Keeping Marie (Alliez Security: Echo Team #2)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

The rumble of the earth as it undulated like a wave, was something Dr. Marie Hughes was never going to forget.

She hid under her desk as books and the shelves that housed them tumbled to the ground, and glass shattered all around her.

The building groaned as if trying to fight against the wave and was losing.

When would it end?

It seemed interminable, as if the shaking and shuddering of the building had been going on for hours, when in fact it had merely been seconds.

Was the old Guatemalan building the hospital inhabited going to survive? Or was it going to implode around her?

What about the patients who were scattered around the three-story building? How many of them were hurt or worse?

What about Mr. Ricco? Her favorite patient.

She’d left his room ten minutes before the earthquake hit, his laughter ringing in her ears after she’d told him a lame joke.

His eyes were bright with merriment and his smile wide.

For a few brief moments she’d taken away his pain.

Marie hoped and prayed that he would be alright.

That all the patients in the small hospital would survive.

Realistically, she was aware that her hope could be misguided.

What would’ve happened if she’d been in the ancient elevator instead of her office? Would the old chains have held the cart?

Finally, the shuddering and groaning stopped. The building creaked and the odd sound of something hitting the ground lessened.

Was it safe for her to move from her shelter?

Or was something waiting for her to move to crush her?

She’d grown up in Los Angeles, so earthquakes weren’t new or an unknown entity for her, but this time it was different.

It was louder.

Stronger.

More aggressive.

Had the epicenter been close by? Is that why it seemed so very different this time to all the other earthquakes she’d lived through. Or was it because the buildings she’d lived in had been built to withstand the effects of earthquakes.

Having the engineering infrastructure that made them sway with the motion and not try and fight it like this building had appeared to be doing, was the reason they didn’t collapse. She was no engineer, so she didn’t have the answers.

Marie counted to sixty and then another sixty before she crawled out from under her desk.

Over to her right, there was a hole where a wall had once been.

The stone was scattered inside and outside the building.

The desk where her colleague had been sitting at only a few minutes ago was crushed.

She was glad that Ophelia had gone to check on something when she had.

That single action possibly saved her life, unless she had been in another location in the building and hadn’t found a safe place to wait it out.

She coughed as the dust from the collapsed wall settled into her lungs.

Quickly she pulled out one of her masks and covered her face.

She couldn’t stay where she was. She needed to get out there and help evacuate the building.

If there was a strong aftershock, then the odds of the building remaining upright wasn’t great.

Carefully she made her way out of the small office. The sounds of people screaming, crying and moaning appeared louder within the wrecked building.

Glass shards from the windows and bits of the ceiling littered the floor, and Marie took her time making sure the ground beneath her was stable. The last thing she needed to do was injure herself. She would be of no use to anyone then.

What would take her less than a minute to get to the stairwell took her almost five. At least the stairs looked solid and appeared to be safe to climb.

Where is everyone? Am I the only one who survived?

Marie expected to see other staff members making their way toward the patients.

The hospital wasn’t staffed with thousands like the inner-city hospital she’d worked in before taking this six-month contract in Guatemala.

There was only a staff of twenty. They were stretched thin, but they made it work, and the last couple of months had been the most rewarding of Marie’s career.

She wouldn’t think she was the only one who had made it through, and if she was, then she would do what she’d been trained to do—save people.

Determination fired through her as she made her way to the second floor. The door from the stairwell was hanging off its hinges, and like the first floor, debris was everywhere, but she heard voices.

“Ophelia?” she called out hoping her friend would answer.

“Marie? Is that you?” Appearing out of the settling dust, Ophelia came rushing forward. “Oh my god, I’m so glad that you’re okay.”

Marie clutched Ophelia close. “I’m so glad to see you. I was so worried. What’s the situation?” she asked, pulling down her mask. As good as it was to see her colleague, there were patients to consider, not to mention everyone who needed medical help outside the hospital walls.

“I don’t know. I haven’t had a chance to look. Juanita has a cut on her head and a possible broken arm. Frederico is okay, but a wall came down blocking the hallway to the patients, he’s attempting to move rubble so we can get through. I don’t know about the other floors.”

Marie wanted to scream in frustration, and truthfully, a little bit of fear. If they couldn’t get to their patients they wouldn’t be able to see them and treat them. “No one has been able to get to the third floor?”

Ophelia shook her head. “We weren’t too sure how stable the stairs were, but if you were able to come up then it’s promising that we can get to the third floor.”

“Okay, why don’t you send Frederico up there for him to appraise the area and then, if it’s blocked like this floor, we can make a plan of how we’re going to tackle things.

I’m going to assume, right or wrong, that there are some staff on the other side of the rubble on this floor that can triage their area.

Have you been able to have any sort of communication with anyone on the other side? ”

“Si, Frederico says he was able to yell to someone and they were trying to get through from their side.”

Marie nodded, a tiny bit of panic receding, at least it wasn’t only the four of them able to help.

Although Juanita, with her broken arm, wouldn’t be able to do a lot, Marie knew the older woman wouldn’t let anything like a injured arm stop her from doing what she could in this situation.

“That’s good. I’m going to go back downstairs and collect what I can from the storeroom, if it’s still standing, and bring it up here.

Hopefully when I get back we’ll have a better idea of what we need to do and how to handle it. ”

Ophelia nodded and then picked her way over the rubble to relay Marie’s message to Frederico.

The wail of sirens began to fill the air.

The San Carlion clinic was a small hospital in a small town and she wanted to believe that they would be given help first so that more of the injured could come and be treated.

However, given the state of the building, Marie didn’t believe they would be of much use at all.

In all likelihood, they would have to be evacuated to a safer building where they could do what they could.

Was there even another one that would be suitable?

“Not your problem,” she muttered as she carefully made her way back to her office. “The authorities will make the necessary calls.”

Marie had no idea how things worked in this town. How many other places were more badly damaged than what they were? She hadn’t even gone outside to see what the situation was like.

How many more buildings were almost collapsing?

They were things she couldn’t think about now. Her main priority was the people in the hospital. Treating them and making sure they were okay, then they could help everyone else.

Marie reached the supply closet. Like most of the other doors, this one hung precariously, and most of the supplies that had been shelved neatly lay in disarray among the dusty rubble.

Thank goodness they were packaged up and not loose, if they had been she wouldn’t be able to use them as they would be compromised and she wouldn’t risk giving an injured patient a bacterial infection, or worse, on top of whatever they were trying to recover from.

Looking around she spied a basket she could shove some supplies in.

She hoped by the time she got back to the second floor they would’ve been able to make headway through the rubble and get to the other side.

She also needed to make her way up to the third floor and check on everyone there, particularly Mr. Ricco.

Her stomach churned with worry, she couldn’t shake the feeling that it would all be fruitless, that the shaking had been too much, and the building was going to collapse around their ears before they could get everyone out.

“Are you okay? Do you need help?”

After being around Spanish speaking people for so long, not to mention talking in the same language, hearing an American accent shocked her for a few seconds.

Marie whirled around, clutching the basket to her as if it could protect her.

Natural disasters and other tragic events tended to bring out the worst in some people.

They were also a hospital so they had drugs which could be sold on the black market.

The man standing in front of her was tall, broad shouldered and had an air of—not danger, but authority, maybe.

A scruffy beard covered most of his face and his hair was longish with streaks of silver in it.

His clothes were dusty, but he had sturdy boots on his feet and he looked like he could provide assistance in getting to the inaccessible parts of the building should they need it.

“Are you okay? Do you need help?” This time the same questions were spoken in Spanish as if the man thought she didn’t understand English, which made sense considering they were in another country.