Sirens•Evan Buckley

Help is not coming.

"That's it. You're doing great. You've uh- you've done this before haven't you?" We we're making our way down the wrecked and crooked stairs a few hours after Eddie had pulled the girl up, when Buck made that comment. "Yeah uh, it was my major at the Rhode Island School of Design. Sorry, sorry sarcasm is my fallback for pretty much everything." "Totally get it" He said in response. The seconds after that we're just reassuring words from either Myself, Buck or Eddie. Us trying to get her calmed down and less nervous, we didn't blame her for being nervous hell, we were, but we needed her to be calm just in case. "You think he'll still be on the sidewalk when we get down there?" She didn't have to say who she was talking about for us to know. "No. And we're not going out that side anyway." Buck said responding. "Plus, it's usually protocol that when a man falls onto concrete.. we scrape him off as soon as possible" I was just following along with her past sarcasm but Buck and Eddie didn't find it funny. She did, it was the only time we'd heard her laugh, she had a beautiful laugh. "Let's hustle up you two. We don't wanna be here for the next aftershock." Eddie said, telling us politely to shut up and keep moving. "Wait, what do you mean the next aftershock!?" If there had been 16 already we needed to be prepared for a 17th and an 18th maybe even a 19th. After making our way further down the destroyed staircase Buck said "you've gotta be kidding me. We're not making it out this way." The stairs leading downward had been turned into rubble. Nothing but cement and metal. "Now what!?" She said, you could tell she was worried and on the brink of becoming frantic. "We go back up" Eddie said. A few seconds later Bobby came on the radio requesting a head count. "Ladder 118 responding. Diaz, Buckley and Andrews, we're good, Cap." We stopped to listen to the others respond. "The is Chimney. Responding" we knew that Hen went with Chim so we were obviously stopped dead in our tracks when he responded without her. "Hen do you copy. Hen, do you copy." We all looked at each other. Thinking the worst. Thinking the thing we all thought would never happen, happened to one of ours. "This is Captain Nash for Henrietta Wilson. Do you copy?" Nothing. Radio silence as they say. No one ever know what radio silence is like until they experience it themselves. "Is that a friend of yours" She said trying to, what I thought was, cut the tension. "Let's keep moving."

We made our way to a hallway where rooms were lined all across. "Miss, there's this egress on the North stairwell of this floor." Eddie said, "what if it's blocked too? Cant you guys get a ladder to one of the windows?" "It's too risky. The building shifted too much. No, we got this Abby. We'll get you out of here." Buck replied, he didn't seem to notice he used the wrong name but she did. "Ali" "what" buck asked, "you called me Abby. My names Ali." "Oh ya... sorry. Abby is my... its complicated" A little part of me was upset hearing him talk about a woman that he was involved with. "Isn't it always?" Ali said with a laugh. "Uh, she's in Europe. She's travelling. For the first time I'm glad she's not around. Don't need the worry." Ali leaned herself against a wall while we tried to get a wall to a point that we could go through it. "Having someone to worry about sounds... nice actually. All I do is work." She said while throwing back a small bottle of alcohol that was left on the cart of whoever cleaned the rooms up here. We looked at her slightly judgtngly. "What? It's after 5;00." Eddie turned around to keep working but me and Buck heard something.

"Hey hey hey hey hey. You guys hear that." Buck said questionably. "Ya.. actually I do." In the distance a man was screaming for help. Buck and I made our way in as fast as we could.   "Alright don't move, just relax. I need you to stay as still as possible." Buck said to the man. He was on his back laying on the ground, it looked like he had been hit in the head by the bar cart resulting in the bleeding we could see. "Ok we gotta roll him over. On three. One, two, three." I said to Buck and we flipped him on his side. I looked over at Ali and she seemed overwhelmed, I told Eddie to finish while I made my way over to see if she was doing okay. "You doing okay?" I asked when I got over to her, "ya, I'm doing really well." I remembered the sarcasm from earlier and looked over at her, "ya, you know what? Me too. We're here. We're alive-" I tried to lift her mood before she interrupted "we're stuck in a hotel that could tip over at any second.... God. I'm sorry I'm being a bitch aren't I?" I looked over and gave a little laugh. "No, I- I totally understand. You use humour and sarcasm to cope or try and hide behind it. I usually just start talking and then I don't stop, and before you know it I'm having a full blown conversation with myself instead of the person right beside me." I learned after about a day on the job that relating your own struggles to what the person you're trying to help, can help them more. Make them feel more comfortable. We stopped and overheard Buck and Eddie say something about a backboard, I knew we didn't have one so I, along with Ali, started looking for something that would work. "Guys, what about this?" I turned around to see Ali holding an ironing board. "Could work, but how do we get him down the stairwell?" Eddie seemed unsure of what we could do but an idea popped into mine and Bucks head and I said, "maybe we don't use the stairwell." "What do you mean what other way is there?" Me Buck made eye contact and said it together. "Elevator shaft"