"You sound like my wife." He grimaced again. "I know that it doesn’t look good for me. I just want to see her again. Sounds stupid, huh?"
"No, not at all." Danni slipped the syringe into the I.V. line. "This is going to make you feel a little better. Take the edge off of that pain."
"They said that my wife was on the way. I don’t want to be out when she gets here." He looked nervously at the syringe. "If I’m…" He paused trying to muster the courage to say his thoughts. "…Gone before she gets here. Will you tell her that I love her?"
Danni’s heart felt like it would break as she listened to his plea. "Don’t worry, she’ll be here soon. You’ll tell her yourself." Danni patted his hand. "I’ll be right back." She moved away from the man and sought out the tall surgeon.
"Doc, there ain’t nothing we can do. When that coupling comes apart he’s going to bleed out. We thought that maybe you could…" The rescue worker looked hopeful.
Garrett looked back to the patient. Sighing deeply, she thought about the possibilities. Even with a full team of surgeons in the O.R., there would be a very slim chance to save the man. The disruption of organs and the involvement of the spine alone would be debilitating enough to render his quality of life to a very low level if indeed he would survive. It would just be a matter of time now. When that coupling was undone, the life would flow out of him within a few minutes and his body would be at its final rest.
The only thing that she could possibly do for the man was keep him comfortable and fulfill any last wishes that he may have.
"Gar, can you do anything for him?" Danni’s eyes looked for comfort in the pools of blue. The desolation in the surgeon’s eyes was all she needed to see. "I see." The nurse looked up at the rescuer in charge. "He said that his wife was on the way. Is she here yet?"
"The police went to get her from her job. They should be here any minute."
"Then what?" Danni pushed for an answer.
Garrett bit at her lip, disgusted that she could do nothing for him. "Then when he’s ready, they uncouple the cars."
The blonde nurse looked puzzled. "Uncouple the cars, how do they do that?" She looked back over to the man. "Can’t we do something then?"
Garrett looked back over to the trapped man. The priest that had been called to hear his last confession had just arrived. "He needs a few minutes of privacy. Follow me."
The tall surgeon took off across the railroad yard to the pair of railroad cars that stood off in the distance. Her long strides made short work of stepping over the numerous sets of tracks as she quickly reached her destination. Danni scurried to keep up. Her much shorter legs lifted higher to clear the 6-inch metal rails soon began to tire, as the walk resembled more a step aerobic workout.
Finally arriving at their destination, Danni showed signs of being slightly winded. The heaving of her chest was noticeable to Garrett. "Why didn’t you tell me I was going too fast?"
"What, and make you think that I can’t keep up with you? Never!" The corners of her mouth turned upward as she sucked in another round of breath. "Now show me this coupling thing."
Garrett moved between the two uncoupled cars and Danni followed right along.
"See how the metal is shaped like a hook?" Danni nodded. "Now follow me to the other car. You’ll see that the hook is just the opposite. They slide into one another and mesh together in the middle, locking them together."
"Then when it went through him…"
"It caught everything in the middle and pinched it off." Garrett’s brow furrowed. "That’s what I was talking to the Scene Commander about. The liaison for the railroad was kind enough to explain it to me."
The nurse moved even closer to see the menacing coupling. Her petite frame next to the boxcar made her look even shorter than normal with the coupling’s height being just about the area of her heart. The mechanism amazed her and caused her to lose all concept of the world around her. Bending over, she tried to study it from the underside, twisting and turning around several times. ‘By the gods, I bet that there’s nothing left to his vertebrae but splinters.’ Danni’s mind brought vivid images of the man’s anatomy and the trauma that had occurred to his internal organs. She shivered in response.
Suddenly Danni could feel the tears welling up in her eyes as the idea of knowing that this would be the day of your death over powered her. She closed her eyes against their sting as the first tear rolled down over her cheek. A wave of fear washed over her as she thought of what the man was going through. The nurse stole a look at her tall, raven-haired friend and imagined herself in that same position as a giant lump came to her throat. Brushing the tears off her face, Danni forced her mind to concentrate on the coupling device. Maybe, just maybe, something would come to her mind to help save the man.
The tall woman stood back and watched her for a moment, amused at the intrigue of her curious team member. ‘I wonder how she would act if I let her into the O.R. for one of my operations?’ Garrett shook her head and turned to lean up against the other boxcar. The surgeon looked back across the yard at the gathering crowd of onlookers and rescuers alike. Her center of attention now focused on the scene of the entrapped man and the priest.
Danni was having a hard time understanding the locking device. ‘Maybe if I can understand how it goes together, I could figure out some way to help.’ She stood now in front of the claw-like device on the car closest to her. Something seemed to elude her but she just couldn’t think of what it was. ‘Maybe if I eye them up in line…" Danni turned and stood with her head at coupling level, trying to see how it would connect and spring into action. She turned back to the closer coupling and studied it intently.
The noise of the yard was resuming as the trains in the other parts of the yard were being moved and rotated into the lines of cars that were needed to carry the freight to their destinations. The sound of squeaky wheels and groans of the rails as the engines passed over them brought images of the travel that Garrett had taken to get here to Pittsburgh from San Francisco. The ride had been so soothing for her, and the scenery magnificent. If she closed her eyes right now, she could feel the constant jiggle in her body and hear the slow sounding clickity-clack that both started and stopped any rail journey. It was enough to lull her into dreaming of taking more rides by train in the near future.
The moment of quiet contemplation was suddenly thrown out the window with the jolting push her body felt and the sound of metal snapping into metal. The surgeon was thrown out of her comfortable position and found herself headed for the ground. Remembering where she was, her first thought was that of the safety of her friend. Blue eyes opened to see Danni still squatting in front of the coupling device and staring at it.
Garrett could feel the boxcar pushing her forward as she fell. There was no time to call out. Instead, she lunged forward, stretching her body to it’s full potential with her arms outstretched, fingers grabbing for the Flight Suit of the nurse.
"Hey! What the…" Danni’s body was being pushed forward and pulled down all at the same time. She didn’t know what to think but to go with the flow of force to keep from getting injured trying to fight it.