Jonathan Lee - High Dive

The room gloomed and the air was out of him again. He was a whimpering dog now, nothing more. There was a cry from somewhere high as he panted. It faded into the endless whistle in his ears. His leg was pulsing. His eyeball too. He thought of all the gloop inside him, the way it seemed so desperate to get out, and he felt himself going limp — back into darkness, a dog.

He woke to the foul smell of sewage. Through the thick stink of grey he watched the wound on his leg. It shivered. Why? Why had this happened here? Who? His body was convulsing less now. His wheezing was slowing, his airways adjusting.

Paper did a dance. With his weight on his elbow he took a fistful of these whirring papers — they were warm, they were his, they were kind — and now he was stuffing paper into the wound in his leg, paper into flesh and flesh becoming paper. The wound seemed to gurgle less. It had been a good idea.

Break it down. Break this down into steps.

The mottled concrete block that trapped his leg had a promising crack across it. He couldn’t shift a big block, but he could maybe shift two smaller ones. He needed to work the crack and make it material. Please God, I know I have ignored You for years. Let my daughter keep her life. Anyone else I will let You have. It is evil but I will let You have them.

She was outside, was she? He was 90 per cent sure she was outside. As percentages went it was nowhere near enough.

It burned to blink. Through stinging eyes he looked again at all this mess. There would be dozens of other wounded people in this building, people dying or dead or trapped on different floors, alone. Humans, creatures, suffering. It doubled his pain to know this. He started weeping. Could not help it. A gift of life gone. The weeping eased his eyes. A breeze came now and this was lovely, no sulphur scent at all.

Come on, you fool. Come on.

He twisted his body to the left. Paused. Tried to use his elbow as a kind of jack — winch himself backwards, free his leg. Didn’t work.

Freya was outside, definitely. Would be outside in the air, the clean dark air, his daughter in the fine night air outside. Please let her be outside. She was outside. He coughed. Maybe with Marina, in the air outside. He’d seen Freya going out. If she was all right outside then everything else would be all right. All right. Ah, ah, ah.

Vision blurring again, he lifted his good arm. Felt for the crack in the concrete block. Dug his fingers in. Paused for breath. Got his fingers in there, squeezing. Try to burrow. It didn’t work.

The darkness was now more red-brown than grey and something black swept down, a bird or bat he thought, but it clattered in front of him and he saw what it was: a fucking security camera, a ghost from the future.

This time he gave himself ten seconds before stretching his right arm up. His plan was to get a grip on the other concrete block. The one behind him, planet-sized, causing him no bother at all. And none of this was the old hotel’s fault — he would not let anyone attribute blame — and he backed his palm into the block and clutched its upper edge, an awkward angle for his hand. Everything required calculation: every breath, every movement. Well: he could calculate. Calculation was one of his things. He counted to five, panting, waiting for the next wave of pain, and another explosion of rubble came down, the building’s most vicious sneeze yet. When he recovered and got to five he gave himself an extra two. He tried to grip the smooth surface, haul himself back with his fingertips, unwedge his leg. He cried out, ‘Give me a chance.’ His chin was wet. He was grateful that his leg was numb. Lost his grip and the back of his head hit concrete. A howl. It didn’t work. He sensed now that his life was over, that death was the one constant thing, the destination he’d been heading to these last few weeks or years. He moaned and thrashed at this naked unfairness, pulled at his clothes in despair.

Then he thought, No. Just: no. He began to go wild on the concrete block. Began to go out-your-brain mental. He was all clawing, all thumping, all eyeball-surprise. He had an idea of unseen people urging him on. People saying, Come on, Moose, come on, Moose, come on. People thinking, Moose, Moose, I never liked you much, Moose, you’ve got a stupid name and a slow history and you’re a bit of a wet blanket, Moose; you’re a bit strange and soft-spined and irrelevant to what we’re interested in, Moose, but come on now, let’s get it together.

When he tired of his own frantic attack he saw that the crack in the block had opened up. Two sides of stone had relaxed into a roof around his knee. There was a change in the pressure in his leg. An astonishing happiness filled his heart.

He began twisting himself, breathing, oh, oh, oh. He saw his lower leg, the first sign of it, pale and swollen in his shredded trousers, an appalling sight but where was the pain now? Hello, pain, where are you? It had nothing left to attack him with. He howled as he hauled himself back, saw the pale pressed flesh shuffling out from under the concrete. Welcome back, lower leg! A blood rush now. A sense of what survival might mean. Pulling, twisting. Biting his lip. Imagining Father Christmas going ho, ho, ho. The pop of his leather loafer coming off. His foot was attached to his leg. Thank you for this gift, thank you.

He turned himself over. Considered the triangle of light on the other side of the room. Began planning a route through the debris. He was counting out seconds as crocodiles. He was allowing himself three crocodiles with his eyes still scrunched. One crocodile, two crocodiles, three. Who cared if he’d never done anything newsworthy? Day to day he had a daughter. Day to day he had shelter. His daughter would be outside and she would be one hundred per cent fine. He paused to warn the heavens that he would tolerate nothing less. He was in tears again as he crawled.

There were firemen now. Sirens. Red lights, blue lights, a confusion of noise. Police shouting ‘Back from the building! Back!’ Women in tattered dresses, men open-mouthed in the night. Chattering teeth and an ambulance.

She tugged at a fireman’s sleeve, needy. ‘My dad.’

‘Breathe!’

‘I’m already breathing! My dad’s in there.’

‘OK, OK.’ The fireman removed his hard hat. The fireman was in fact a firewoman. Her blonde hair was all balled up at the back and her eyebrows were drawn on with a pencil. Give me information, the firewoman said. His name, what he looks like, the area of the hotel he’d be in.

‘Finch,’ she said. ‘Philip. Moose.’

The firewoman shook her head. One lick of hair came loose. She made some notes on a folded piece of yellow paper and said we’re doing what we can, I’m sorry. If you think he was on the ground floor that’s good. She said this and then she put her enormous yellow hat back on, gave a policeman the piece of paper, pointed at Freya and whispered some words. Gone.

A tanned man wearing a baggy jumper and sports shorts was crouching over Susie. He had Twiglet legs. All he said about himself were the words ‘off duty’ and then ‘I don’t sleep so well’. He was touching Susie’s ankle like he could heal it by the power of thought alone and basically the stage was set for a miracle. In a minute he’d fix everything else. ‘This will be …’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, this will be …’ and Susie whimpered right up until the point where he stuffed a hanky in her mouth. Her eyes went wide with fear. Freya failed to intervene. He took Susie’s foot firm in both hands and twisted it viciously, an awful cracking sound. Susie’s muffled scream; her bared teeth biting down on the hanky; her swelling eyes as it happened. He pulled the hanky out of her mouth, strings of spit bending onto his hand. Susie fought for breath. Bit her lip. It bled. Her body was convulsing. He told her, ‘Better now, better. You don’t want to leave these things too long.’ The foot was facing the right way. Calmly he waved to a paramedic. ‘I need a hand here, when you have a moment.’