Jason watched as Nathan opened his eyes and smiled down at the lap full of small children, all asleep and probably as warm as hot water bottles. Jason sat against the opposite wall, an answering small smile on his face. Nathan yawned and blinked.
“S’ten,” Jason offered softly, knowing Nathan would ask. Twenty-seven hours since the quake.
“Sleep at all, dude?” Nathan asked, and Jason nodded. No sense in letting Nathan see he had hardly slept at all.
“Some. Was helping around a bit and some of the kids were kinda restless.”
“You should have woken me, Jase, I coulda maybe helped.”
“Nah, I handled it. Anyway, we are so outta here in two. Some new med staff came in, volunteers, and all the wounded have been triaged and moved. We’re kinda some of the last left at this station.”
“Where they moving us to?”
“They have a center, a children’s center, they want us there. Well, they want the children there, and I’m staying with them.” Jason didn’t ask if Nathan was staying as well. He could see the conflict in his friend’s eyes, the desperation to see Ryan, to make sure he was all right, warring against the need for the kids to maybe be reunited with their families. Finally, he saw a decision in the calm set of his friend’s face.
“I’ll come with you and get the kids to the center, but then I’m going to find Ryan,” Nathan finally offered, closing his eyes briefly, a frown on his face. Jason sighed inwardly. It hurt him to see his friend like this, hurt him to see Nathan so desperate to make sure Ryan was mending but being unable to reach him, the two sites having no direct communication. Batteries had long since died in cells, reception was sporadic, and the only communication they did have, via the Army, was restricted for emergencies only.
Jason had known Nathan for so long. They had met in acting school and just fell into friendship as easy as breathing. To his mind, he’d never seen Nathan so conflicted. It had always seemed to Jason that Nathan saw events in black and white. He was so strong in his beliefs and his opinions—always so quiet unless he had something he needed to say, kinda shy, and desperate to keep to himself. Jason often pointed out that the Virginian farm boy had sure chosen the wrong career if he wanted anonymity. Nathan had argued back that it wasn’t anonymity he craved, just a small amount of personal space.
And now, looking over as Nathan began to wake up the children one by one with quiet words and hugs, words of reassurance slipping from his tongue, Jason had his first real look at the desperation in his friend’s face whenever Ryan’s name was spoken. Every child asked where Ryan was. Jason sighed and made to stand, helping to peel off each sleepy child, finally helping a sleep-stiffened Nathan, his leg straight in front of him to protect his hip, to his feet.
“Think I may need some more,” Nathan wheezed, his free hand moving to his chest, “pain killers.” He was breathing steadily, but his face was pale, and a sheen of sweat glistened on his skin.
“I’ll grab some. Can you stand okay?”
“Standing…not a problem…breathing more so.” Then Nathan smiled, a wry smile, a sarcastic Nathan-smile, and it made Jason feel less deathly worried and more just normally worried.
“Come on, man, let’s go get these kids back where they belong and go find Ryan, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
They all clambered aboard the next transport through the smoke hanging in the air and the dust clogging their mouths and noses. Each child was passed up carefully from Jason to Nathan and, assisted by crew, strapped into place. Jason jumped up and sat next to Laurie, holding her hand and whispering something to her as the rotors started and they waited for the speed to pick up.
The sudden stomach-falling feeling of lifting from the ground made Jason’s head spin, and he felt several sets of small hands clutch at his Army-issue jacket. Sooner than he wanted, they were airborne. The men had been warned they would be taken above the low-level smoke, that they would cross the top edge of LA, and that they would see things that maybe the kids should be kept from seeing. They tried.
The climb through the spinning, wheeling smoke was disorienting and brutal. It sent shivers down Jason’s spine, like the climb to the top of a roller coaster before the fall. He didn’t want to see LA destroyed. Not his city. He needed to see, but he didn’t want to.
At first it was difficult to make out. The ground below was hidden by the low-hanging pall of smoke and a large debris field, but LA was tall. LA had buildings that kissed the sky in their grace and beauty—or it once had. Now they had mostly vanished. Some remained, the glass gone, tilted, slanted, their backs broken, as if a small breath would topple them to the hidden floor below. Blinds hung out of eyeless frames, and desks, chairs, and jumbled furniture were only briefly seen as the chopper climbed higher, escaping the height of the tallest remaining buildings.
An insistent glow of orange travelled the tallest skyscrapers, fires burning unceasingly inside, fuelled by the normal parts of office life. Surely these buildings would have been virtually empty so early in the morning. Surely hardly anyone had died. The people who commuted would have still been at home, and they wouldn’t have been at desks, trapped… Would they?
Jason realized he couldn’t identify much of what was left, couldn’t make out the skyline from the ruins below, and part of him wished he had a camera to capture the stark destruction, to understand where the LA he knew had gone. He looked over at Nathan, seeing tears in his friend’s eyes, wishing he could cry himself, wishing he had something in him that would snap and let out the emotion that was eating away inside of him.
He couldn’t indulge in his own fears and sorrow, not in front of the kids. He recognized Nathan’s protective way of dealing with things had taken over, shutting him down, and his usual safety valve to release the tension—Ryan—was nowhere near him. Nathan had said in their alcohol-fueled talk a few days before the quake that he could always rely on Ryan to talk him out of his isolationist coping mechanism, prank him out of it, joke with him, make him laugh, kiss him… Jason wanted to help in the same way, but it was impossible.
Nathan was clearly desperate for information on Ryan, frantic to see him. Jason hoped they would find Ryan whole and awake, not the still, white-bandaged body they’d flown away the night before.
Jason turned away from Nathan, because he couldn’t bear to see the tears on his friend’s face. Instead he looked over the vista that was a burning, destroyed LA. He felt empty.
* * * * *
When they arrived at the new area, Nathan sat down tiredly. Jason took care of booking the children into the children’s center, but Nathan kept Laurie on his lap. She was the very last to be processed. Nathan didn’t want to let her go, and Ryan wouldn’t want him to.
“Sir, Mr. Richardson, we just need to process this little one now.”
“I know…” He paused. “Her name is Laurie, Laurie Allen, and she’s three. We found her up by Dryden, in the hills, in a car.”
“Can you describe the car, sir? Or any other details?”
“I didn’t see, I’m sorry but my partner did. Ryan, Ryan Ortiz…”
“Can you spell that for me, sir?”
Jason took over, spelling and giving as many of Ryan’s details as he could. Nathan took advantage of the time, pulling Laurie in for one last hug before standing and passing her over to the kindly woman taking the details.
“We can check back.” Nathan knew he wanted to see if Laurie was happy, if she had been reunited with someone…anyone.
“You can, sir, you can.”
Nathan and Jason watched as the last of their babies were taken through the security doors. They had seen inside, knew it was a better environment than following around two tired men, but still, to see Laurie waving over the woman’s shoulder was not good, not good at all.
“Nathan, let’s go find Ryan.”