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The room descended into chaos. Nate rushed over while I ran to the wall and flipped on the light, bathing everyone in the harsh glow of the overhead fluorescents.
"He's breathing..." Nate said. He turned to one of the guys. "Help me get this off him."
As they worked on pulling off the shelving, Lottie whipped out her phone. "The ambulance is on its way," she said, hanging up.
"I'll go down and meet them," I offered.
"Actually, could you get everyone out of here?" Nate asked. His eyes shifted nervously toward the gaping hole in the floor as he lied, "I don't know how much room the EMTs are going to need to work."
I realized we had no idea how stable this building was. Last thing we needed was to make the headlines because the hardware store had collapsed.
I turned to everyone on the tour. "Follow me."
Everyone seemed completely onboard with that idea, and they filed out behind me to wait outside. The cool night air was welcome to the staleness of that storeroom. A couple of the girls were crying softly from the shock.
But Lottie was on it. She took control of the situation. "If you'll all follow me to the saloon, I'm sure that Trevor would be happy to comp you all a free drink!" Lottie turned to me and whispered, "He'll comp them a drink, right?"
"Remind him that if he is able to counter all the impending bad word-of-mouth with a beverage, he'll be getting off cheap."
Lottie nodded in understanding, then turned back to the group. "Let's go! I don't know about you, but I sure could use a stiff one!"
There were chuckles of identifying laughter. Honestly, watching how well she did in a crisis, I could totally see why Nate had liked her. She was able to disarm everyone and unite them and even get them laughing a little about the whole horrible situation. I, personally, wished I could have joined them all for that beverage.
But instead, I folded up my arms to keep warm as I waited for the ambulance. It was there just moments later. Tim and his crew came running out with their backboard and gurney.
"Right this way," I said, opening the door for them.
There was a decrepit, ancient freight elevator and after a little trial and error, we were able to get it to work. By the time we got upstairs, Tango was awake but woozy.
"I think the shelf may have broken his leg," Nate said as the guys rushed over to check Tango out.
Tim came over to talk to us while his fellow EMTs took Tango's vitals and worked out how to get him onto the backboard with the least amount of pain.
"Is he going to be okay?" I asked.
Tim nodded as he pulled out a clipboard and clicked his pen. "We'll get him patched up. Just so we can tell the doctors, what exactly happened?"
"I guess it was just a rotted floorboard," Nate stated. "With the added weight of everyone up here, it just cracked. And then he reached out to catch his fall and pulled the shelf over on himself."
"Heck of an accident," said Tim, shaking his head to take notes. "Gotta get an inspector in here to figure out if it was just the board or if there is larger structural damage." He then half-joked, "We should also probably have Stan and Fred check it out to make sure the floorboard wasn't sawed or whatever conspiracy they'll come up with this week."
As soon as Tim said it, though, I thought back to the little saw that Echo had purchased in the hardware shop. He wouldn't have sliced through the floorboard, would he? Their professional rivalry wouldn't have caused him to stoop that low, would it have?
I glanced over and my eyes fell upon the board. A chill ran through my blood. The wood wasn't splintered. There was a clean cut.