A-Splendid-Ruin(68)
People combed desperately through the rubble, tossing aside brick and stone and wood. The eerie silence continued, punctuated by cries for help and rumbling and crashing, now and then an explosion. Even the sobbing and the groaning had a muffled, strangely quiet aspect. People paced the ruins. “My husband is dead!” “Where is my daughter? Have you seen her?” “Anna! Anna! Where are you?” They spoke in low, quick voices, spooked by the silence. Horses stomped nervously and whinnied. Dogs slunk about, jumpy and cowering and snappish. Rats scampered in confusion.
It took me a long time to work my way through the jigsaw of wreckage. The morning advanced, the sun undisturbed, the relentless press of time unaffected. Blood from my forehead dripped down my cheek and onto my dusty shoulder, but I hardly felt the gash. I had been lucky. Dead bodies lay in the street where people had dragged them from the ruins. Here, a leg protruded from a pile of rubble. There, a man sat on a heap of brick, sobbing over a dead woman half-buried at his feet.
The ground shifted, wakeful still. More than one person screamed. I stopped, my heart pounding. The earth breathed beneath my filthy, bloody feet, turning in its sleep, no longer something I could trust. I walked quietly, lightly, careful not to disturb, flinching at every sound, pausing to wait for the reaction, the restless waking, the roar, then relieved again when it was only a shudder.
I passed a crowd gathered to watch smoke rise from the streets below. “Fire,” said one man. I caught the eye of another driving a produce wagon, though I didn’t mean to, and he frowned and stopped. He called, “You should be in the hospital. Get in. I’ll take you.”
It was then I noticed there were others in the wagon as well, all hurt. The wagon would put greater distance between me and the asylum more quickly, so I didn’t protest, though I had no intention of going to any hospital—it was no place to hide—and who was to say one was still standing, anyway?
I climbed into the back, among baskets of carrots and cabbages and other wounded. It was only then I realized how much I hurt. The bottoms of my feet were shredded. I ached all over. The wagon slowed as the streets became mobbed with those escaping the city, people lugging personal treasures, framed pictures, carpetbags, men pulling playwagons loaded with children and possessions, hauling trunks that scraped and thudded relentlessly over the cobblestones. One woman had a parrot on her shoulder and carried a birdcage that held two kittens. A boy shuffled along holding a chromolithograph over his head. No one spoke, everyone was gray faced, and no one was running, but only walking in a steady, onward flow, and I had the sense that they too felt that the world was restless, that a wrong step could wake it again.
Soldiers—where had they come from so quickly?—were everywhere, directing digging men. The produce wagon stopped, and a soldier peered over the side at us.
“They need a hospital,” said the produce man.
“Mechanics’ Pavilion,” the soldier said. “Hurry up now.”
Mechanics’ Pavilion. No, that could not be right. It wasn’t a hospital. I had been there skating with Goldie. There would be people there I knew.
But that was another life. No one would be skating today.
The entrance of the Pavilion was cordoned off by police. Crowds pushed to get inside. One of the officers hauled me from the wagon and passed me to a nurse. I’d been off my feet long enough by then that they throbbed, no longer numb from shock and walking. They moved me and the others so quickly I had no time to argue or to thank the produce man, and he was gone.
Inside, the huge building was filled with people, men and women holding crying babies, children whining at their feet. Near the entrance were operating tables surrounded by doctors and nurses, all of them full. I had to turn away at the sight of a badly mangled woman held down by her husband as the doctor brought a bone saw to her leg.
The nurse hurried me past. Mattresses and cots and blankets crowded the floors. Damaged and destroyed hospitals had apparently rushed staff and supplies to whatever large buildings were still standing, but I was surprised at how quickly it had been organized, though honestly I was so shaken that my notion of time could not be counted upon.
It stank of blood and coffee and carbolic. Everywhere were people searching for someone. Thankfully, it was too chaotic for anyone to care who I was. A nurse directed me to a mattress, stitched up the gash on my forehead, and cleaned and bandaged my feet. The high, vaulted ceiling echoed with the buzz of talk and groaning and cries of pain. I stared up at it uneasily, remembering how Blessington had fallen upon me, discomforted by being again inside, twitchy. I would have fled if not for the fact that my feet hurt so much I didn’t think I could. I was impatient now. It was time to begin putting my plans in motion.
Two men passed carrying a makeshift coffin of a wicker basket. They went behind the seats ringing the main floor; the Pavilion was serving as a morgue too. It wasn’t until then that I wondered if the earthquake may have made my plans moot. Were the plans I’d spent so long scheming in the asylum only to be shiny, pretty useless things?
I had made them assuming nothing would have changed in the time I was gone. Who lay now in the morgue beyond? Was anyone I knew on those operating tables? Shin? LaRosa? Downtown was a shambles, what of Nob Hill? What of the Monkey Block? Had God given me my escape only to take away the reason I’d wanted it? Had he taken retribution for me?
I hoped not. I didn’t want the Sullivans dead in the earthquake. I didn’t want them dead at all. I wanted them to suffer, as I had suffered. An earthquake wasn’t enough.