Powerless (12 page)

 

H
is hands covered with blood, Dr. Aaron Jackson asks one of the nurses to wipe the sweat from his brow. Eleven hours into a particularly difficult heart transplant, he takes the opportunity during the brief break to arch his back and stretch side to side. He adjusts the magnifying surgical loupes resting on his nose and plunges his hands back into the chest cavity of Mr. Joseph Hall, the lucky recipient of the new heart. Mr. Hall had waited eight long months teetering at death's door for a donor heart.

“Almost there, kids,” he says to those in the room, his voice muffled by the surgical mask.

Dr. Jackson works out of the South Texas Transplant Center, and is performing his third heart transplant of the year. He is among the half a dozen surgeons crowded into the sterile room, where he continues to make the final plumbing connections. He works to connect the pulmonary artery. He carefully threads the polypropylene suture material through the patient's artery, then through the donor heart. With his forearm he readjusts the magnifying loupes and continues stitching. No larger than a human hair, the suture material is difficult to see with the naked eye, but the magnifying glasses lie heavy on his nose.

The huff of the ventilator and the whoosh of the cardiopulmonary bypass machine are the only noises other than the exhaled breaths of those in the room.

“Jen, can you reposition the light?” he says to one of the nurses.

She reaches a gloved hand up and pulls the intense lamp closer to where Dr. Jackson is stitching. He continues to stitch as the other physicians lean in to follow his progress. With a final flourish he ties off the suture and snips the end of the thread with a pair of surgical scissors.

“I think we've finished,” he says, looking up to survey the hidden faces of the other surgeons. Each gives him a nod.

“Okay, people, have extra suture material ready as well as more surgical sponges in case he springs a leak.”

He takes one final look, then says, “Switch off bypass.” The whooshing stops and he begins to gently remove the clamps attached to the arteries leading to the new heart. As he unclips the final clamp, and before he can determine if the heart is pumping, the room descends into darkness.

“Oh shit,” someone shouts.

“I need more light, stat!” Dr. Jackson shouts as he flicks on the feeble beam attached to his magnifying loupe.

“Christ, we've got a bleeder. Sutures!”

 

 

Three stories below, Chief of Maintenance Virgil Hunsaker reaches for his time card to clock out for the day when a shower of sparks erupts from the main electrical panel. The basement is submerged in sudden darkness. A white-hot flame erupts from the breaker box as he races toward the developing disaster. The acrid odor of burnt plastic fills the space as a smoky haze obscures the just-coming-to-life emergency lighting.

He yanks a fire extinguisher from the wall and shoots a spray of foam toward the fire. A door is yanked open across the room and one of his workers rushes in.

“See what's wrong with the generator,” Virgil shouts to the man.

“How come it didn't switch on?” the worker says.

Virgil empties the extinguisher and the flames abate.

“Don't know. We got hit with a massive jolt of something. We've got to get that generator running right damn now.”

Six months ago, the hospital had installed a new main line from the recently built electrical substation a block away.

With the sleeve of his uniform shirt he yanks the melted cover from the generator's transfer panel.

“Oh shit.” The breakers in the panel are fused together.

“People are going to die if we can't figure out a way to bypass this goddamn panel,” Virgil says.

He glances at his watch to determine how long the hospital has been without power, and winces.

“How about we run a cable directly from the generator and tap into the main line after the breaker box?” Virgil says.

“Might work,” his young assistant says.

 

 

In the darkness, Dr. Jackson drops the first suture-loaded forceps to hit his palm. “I dropped it. Someone find me a goddamn light. More sutures.” Another set of forceps hits his palm.

“I can't see a damn thing.” His hand fumbles through Mr. Hall's chest cavity in search of the leak. “I've got more than one bleeder, but I can't see to suture them. Somebody call downstairs and tell them this man's life depends on the backup generator.”

A nurse races to the phone and snatches up the handset. “The phones are dead, Doctor.”

“Yeah, well, this man will be dead if we don't stop the bleeders and get this heart pumping in the next two minutes. Somebody stick their hand in here and start cardiac massage.”

One of the other doctors leans over the table and begins squeezing the still heart.

“I cannot suture without more light. Find me a goddamn flashlight right now,” Dr. Jackson says in a low, menacing voice.

There's a mad scramble to find a flashlight or anything that could be construed to be a light source. Someone produces a small penlight from one of the drawers and passes it forward to the attending nurse. She clicks it on and splashes the narrow beam into the chest cavity. A large pool of blood is forming around the new heart.

“Suction!” Dr. Jackson shouts.

“Doctor,” one of the other nurses says timidly, “there is no suction.”

Doctor Jackson howls out a scream of frustration.

Five minutes later, the hospital's backup generator powers on. Mr. Hall, the proud recipient of a new heart he had waited eight months to possess, is on the verge of bleeding out.

“Hang two units of AB positive,” Dr. Jackson orders. “Charge paddles.”

The nurse hands him the defibrillator's paired internal paddles. He waits for the physician delivering cardiac massage to clear his hands from the chest cavity before placing the paddles on either side of the new heart and triggering an electrical shock.

He pulls the paddles clear. “Suction, please. I need to be able to see the entire organ.” His voice has lost all urgency.

One of the nurses places a tube into Mr. Hall's chest and suctions out the spilled lifeblood of their patient.

“Charge paddles.” He inserts the paddles and triggers another shock. No response. He dejectedly hands the small paddles to the nurse.

He exhales an exasperated sigh and says, “Time of death is 17:59.”

 

A
board the
Ragin Cajun
, a paddleboat plying the waters of the Mississippi River in New Orleans, the mayor of the city stands on the top deck observing the devastation enveloping her city. After ten days of nearly constant rain, the recently rebuilt system of levees, floodwalls, and pumps is overwhelmed by water. For fifteen billion dollars the city was supposed to be safe from flooding. But with parts of the Big Easy as much as seventeen feet below sea level, dealing with water intrusion is a constant battle. Of course the whole pumping system was built with the premise that there would always be electrical power to operate it. After the Corps of Engineers replaced the fried pumps, the generators ran for three days before they ran out of fuel. With Lake Pontchartrain and its 630 square miles of surface area on one side and the mighty Mississippi River cutting through the center of town, New Orleans has always been a disaster waiting to happen.

Her chief aide, Chad, lumbers up the narrow staircase and approaches. At sixty-two, Margaret Atwell retired from her job as vice president of a technology start-up to run for mayor of her hometown city. She won in a landslide against a former mayor recently released from prison, but now she'd give anything to turn the clock back.

“Madam Mayor,” Chad says as he approaches, “we've received word that the 17th Street, Orleans Avenue, and London Avenue canals are flooding.” On Chad's belt is a two-way radio attached to a clear earpiece inserted into his ear.

She takes of her glasses and rubs her nose. “God, can't we get any good news?”

Chad lowers his head and shuffles his feet.

“Send out evacuation orders to those parishes. Have we heard any more from the Corps of Engineers?”

“No, ma'am. Last I heard they were trying to get a fuel barge up the Mississippi.”

“Unless it gets here in the next couple of hours, the entire city will be underwater.”

“I'll see what I can find out.”

“Thank you, Chad. Would you also get in touch with the local emergency services office for an estimate of the time needed to evacuate the city?”

“You want to evacuate all of New Orleans?”

“I certainly don't want to, but we may not be left with a choice.” She walks over to the railing and Chad follows. “I'm not sure this city can recover again.”

“But we always have.”

She turns to face him. “According to scientists, the city is sinking as much as an inch a year. That, coupled with the rising sea levels, may spell the final doom for our city.”

Chad takes a step closer to the mayor. “When did you turn into such a pessimist?”

Mayor Atwell looks down at the muddy water coursing under the boat. “I'm not a pessimist. I consider myself well-grounded in reality. But the harsh truth is that New Orleans may become an abandoned city soon to be reclaimed by the marshes. The insurers will raise hell about rebuilding the city only a few years after Katrina.”

Chad pulls the radio from his belt and talks quietly into the handset. After a brief conversation he reattaches the radio. “According to emergency services, evacuating New Orleans takes about thirty hours.”

Mayor Atwell kneads the back of her neck. “I don't think we have any choice. Contact the governor's office so they can issue the order to evacuate.”

 

T
he doctor's predictions proved true—Robert Marshall
is
a new man, with more energy and vitality than he's exhibited in years. The power is still out after a week and the generator is running on fumes from the propane tank. Zeke and Lexi have taken up residence with his parents so the generator would have to power only the one water well.

Zeke, lazing in the spare bedroom, dog-ears the page of the well-read paperback and walks into the living room, where he finds his mother reading and his father holding the shortwave radio to his ear.

“Anything?” Zeke says. His father has been fiddling with the radio all week.

“I pick up occasional voices, but nothing steady. From what I can gather we were hit with some type of solar storm.”

“Hear anything about how long we'll be without power?”

“I don't think anyone knows. But if I recall correctly from an article I read in
Popular Science
, it could be a good while. Months certainly, maybe a year or longer.”

“What are we going to do for water when the propane tank runs dry?” Barb says, joining the conversation.

“I've got maybe five gallons of gasoline out in the shop. We'll have to rig up something for the generator but that'll keep it running for a few more days. After that, I guess we'll be hauling water from the creek.”

“That water's not fit to drink,” Barb says.

“We'll have to boil it before we can drink it. Don't know that we have many choices, my dear.”

“Dad, I'm going to drive into town. I think it's worth the gas. Maybe I can find a few things to restock the pantry, or at least find out if there's somewhere to get more gasoline.”

“I don't think you're going to find much, son. But knock yourself out.”

“Zeke, we could use some more toilet paper if you come across any.”

“I think toilet paper is the least of our worries,” his father says.

“I'll look,” Zeke says, giving his mother a wink. He opens the back door and whistles for Lexi. She creeps from beneath the old shade tree and takes a moment to stretch, leaning back on her haunches with her front feet fully extended in front of her.

“Take your time,” he tells her. Once she's all limbered up she approaches the pickup, her tail wagging, and climbs into the cab.

Zeke slides behind the wheel of his father's pickup and double-checks the fuel gauge—half a tank. He slips the truck into gear and eases out onto the roadway. First time all week any of them have driven anywhere. The pickup is the only automobile on the road as he makes a right turn onto the highway. The first stop is the small convenience store/bait shop a short distance away.

As he draws near, he doesn't even tap the brakes, because the old broken-down store is boarded up as if anticipating a hurricane. Broken glass, near where the windows once were, is scattered all over the front drive. The lone fuel pump stands like a sentry in the dusty parking lot, its handle discarded on the ground. Despite his declining hopes, he decides to continue on toward Durant.

And finds more of the same. Boarded-up businesses and a street absent of human activity. He swings by the hospital and he's surprised to see the parking lot empty with the exception of a couple of random cars parked on the outer edges of the lot. He makes a detour and drives up closer to the hospital's entrance, where he discovers a chain threaded through the metal door handles secured with a heavy padlock. He gooses the gas and makes his way back to the main road. Lexi, sitting up in the seat, stares out the window, as if she can sense that all is not well with the world.

The eerie feeling is inescapable as he motors through what used to be a fairly busy place, but now more closely resembles a forgotten ghost town. The shiny newness of the plywood is the only indication of the recentness of the disaster.

Zeke drives a little farther down the road to the new Walmart and pulls up short, shocked at the chaos in the parking lot. Carts lie overturned, boxes are piled up everywhere, long-spoiled food litters the asphalt, and shattered glass from the large front windows winks in the sunlight. No plywood covering the double-wide entrances and exits—everything has already been carted away. Dejected, he makes a U-turn and heads toward home.

The brilliant sun streaming through the windshield forces him to slip on his Ray-Bans. A few cottony white clouds dot the sky, their shadows drifting across the black asphalt. A beautiful fall day. There is no traffic on the return trip, either, but he does pass several people walking alongside the roadway. Their grim facial expressions leave him unsettled.

As he nears the turnoff toward home, he spots two pickups making a right turn into one of the campgrounds bordering Lake Texoma. From this distance he can't tell whether they're families simply searching for shelter or something more sinister. His sudden trip to town has opened his mind to some very unpleasant thoughts. He experiences a growing sense of dread.

The road leading to the neighborhood homes is the same road that leads to the campground, only in the opposite direction. He bumps down the poorly maintained road for two miles and turns in to the gravel drive of his parents' house. He taps the brakes and brings the pickup to a stop, observing the surrounding area from a new perspective. The homes are far removed from the main road and they are shielded from view by an expanse of juniper trees along the north side of the drive. You'd have to be close to stumble upon them, a slight measure of security from would-be marauders. Nevertheless, he circles behind the house and parks the pickup in the barn. As he climbs from the cab, he does the one thing he hasn't done since moving down here—he locks the doors to the truck.

“Anything?” his mother says as he draws near.

Zeke shakes his head. “Nothing. The bait shop is boarded up and the Walmart looks like a war zone.”

She holds the screen door open as he brushes past, Lexi following closely behind. His father is still in the living room, patiently twirling the knob of the shortwave receiver. To save batteries, he turns it on only a couple of times a day.

“You find anything, son?”

“Nope. You could shoot a cannon down Main Street and not hit a thing. It's eerie as hell out there, Dad.”

Zeke pulls out one of the kitchen chairs and takes a seat. When they remodeled, his mother insisted on an open-concept floor plan, so most of the main floor is one large room open to the kitchen.

His mother hovers nearby, her faced pinched with concern. “Do you think Ruth and Carl and the kids are all right?” She has asked the question a dozen times over the past week, always with the same answer—no one knows.

“How about I go down and get them?” Zeke offers for the eighth or ninth time.

“And I can go with him,” his father says.

“You're not going anywhere, Robert.” His mother pauses for a moment and, when she finally speaks, the answer is different. “Maybe you should, Zeke.”

“I'm willing. What do you think, Dad? There's not enough gas for me to get all the way to Dallas and back home, but I've been thinking about it most of the week.”

Robert Marshall scoots up to the edge of his seat. “How're you going to do it with no gasoline?”

“I'm going to trailer the three horses as far as I can while leaving me enough gas to make it back. I'll park the truck and trailer in a secluded area and ride the rest of the way while leading the other two horses.”

His father raises his eyebrows. “How are you going to get five people back to the trailer with only three horses? Besides, when is the last time you've even ridden a horse?”

“Ruth and Carl can double up with the kids. Shouldn't be a problem. And the last time I was on a horse was in Afghanistan.”