Tim Washburn - Powerless

A college-age worker sidles up to their car and secures the over-the-shoulder apparatus and tugs on it to make sure the connection is secure.

“Anybody ever fall out of this thing?” Caitlyn says.

“Not today,” he replies with a crooked grin. He moves on to the next car.

“Don’t worry, Mom. Madison rode it six times straight.”

“I don’t really care what Madison did.”

Caitlyn watches as the smart-ass college kid picks up a handheld microphone and reminds everyone to keep their hands inside the car. He then punches a button and the coaster accelerates away from the platform. The cars connect to a chain with a loud clunk and they ascend.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God…” Caitlyn keeps up the litany until they reach the apex of the hill. Then she screams.

The coaster races downhill through a tight right turn before whipping into a left turn and descending into darkness. They bolt over a short hill, and her stomach lurches as the car dips down through another sharp curve. Clack, clack, clack—they’re climbing again.

At the top of the next hill, just as they’re teetering on the downfall, the flashing lights running the length of the track wink out. But Caitlyn takes no notice. The coaster accelerates in free fall, but as it nears the loop it begins slowing down, sparks shooting out beneath the wheels. Up the loop they go, but not with enough speed to make it all the way around.

The ride comes to a dead stop with Caitlyn and Shelby hanging upside down.

“Get me out of here!” Caitlyn shouts as she squirms in the harness now digging into her shoulder blades.

“Mom, hush.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have gotten on this damn thing.”

“Mom!”

“Why aren’t we moving, Shelby?”

“I don’t know. It’ll start back up in a minute,” Shelby says with more bravado than she feels.

They hang upside for five minutes until the worker shows up beneath them. The lopsided grin has been erased from his face. “I’m sorry. We lost power. The coaster has a fail-safe. It automatically locks the brakes in the event of a power loss.”

“Well, unlock the damn thing,” Caitlyn shouts.

“I can’t,” the young man stammers. “I need electricity to unlock the brakes.”

“How in the hell are you going to get us down?” Caitlyn shouts. Her face is nearly purple from the blood pooling in her head. She experiences a sharp pain, which robs her of breath.

“I called my boss on the radio. He’s on his way over.”

Other riders begin hurling insults at the young man, but Caitlyn remains eerily quiet.

“Mom,” Shelby says, turning to look at her mother. “Mom?”

Her mother hangs listless. Shelby screams. Gulps in air and screams again, not knowing that her mother had been carrying within her a ticking time bomb in the form of an undiagnosed aneurysm.

Houston, Texas

Wednesday, September 29, 5:21 P.M.

His hands covered with blood, Dr. Aaron Jackson asks one of the nurses to wipe the sweat from his brow. Eleven hours into a particularly difficult heart transplant, he takes the opportunity during the brief break to arch his back and stretch side to side. He adjusts the magnifying surgical loupes resting on his nose and plunges his hands back into the chest cavity of Mr. Joseph Hall, the lucky recipient of the new heart. Mr. Hall had waited eight long months teetering at death’s door for a donor heart.

“Almost there, kids,” he says to those in the room, his voice muffled by the surgical mask.

Dr. Jackson works out of the South Texas Transplant Center, and is performing his third heart transplant of the year. He is among the half a dozen surgeons crowded into the sterile room, where he continues to make the final plumbing connections. He works to connect the pulmonary artery. He carefully threads the polypropylene suture material through the patient’s artery, then through the donor heart. With his forearm he readjusts the magnifying loupes and continues stitching. No larger than a human hair, the suture material is difficult to see with the naked eye, but the magnifying glasses lie heavy on his nose.

The huff of the ventilator and the whoosh of the cardiopulmonary bypass machine are the only noises other than the exhaled breaths of those in the room.

“Jen, can you reposition the light?” he says to one of the nurses.

She reaches a gloved hand up and pulls the intense lamp closer to where Dr. Jackson is stitching. He continues to stitch as the other physicians lean in to follow his progress. With a final flourish he ties off the suture and snips the end of the thread with a pair of surgical scissors.

“I think we’ve finished,” he says, looking up to survey the hidden faces of the other surgeons. Each gives him a nod.

“Okay, people, have extra suture material ready as well as more surgical sponges in case he springs a leak.”

He takes one final look, then says, “Switch off bypass.” The whooshing stops and he begins to gently remove the clamps attached to the arteries leading to the new heart. As he unclips the final clamp, and before he can determine if the heart is pumping, the room descends into darkness.

“Oh shit,” someone shouts.

“I need more light, stat!” Dr. Jackson shouts as he flicks on the feeble beam attached to his magnifying loupe.

“Christ, we’ve got a bleeder. Sutures!”

Three stories below, Chief of Maintenance Virgil Hunsaker reaches for his time card to clock out for the day when a shower of sparks erupts from the main electrical panel. The basement is submerged in sudden darkness. A white-hot flame erupts from the breaker box as he races toward the developing disaster. The acrid odor of burnt plastic fills the space as a smoky haze obscures the just-coming-to-life emergency lighting.

He yanks a fire extinguisher from the wall and shoots a spray of foam toward the fire. A door is yanked open across the room and one of his workers rushes in.

“See what’s wrong with the generator,” Virgil shouts to the man.

“How come it didn’t switch on?” the worker says.

Virgil empties the extinguisher and the flames abate.

“Don’t know. We got hit with a massive jolt of something. We’ve got to get that generator running right damn now.”

Six months ago, the hospital had installed a new main line from the recently built electrical substation a block away.

With the sleeve of his uniform shirt he yanks the melted cover from the generator’s transfer panel.

“Oh shit.” The breakers in the panel are fused together.

“People are going to die if we can’t figure out a way to bypass this goddamn panel,” Virgil says.

He glances at his watch to determine how long the hospital has been without power, and winces.

“How about we run a cable directly from the generator and tap into the main line after the breaker box?” Virgil says.

“Might work,” his young assistant says.

In the darkness, Dr. Jackson drops the first suture-loaded forceps to hit his palm. “I dropped it. Someone find me a goddamn light. More sutures.” Another set of forceps hits his palm.

“I can’t see a damn thing.” His hand fumbles through Mr. Hall’s chest cavity in search of the leak. “I’ve got more than one bleeder, but I can’t see to suture them. Somebody call downstairs and tell them this man’s life depends on the backup generator.”

A nurse races to the phone and snatches up the handset. “The phones are dead, Doctor.”

“Yeah, well, this man will be dead if we don’t stop the bleeders and get this heart pumping in the next two minutes. Somebody stick their hand in here and start cardiac massage.”