Almost falling into a seated position on a nearby shelving unit that had fallen onto its side, I drag my weary eyes to meet Jed’s gaze. He starts the healing process by taking a cloth and wiping my face, as he does so I suddenly realize how sweaty I had become over my time in the dark underground.
Running my hands through my hair I could have sworn I had gone swimming down here, or that the fountain truly was active and I decided to take a shower. I still felt sick and my head was still spinning. Taking sips of the water that Jed had brought me did help somewhat.
Snapping the clip off of my makeshift sling, Jed slowly peels off the crusty scarf that acted as my bandage. I would have preferred to not look at my wound, but for some reason, my head veered towards it.
Pale skin dyed red closest to the wound, the gaping slash leaking yellow and green, dirt from the collapse had seeped in deep and probably infected the wound faster than normal. With the removal of the shoddy bandage, I saw it begin to bleed again, as I could see bone beneath. My stomach bubbled, but I fought back the urge to purge again.
“Fuck me, that’s disgusting”, Jed rudely spouts. “Hold still, I will try and clean this”, he continues as he rotates my arm to lean on his knee, the wound having a clear path to the floor.
Taking another water bottle he douses the cut, stinging and piercing me with icy daggers as he does so. Dabbing it quickly with a larger towel, Jed then pulls out a roll of wound dressing, a mesh of fabric that would normally be quite thin but with several wraps around and around became thick and constrictive.
With someone else applying the bandage, as well as using proper materials, I can already feel it is leagues ahead of what I did earlier. Applying a belt around the part just above my elbow, Jed also removes the makeshift tourniquet, stating it was probably doing more harm than good as makeshift ones typically don’t cut off the right parts. With the materials at hand, he couldn’t fashion a new one either.
Finishing the bandaging process, of which he used the whole roll, he ties two belts on the top and bottom ends of the bandage and straps me into a better sling, though says it would be best if my arm could be raised, that in this situation wouldn’t be a possibility.
Picking out some antibiotics and painkillers he places them into my palm and tells me to take them. In any other situation I would never take such drugs from another, if they were between a red and blue pill maybe, but now wasn’t the time to be picky. I down the pills and follow them with several chugs of water.
“That’s the best I can do with this light, this time, and these materials”, Jed said comfortingly.
“You a doctor or something?”
“Nah, I aimed to be, but the hours of studying didn’t mesh well with my living conditions. Had to take a full-time job, which fucked those chances.”
“Know more than me though, and I cannot thank you enough for sorting me out. Do you know if I am going to be able to keep the arm?”
“Hard to say, I remember a lot, but not everything. I know people with arm stab wounds can keep their limbs, but in this situation… it’s hard to tell, sorry.”
I winced at his response slightly, the thought of losing an arm to something far out of my control felt like a big “fuck you” from the universe.
“Fuck, it’s better than nothing. So, where’s the closest exit?”
“A good 5-minute walk from here? May take us a bit more due to wheelchair and all”, Jed estimated. His face showed signs of thought alongside his own pain.
Taking the painkiller bottle, Jed also downed possibly one too many, following it with more water. Watching him, I slowly felt the drugs take effect as I gained more of my senses, though for how long I had no idea. Five minutes would probably be fine, right? I took what drugs, bandages, and water bottles we had left, threw them into a hemp reusable bag, and hooked it over Jed’s wheelchair.
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Alongside the resources at hand, we also picked up some protein and caffeine heavy snacks, scissors, as well as a few lighters. Sadly the pharmacy didn’t stock any lights, at least not in the side that hadn’t fallen in.
As we began to make our move out, we could hear and feel the rumble of more shifting rock, but we praised whatever gods we followed as it came from far away, in the direction we had come from. It would have been enough for the sounds to stay distant, so we needn’t pay it much mind. But in the rush of new rubble, as well as old rubble being moved around, it allowed the area to be full of new noise.
Cries, whimpers, and shouts for help started to echo in the underground chamber. I most likely heard a few more than Jed did as my mind was still stirring a bit from the loss of blood and possible infection.
“Hey! Can you hear me?!” I yelled out into the distance.
For the first time in what felt like a bleak eternity, my shout was returned by a flurry of different voices. Calling “Hello!” or “Help!” followed by “Over here” and the name of yet another clothing store.
“We’re coming”, Jed added as he started to wheel himself in the direction of the yells.
Moving closer to the exit, as the calls were in that direction, I began to smell something other than my own blood, sweat, coupled together with the dust in the air. The overpowering stench of other people’s blood and that of death, making me sick to my stomach. If the smell wasn’t bad enough, the sight was even worse as we got to the next clothing store of many.
Splatters of blood, pools of red water, squashed flesh against rock. The collapse was bad enough imprisoning people down here, but the bloody bricks had now taken lives. My heart raced further as I felt a lump in my throat and a stinging in my eyes. A shiver went across my body as a deep foreboding took over, a kick in the teeth of my mortality.
It could have been me. If I had run faster, or been in a different state of mind on the surface, I could have died. Whatever fucking fate was steering me into my final destination, I had survived when the unlucky unsuspecting bystanders found themselves dead and buried. As if I was being shrouded in a thick blanket of despair, I fought back against it with clenched fists alongside a willful fight back against the darkness.
This won’t stop me, I still have to get out and save my arm. I still had to help the ones still alive to get out!
Catching up with Jed, I push the images of death out from my vision as I turn to face those still breathing. Lit up by torchlight, I counted four other people, three women and another man, all in their 20s to 30s. Shades of brunette hair contrasted with blonde, all muddied by dirt and pooling blood from wounds.
They were all trampled by large hunks of broken concrete from the streets, plus smaller rocks from the earth itself. The man had several shards of glass impaled into his right arm, deep, severe cuts that made my left arm look fine in comparison. The women were mostly in better sights, though one had their leg impaled by a clothing rack.
Assessing the situation, Jed and I start to pull rubble away from one of the ladies who had the least amount stopping their exit. Thanking us profusely, she aids the next, and then the next. Jed’s further assessment of their wounds lead him to give out medical advice, though it was dubious if it was all correct.
For the implement and glass shards, Jed advised that they stay within their bodies as pulling them out could cause further and faster bleeding. Since the foreign objects were so deep within the pair, it was risky to pull any out, despite the pain. Instead, painkillers were handed out alongside more bandage work that hugged the wounds and objects to slow their bleed out.
Thinking back to my own impalement, it was probably a bad idea that I had snapped the rock shard out of me, I would have been better off leaving it in to slow the bleeding. But how was I supposed to know? Regardless, I was still lucky in comparison to the dead eyes that glistened in the darkness. Lifeless reflections that instilled more fear within me in the dark underground.
The recovery took a good ten minutes or so, it was hard to tell as I wasn’t bothering to check my phone anymore, the screen was barely readable anyways. The lady with the impaled leg was given aid by one of the other women, while the others could walk fine, even if the man had a bit of a limp.
Continuous rumbling and roaring in the distance gave us all a reason to worry, the earthquakes may have stopped but that didn’t mean we were safe. The underground was unstable, with more and more debris tumbling down every so often. Jed turned to the group, taking on a leadership role as the others put their lives in his hands after their treatment.
“These wounds aren’t going to give us much time, we can’t go back to the pharmacy. The exit isn’t far, we may be slowed down, but we can make it.”