Page 13 of Heartbeat
The arrival of the rescuers with the injured childrenset off a fresh wave of examinations. Doctors from the hospital were on scene now, and they soon had the children in need of further care in ambulances and on their way to the ER.
Chapter 3
Louis Glass was on the job at Trapper’s Bar and Grill when the chopper crashed and exploded. It sent a shock wave across town, rattling windows and frightening everyone, including the locals and the tourists.
Louis was behind the bar when someone shouted, “I think something happened at the school!”
His heart stopped. “Lili,” he cried, and raced outside. The dark, billowing smoke was already rising in the air. He ran back inside, yelling at his boss. “I have to leave! I have to find Lili!”
Then he grabbed his coat and his car keys, and left through the back door, calling his wife, Rachel, as he went.
Rachel was putting her last load of wet clothes into the dryer when her phone rang. She hit Start on the dryer, then answered.
“Hey, honey! Are you on your lunch break?”
“Something happened at the school. There was a bigexplosion, and now a huge cloud of black smoke and fire. I’m on my way there.”
Rachel staggered, then caught herself. “No! Oh my God, no,” she moaned. “I’m leaving now, but call me the minute you know anything more.”
“I will, honey, but drive safe. We need you to get here in one piece, understand?”
“Yes, Louis, I promise.”
Similar phone calls were spreading up the mountain. Parents in a panic to get down to the school. Not knowing the status of their children. The line of cars coming down from the mountain was telling.
There was so much panic at the school that the helicopter crashing had taken a back seat. There was no plan for recovery. It was obvious from the start there would be no survivors from the plane. The immediate concern was containing the spread of flames to keep the school and a nearby neighborhood from catching fire from the burning debris.
For the time being, no one knew who’d been inbound, or how many were on board, or why the chopper had exploded in midair. That would be for the authorities to figure out.
All of the chaos was happening in the football field across the street.
Because of the roadblocks to leave the streets openfor emergency vehicles, parents began arriving on foot, some running, most all of them in hysterics.
Mrs. Lowery had sent out a blanket text from the school that every parent was now receiving, letting them know every teacher and student was accounted for but needed to be picked up. The students were huddled together on the bleachers, separated into the homeroom classes, with teachers and aides at their sides. All of them were in shock. Most of them were still crying.
The injured children were being transported to the ER, and the teachers were releasing each child to their parents as they arrived.
Both Aaron and Wiley caught up with Sean before he left.
“Thanks for showing up. You made the difference, carrying three children out,” Aaron said.
Sean nodded. “I heard the explosion. I thought the school was on fire. Never been so scared. Do you know anything about the crash? Was it a chopper?”
“Yes. Dani was on playground duty. She saw it coming inbound from a distance, and then she said it exploded in midair. If she hadn’t sounded an early warning, we would have had kids dead all over the place. There were two classes of children outside on the playground, and students in all the rooms on the south.”
Sean paled. “Good lord!”
“Another fifty yards to the north and the chopper would have hit the building,” Wiley muttered, then tapped Aaron’s arm. “We’ve been ordered to standguard at the roadblocks until someone gets here from the NTSB.”
Aaron glanced at Sean.
“Tell Mom we need a rain check on supper. Lord only knows when we’ll get home tonight.”
“Will do,” Sean said. “I’d better get back to the jobsite. I was working in an office in the business center when I heard the explosion.”
“Get the medics to check your breathing before you leave,” Aaron said. “And that’s an order. We sucked in a lot of bad shit in there.”
“Yeah, okay,” Sean said, and headed for the makeshift triage area, calling Shirley as he went.
