Travelin' Time A French Journal

“Well isn’t this dandy,” Maddie said aloud lying on a hospital bed between the dining room table and the living room in the house she grew up in and still cohabitated with a younger sister and working mother.  She never desired much from living, a job, chores around the house, family, friends and a retirement nest-egg to sit on the back porch and read to old age.  Father passed away years ago leaving them to frolic in a women’s domain of make do and careers.  But it was her job that brought on this untimely, mid-life crisis.

Mary-Madeline began working as an orthopedic nurse for West General Hospital, an enjoyable fourteen years of health care service.  Friends, the hospital staff, wound their way in and out of her lifelong ambition.  Night shifts and major cutbacks swayed her occupational advancement with an additional degree as a nurse practitioner.  The last four years was a comfy position as an employee health nurse for a large manufacturing concern.  Treadmills, blood tests and the occasional sick one in day care routined her days. 

It was an ordinary Tuesday when the emergency call came, beckoning her to the warehouse.  Something mechanical had gone very wrong.  Not since 1942, during wartime had there even been a glimmer of operational malfunction.  Way back then a conveyor belt busted in mid-production.  Not a single injury was reported by the all-ladies day shift.

*    *    *

Three bodies covered in blood lay beneath a twisted steel sculpture of a former thriving assembly consortium.  Arriving amidst the drenching red, flashing emergency lights, Maddie without pretense grabbed an idle med-kit and wood stretcher with rope.  Handing a reluctant paramedic the end of the rope she ventured forth braving metal and machine to attempt a rescue.  Raw blood greased the pavement as she weaved her way through the maze of broken remnants.  Fine machine dust permeated the air filled with a fireworks display of sparks raining from above.  The still of darkness cloaked the scene like a black-hooded mask.  She paused, gravity fed sweat poured down he face and back--the air conditioning system went out along with the ceiling lights.  A steel beam held her resting torso.  She waited.  Commands echoed the efforts to restore main power.  With a startle, emergency lights pierced the enclosure.  She resumed the rescue, crawling over fallen girders and sprawling webs of brass wire.  The moans of affliction and the eerie twinkling of wind chime sounds from the mangled debris kept her objective clear.

Multiple adhesive-gauze patches and a pressure bandage to a large gash on a leg sent one freed victim of circumstance to safety.  The accumulating crew pitched in and pulled the woman out.  A body-taped arm and a full, left leg splint made from wreckage were the first aid procedures to a second breathing casualty.  A brave medic weaved the gurney back in again while waiting, a lifeless body of a black man rested.  No pulse penetrated his dark brown wrist.  Blood covered an injured skull and expressionless face.  Breathing deeply and coughing from the stench of this fractured environment, Maddie dragged the dead man to a less cluttered area near the sounds of torches scorching the outside wall.  Liberation was close to reality.

Far off screams, screeching metal and bolts machine-gunning from above forced a last ditch attempt.  Everyone ringside froze, shoes concreted in place, they looked helplessly on.  Throwing herself atop the wounded corpse, the ceiling remains swung down a crippling finale.

Sirens chilled the warm humid air of summer.  A hole brought forth life to a disastrous scene.  Mary-Madeline was nearly unconscious, just the blinking of her glassy eyes kept her awake.  Pain sliced her lower appendages.  Bleeding and blood stained, medics carried her through the man-made crevice for ambulance transport.  The walking wounded watched the last two depart.  The vehicle glided, sirens shrilled and red lights flashed a memory of the next week’s in-hospital bedside care.  It would be back to “nurse land” only this time she was the patient in need.

Strapped to a traction unit with bedpan and catheter the company insurance ran out.