Jacqueline Druga - Under the Gray Skies

Ruth was delighted and almost giddy when I gave her one of the bistro snack pack boxes. While she dined on the contents, Madison rubbed lotion on her arms.

“We need you strong to move tomorrow,” Madison said.

“I’m not good at walking, so maybe just leave me behind. Stevie went for help.” She tapped Madison’s hand. “I’ll be fine.”

“No, we’re taking you,” Madison said. “If this Stevie isn’t back tomorrow, we’ll leave a note. We’re…” she looked up at me. “We’re looking for help. We’ll all go together.”

“Madison. How do you think it was possible for the oxygen to leave? I mean it’s back, right?” I asked.

“Maybe not leave per se,” Ruth answered, “that would be disastrous for everything. Did you see that cloud roll in? Stevie said whatever it was, not only knocked things over, it made the air smell and thick. Suffocated everything. He said it was hot when it went into his nostrils.”

“It happened right after the cloud,” Madison said. “Lacey, you said you felt the quakes and then what? Fifteen, twenty minutes the cloud hit?”

I nodded.

“Same here,” Ruth said.

“Not me,” Madison said. “I was south of here, so it took the cloud a little longer. I was visiting my grandmother in the hospital when the quakes hit. I had never felt one. I panicked. I had chest pains and swore I was having a heart attack. I couldn’t breathe. It was all part of the panic attack. I didn’t know. They did, I guess. The plopped me on a gurney, put an oxygen mask on me and stuck me in a corner while they dealt with injuries.”

“So you know what happened?” I asked.

“No one knows what happened,” Madison said. “Lights went out. Phones. Everything. Like an EMP hit. It happened after the quake and before the cloud. I remember it rolled in. A good forty minutes after the quakes. Windows blasted, the ground shook and it got dark, I mean really dark. I was just getting up to check on my grandmother, to go find her, when a nurse came to check on me and mid sentence, she froze. I mean… froze. For a second her eyes widened and…” She paused. “I watched her turn blue, I mean the blue was almost purple, she looked like she gasped and she dropped to the floor. I whipped off my mask and that’s when I realized she suffocated. If I didn’t think I could breathe before that, when I took off my mask the air was thick and hot, like I was drowning. All that commotion in the ER… stopped. Everyone dropped. I clutched that mask to my face and didn’t move.”

“What about others, like you with oxygen on?”

“Unless they were unconscious, people whipped off their masks, or ran to get help. I thought of that, I did,” Madison said. “With no power, I was connected to a little canister and I carried it with me. Anyone I did see, they didn’t have the oxygen on.”

“That’s the first thing you do,” Ruth said, “You feel trapped, connected and tied with the mask on. You pulled it off to move. Unless you know, you can’t.”

“I thought that about my grandmother and ran up to her floor. The debris, the cloud had blasted through the window and she was covered in debris,” Madison said with a whimper. “That’s when I said fuck it… sorry, Ruth.”

Ruth waved her hand in a ‘no worries’ fashion.

“And I took off my mask. I was able to breathe.”

“It was lighter out when the air came back,” Ruth explained. “I mean, still dark but not as dark as when the air left.”

“I can’t explain it,” Madison said. “No one can. And there’s no one around to explain. I looked, I searched that hospital but I could only search for so long. I heard it coming.”

“What?” I asked.

“The wave. The sound of rushing water.” Madison’s eyes gazed out as she spoke. “It looked huge and I just bolted to the stairs. It… ended up not being as high as it looked. Two floors, but enough for me to get scared. I stayed on the higher floors for a few days until the water receded enough for me to leave or at least not worry about another wave. But every time I made it so far, it would rain in some sort of freak storm.”

“How did you get out of the city?” I asked.

“My rental was parked on the fifth floor of the garage. It was actually okay. It wasn’t damaged and the garage survived. Surprisingly. Then again, that car only got me about thirty miles and I had to start walking. I kept on walking.”

I understood Madison a little better, her journey and what she had gone through. It was no wonder she didn’t hold hope that her family was alive, and that with her bags she carried so much sadness. She had seen things I hadn’t.

I also understood why Madison was like she was with Ruth. Apologetic and empathetic. Eager to help her, clean her, make her well. It was almost as if by helping Ruth she was in a way, making up for being unable to help her grandmother.

One thing was certain, while I wasn’t forefront in cleaning Ruth and getting her stronger, Madison and I were on the same page. Wheelchair or not, there was no way we were leaving Ruth behind. We’d bring her with us and make it work. I was willing to bet, even though Ruth was unable to walk, there was a lot of wisdom in her ninety year old mind that would come in handy.

Even though it was just a little past five PM, night had fallen and we hunkered down for the evening in room 213. It had been vacant before anything happened and it was free from any bodies. We made a mattress on the floor so Ruth could lie down, then with nothing else to do but wait and plan, we sat around talking. Ruth told us that initially, after the cloud and the quakes a lot of residents did survive. None of the staff though, except for Stevie. How he managed to get oxygen on remained a mystery. Madison joked that perhaps he was sucking on it as a form of a high. After all he was young.

Ruth explained that he was about twenty, she wasn’t sure. Everyone looked very young to her.

Initially, Stevie left. In search of his family, but they had passed away, and so he returned.

Stevie did all that he could, she said. But with those that remained, a lot suffered injuries in the quake, broken bones and hips that were untreatable under the circumstances. In addition, insulin and any other medication that needed a refrigerator had gone bad, and those individuals died as well.

Eventually it was Ruth, Stevie, and just a couple others.

“After Bernie next-door died,” Ruth said. “Stevie knew he had to go get help. That’s when he went.”

She told us that he had left her water and food, before he took off. It struck me as odd. Why would he do that? Why would he leave her supplies if he was coming back? Unless he was fearful he wouldn’t, or he knew he wouldn’t. In any event it just didn’t make sense that he would stay there after the quake and help her and then just leave without returning. In my mind, and in my heart, something happened to the boy, Stevie. Unfortunately, in a world without phones or people, unless he walked through the door we could very well never know what happened to him.

Every time Ruth took a sip out of the airline bottle of booze, it sounded like her top lip kept getting stuck.

“You okay there?” Madison asked her.

“Yeah, pass me more of those olives, please, thanks.” Ruth reached for them and hiccupped. “Like having a martini in segments.”

I saw Madison’s face. She looked down to the three empties and watched Ruth finish a fourth.

“I don’t usually drink like this,” Ruth said, “I need to relax and this is the first night in awhile I’ve done that. Ever sit alone in the dark? You hear things.”