Broken Lines- A Tale Of Survival In A Powerless World Read online

  “Am I gonna die?” Garry asked.

  Mike felt the spasms of Garry’s body against his hands, the struggle to stay alive. The eyes staring back at him were scared, tired, and losing their fight. Garry’s green eyes seemed brighter against the pale flesh of his cheeks. Mike’s son’s eyes were green.

  “Allegheny General is just a few more blocks. I need to move you over there now, but you’ll need to keep pressure on the wound,” Mike said.

  Blood spilled from Garry’s gut when Mike removed his hands from Garry’s stomach. Mike threw his arm around his shoulder and took the bulk of Garry’s weight onto it.

  Mike pulled Garry from the alleyway, his feet dragging behind him. Drips of blood splattering against the concrete underneath.

  When they appeared out of the alleyway, people just stared at the two of them. Everyone took a few steps back. Nobody was sure what to do. Mike stared into faces filled with fear, panic, and uncertainty. A guy in a business suit came up and threw the young man’s other arm over his shoulder.

  “Thanks,” Mike said.

  The crowds outside the hospital were enormous. The shouts, cries, and pleas for help drowned out any sound or ability to hear. The three of them kept moving forward, each bump into the person in front of them clearing a path to the hospital’s doors.

  People jumped back in revulsion. Most people had minor injuries and the sight of blood dripping from Garry’s stomach, his head hanging limp on his neck, caused them to get out of the way.

  Nurses and doctors ran around the lobby. Patients were being treated in the chairs in the waiting room. Trails of blood stained the tile of the entrance. The only light visible shone through the glass doors from the entrance. Mike could see a few candles down the hallways, offering a slight glow in the darkness.

  Mike reached out and grabbed a doctor’s arm passing him.

  “I’ve got a critical patient with a gunshot wound to the abdomen,” Mike said.

  The doctor’s eyes fell on Mike, Garry, and the man helping them. He lifted Garry’s head up and opened his eyes. He placed his fingers on the side of Garry’s neck. The doctor shook his head.

  “I’m sorry, boys. He’s gone.”

  The room around Mike went into slow motion. The frantic nurse that rushed up and stole the doctor, family members begging with the medical staff to do more, the blood dripping onto the tile from Garry’s stomach seemed unreal. Ten minutes ago the man he was holding up was alive.

  They dragged Garry’s body over to a corner of the room next to a door with “MAINTENANCE” written in white bold letters, and set him down. Mike grabbed a sheet off a stretcher and tossed it over Garry’s body. Mike turned around and the man that had helped him was gone. Garry’s blood was still warm lingering on Mike’s hands. He smeared his shirt, attempting to wipe the red stains from his fingers.

  No matter how hard he wiped the blood wouldn’t come off. The metallic stench filled his nose. He could feel it, taste it. He had to get out. Mike made a beeline for the door, savagely pushing people out of his way, and then he stopped suddenly.

  “Dad,” he whispered.

  Mike turned on his heel and grabbed another nurse rushing past him. He held her by both of her arms.

  “I’m looking for my father,” he said.

  The nurse squirmed to free herself from Mike’s grip. Her face twisted from the uncomfortable feeling of the unfamiliar touching her.

  “Sir, please let me go,” she said.

  “He came in for a blood test this morning.”

  “I have to get ready for surgery.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I-I think they put all non-critical patients on the third floor.”

  Mike let her go and sprinted for the stairwell. The door was propped open. The light from the lobby doors and windows flooded the first flight of stairs. He could see faint rays of light above him from the open doors in the stairwell.

  Two large orderlies carried an elderly man on a stretcher and were making their way down to Mike as he reached the second floor. Mike could see the white wisps of hair on the old man’s head, the limp hand hanging off the stretcher with a gold band around the ring finger, but couldn’t see his face. Mike’s heart leapt and he pushed the orderly aside to see get a better look.

  “Hey, what the hell are you doing, man?” the orderly asked.

  An unconscious face rocked back and forth from the orderly’s attempts to steady him. Mike’s heart skipped a beat and then slowed its pace. He let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d held.

  “Sorry,” Mike said.

  Mike moved to the side edge of the stairs and let them pass. On his way up the last flight of stairs he could overhear the two men talking.

  “You think he’s gonna make it?”

  “You kidding me? You see what’s happening right now? Anybody who’s dependent on modern medicine ain’t gonna last much longer. The old man’s a goner.”

  Hospital

  Mike leaped the steps two at a time. He burst through the open door into a hallway on the third floor. He looked left, and light shone in from a window down the hallway. To his right, the dark hallway was lit with specks of light spilling out from inside the patient’s rooms. He rushed past nurses, doctors, and patients, scouring the floor for his father. Shouts from hospital staff filled the hallway.

  “We need IV drips going in rooms twelve, nineteen, and seven.”

  “We need a doctor in here now!”

  “Ma’am, please we’re doing everything we can to help your husband.”

  “We need all of the candles in the interior rooms.”

  Mike squinted, trying to make out the signs hanging from the ceiling. He read “ICU”, “ADMINSTRATIVE DESK” and “BLOOD LAB” on the bottom with an arrow pointing further down the hallway.

  Mike weaved in and out of the traffic of people clogging the hallway and headed deeper into the darkness. He saw the figures in bed, unmoving. He saw nurses huddling around the candles, filling syringes by their light. He walked past the intensive-care unit. The silence of machines replaced by the sobs and screams of mothers, fathers, wives, and husbands slumped over lifeless bodies.

  Beyond the ICU Mike passed the blood-soaked operating tables with doctors frantically trying to keep their patients alive. All of the technology used to aid them in surgery now gone.

  The sign of the blood lab was plastered on the door. Mike bolted inside. The room was pitch black.

  “Dad?” Mike whispered, but no answer.

  Mike felt his way back to the door and left. He stood motionless in the hallway. Hospital staff rushing past him, faces staring at him, he had no idea where to look next.

  “Michael!”

  The light from the window down the hall outlined Ulysses’ silhouette. Mike couldn’t make out the reaction on his father’s face upon seeing him, but Mike knew Ulysses could see the relief spreading across his own.

  “Dad,” Mike said, running toward him. He took his father in both arms, pinning him against his chest.

  “I thought I’d lost you, old man,” Mike said.

  “Not yet,” Ulysses replied. “I need your help.”

  Mike followed his dad back toward the window in the hall, the light growing stronger and everything becoming more visible the closer they moved to it. That’s when Mike noticed the red bandage around Ulysses’ arm.

  “Are you all right?” Mike asked.

  “There are some people trapped in the elevator down the hall. I don’t know how many,” Ulysses said.

  “Dad, did they give you any insulin?”

  “I’ll need you to hold the doors open until I can pin them in place.”

  “Dad!”

  Mike seized his father’s arm. He whipped him around and the two stopped dead in their tracks. The flow of people moving through the hall rushed around them like water breaking on rocks in a river.

  “Michael, I’m fine,” Ulysses said.

  “Did they already give you your insulin?” Mike as
ked.

  “The lights went out before they could give it to me.”

  “We need to get you that medicine now.”

  Ulysses jerked his arm out of his son’s grip.

  “After we get those people out of the elevator.”

  Ulysses marched back down the hallway and Mike turned his head down to the blood lab, where he had been before. He should have tried to grab the insulin then.

  The shouts coming from the elevator shaft roared louder the closer they moved to it.

  “You sure they’re below us?” Mike asked.

  “Yeah, we need a drop key to get the doors open. I went looking for the maintenance room, but I couldn’t find it,” Ulysses replied.

  “There was a maintenance room downstairs,” Mike said.

  Mike flew down the hallway and rushed back down the stairs. When he opened the hallway door to the first floor, the number of people waiting inside had doubled. The cries were coming from both children and parents alike.

  Mike stepped forward and his boot slid on the tile; he stuck his arms out on both sides trying to steady himself. He looked down and saw his boot print smeared in blood. His eyes followed the trail to other fluids staining the white hospital tile.

  Garry was right where he had left him. The sheet was still covering his body. Mike paused, glancing at the heap of flesh underneath.

  The maintenance room was chaotic and unkempt. Mike hunted through drawers with mixed tools, light bulbs, and spare screws. Blue jumpsuits hung on a rack along the wall. He searched the pockets, turning them jumpsuits inside out. He reached the last one on the rack and as his hand dug into the outer pocket he could hear the jingling of keys. Mike flipped through the jumble of keys until he found the three-inch long rod with a hinge piece hiding amidst the silver and bronze surrounding it.

  ***

  Ulysses had gathered more candles and had been joined by two stickily built men, Adam and Sam, when Mike returned. Ulysses jammed the key into the hole letting it fall into place and the elevator doors’ locks released.

  Adam and Sam pulled the elevator doors apart. Mike glanced down and saw that the elevator was stuck in between the second and third floor five feet below them. The shouts were more audible.

  “Help us!”

  Ulysses stretched out his hand to grab the cable and Mike knocked it away.

  “I’ll go down and check first,” Mike said.

  Before Ulysses could protest Mike shimmied down the cable. His landing shook the elevator car a bit and he yanked the service hatch open.

  A nurse in scrubs was furiously pumping a patient’s chest on a gurney while a young girl squeezed an air mask over the patient’s face.

  “What happened?” Mike asked.

  “His pacemaker went out when I was taking him upstairs for some tests. We need to get this guy out of here and into surgery now,” the nurse said, while keeping his hands on the man’s chest.

  Mike’s head was level with the third floor. He looked over to Adam and pointed.

  “Adam, I’ll need your help getting him out,” Mike said then looked over to his dad. “As soon as we get this guy out of here you’ll need to start CPR on him, okay?”

  “Okay,” Ulysses said.

  Adam took Mike’s place on top of the elevator and Mike slid through the service hatch. Mike noticed the trembling hands on the young girl holding the mask. Her face was down and her hair hovered over the patient’s head. Mike placed his hands on the young girl’s. She looked up when their hands touched. Her eyes were misty.

  The nurse brought the straps from the side of the gurney and tightened them over the patient’s body.

  “We’ll move him on three. One, two, three,” Mike said and he and the nurse lifted the patient to Adam’s extended hand.

  Mike pushed the patient up through the service hatch with the nurse’s help and watched it disappear out of sight. He folded his hands like a step and motioned to the young girl.

  “C’mon, you’re next,” he said.

  The girl placed her Converse sneakers into Mike’s hands and he lifter her up to the ledge of the service hatch above. He could see Adam’s hands grab under her arms and pull her the rest of the way.

  “Thank you,” the nurse said.

  “Up you go,” Mike said and thrust the nurse up to freedom.

  Once everyone was out of the shaft, Sam jumped down inside next to Adam and the two of them lowered their arms inside the elevator. Mike jumped and grasped both of their hands. He felt himself being yanked up through the hole in the ceiling and then his feet landing on the metal casing on top of the elevator.

  The nurse and patient had already left and the young girl wrapped her arms around Mike. She couldn’t have been older than fifteen. His hand held the back of her hand gently and then she peeled away from him and took off.

  “Appreciate your help, boys,” Ulysses said shaking Sam’s and Adam’s hands.

  “Yeah, thank you,” Mike said.

  The two men nodded and disappeared into the crowd. Ulysses pocketed the maintenance keys. Mike gave him a frown.

  “They might come in handy later,” Ulysses said.

  “Dad, we need to find the medicine room here,” Mike said once the others had left.

  “What for?”

  “We need to grab you as much insulin and needles as we can.”

  Mike picked up one of the candles on the elevator opening’s edge. He hovered it over every sign next to each door.

  “Look for anything that says pharmacy,” Mike said.

  They traveled deeper into the hospital. Once they were out of the main hallway, which was lit by the windows on each end, the only light that was visible were the candles in their hands.

  Beyond the busy operating rooms and ICU the rest of the hospital was eerily quiet. Mike could see shadows moving in each of the patient rooms he passed and hushed murmurs coming from the rooms. The deeper they went into the center of the hospital the quieter it became. Patients sat in the darkness, some with loved ones, murmuring to each other.

  Finally, Mike saw “PHARMACY” painted in bold black letters across a door window. Inside he found a twelve pack of 10 ml bottles. Mike found a backpack and emptied the contents. He stuffed the pack full of insulin and disposable needles. He tossed one to Ulysses.

  “Take one now before we leave,” Mike said.

  “I have that stuff back at my place. You don’t need to steal it, Michael,” Ulysses said.

  Mike’s gut turned sour. That’s what he was doing wasn’t it? Stealing. He’d never stolen anything in his entire life. Then he remembered the hordes of people trampling each other to get into the police station. He saw the young man with the gunshot wound. He wasn’t going to let his father die when he had the means to save him.

  “C’mon, Dad. We need to get out of here,” Mike said.

  Mike peeked around the corner outside the lab. The hallway was dark and empty. He motioned for his father to follow and he walked briskly down the hall.

  When Mike turned the corner most of the hallway had been deserted. It was oddly quiet and darker than it had been when he entered. He squinted down the hallway and saw a moving mass blocking the window. Faint shouts echoed from outside.

  Mike pushed his way through the crowd and made it to the edge of the windowpane. Masses of people marched their way through the streets in unison. Hundreds of people weaving around the abandoned cars. Most others were desperately trying to get out of their way and ran inside buildings and shops.

  Mike edged past the man next to him to try and get a better look down the street to where the riot was heading.

  “Easy, pal,” said the man Mike was trying to edge out.

  “What are they marching toward?” Mike asked.

  “Looks like they’re about to run into shields and batons. There must be at least a hundred policeman in the streets.”

  The precincts. Mike pushed his way back to his father, who was trying to get a look out from where he was standing in the
back.

  “What’s going on out there?” Ulysses asked.

  “Nothing good. We’ll have to take the back way out of here. I-279 is right behind us. We can hop on that and take it to 65 back to my place. I’m not sure how safe it’ll be, but we should be fine as long as we make it back before dark,” Mike replied.

  Mike and Ulysses rushed down the stairwell and burst out onto the first floor. Almost everyone that wasn’t dead or dying had crowded near the large lobby windows to watch the events outside. Mike didn’t need to watch it. He knew what would happen.