Chapter 5

James only had a couple of small bruises where he had tripped over debris, and the pharmacist handed a tube of cream to Pat. “Spread that thinly over the wound, and repeat several times a day. Next.”

Pat pulled Tracy forward, as she had more bruises and scrapes than the rest of the girls. Pat stood over her and despite Tracy’s trepidation, insisted that she fully expose cuts and scrapes near the tops of her legs and on her buttocks. The pharmacist was unconcerned with exposure, just doing his job efficiently. He handed several packs and tubes to Tracy, with instructions on how to use them and when.

Sylvia followed, but she had little in the way of damage, and neither did Pat have problems except some soreness from muscles being ill-treated while scrambling to safety. Localised myalgia, the pharmacist called it. That simply required rest and a few ibuprofen tablets for several days, he said, handing these over.

I came last. He looked me over and remarked on how many cuts and scrapes I had accumulated on my body. “You were inside when the quake hit?”

I agreed. “Luck of the draw,” I said. “Thrown out of my hotel room during the collapse of the building and I landed on brick rubble and other debris, but nothing serious. I’ll live.”

“Hmm...” he mused. “In normal circumstances we would have you stay overnight and give you x-rays and scans to make sure you had no deeper problem, but today with all the casualties, if you have no evidence of real trauma, we can just treat your minor cuts and abrasions with antiseptic creams. I’ll give you a good supply, but if you later show redness around any of the wounds, report to a doctor as it may be an infection that has to be caught at an early stage. This is important. You promise to follow these instructions?”

“I do. I am not stupid. I want to get better and if this is what is required, then I’ll do it to the letter.”

“Good man. Keep that up and you’ll be fine. That boy yours?”

“James? He is now. Lost both his parents so I am going to adopt him; me and Pat, that is. We have an understanding you see.”

“Good. He needs the love of parents to help him get back to normal. That the lot?”

“Yes. I am last of the bunch. We want to stay together as part of our recuperation, so if we are being released I need to call my father. He runs our grocery business and will be anxious to hear from me. He will be shocked to find he has an unexpected grandson!”

Grinning, the pharmacist pulled out his mobile phone.”Want to ring him now? This helicopter crew will want to get off on their next mission.”

I accepted his phone and dialled my Dad’s number from memory. When he answered with his number, I said hurriedly, “Hi, Dad. I survived the earthquake, but didn’t get a chance to do any business; just as well I didn’t; no shop there now.”

“Paul! Damn, boy, am I glad to hear from you! Where are you?”

“No idea, Dad. We just got off the chopper at a hospital. The guy whose phone I am using can tell you what hospital.”

I handed the phone over, and they sorted out the location and that the doctor said that I and my family were free to go. The pharmacist looked surprised at something, and shoved the phone at me. Dad spoke in shocked tones, “What family? Is he confused? What is he talking about, Paul?”

“Uhh..., things got a bit shirty after the quake, Dad. I found a boy of about six whose mother had just been killed in the quake, and with no father, I sort of took James over for the duration, and now, I have invited him to be my own son. Was I wrong?”

There was another shocked silence at the other end, then Dad admitted, “I expect you saw it as the right thing to do, Paul. You are like that, but a boy needs his mother; you can’t fulfill that need, with the best will in the world.”

“Quite right, Dad. Pat agrees with you and volunteered to be his mum.”

“What? You have picked up a woman as well?”

“Sort of, yes. Pat and her sister were on a yacht and I rescued them using a rowing boat. They later found and rescued Tracy from the ruins of a dress shop. We all want to stay together for a while, as all of us went through the same distressing event and can share our experiences as we recover.”

“What do you mean, all of you? You think this is an open-ended crisis unit? We have a business to run, boy!”

“I know, Dad. I intend to work hard on making the business a success, and I think the girls want to assist me in that. Tracy worked in a dress shop, so she has knowledge of what women like in the way of clothing. We could use that expertise to expand our stock profile to clothes, and I am sure Pat and Sylvia also have talents we can utilise to our benefit as a group.”

“Well, if you think they would be assets, then it is up to you to prove it, Paul my boy. But I am glad to hear you are okay. When I heard about that earhquake, and very few survivors, I feared the worst.”

We switched the topic to getting home, so he said he would organise transportation. He said he would get a taxi to collect us at the hospital and take us to our home. All I had to do then was ring him at the office once a day for an update, and he ordered me to get a replacement phone sharpish to enable that. I knew this would all be charged to the business, even the long distance taxi run, so I went along with that decree. I could probably get phones for all of us except James, and treat it as one order for the business. The pharmacist took back his phone and waved us all away from the helicopter that was about to take off again. He refused my offer of payment for the call.

While we waited for our transport, I quizzed the sisters on their previous work and education. It was a revelation. Pat had a degree in management, and Sylvia was a primary school teacher. Both were currently on holiday, they said, so I saw a possibility of recruiting them for our business. Sylvia’s profession was a bonus with a six-year-old now in the family. I was becoming more encouraged that this arrangement could work.

As we waited patiently for the promised taxi, another helicopter arrived and disgorged another batch of injured people. It seems that these were pupils and teachers that had been found in one of the smaller classrooms that had withstood the quake more effectively and the victims had been mainly trapped and had injuries that needed some hospital attention. The rescuers had broken and removed a window frame and then pulled them out, the chopper crew told us, but it seems there were many bodies remaining in the wreckage. These were low priority, as they weren’t going to move. Some might never move, if the wrecked buildings were too unstable to work on. The victims able to be found and rescued were few.

That was my impression from the start, finding myself almost alone. Who knows how many other people were in my hotel and never escaped; certainly all the staff would have been within and perished. All the multistorey buildings were now down and most of the single-storey houses would have had their roofs caved in.

I noticed Tracy start to shiver as the vastness of the destruction over a large part of the countyryside began to overwhelm her, and Patricia gathered her in her arms to comfort her.

“It is all right, Tracy. You are safe and your parents are probably fine too. As soon as we get phones, you can ring them to let them know you are okay and in safe hands.”

I looked at Pat’s calm face and asked wonderingly, “What about your parents, Pat?” She shrugged nonchalantly. “They are on a cruise ship, so it is unlikely they are affected. Even a tsunami has little impact out at sea. They didn’t even know we were sunning ourselves on a friend’s yacht, so they probably assumed we are at home or at work. Either way, they would not assume we were in the earthquake. Eventually we can give them a ring to update them, if we can reach them on a ship.”