she blew hard to dry them.