David’s face was
full of concern while he watched me for a moment before he spoke again. “I’m
going to continue now.” His hands resumed their palpating down the rest of my
back side.
“Portia, can you
push your feet against my hands?”
I pushed them
against him like he’d asked.
“That’s great,” he
said. “Now I’m going to check your arms.”
“Ouch!” I said as
soon as he started, wondering what was wrong now.
“You have a lot of
tiny shards of glass embedded in the undersides of your arms and your hands. I’m
not going to check them anymore, but since you can’t squeeze my hands, can I
get you to wiggle your fingers for me?”
I slowly wiggled
my fingers.
“That’s good.” He
lifted his head to look over the top of me. “Over here!” he called to someone I
couldn’t see.
“My friend Maggie
was right next to me,” I said, still worried about her.
“Maggie?” David
asked. “What’s her last name?”
“Pratt,” I said. “Do
you see her?”
“I haven’t seen
her, but don’t worry. There are a lot of people here to help out. We’ll find
her.”
I could still feel
the tears trickling down my face, leaving cold watery trails as they traveled
along. I started to shiver even harder, I couldn’t control it.
“Portia, my
partner is here now. His name is Kevin. He’s brought a backboard, which we’re
going to put you on to help protect your spine and any other injuries you might
have. It’s probably going to be very uncomfortable for you, but it’s
necessary.”
“All right,” I
said, and a new face floated into my view.
“Hey, Portia, I’m
Kevin. I just want to give you a few instructions. When we move you, we need
you to let us do all the work. Don’t try to move anything yourself. Do you
understand?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I’m going
to place this board up next to you, and David and I are going to turn you on
your side against it. Are you ready?”
“I’m ready.”
I felt one of them
lift my arm and lay it gently up by my head.
“Keep your arm
right here,” Kevin instructed. “Okay, Portia. We’re going to turn you on the
count of three now. One, two, three.”
They rolled me in
unison onto my side.
I clenched my
teeth to keep from screaming out, but was unable to suppress the sound.
“You’re doing
great!” David said with a reassuring smile. “We’re going to do the same thing
one more time, only this time we will lay you back onto the board. Ready? One,
two, three.”
It was then I
realized a third person had been there holding the backboard, while Kevin had
held my head and David had rolled me.
“Hello, Portia,
I’m Pam,” the female firefighter said to me. “Kevin’s going to continue holding
your head while we get you strapped in now.”
She produced
several belts and a roll of duct tape, as well as some sort of cardboard thing
she snapped together. She held something up to my neck.
“This is a C-collar.
It’s to protect your cervical spine. I’m going to wrap it around your neck
now.”
While she was
placing it on me, David was crisscrossing several buckling belts over my body
and securing them to the backboard.
After they were
done, they slid the cardboard thing around my head.
“We’re going to
tape your head down with this to keep it from moving. It’s just a precautionary
measure to protect your spine as well,” he explained.
I soon felt like a
mummy, wrapped up in a papoose.
“We’re ready to
move her out!” Kevin called to someone out in the hall.
I felt myself
being lifted up into the air, and I was carefully carried over the great piles
of debris. They moved me out of the classroom door and into the hallway. Someone
came up and put a blanket over my freezing body after I was placed on a gurney.
I was strapped down again, and then wheeled down the hallway.
As we rolled
along, I noticed several of the light fixtures were busted and hanging from the
ceiling. Foam tiles were missing too, leaving gaping holes up into the dark
space above. When the doors opened to the outside, I had to shut my eyes
against the light of the bright, cloudy sky.
I was rolled to a
waiting ambulance, and when they were putting me inside, I opened my eyes,
catching my first and only glimpse of the school.
There was a giant
gaping hole where my classroom had once stood, and rubble spilled out of the
building. Policemen were swarming the grounds with dogs.
I noticed at
least three long black bags lying in a spot on the snow-covered grass. Body
bags, I realized. That meant people were dead, people who were my classmates. I
started crying again.
“Hey, Portia,
you’re doing great,” David said, reassuring me again as he climbed in to sit on
the seat next to me, while Kevin slammed the doors shut behind him.
I didn’t answer.
“I’m going to
start an I.V. on you now. This is just in case I need to give you any
medication or if you were to need surgery or something. Kevin’s going to be
driving us to the hospital, and you’ll be hearing the sirens. There are a lot
of bystanders and heavy traffic out on the road, so we need them to get through
everyone.”
“Okay,” I said,
hearing the loud wailing sound of the vehicle as we began to move.
David started the
I.V. in the back of my hand, since the other side of my arm was covered in
glass.
“All done!” he
said, when he had the I.V. securely taped. “Hey, Kevin? Can you patch to the
hospital for me while I take her vitals?”
“Sure thing,”
Kevin called back from the front of the ambulance.
A minute later he
called back to David.
“Verde Valley has
requested that we defer to Flagstaff Medical Center under the circumstances. They
said they have a chopper on standby at their facility if we need it.”
“Yeah, let’s do
that. I don’t want to have to bounce her all the way to Flag in this weather.”
“My mom’s a
pediatric nurse at Verde Valley,” I said then.
“Really? What’s
her name?” David asked me.
“Stacey Mullins. She’s
working today.”
“Kevin!” David
called up to the front. “You’d better get Verde back on the horn. This is
Stacey Mullins’s kid.”
My mom was
standing at the emergency room door when the ambulance backed into the bay, and
a flight crew was standing there with her.
“Portia?” my mom
called out to me, and I could hear the worry straining her voice.
“Mom!” I choked
back, emotion at the sound of her voice flooding me, and I started crying
again.
She started to
reach for my hand, but David stopped her.
“She has glass
embedded in her hands and arms, Stacey,” he warned, and she pulled her hand
back to her chest.
“How is she?” she
asked him, though her eyes never left my face.
“Let’s talk while
we walk,” David said, motioning to the flight nurse that he was ready to give
his report.
The flight nurse
began writing everything David said on his clipboard. Even though I could
hardly understand any of the medical jargon he was saying, my mom seemed to be
getting the gist of it all.
“We have a sixteen
year-old female, Portia Mullins, who’s the victim of a possible chemical
explosion at Sedona High School. Portia was thrown across the room, unknown how
far, and slammed into a brick wall. The ceiling of the classroom fell in
completely, on top of the occupants. She was found up against the wall, lying
on her stomach over a pile of debris and is complaining of severe back pain in
the lumbar spine. Deformity is noted in the same area.”
I heard my mom
gasp.
“Patient is able
to move all extremities at this time with good pulses and capillary refill. Full
C-spine precautions and one hundred percent O2 by non-rebreather were initiated
on scene. An eighteen gauge I.V. was started in her left hand enroute to this
facility via ambulance. Pupils have been equal and reactive to light, and
patient is alert and oriented. Initial O2 sats were at ninety percent on room
air, and patient is now saturating at ninety-eight percent on one hundred
percent oxygen. Pulse is up a little at one hundred and ten. I was unable to
get a blood pressure due to the shards of glass in her extremities.”
“Very good,” the
flight nurse responded, glancing over at me. “We’ll take her from here.”
David and Kevin
helped to move me from the gurney and loaded me into the helicopter.
“Good luck,
Portia,” David said, resting his hand gently on me. “We have to go back to the
scene now, but we’ll check in on you later when we get the chance.”
“Thanks,” I said
to them, watching them walk away while the flight crew tightened all my
restraints.
“Hi, Portia. My
name is Scott,” a male voice said. “I’ll be your flight nurse from here to
Flagstaff, along with my partner today, Mary Ann. She’s a paramedic. Your mom
is coming with us. She’s going to sit up front with the pilot. His name is
Stan.”
“I’m right over
here, honey. Daddy’s on his way to Flagstaff to meet us,” my mom called out to
me.
I couldn’t see
her, but it was comforting to know she was still here with me.
“Portia, we’re
getting ready to start up the chopper. It’ll be very loud, so we’ll be placing
a headset down through your cardboard brace to cover your ears. There’ll be a
microphone too, so you can talk to us if you need to. We’ll be wearing the
headsets also.”
“All right,” I
said.
Scott soon had me
set up with the headgear, and I could see the helicopter’s blades begin to
whirl in the air outside my window. Pretty soon they were moving at a very fast
pace.
“Here we go,”
Scott’s voice cut in through the headset.
We lifted off the
ground easily, and I could hardly tell we were moving through the air. It was
kind of like being in a giant bubble.
“I’ll just be
checking your vitals again while we’re in the air,” Scott said, his voice
clicking on and off through the headset. “The flight to F.M.C. is very short. It’ll
take about ten or fifteen minutes. Are you doing okay?”
“Yes.” I closed my
eyes and thinking I wasn’t okay at all. I was terrified for Vance.
True to Scott’s
word, we soon began our descent onto the helipad, down to the heavily snowed
roof of the hospital.
“We’re here now,”
Scott explained. “We’ll wait a minute for the chopper to shut down, and then
we’ll get out. After that we’ll be putting you on another gurney and then
taking you on an elevator down to the emergency room on the ground floor.”
“You’re doing
great, baby!” my mom’s voice came over the headset, trying to reassure me.
I was soon
unloaded from the helicopter. Mom walked by my side as I was wheeled into an
elevator, where we were met by a trauma nurse and an E.R. doctor.
Scott gave them
his report, and I was wheeled into one of the trauma rooms and switched over to
another bed.
“The doctor will
be right in,” the trauma nurse said to my mom while hooking me up to a bunch of
monitors.
“Thank you,” she
replied, coming to stand next to the bed and finally, for a few moments, we
were alone.
“Momma,” I cried
in a whisper. “Something happened to Vance.”
“Was he with you?”
she asked, looking concerned.
“No. He was
running to help me, and then … I don’t know. He just disappeared.”
“What do you mean
he disappeared?”
“Everything’s gone.
I can’t reach him. Mentally there’s nothing, and the farther we flew from
Sedona, the worse my pain got.”
The doctor came
into the room at that moment.
“I’ll let your dad
know immediately,” Mom reassured me.
I spent the next
hour answering all the same questions over and over again, before I was finally
wheeled in to get a cat scan.
The backboard,
with me on it, was slid into the giant machine, and I could hear it whirring loudly
as it took the pictures. Thirty minutes later I was wheeled back into the
trauma room where my mom, dad, and grandma were all waiting for me.
“Hey, Pumpkin. How
are you hanging in there?” my dad asked, bending to give me a kiss on the
forehead.
“Not so great, Dad.
Has anyone heard from Vance?”
I noticed him
exchanging a worried look with Grandma over my head.
“Just concentrate
on you right now, honey,” he said, evading the question.
“Dad. Ninety
percent of the physical pain I’m in right now is because Vance isn’t with me. If
you know something, then please tell me. I don’t know how much longer I can
survive this.”
He stared at me
for a few seconds, working his jaw a bit before he spoke.
“It’s bad, Pumpkin.
Really bad,” he said, sadly shaking his head. “Are you sure you’re up for it?”
“Please just tell
me.” All sorts of horrible thoughts began running through my head.
“Babs went to tell
Marsha about the explosion at the school,” he began. “When she got to Marsha’s
house she found her there. She’s dead, honey. Someone killed her. All of her
belongings were strewn everywhere, and all of Vance’s things are missing. The
police are still there.”
I gasped at the
news. “They don’t think Vance is responsible, do they?” I replied in shock, my
heart breaking into a million pieces as I realized he’d lost another family
member.
“No. He was at the
school, so he has a good alibi. Sweetheart, Vance is missing though. No one has
heard from him, and no one can find him since the explosion happened. I’m
beginning to think the whole thing at the school may have been orchestrated as
a cover to kidnap him.”
He was right, and
I knew it. I felt as if everything inside me had died, and I began sobbing
hysterically, unable to keep the terror at bay any longer.
The nurse ran into
the room. “What’s wrong?” She looked at me with concern.