He felt the pressure against his chest and burnt stomach release. A tremendous difference.
He could actually breathe now. He panted with his eyes shut. His ribs hurt. His head pounded as the blood came back to it. Now perhaps he could work his legs out. He pulled on his legs one at a time, bending his knees upward to see if they worked. They were fine, right? No, one leg hurt. In fact, a lot of him hurt, he realized, especially where the front of his stomach was burnt away.
The pain rode up and down and through him and he had to tell himself not to give in to it, but he did nonetheless, feeling himself falling toward unconsciousness. He needed water badly, he realized. Water would save him, if he was to be saved. He awkwardly pulled up Wickham's bunker coat and found the water bottle there, a full liter. He drank half of it. He felt around in the pocket some more and found two packets of peanut butter crackers. That was Wickham, always ready. He ate the crackers slowly and washed them down with the rest of the water.
Then he examined his burn, holding the flashlight above him. The flesh was seared down to and into the muscle and wept blood and lymphatic fluid that itself had mixed with the fluids of Wickham and the dust that covered everything. I don't know what to do about this, Ray thought. He found his own water bottle and considered washing out the wound. But he might need that water, he realized. He could clean the wound and find it still became infected. In burn victims, he knew, survival was based on the total percentage of skin area affected. His burn was deep but not wide. He decided to save the water.
Now he turned on the radio.
Company Ten, Company Ten, go ahead.
No answer.
Had there been a complete loss of radio transmission?
It appeared so.
He wondered if he could hear voices above him, faint sirens, something. Maybe not.
He glimpsed at Wickham. If Ray had been on top, he'd be the one dead now. It was that simple. Because he landed below Wicks, he'd survived.
Lucky, thought Ray. I can't be luckier than that.
The limp fireman recovered from the rubble sixteen hours later was rushed by police escort to St. Vincent's Hospital, intravenous saline lines inserted in both wrists and both ankles. His nasal passages and esophagus were plugged with cement dust. His heart was beating weakly once every two seconds. In addition to his severe third-degree burn and the sepsis that had quickly set in, he was found to have a collapsed lung, fractures of the tibia, nine ribs, one vertebra, and a finger on the left hand, cartilage damage to the left shoulder, and a ruptured spleen. When he awoke two days later, his mother and father were seated next to him. The president was going to attack Afghanistan, they told him, the war against terrorism had begun.
An hour later the deputy fire commissioner for legal affairs appeared in his room and shut the door. The short fat man with white hair pulled up a chair close to Ray's head. We need to have a little talk, Firefighter Grant. I apologize to you for pressing this matter upon you only hours after you have regained consciousness. But it's an impor tant matter that we need to get straight. Ray nodded vaguely, not knowing what else to do. We see no reason why his wife, Molly, needs to know how much Firefighter Wickham suffered. She saw most of the body. That was difficult enough. We had our own people work on him before the funeral home came. She was told he was killed before he was burned so badly. We had to tell her something. But we don't want anyone knowing the particulars. This department lost more than three hundred men, Firefighter Grant. We will be finding bodies for weeks to come. I am ordering you as a fireman in the brotherhood of firemen and I am asking you as a man of honor that you never discuss Firefighter Wickham's suffering and injuries. The men who found you and Wickham are all sworn to secrecy on this matter. You do not need to fear that others will speak of it. And if they somehow do, the fire department will never comment on it except to say that Wickham was killed in the heroic line of duty. No one needs to know he was nearly burned in half by a hot cable. It would hurt individuals and it would hurt the morale of this department in a time of great suffering. In addition to your injuries and trauma, this will be an extra burden to you. I recognize that, the department recognizes that. Furthermore I ask that you never tell your father, not because he is your father and from what I understand a very honorable man but because he is a policeman, and you know of the very difficult relationship between the two departments in this city. You should also know there was one newspaper reporter who was nearby when Firefighter Wickham's body was recovered and had a question, but we had a little talk with him. I expect that this information will perish with you. That you will never tell anyone, ever. Especially the news media. Are we agreed about this, Firefighter Grant?
Yes.
Firefighter Wickham's suffering was a sacred sacrifice that must not be polluted or cheapened by public discussion of it. Are we clear about this?
Yes.
You're sure. Including your father?
Yes.
They shook hands.
He stayed in the hospital six weeks and was unable to attend Wick-ham's funeral, the flag-draped casket carried on the back of a pumper truck, as was the tradition, followed by row upon row of his brothers in their dress blue uniforms.
Had he been in the chair all night? He opened his eyes, felt stiff in the chair. Did I wake up before? wondered Ray. I thought I woke up. His head felt light. He needed coffee, sugar, something.
"Did you enjoy your trip?" asked Gloria, about to go off duty.
"My trip?"
"Your little drug trip."
He shook his head, blinked. "You knew?"
"Of course."
"But said nothing?"
She was waking his father, breakfast ready on a tray. "Nothing to say, once the juice was in your arm, except that if you do it again, I'm going to report you."
Ray sat up.
"Plus it wasn't like you were going nowhere on me."
He sat up some more. His head felt filled with sand.
"Very unfortunate," croaked his father, eyes open.
"What, why?" Ray answered.
"This house has many nice beds upstairs that I worked hard to pay for," his father said. "I wish you'd slept in one."
"I'm fine."
"Well, while you were sleeping I did a great deal of work for you."
"You did?"
"Sure."
"Well?"
"She gets mail at her apartment?"
Ray thought. He remembered locked mailboxes inside the apartment house foyer. "Yes."
"Did she have a regular phone there, a landline, we used to call it?"
"Yes. Mostly for international calls to her mother."
"And a cell phone? She's not calling China on a cell phone."
"Yes."
"Two phone lines," observed his father. "Billing cycles every thirty days. Two bills in thirty days. Cell phone and regular bills tend to be separate, they are for me."
"She's been missing something like five days."
"If the bills were perfectly distributed fifteen days apart, you have about a one-in-three chance that there's a fresh bill sitting in her mailbox showing who she was calling. Might be very useful information. Only other way to get it is with a court subpoena."
"One in three aren't bad odds."
"They could be worse or better."
"Maybe she had her mail forwarded."
"No." His father winced. "People running for their lives don't do that. Plus it generally requires a trip to the local post office. You have to give a new address. She didn't have a new address."