The Nurse's Rescue. Alison Roberts
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encounters with the various women who had briefly shared different periods of his life?
There were no flashbacks and the only woman whose face Joe could picture was Jessica McPhail. And Joe remembered why he had risked his life. Would his mother have looked like that if he’d been missing and possibly injured? No. Nobody had ever loved Joe that much. His mother would never have risked anything for him—even the prospect of a hot date. Joe couldn’t begin to imagine what it would be like to be loved like that and he was never going to find out. Women never stuck around—not when they knew he wasn’t interested in marriage. Or kids. Joe had grown up without anyone putting him first. He would probably die like that as well.
But not quite yet. The noise had stopped. The thick cloud of dust prevented any visibility but the silence continued. There were no ominous creaks or groans that might suggest the entire building was going to pancake down on this basement area. It had been a secondary collapse of a small portion of the mall and it appeared to be over. And Joe was still alive for the moment. Stuck, but alive.
And maybe not that stuck. Joe could move his foot inside the heavy boot. If he could reach the zipper and open it, he might be able to free his foot. The task was awkward. Well over six feet in height and solidly built, Joe’s body was not designed for contortionist activities. He was breathing heavily and aware of something sharp prodding the region of his left kidney by the time his fingers managed to make meaningful contact with the boot zipper. He pulled it down, opening the thick leather boot as far as he could. The steel cap had been squashed; by some miracle his toes appeared to have missed being crushed, but even with the zipper opened to ankle level it was no easy task to free his foot. By the time he wrenched it clear he was also minus his sock, but it felt great to wiggle his toes. They were free. He was free.
Joe pushed himself backwards until he found enough space to ease himself onto his knees. It was pitch black around him, the dust was suffocating and the only sounds he could hear were muffled and too distant to be any kind of threat. Joe remained still for a moment, taking stock of his situation. He had survived the collapse but he was now isolated from any assistance. Or was he? Joe fumbled at the belt holding his bum bag in place. The belt that his radio clipped onto. He felt along its length and then checked again with the sinking realisation that the radio was no longer there. At some point during his mad dash for safety it had fallen off his belt. The likelihood of finding it under the new layer of dust and debris surrounding him was almost nil and even if he could find it he would have no way of telling anyone precisely where he was. He had no idea what direction his flight for life had taken.
Recall of the various briefings they had been given and the maps that were always on display were not much help. The basement car park extended beneath most of Westgate Mall. He knew that one of the pedestrian tunnels was blocked because that was where Jessica’s mother had been found amongst the fatalities. And that might explain how Jessica’s son had survived. Perhaps he’d run back into the car park when a panicked group of people had desperately tried to flee in the opposite direction.
Ricky. For a moment, Joe had forgotten the reason he was now in this situation. Ricky had survived, at least up until the secondary collapse. Had he also managed to dodge the perilous rain of debris that had propelled Joe further into the car park? He’d certainly been running fast enough when Joe had spotted him through the gap in the floor. Joe pulled himself upright, using the bumper of the four-wheel-drive vehicle beside him.
‘Ricky!’ His voice sounded odd. An isolated sound in a dark and alien environment. He tried again. ‘Ricky! Can you hear me? Where are you?’
The silence was thick. The huge space was filled with dust and precious little else. Joe would have expected any sounds from rescue activities overhead to carry enough to be heard. It was only to be expected that the secondary collapse would have resulted in a widespread evacuation of the building. How long would it take to reassess the situation? For people to get close enough for him to try and find some way to communicate his position?
‘Ricky!’ The call was a little half-hearted this time. Even a normal child would probably be too terrified to respond to the call of a stranger and Jessica’s kid wasn’t normal, was he? It might help if Joe knew more about what his problem was. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so careful to avoid any personal kind of conversation with Jessica during the weeks of the course. But, then, if he hadn’t, he might have regretted his decision not to follow up on the attraction he’d felt for her and that would have been a big mistake.
It might also help if he could see something. Joe could barely make out the outline of the vehicle he still had his hand resting on. His headlamp had cut out the moment he’d dived for cover. Or had it fallen off and been lost, like his radio? Joe pulled his leather glove from his right hand and reached up to his helmet. Yes, the small lamp was still there but clicking the switch didn’t make any difference. Taking off his other glove, Joe draped them over the roof rack beside him, then unclipped his helmet and removed it. No wonder the light wasn’t working—the whole assembly was loose.
Working by touch as much as sight, Joe checked the fitting and screwed everything back into place. He held his breath as he clicked the switch and then breathed a sigh of relief as a bright beam lit up a circle of the floor. A steel girder could be seen, with a boot trapped under its end and a forlornly empty sock trailing over the zipper. Joe put his helmet back on. He felt far more confident now. He could start moving and find a way out of this predicament. Maybe he could even find the kid and make this ill-advised solo mission worthwhile.
‘Ricky!’ Joe turned his head from side to side, letting the beam of light arc though more than one hundred and eighty degrees. ‘Where are you, buddy? Let’s find a way out of here, shall we?’
The knowledge that there was someone else trapped down here was comforting in a way. And the sound of his own voice was a lot better than the eerie dust-laden silence so Joe kept calling as he began to move. He headed down the line of parked cars, keeping to one direction. Eventually he would find a wall and then he could move around with the hope of finding an exit. There must have been exits that hadn’t been blocked or there would be a lot of people trapped down here. And an unblocked exit should reveal itself by allowing daylight to enter the space. His headlamp was powerful enough to override any shafts of daylight penetrating the dust but there was no way Joe wanted to risk losing his source of light by switching it off temporarily. The connections still weren’t great and the light flickered frequently enough to be a worry.
‘Hey, Ricky!’ Joe was getting used to talking to his unseen and silent companion. ‘I’m getting near the wall here now. I’ll bet if I keep walking this way I’ll find the ramp where the cars drive out and then we’ll be able to get out, too. Don’t know about you, buddy, but I’m starving!’
The kid had to be hungry by now. And very thirsty. It was well over twelve hours since the disaster had occurred. The thought that Ricky might have been in the car park for that length of time and still not found an escape route was disturbing. Joe stopped walking for a second, using his headlamp to try and penetrate the murky air further away and hopefully spot a potential exit. The silence fell again as the rustle of Joe’s movements ceased. And then Joe heard it. A small sound admittedly, but it had been unmistakable.
Someone had coughed.
A small someone. Joe had encountered enough children with respiratory problems to recognise that this cough came from a youngster. And it wasn’t far away.
‘Ricky!’ Joe found himself grinning beneath his mask. ‘Where are you, mate? I can’t see you. Are you OK?’
There was no response and Joe sighed. He’d have to find this kid now, and if Ricky was keen not to be found it might not be easy. The new cough Joe heard was cut off by the sound of something falling. A single lump of concrete maybe. Far enough away not to be a danger but quite close enough to remind Joe of the situation he was in. They were in. Ricky didn’t even have the dubious protection of a hard helmet. He had to find him. And quickly.
‘Your mum sent me to find you, Ricky. How ‘bout we get out of here and I take you back to Mum?’
Still no response. Hell, maybe the kid was backward enough not to be able to speak.