Somebody shouted: ‘Don’t both call at once! Are you fucking crazy? You’ll block the circuits!’
‘What – were you born in the fifties? They can handle more than—’
Then an otherworldly scream filled the car: the biker had lost control, lost it completely. Screaming, he grabbed the shoulders of the elderly woman in front of him and boosted himself up onto the crowd.
The orderly heard a snap as the woman’s clavicle broke and she screamed and fainted. The biker didn’t even notice; he scrabbled forward atop the shoulders and necks and heads of the others and slammed into the elevator door, breaking nails as he tried to pull the panels open. He was screaming and sobbing. Tears and sweat flowed like water from a cracked pipe.
A slim African-American woman, an aide, in what used to be called candy stripers, colorful scrubs with teddy bears on them, muscled her way forward and gripped him by the collar. ‘We’ll be okay. It’ll be all right.’
Another scream from the huge man, the sound piercing.
She was unfazed. ‘Are you listening? We’ll be all right. Breathe slowly.’
The biker’s red, bearded face leaned toward hers. Close. He gripped her neck. He was looking past her and for a moment it seemed as if he’d snap bones.
‘Breathe,’ she said. ‘Slow.’
And he started to.
‘You’re all right. Everybody’s all right. Nothing’s happened to us. We’re fine. There’re sprinklers. The fire department’s on its way.’
This calmed the biker and four or five of the passengers, but among the others panic was growing.
‘Where the fuck are they?’
‘Jesus, Jesus. We’re going to die!’
‘No no no!’
‘I feel the heat, the flames. You feel that?’
‘It’s underneath us. It’s getting hotter!’
‘No, please! Somebody.’
‘Hey!’ the biker shouted, in a booming voice. ‘Just, everybody chill!’
Some people did. But others were still in the grip of panic. They began pounding on the walls, screaming, ripping the hair and clothes of their fellows to get to the door. One woman, in her forties, knocked the biker aside, jammed her nails into the seam between the sliding doors and tried to force them open, just as he had attempted. ‘Relax, relax,’ the big man said. And pulled her away.
A man screamed into the intercom, ‘Why aren’t you answering? Why aren’t they answering? Nobody’s answering.’
Sobbing, cries.
Someone defecated.
The orderly realized he’d bitten his tongue. He tasted blood.
‘The walls! They’re hot. And the smoke.’
‘We’re going burn to death!’
The orderly looked at the doctor. He was unconscious. A heart attack? Had he fainted?
‘Can’t you hear us? We’re stuck.’
‘No, no!’
More screams.
‘It’s not that hot!’ the biker called. ‘I don’t think the fire’s that close. We’re going to be okay.’
The nurse said, ‘Listen to him! We’ll be all right.’
And, slowly, the panicked passengers began to calm.
Which had no effect on the orderly. He couldn’t take the confinement for a moment longer. Suddenly he was consumed by a wholly new level of panic. He turned his back to the people in the car and whispered, ‘I’m sorry.’ To his wife and son.
His last words before panic became something else. A snake winding through his mouth and into his gut.
Frenzy …
Sobbing, he tore the pocket from his scrubs, wadded it into a ball and stuffed it down his own throat. Inhaling the cloth into his windpipe.
Die, please let me die … Please let this horror be over.
The suffocation was terrible, but nothing compared to the claustrophobia.
Please let me … let me …
His vision went black.
CHAPTER 64
‘Listen to me!’ Kathryn Dance shouted. ‘Listen!’
‘I’ve got my orders.’
She was on the east wing third floor of the hospital, speaking to one of the maintenance men.
‘We need that door open now.’
‘Lady, Officer, sorry. We gotta wait for the elevator repair people. These things are dangerous. It’s not gonna fall. There’s no fire. I mean, there was a little one but it’s out now and—’
‘You don’t understand. The people inside, they’re going to hurt themselves. They don’t know there’s no fire.’
She was in front of the doors to elevator number two. From inside she could hear screams and thuds.
‘Well, I’m not authorized.’
‘Oh, Jesus Christ.’ Dance stepped past him and grabbed a screwdriver from his tool kit, a long one.’
‘Hey, you can’t—’
‘Let her, Harry,’ another worker said. ‘It don’t sound too good in there.’
The screams were louder now.
‘Fuck,’ Harry muttered. ‘I’ll do it.’
He took the screwdriver and set it down, then extracted a separate tool from the bag, an elevator door key. He slipped it into the hole and a moment later was muscling aside the doors.
Dance dropped to her belly, hit by the disgusting smell wafting out of the car, vomit, sweat, feces, urine. She squinted. Security lights, mounted on the CCTV camera inside the elevator, were glaring into her face. The ceiling of the car was about eighteen inches above the hospital’s linoleum floor. To Dance’s surprise, the passengers were fairly calm, their attention on two of their fellows: a pregnant woman, the source of the screaming. And a man passed out, though standing; his face an eerie blue. He was dressed in the uniform of a hospital orderly.
‘The fire’s out! You’re safe!’ This was the best way to convince them to calm, she’d decided. Telling them it was a prank, much less an intentional attack, didn’t seem advisable.
Somebody was trying to give the orderly the Heimlich maneuver but could get no leverage.