Hilda held her under both arms. “Oh do get up, won’t you? We’re all exhausted, you know.”
Mary felt down her legs with her hands. A heavy beam—it felt like metal—was pressing into the angle of her knees. Her kneecaps were pinioned to the uneven rubble of the floor. She strained against the metal. It wouldn’t move at all. There was no effect except to grind her knees into the rubble, which hurt. She reached down and felt along the beam, left and right, but it stretched away farther than the span of her arms.
A rescuer splashed up and shone his torch on Mary. “All right here?”
“I’m very sorry,” she said. “I seem to be stuck.”
She smiled, which was all one could do when embarrassed.
The rescuer had Hilda hold the torch while he knelt beside Mary and tugged along the length of the beam. “It’s good and stuck, isn’t it? Are you in pain?”
“Only when I try to move. Which is silly, isn’t it?”
“Well you just stay calm, darling, while we get this sorted out.”
“Thank you very much,” said Mary. Until the man told her to stay calm, it hadn’t occurred to her that there might be reasons not to.
Hilda held her hands. More rescuers came and began to duck under, bringing up a brick here and a piece of bar there, but whatever was trapping her was too heavy to shift. Mary gathered that the beam was set in concrete at both ends, and the concrete lodged under obstructions. She took in the men’s nervous voices and the efforts they made not to alarm her.
They became more methodical, searching underwater obstructions with their fingertips, trying to understand how to dislodge the beam. The sound of pouring water was loud in the sudden calm. Hilda undid her hair clips and fixed Mary’s hair back to stop it going in her mouth.
“Be a dear and do my lipstick next,” said Mary, her teeth chattering.
Hilda said, “You’re doing very well.”
The water was rising in the basement—now Mary understood this—at about an inch a minute. While she had been kneeling the water, which had been up to her sternum, had risen to the base of her throat. It poured down from the ceiling, faster now that the rubble above was saturated. Some of the rescuers left and Mary stared after them, wild-eyed, until someone told her they had gone to rig pumps.
“What can we do?” Mary said.
Hilda looked at her strangely. “This.”
Now Mary began to struggle. She heaved against the beam as hard as she could, not minding the pain as the metal cut into her calves. She thrashed and bucked, and when the rescuers held her arms to keep her still, she began to fight against them. Water gushed from the ceiling in torrents.
When the level reached her mouth, Mary tilted her head back to keep her face clear of it. The water rose to her earlobes.
Hilda squeezed her hands until she was calm again. In the wavering light of the torches, Mary saw the look in Hilda’s eyes. Now she understood that the most awful thing was going to happen to her. Grief came. Its level rose. The water was over her eardrums now, muting the splashing of the rescuers as they made their last, frantic attempts.
Mary felt unbearable misery that Kenneth Cox was gone. His voice was still alive—this was the terrible thing. The boy never would be told to hush and now he yelled away, somewhere in the impossible music that was flooding her. Grief poured down from fire hoses.
“It’s all just a dream,” said Hilda. “Shh, just a dream.”
“SHHUSSSSSHH!” shouted Kenneth. “It! Is! Just! A! Dream!”
It was agony that he was gone, agony that pretty Beryl Waldorf had died mute and unconsoled, agony that Betty Oates still smiled, even now, when Mary shut her eyes. She arched her body back and forth. She wrenched against the beam that pinned her, and it was more than she could bear, it was really far too much, and it was so clear now that one had not believed in death at all—neither how quickly it came up one on, nor how fathomless its sadness was—until this moment when it was suddenly here.
She groaned in the darkness, and then she felt the sharp scratch as Hilda punctured her arm, through the fabric of her jacket and blouse, with the needle of a morphine syrette. Hilda was looking down at her calmly. “Shhh now. Just . . . a . . . dream.”
After a minute Mary’s breathing came under control and the chill of the black water was gone. A glow spread through her belly and up her spine. It was unfamiliar and yet perfectly native and good. She felt Hilda’s hands on her face, holding her up. “There now.”
Mary was still aware of what was about to happen to her, but only in the same way that one was aware of the crossword. It was something difficult that one might pick up, or might not. The relief of the morphine was upon her and she understood that the drug was a simple and merciful thing, no less appropriate than a bandage for a cut.