EARTHQUAKE - Chapter 2

Mary Cusak drove into Luxora and went to the Mane Event beauty salon. Sissy was waiting for her. Mary was her first appointment. She liked Mary. Mrs. Cusak was a pleasant person. Not all customers are pleasant. Not even most customers are pleasant. Mary would tell her what she wanted. If Barbara suggested something different or something additional, Mrs. Cusak listened politely, thanked her for the suggestion, but always stayed with her original requests. After Barbara had finished with her, Mary  always thanked her, complimented her work, and tipped her as she paid.

Mary was a woman of medium height, with a trim and shapely body. Her complexion was like buttermilk and her hair was the color of a shade called “dawn on a summer morning” on one of the boxes of hair tint. Mrs. Cusak wanted a shampoo and her hair put up in rollers. After her hair was dry, she wanted her hair combed out. That was all that she wanted today. They made small talk while Sissy was shampooing and rinsing Mary’s hair.

The next appointment, Miss Heloise Brumstel came in early. She sat down in the other chair and showed by her air that she wanted to be waited on without delay. Sissy knew from past experience that nothing she would do for Miss Brumstel would be deemed satisfactory, that she would have to endure a steady flow of criticism, complaints, and malicious remarks about her own efforts and about many other people.

Mary was sitting under the dryer. It was like a chrome, outsize football helmet. The floor began to shake violently. Jars and scissors went flying through the air. Something hit the dryer with a loud bang, no doubt protecting her head from serious injury. The ceiling began to fall with large chunks of material and clouds of dust. There was a loud roar as the walls collapsed and the roof came down. Mary found herself face down on the floor. She had heard the other two women screaming. One scream ended suddenly with a gurgle. There were no more screams. After a while there was an eerie silence, interrupted at times by electrical crackling or water dripping.

Directly in front of her she could see daylight. She began to crawl in that direction. There was no possibility of standing or even kneeling. She kept crawling until she reached the broken out front window. Just as she reached the ledge of the window, the roof above her began splintering and cracking. A bunch of debris fell down burying her legs. She was trapped on the very cusp of escape. There was no point in crying out. There was no one on the street.

The sun rose higher in the sky. She began to feel like a person out on the desert with no sign of life or of water. Occasionally she would hear isolated sounds in the distance. The street on which the beauty salon was located must be blocked. Were there other people similarly trapped? Every once in a while she would call out. It was a futile effort and she was getting weaker. She passed out. 

Two men on an all-terrain vehicle saw her bright red head hanging over the ledge of a window. They didn’t know if she was dead or not. One of them came up and reached to feel her neck for a pulse. She awoke and whispered, “Help me. Please help me.”

The two men tried to pull her out but were unable. They called on their radio. The dispatcher told them that he would log the location and a rescue team would be sent as soon as one was available. In the meantime, they were to continue their mission of looking for survivors. One of the men came back to Mary. He gave her a bottle of water and an energy bar and told her that a rescue team would come as soon as one was available. She saw them roar off and turn down the street toward the rear of the building. Her heart sank, and she cried. The sun shone bright and the temperature rose with it. Mary became aware of foul smells that changed whenever the breeze changed direction.

She began to hear loud sounds of materials crashing, engines straining. Occasionally, a helicopter flew overhead. She nursed the bottle of water and made the energy bar last as long as she could. By evening exhaustion and despair took over. She passed out or dozed off. She was awakened by a chorus of voices.

“I’ll check her vital signs.”

“Holy cow. How are we going to get her out from under all that debris?”

“When we start moving the debris, that roof is liable to trap one of us.”

Mary heard all this and prayed, “Lord, please don’t let them give up. Use them to get me out of here.”

The men worked one at a time. Most of the time they had to use their hands. The space was too tight to use a shovel. Often their work caused Mary pain but she squinched her eyes and gritted her teeth. At one point someone put a tourniquet on her right leg and then the pain was unbearable. The same person wrote on her forehead with a magic marker. She could smell the ink. After what seemed an eternity, one of the men said, “I think that has got it. Let’s try to pull her out.”

While they were pulling her out and then carrying her on a stretcher, Mary was in tremendous pain and passed out before they loaded her onto the ambulance. The woman, a paramedic, hung a bag of saline solution. In normal circumstances, she would be talking to a doctor at the hospital. The hospital itself had suffered considerable damage. They were taking casualties to a large hangar at the Osceola airport.  There were some doctors and nurses there doing what they could with scant supplies. From there casualties were being flown to hospitals away from the earthquake zone. Little Rock hospitals were already filled to their emergency capacity. That meant they had beds in all the hallways. They were now flying patients from Blytheville and Osceola to Fayetteville, Arkansas, Monroe, Louisiana, and even Tulsa, Oklahoma.

When Mary regained consciousness, a doctor and a nurse were looking down at her.

“Clean up her legs the best you can. Give her whatever antibiotic we have left. Tag her as urgent. Get her on the next plane. It will take all we can do, all they can do, and a lot of help from God to save her legs.”

After the doctor left, the nurse knelt down beside her.

“What is your name, sweetie?”

“Mary Catherine Cusak.”

“Do you live in Luxora?”

“No, Victoria.”

 “What is your husband’s name?”

 “Karl Ruderich Cusak”

“Do you have any children?”

“Just one, a daughter, Dana Delania Cusak.”

“Are you allergic to penicillin?”

“No.”

“Have you had anything to eat?”

“Just a candy bar and a bottle of water this morning.”

Mary had drifted off to sleep when the nurse returned. There was a volunteer with her. The nurse gave Mary a shot and then said,

“This is Karen. Karen is going to feed you some soup. Eat slowly and don’t get choked. If you feel nauseous let her know.”

After eating the soup, Mary drifted off to sleep again. When she awoke, she was being moved onto a litter and she felt sharp pain while she was being moved and then dull pain at every bounce and bump as she was moved out to the plane. When the plane took off, the noise was unbearable. In the air the plane bounced occasionally which caused more pain. Landing was a fiery storm of pain. She passed out.

The next time she was conscious, Mary was in a hospital bed. A nurse leaned over her and said,

“Mary Cusak, welcome to Monroe, Louisiana. We have some wonderful doctors. They are going to do their best to make it possible to walk out the doors on your way back to Arkansas. Some aides are going to bathe you. I know you are probably hungry. You have a fever, so we will have to just give you some liquids until we get your temperature down.”

Mary knew that the aides were as gentle as they could be, but it hurt every time they moved her and even more every time they touched her legs. Maybe it was a good sign that she had feeling in her legs.

After she had been bathed and was in a hospital gown, a doctor came to see her.

“Mrs. Cusak, I am your surgeon, Dr. Jacob Kubicki. I won’t lie to you. You have a serious injury to your legs. We will x-ray your legs and then maybe take an MRI. If any of your bones were crushed, that would have sent a poisonous toxin through your body. The tourniquet was to retard its progress. Even if none of them is crushed, you could have broken bones. If so, we will have to immobilize the broken bones. Because of the cuts and abrasions on both of your legs, we can’t put on a plaster cast. I want you to know the complications we face. After the x-rays and maybe an MRI, I’ll know a lot more and I’ll speak with you more at that time.”

After she had had a cup of jello and some bouillion, a nurse came to draw blood for the laboratory. Another nurse and aide came with a gurney to take her to X-ray. After several x-rays were taken, they wheeled her out into the hallway.

Not long afterward, Dr. Kubicki came to stand beside her.

“Mrs. Cusak, I have examined the x-rays and studied the results of your blood work. Your left leg is crushed about two inches above the ankle. The crushing injury has sent a poisonous toxin into your blood stream. We must amputate your leg to remove the crushed portion. Then we will use dialysis and antibiotics to attack the poison already in your blood stream. I need for you to sign this form giving us permission to perform the amputation. If we do not proceed now, you will die from the injury in a few days’ time.”

Mary would have screamed if she had the energy. Inside her head there was a primal scream going up and down in pitch like an air raid siren. Physically all that she could manage was a pitiful sob. The doctor was holding a pen and a clip board with a form she had to sign. Signing a paper like signing a note at the bank, except that this time, after she signed, they would take their pound of flesh right away. When she hesitated, the doctor asked, “Do you have any questions about the surgery that I can answer?” She shook her head and signed the paper.
   They rolled her down to the operating room. A nurse started an IV and another nurse gave her a shot and told her to start counting backward from 25. Before she reached 18, she was asleep. When she woke up in the recovery room, she was confused. Someone told her that the surgery went well. Later, someone told her that they would be taking her to ICU in an hour or so. Gradually she became more conscious of her surroundings and remembered that she had agreed to let them amputate part of her leg.

She remembered the first words that were said to her when she was brought to this hospital, ‘Mary Cusak, welcome to Monroe, Louisiana. We have some wonderful doctors. They are going to do their best to make it possible to walk out the doors on your way back to Arkansas.’