Chapter Text
There was a sharp jolt and then the earth started shaking. From one second to the next the lovely sunny day turned into chaos and destruction.
Jay Halstead had never experienced anything like it before! The shaking swept him off his feet, he dropped to the ground and covered his neck and head with his arms as well as he could. Next to him he could see Will and Connor do the same. There was no cover, no table or anything to hide under – they had been outside, in the middle of a road when the quake hit Los Angeles with all its power.
Yeah, he knew an earthquake was something that might happen in California, thanks to the San Andreas and Hayward faults – tectonic plates sliding past each other. But an earthquake sure as hell hadn’t been on Jay’s must-see list for LA! He had dreamed about escaping Chicago’s cold, wet and windy autumn weather for a bit of warmth, sunshine, palm trees, runs on the beach, maybe a Lakers game, good food and a lot of drinking in cool bars with his brother Will and their friend Connor who had moved to LA a year ago.
A big piece of debris crashed down between Jay and Will – Jay assumed it must have fallen from one of the high-rise buildings around them. “You ok?!” He screamed to his brother. “Yeah!” answered Will. Shards of glass were flying through the air, cutting Jay’s skin. It was crazy. The vehicles on the street were scooting about on the pavement like toy cars, they bumped into each other horns blaring, buildings swayed and made rumbling and moaning noises like hurt animals. People were screaming.
When the shaking stopped there was an eerie silence for a few seconds – then all hell broke loose! There was rubble and debris everywhere, cars were scattered all over the road, people were running and limping around, smoke and dust and screams and sirens wailing in the distance.
“Anybody hurt?” Will screamed. Connor and Jay looked themselves up and down to check for injuries.”
“I’m fine!”
“Me too!”
Forgotten were their plans to hang out on the beach this sunny afternoon. The first responders would be in over their heads with emergencies all over the city now. It could take 30 minutes or more until anybody would arrive here. All three men knew what they had to do. They had to do whatever was in their power to help!
Jay and the two doctors started running down the road, assessing the severity of the injuries of the people around them as they went. In their immediate surroundings the people seemed to be ok, mainly pumps and bruises, nothing major. But where were these screams coming from?
“Down there,” shouted Jay and they ran towards the commotion.
They ran a block down the road and when they looked round the next corner, they knew exactly where the screams were coming from! Half of a big building had collapsed, there was dust and debris everywhere, on the road a power pole had crashed half way down, electricity sparking. That was a death trap. Jay took out his phone and dialed 9-1-1 but the phone service was down. With a curse he stuffed his phone back into his jeans pocket.
Connor had been screening the scene and shouted “Jay, Will, that’s a school!”
Kids and teachers were streaming out of the collapsed building, gathering on the road. Many were injured, bleeding, crying. A man carried an about 10-year-old boy in his arms. The boy’s leg was clearly broken and he was unconscious.
“Fuck, there still must be hundreds of students in there!” Jay said. “I’m going in, see if I can help.”
“You go, I’ll stay here and see what I can do for the injured! Start triaging out here until the firefighters and paramedics arrive!” Connor replied and wiped blood from a scratch across his eyebrow.
Jay and Will nodded and made their way through the debris up to the main entrance of the building.
After only about 15 minutes they had brought about 20 children outside safely. Out there on the street Connor had started treating the wounded with a few other helpers. They hardly had any medical equipment, only a few first aid kits from cars, but it was better than nothing and they were improvising as well as they could.
A little girl was clinging to Jay’s neck with all her strength when he carried her out onto the street. “My teacher Mrs. Miller! And my class! They are still inside! I was in the bathroom when the earth started shaking. And when I wanted to go back… the hallway… back to my class… was just gone!”
“What’s your name?” Jay asked the scared girl.
“Emily.”
“Ok, Emily, I’ll get you out onto the street and a doctor will look at you. And me and my brother will go back inside and search for Mrs. Miller and the rest of your class.” Jay tried to comfort her and she nodded and cried “Ok.”
Jay wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Hey Will, let’s check out the collapsed part of the building. Emily said her whole class is still missing… I bet there are many people trapped under the debris or cut off from the exits.”
Will nodded, he was breathing hard from the exertion. “Ok, let’s see how far we get without any tools or gear. We need to be careful though, all this may collapse at any time.”
“We’ll be fine, come on, Will!”
They entered the building and tried to advance into the collapsed part of the school. It looked like a warzone. Debris and collapsed walls and ceilings everywhere.
“Jay, there’s a hallway behind here. I can see it through a gap! If we can move some of the debris we can go in and check all the classrooms down there!”
Together they started removing debris with their bare hands. It worked reasonably well, considering that they didn’t have any tools. They lifted big pieces of rubble together, both men sweating, panting and cursing. Jay’s fingers started bleeding from the sharp edges of the debris and he wished he had something to wrap his hands with.
As soon as the opening was big enough to squeeze through, they did and entered the hallway on the other side. At the first classroom they checked, the door wouldn’t open, it was jammed, but finally Will and Jay burst it open by first kicking it and then jumping into it together. Inside the classroom a group of children including a teacher were huddled under the tables obviously scared but nobody seemed seriously harmed. When they saw the two men enter the room they jumped up in relieve. “Are you Mrs. Miller?” Jay asked and the young woman nodded. “Emily sent us to get you.”
Will gestured towards the door and down the hallway “The way to the main entrance is clear. Take your class out of here. You’ll be ok.” The teacher drove her kids out towards the hallway like a flock of sheep, then she hugged Will tightly and gave him a kiss. “Thank you!” she muttered. Will’s freckled face blushed visibly.
“New girlfriend, Dr. Superhero?” Jay teased his brother and laughed.
“Just shut up, bro.” answered Will and laughed too.
The laughter ended abruptly when the earth started shaking again. Before Jay and Will could hide under the tables, the world came crushing down with a deafening rumble. And everything went black.
“Jay!”
“Nnnaaaaa…”
“Jay!”
What was going on? He had no idea where he was. But somebody was calling his name. Why?
“Jay! Where are you?”
“’m ‘ere…” he mumbled. He had no idea where here actually was, but maybe the person who was calling him could find out. With a flicker Jay opened his eyes. It was dark and he couldn’t see much.
“…da fuck” he muttered and tried to sit up to take a better look at his surroundings, but something was holding him back down. A sudden flash of excruciating pain shot through his abdomen. “Aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrhhhh!”
“Hold on Jay, I’m coming to you.”
“Will?”
“Yeah, almost there, hold on.”
Jay couldn’t move to see where Will’s voice was coming from. He heard the scraping of rock against rock, concrete against concrete and something rumbling. At that moment everything came back to Jay: LA, the earthquake, the school, they were rescuing the kids from their classroom when… the whole building had collapsed on top of them during the second quake! There wasn’t a classroom anymore. He lay in between and covered by a huge pile of rubble and blocks of concrete and all kinds of debris… a former school house worth of debris!
Suddenly Will’s face appeared through a hole to his left. His face was covered in blood. There was a cut right at the top of Will’s forehead that was bleeding heavily.
“You ok, Will? You’re bleeding…” Jay asked his brother. “I’m fine, it’s nothing.” Will wiped his forehead unwittingly, smearing the blood all over his face. “I’m coming to you…”
While Will tried to squeeze the rest of his body through the narrow gap between the concrete fragments, the debris above them started to shift. A few football and fist sized pieces of rubble came crashing down with a load of dust that clouded Jay’s sight and made him cough. Instinctively he raised his arms to protect his head when something hit his right shoulder. “Gnaaaaahhh, fuck!”
Will dropped to the ground next to Jay and the clouds of dust started to settle down. He coughed “Sorry, bro, it wasn’t easy to find you and get through to you. We’re covered by tons of debris and --- Jay?!” Will’s eyes widened with shock.
“Wha’?” Jay asked confusedly.
His gaze followed Wills stare, down his chest and towards his aching belly. There was a long piece of rebar. And it stuck in his abdomen!
“Nnaaaaaaaaa” suddenly the pain hit him and he winced. As if his body hadn’t noticed the injury before, but as soon as his brain had registered it, his body screamed in agony. Jay started panting. “Get… it… out… get it… out… of me!”
“Jay, I can’t. It’s coming from that big piece of concrete above us, pinning right through you and down into the ground. And even if I could remove it, I wouldn’t – because that would make you bleed out.”
“Ok, that… sounds … bad.”
“Well, it’s not good. But I’ll take care of you, ok? I’ll check you out now and try to get the bleeding under control.”
“’m bleedin’?”
“Jay, you are impaled through your abdomen by a piece of rebar, so yes, you are bleeding.”
Suddenly Jay felt really tired. He just wanted to sleep. His eyes fluttered, but Will rubbed his sternum, it hurt and Jay opened his eyes again.
“You need to stay awake for me, Jay. Can you do that?”
“Mkay.”
Will took out his phone and dialed, but soon after shook his head in frustration. “No service – everybody in this fuckin’ city is calling 9-1-1 or their friends, family or loved ones right now… We’re on our own. For now.”
Will felt around Jay’s belly and around the entry and exit wound and it hurt so much that Jay gritted his teeth not to scream out loud. He exhaled through gritted teeth with a hiss and inhaled painful stuttering breaths in through his nose. Will seemed to be satisfied with what he found, because he stopped touching Jay and took off his t-shirt and pressed it on the wound around the rebar. Jay saw that his brother’s whole torso was covered in big bruises that were slowly growing darker…
“Wha’ happened to you, Will?”
“I got hit by some debris. But it’s nothing. Looks worse than it is.” Will looked down on himself, shrugged and continued working on Jay. “Bro, I need your t-shirt too. To use it on the wound on your back.”
When Jay made a move to take off his t-shirt, Will stopped him and held him down. “Don’t you dare move! It’s a miracle you’re still conscious anyway.” Will started ripping off Jay’s t-shirt. “That’s just because you won’t let me…” Jay moaned.
Ripping off the t-shirt without a knife or scissors was difficult and took some time. And it hurt. Every tiny movement, shot through his abdomen like a stab of a knife. Jay groaned and whimpered in pain and almost passed out twice, but Will kept him awake. “Stay with me. Talk to me, bro.”
“’m fucked, aren’t I?” Jay asked his big brother.
“No! I’m taking care of you. I’ll get you out of here, I promise.”
“How?”
“Not sure yet… Maybe… I have to find some metal to bang on. To alarm somebody… there must be firefighters on scene now and –“
“You’re not banging anything against m’ rebar.”
“Haha, very funny, little brother.”
For a while none of them spoke. Jay wondered if this was where he was going to die. Impaled by a rebar, buried by debris, bleeding out. When he was in Afghanistan with the Rangers, he had thought about death, accepted the possibility of dying. Death had been all around. And even as a police detective in Chicago Jay knew that he might one day die, shot by a drug lord or stabbed by a mass murderer or something. But this was supposed to be a fucking vacation! With sun and beach and fun and drinks. Not with rebars, piercing through his body!
“Will?”
“Hm?”
“You… should try to get out of here.”
“I’m not leaving you!”
“You’re no’ leaving… just go and get help.”
“No, I’m not leaving.”
“I can’t… move… but you can. Bring back… some firefighters… or at least an angle grinder… or something. Don’t be such… a… stubborn ass.”
Will didn’t reply. Jay took that as a “No, I’m staying here.”
“Do you think… Connor’s alright?”
“Yeah, I’m sure of that. He’s a lucky bastard anyway – he can survive anything, remember? I bet he’s still out there triaging and bossing everybody around.”
Will didn’t let his brother know how worried he really was. Jay was awake and responsive now, but that could change any time. Down here Will had no way of determining the internal damage the rebar had done to Jay. He couldn’t tell if vital organs had been damaged. And if so, he had absolutely no way of treating him here if there were complications. And then there was the danger of blood loss. Will had been able to slow the bleeding down, but Jay was still losing blood. And sooner or later he would go into hypovolemic shock.
They had to get out of here! Maybe Jay was right. He needed to go and get help. But Will had this fear that if he left his little brother alone now, he wouldn’t find him alive when he returned. That was his worst nightmare.
Will had tried to keep Jay awake for some time now, rubbing his sternum, slightly slapping his cheeks or trying to get him to talk, but it was getting more and more difficult. The pain and the blood loss were taking their toll on Jay and ever so often his eyes fluttered close.
In the beginning Jay moaned or gritted his teeth against the pain, but now he just lay there. Pale and impassive, cold sweat on his forehead and it freaked Will out.
Will took Jay’s hand and together they lay there in the twilight. The ground was cold and rough and uneven. It poked into Will’s back and the cold made him shiver. Whenever he felt Jay’s hand go limp in his, he squeezed it and talked to his little brother until he opened his eyes again. But it got more and more difficult to keep him awake.