A terrible earthquake. A massive natural disaster.
Chaos everywhere. People hurt, buildings falling, buildings fallen.
The ones uninjured or at least uninjured enough to help, the ones with more conscience than sense, spill toward makeshift outdoor hospitals. Some seem more like morgues.
I follow, somehow having escaped the widespread destruction. I had been crossing a wide street, far from anything that could topple. Lucky I guess, unless guilt is your foe. I want to help. Running turns to labored jogging that turns to doubled-over walking due to the air that is thick with microscopic debris. Asbestos cuts your lungs. But death to cancer seems not exactly bad right now.
Coming to a gathering of the hurt means a moment of limbo. How can I help, what can I do? No one is in charge, no one knows anything. Some are helping the injured, some injured are helping each other, but it’s unclear if anyone knows anything, medically or otherwise.
A young woman is badly hurt, and is alone save for her child who stands next to her, stunned. She reaches toward me with the hand that isn’t clamped in her child’s. I scurry over, kneel. The woman is dying. Something blunt has fallen on her midsection and caused a blow significant enough to incapacitate her totally.
Our eyes meet in a moment taut with something, a thing that I can’t identify because I’ve never seen it. We stare into each other for a moment, then we are ourselves again.
She looks to the opaque sky. Broken and hurting, she cries out to no one.
“How can this have happened?! Why?”
“Hey,” I say.
“Don’t blame me! It’s San Andreas Fault!”
Well written!