Sailors Take Warning by Malcolm Torres, CHAPTER ONE - Day 1

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SAILORS TAKE WARNING

By Malcolm Torres

PART I:  ABOARD THE USS NIMITZ

 CHAPTER ONE - Day 1
Kate Conrad leaned out the pharmacy’s dispensing window and handed the man a tube of medicated cream.  She was about to tell him to apply it twice daily to the affected area, when the alarm bell rang.
At twenty, Kate was tall with short-clipped sandy hair and blue eyes.  Second thoughts about leaving the University of California at San Diego to join the Navy still haunted her, but as a member of the ship’s Flying Squad, she never thought twice when that alarm bell rang.
“Follow the directions on the label,” she said hurriedly while locking the pharmacy.  She ran from the medical department, calling back over her shoulder, “And don’t scratch no matter how itchy it gets!”
In the main deck passageway, Kate waited and listened to the bell’s incessant clangor.
It rang from waterproof speakers throughout the ship—a bone-rattling metallic din, threatening to perforate eardrums.
Thousands of sailors looked away from computer screens, set aside power tools and paused conversations.  Throughout the multilevel maze, eyes turned toward speakers mounted on bulkheads.  Those asleep in narrow bunks under white sheets and scratchy wool blankets startled awake—eyes suddenly open in air-conditioned darkness.
 

A squeal of feedback squashed the clanging bell, and a computer-generated female voice announced, “AWAY THE FLYING SQUAD.  THIS IS NOT A DRILL.  FLAMMABLE SPILL ON THE AFT HANGAR DECK, FRAME TWO FOUR FIVE.  AWAY THE FLYING SQUAD, AWAY.”  The bell resumed its urgent call to action, reverberating against every bulkhead.

Kate Conrad ran aft inside the main deck passageway, shouting at sailors walking ahead of her, “Gangway!  Coming through!”  After weeks of endless boredom, Kate relished the adrenaline shot as she ran to the accident scene.

The eight-foot-wide corridor was the Nimitz’s main drag compared to so many other narrow passageways, but sailors crammed in, walking two and three abreast.  Fluorescent lights glared off the polished green Formica.  Bundles of cable, ventilation ducts and myriad pipes carrying water, jet fuel and sewage crammed into the low overhead.  Bulkheads marked with weld scars and rows of rivet heads.  Fire hoses stowed in compact racks.  Watertight doors, battle lanterns and fire extinguishers flew past in Kate’s peripheral vision.

They were the shipboard equivalents of ambulances screaming along crowded boulevards.  In passageways throughout the ship, sailors squeezed behind pipes and doors, flattened themselves against bulkheads, like cars pulling to the curb, as Flying Squad members ran past, their black boots booming on the steel, their cries of “Gangway!” and  “Make a hole!” punctuating the boredom of shipboard routine.

Frequent drills tested her ability to locate damage control lockers and emergency medical stations hidden away inside the Nimitz’s 1,000-foot-long and 17-deck-high hive of compartments and passageways.  She’d studied 3-D schematics of the ship and proved she could find any location blindfolded during blackout and smoke drills.

Jet fuel mist swirled down around a ladder angling at 45-degrees through an open hatch in the deck above.  The smell seared her nose; Kate pulled a gas mask tight against her face and exhaled hard to clear it.

Fire Marshall O’Malley emerged from the jet fuel fog.  A human tree trunk with the bark peeled off, he shouted orders at sailors distributing extinguishers, mops and buckets in a disciplined frenzy.  O’Malley’s fierce eyes stared out through his face shield.  “You and you,” he roared, pointing a thick finger at two boatswain mates.  “Grab oxygen bottles and a stretcher.  Follow EMT Conrad!”  O’Malley stared at Kate and shouted, “There’s one serious injury and several overcome by fumes on the fantail.  Move it.”

She grabbed her bulky EMT kit from the damage control locker and a fresh shot of adrenaline pulsed into her limbs as she climbed the ladder into the mist.  At the top, in the aircraft hangar, she came face to face with the cause of the current emergency.

Jet engine shipping containers—steel cans, each the size and weight of a minivan—were normally stacked three-high and chained to the deck in this area.  As best Kate could tell, one container had fallen over and landed on several wooden crates, reducing them to splinters.  A second shipping container had fallen over, rolled across the deck and smashed a pipe against the bulkhead.

A fountain of fuel—creating an asphyxiation, fire and explosion hazard—squirted in multiple directions across the hangar, splashed on several cargo containers and misted in the air.  Kate saw the cloud of vapor billowing through the open space packed with jet aircraft and aviation support equipment.

Sailors scrambled about dropping bails of rags and tearing open bags of absorbent granules, dropping them on a growing puddle of fuel that sloshed this way and that as the ship rolled on erratic ocean swells.

A jet mechanic in blue coveralls and a scuffed yellow hardhat shouted, “Over here,” hailing Kate and the boatswains.

They splashed through the jet fuel puddle, and followed the mechanic through a shop crowded with partially assembled jet engines.  “A shipping container fell on the poor guy,” the mechanic explained.  He swung open a big metal door and led the way out onto the fantail, an open deck on the aft end of the ship where sailors throw trash overboard, go fishing and occasionally bury a shipmate at sea.

Passing from the ship’s air-conditioned interior to the scorching humidity, here a few degrees north of the equator, Kate broke a sweat instantly.  She pulled off her gas mask and took a deep breath.  The oppressive claustrophobia of the ship’s cramped interior fell away.  Blue ocean and boundless sky expanded to the horizon.

A crowd stood gawking at the accident victims.

“Give us room here,” one of the boatswains ordered in a thick Boston accent. 

“Let’s go, move it,” the other boatswain shouted as the crowd shuffled toward the far side of the fantail.

Kate went directly to the injured man lying on the deck, while the boatswains administered oxygen to several sailors who were soaked with jet fuel and overcome by fumes.

She knelt and placed her hand on his shoulder and saw his grease-streaked brown jersey soaked with jet fuel and blood.  She opened her kit and noted his head cocked at an odd angle and his eyes open in a dead-ahead stare.  Between baby-fat cheeks, his lips twisted in a grotesque kiss.

She found no pulse at his wrists or neck.  She pulled on a pair of Nitrile gloves and a facemask, stuck two fingers between his teeth and pulled his jaw down to reveal a mouth filled with blood.  She grabbed a pair of surgical scissors, and in one smooth motion cut his brown turtleneck jersey from collar to hem and pealed back the wet fabric.

Blunt force trauma had crushed the entire left side of his chest.  A malicious purple bruise covered his smashed torso.  Blood flowed from punctures where fractured ribs pierced skin.  Kate pictured the shipping container tumbling over, knocking him down and crushing him—causing massive thoracic trauma.  Flail chest—she remembered from training—when ribs are broken in so many places that the shattered sections detach from the ribcage and play havoc with the diaphragm, making it impossible to breath.  Fuck, she realized, he’s already dead!

Examining his neck, she found it wasn’t broken.  She turned his head to the side.  She grabbed a suction device from her kit and tried to clear his airway, but too much blood flowed from his mouth.  She dropped the suction device, grabbed a tracheal tube, inserted it in his mouth and pushed it down into his lungs.

“Oh-two,” she shouted.

The kid from Boston connected an oxygen bottle to the tracheal tube and let it flow.

The victim’s chest raised a little. 

Kate thought maybe, held her breath for a few seconds hoping, but his busted chest contorted and collapsed.  Blood flowed from the torn skin where his broken ribs protruded.

“Gentle pressure,” she whispered.

The kid from Boston grabbed a towel from the kit.  He pressed it against the guy’s chest, trying to hold the ribs in place, so Kate could get him breathing, but his torso was all Jell-O and broken bones.

Oxygen filled the victim’s lungs and contorted his ribs.  A large blood-blister bulged through the skin on his shattered breastbone.

Flail chest with hematoma.  Kate knelt on the steel, helpless with her first responder kit.  He needs a team of specialists and a thoracic surgery suite, Kate thought, as air and blood gurgled out of him.

The mechanic squatted beside her.  “A shipping can weighs over two tons,” he whispered.  “It took eight of us to lift the corner of it just so we could pull him out.”

Kate closed the dead man’s eyes.  She gazed across the ocean and noticed a ship cruising a ways off.  It looked strange riding in the Nimitz’s wake.  It had spinning satellite dishes and high towers with long antennas.  She wondered if the people on that ship could see the Nimitz.

 

*   *   *

 

In the medical department, the sheet came off the second the dead body hit the examination table.

“Owwww!”  Gutierrez groaned when she pealed back his jersey and eyed bone splintering through bruised-black flesh.  Her brilliant white teeth bit her lower lip.

Kate snipped the dead man’s laces and pulled off a boot.

Gutierrez bucked up and began snipping his pants.

Kate tugged at a silver Navy ring on the dead man’s left hand but his fingers were pudgy and it wouldn’t budge.

“Try this.”  Gutierrez handed her a tube of petroleum jelly.

The chief medical officer, Commander Sternz, entered the room.  A stout woman with a freckly, olive complexion and dark eyes, Sternz wore her black hair in a bun so tight it looked painful.  A smile rarely stretched her lips and never reached her eyes.

Kate tugged at the ring and said, “A shipping container fell on him, ma’am.  He died from internal bleeding before I got there.”

Sternz glanced at the caved-in chest and said, “Finish stripping this cadaver and lock it in the morgue.  Meet me back here at nineteen hundred for an autopsy.”  She glanced mechanically from Kate to Gutierrez.  “This gives us a training opportunity,” she said.  “We’ll explore his thoracic interior.”  Then Sternz left the compartment, oblivious of the door banging shut behind her.

“She’s colder than this guy,” Gutierrez said.

Kate dropped the Navy ring into a Ziploc bag along with the dead man’s wallet.  They slid a thick, black plastic body bag under him, folded his arms and legs inside and zipped it shut.

Kate rolled the gurney across the hall to the morgue.  She typed the combination on a keypad lock.  She held the door with her foot as she maneuvered the gurney into the small space.

Vertigo wiggled behind her eyeballs and her knees wobbled.  She stepped forward to prevent herself from stumbling.  Wondering if a rogue wave had hit the ship, she glanced at the rows of shiny stainless steel drawers.

She thought about Donna Grogan with a broken spine, fractured skull and covered with sticky maple syrup.  Grogan went into the morgue, but then where’d she go, Kate wondered.  And Larry Burns, the cook who died of a heart attack while pulling a tray of dinner rolls from an oven in the bakery.  Somebody put him in here, just like Grogan, but where’d his body go?  Kate glanced at the drawers, wondering which ones Grogan and Burns had occupied.

She positioned the gurney and prepared to put this guy, whose name she didn’t know yet, into cold storage.

 

*   *   *

 

Kate grew up on the beach in Ventura, California.  Muscles rippled on her long arms and legs.  In high school, she was fiercely competitive in volleyball and track, so dragging a 170-pound corpse from a gurney to a morgue drawer wasn’t a problem.

She grabbed the body bag, braced her legs and out of nowhere a shadow of doubt flitted across her mind:  What am I doing?  I should be in college!

After months at sea, these thoughts intruded several times a day.  I’m filling penicillin prescriptions for sailors with the clap, when I should be in a pre-med program or at least at a Friday night keg party with friends!

“Okay, cool it,” she reminded herself that the University of California at San Diego volleyball scholarship had only covered one-third of her tuition bill.  She remembered the start of every semester, standing at the financial aid window signing a student loan promissory note.  She still felt the anxiety and depression that swelled in her chest after several terms; after she did the math and calculated her growing mountain of student loan debt.

One night at the library, cramming for an Anatomy exam, a panic attack hit.  Owing so much to Bank of America, she feared, would prevent her from ever buying a car, a house, or having kids.  Shoving the textbook aside, she tallied what she’d owe by the time she earned a medical degree.  The six-figure number gnawed at her during lectures and labs.  She awoke in her dorm room in the middle of the night with such dread it was difficult to breathe.  I’m too young for this kind of debt, she told herself as she sank back into a troubled sleep.

A few days later, with sunlight streaming through the library windows, she was surfing the web and saw, under a banner ad for Clearasil, a picture of a female sailor dispensing a prescription over a pharmacy counter.

The next day, she rode her bike off campus to meet with a Navy recruiter.

 

*   *   *

 

With fists that spiked their way to a high school volleyball championship and a UC San Diego scholarship, Kate dragged the body bag onto the cold drawer.

Outside the morgue, she double-checked the lock.

In the records office, she dropped into a chair, touched color-coded menu options on a screen to open a fatality report.  Reaching into the Ziploc for the dead guy’s wallet, the ring slipped around her finger.  She pulled it out, examined the blue gem and read his name, Stanley Comello, inscribed inside.  Her mind flashed on his chubby knuckles and out of nowhere, tears brimmed on her lower eyelids.  She dropped the ring back into the bag, and opened her eyes wide and inhaled deeply through her nose to make the tears go away.  In Comello’s wallet, she found his ID and glanced at his picture.  At 19, he hadn’t burned off the baby fat.  His chubby cheeks and toothy smile gave him a slow moving, good-natured look.

She swiped his ID and his record started downloading.

She glanced at a whiteboard where they kept track of the number of days they’d been at sea.  Across the top, someone had written “DAYS ON AN INVISIBLE SHIP . . .” and below that, a big number 93 in the middle of a dark smudge where someone erased and updated the number every morning.

She remembered the ship cruising behind the Nimitz and wondered if it was the Hayward.  Had it finally found them?

She filled in the fatality report and clicked save.

Before meeting Terrance McDaniels for dinner, Kate checked the lock on the morgue one last time.

#



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