"Two or three at a time?  That's all?" Richard cried, his voice rising in disbelief. "That's all?" he repeated, his face a mask of disbelief. "What kind of plan is that?" He shook his head in frustration.

He had watched from behind the dispatcher as three patients were transferred to litters, logged out, and loaded onto the noisy helicopter in the center of the helipad.   The chopper door had been slammed shut, and the machine lifted from the ground in a wild whoosh of hurricanelike wind and noise.  For an instant it hovered as if uncertain of its purpose, then it swerved off into the darkness. He had watched it until it disappeared into the night sky, leaving a strange emptiness in its wake.

The man guarding the exit door from the hospital to the helipad turned to answer Richard.  His eyes were slitted against the dust, and a hand covered his nose.  "Who the hell are you? You're not supposed to be here!"

"Those 'copters can only take out two or three people at a time?" 

"Right!  These particular ones are on loan from the Chicago Fire Department.  And we're lucky to have them---they could spare us only five!!  We've been promised Coast Guard choppers, but I haven't seen any yet, and the Army and Marines should be sending in.... Listen, kid.  You're not supposed to be here!"

"My mother's inside, badly burned," he said, motioning toward the emergency room some distance away. "She's supposed to be flown out to a burn center." He was frightened and worried about his mother's condition. What would the outcome be if he couldn't get past this hard case? Would she even get the care she needed?

"Her and a thousand others." The man nodded to a large room off to the side. Inside the room were rows of beds filled with women in white gowns attending to wounded people on stretchers and gurneys. He sighed and shook his head sadly. "Sorry, kid. She'll have to wait."

"She can't! She's too weak!" Richard cried, dogging the man's heels.  He knew he shouldn't be so pushy, but he couldn't seem to stop himself.   "Mister, wait!"

"You can't come in here," a nurse said, turning him away from the holding room with a firm hand on her arm.  In the brief instant before the door closed, he saw several orderlies in green surgical garb.  On the nearest gurney he noticed a number, pinned to the sheet covering.

For a long moment he waited at the closed door, wanting to force his way in, knowing it would get him nowhere.  With only three people being airlifted out every ten minutes or so, it could take hours before the wounded in just that one room could be moved.  In the meantime, his mother could die.  His whole body shook as he turned on his heels and ran back to the emergency room. 

He was passing the radio room when a voice saying "burn centers" stopped him. He immediately became alert and made his way into the radio room to hear more. The voice faded, then returned, stronger.  "Sorry, Glendale. We're trying to get to you.  Clear a landing space---a hundred by a hundred---and set up some signal fires so we can see where to land."

"We already did that!  At the high school football field.  Can't you see our fires?  For Chrissake, mister, where's that help you promised? It's been days and there's no sign of it.  What are we supposed to do?"

Someone in the radio room switched channels and started speaking.  Richard looked into the room and saw a white-coated man at the radio. The man's voice was deep and authoritative.

"This is Verdugo Hospital, calling Goleta. Verdugo Hospital to Goleta."

"Goleta Police.  Captain Huxley speaking."

"I'm Dr. Dahlberg.  We've got a thousand wounded here, at least half of them burns.  We need urgent medical attention for these patients, as well as supplies to treat their burn injuries. Where're the paramedics to take them out?  The situation is dire, and time is of the essence; we need help right away. We've got choppers taking two, three at a time.  The remaining patients need to be transferred to a better-equipped medical facility as soon as possible, or their lives may be at risk. What is this?  Some kinda joke?"

"No, joke, doc.  We've got requests to take out victims from everywhere.  It's like everyone is clamoring for our help! Military choppers are en-route."

"It's been I-don't-know-how-many hours! I'm exhausted and in desperate need of rest. These burns need attention!"

There was just the slightest hesitation, and then Goleta returned with, "The State of California has fewer than two hundred beds for severe burn victims, Dahlberg. And you know it!   It's an appalling statistic, considering the number of fires that this state sees each year," Goleta concluded. " The beds are full. I said full! Personnel are supervising other medical staff so they can serve maybe five or six hundred.  No more. We're sending to Arizona now."

"Arizona?! Good Christ!"

Richard's breath caught in his throat.  If California could only treat 200 severely burned, what could the less populated Arizona possibly have---ten, twenty-five, even fifty beds?  As he hurried back to his mother, he remembered a conversation he'd heard and paid no heed weeks ago.  "Listen to this," his father had said in an incredulous tone.  "Some government bigwig says we could survive an all-out nuclear attack with maybe 30 to 40 percent of our population intact." How, Richard now wondered bitterly, with hospitals gone, doctors dead or dying, medical supplies destroyed, water contaminated, fires everywhere, and even the air we breathe poisoned?  What about the few that did survive?  What would they eat?  What about the diseases that would follow?  He was sure, as he thought about it, that he'd rather die quickly than be one of the unlucky ones who lived.

A sickening anguish filled his stomach.  Until yesterday he'd tuned out everything except what happened in his own small world of school, music, running, his family and friends.  Now he realized he'd been stupid, that he should've paid attention to what was happening elsewhere.  If grownups were so dumb as to build something like the A-bomb and wield it like some kid who found his dad's gun, then maybe grownups weren't any smarter than kids.

He didn't know if his mother heard him as he bent over her still, clammy-cool body, but he spoke anyway, whispering in her ear.

"Mom, listen.  Hang in there, please.  I'm going to get you out of here.  Just hold on another hour or two, and you'll be where they know just what to do for your burns."

He thought his mother's hand tightened slightly in his, but he wasn't sure.

First, he had to move his mother's gurney out of the crowded room.  Harried, he looked around.  The orderly who was caring for the fifty or so patients had left for more supplies.   The patients were jammed so tightly together that there was practically no space between them.  Some, against the walls, might not have been examined in hours because they were so inaccessible.  HIs mother's bed stood in the middle of the room.  To move her out he'd have to rearrange other patients.  It reminded him of those puzzles he used to love working, where you had to line up numbers in consecutive order with just one free space to move in.  If he pushed that bed to there, and that one to..."

"Richard!"

He swung around, joy surging through his limbs at the sound of his brother's voice.

"Washington!  Stacey!"

Dark rings rimmed Stacey's eyes, and Washington wore a two-day stubble of bear.  They looked ragged and disheveled and tired beyond caring.  He realized that he must look the same.

The sound of an incoming helicopter cut short his pleasure.  Though he wanted to know where they had been, what had happened since he'd left them, and why they hadn't come sooner, he thought now only of his mother.

"Move that bed to the right, Wahington, will you, and Stacey, move that one to the left."

"Hey, wait!  How's Mom?"

"Washington, please!" The chopper sounded closer now.  It would be landing in another moment.  If he could get their mother out fast, then maybe...."Move that bed, Washington!"

"Why?  What the hell are you doing?"

"Just do like I say!" He began sliding another gurney aside, so that soon there'd be space to move his mother out.  As he worked, he explained about the helicopters taking out the burn victims and how the burn centers in California were already overcrowded.  If they didn't get their mother out soon, there'd be no hospital with specialized care in the whole country that wasn't full!

"Hey!  What the hell are you kids doing?" a voice cried, outraged.

"Don't stop, Washington!  Do like I said!" Richard ordered as Washington paused to look uncertainly from him to the attendant.

"You leave those beds alone!  Go on!  Get out of here before I call security!"

Security.  What a laugh, Richard thought.  "We'll put everyone back just like they were.  We're only rolling our mother out so we can take care of her ourselves."  He figured it was wiser not to speak of his plans in case someone tried to stop him.

"You can't do anything for her!  We've triaged the patients."

"Triaged?" Stacey asked in a weak voice.

"Sorted out, set priorities on.  Those we can help, those who could survive if we got them to a burn center are identified with tags."  The attendant's patience seemed just about gone.  "Look, you kids get out of here.  I'm sorry about your mother, but these patients won't make it."

"Then you won't mind if we take our mom where we can be with her for a while," Richard said grimly, pushing another bed out of the way.  "Washington...." He started to slide his mother's gurney into the space that opened up.  "We'll put the other patients back like they were, like we said.

The fact that they were returning the other beds to their original positions as he'd said they would evidently put the orderly in his place.  He muttered irritably about not having enough help or supplies and left the room, annoyed.

"What the Christ are you up to?" Washington whispered.  He and Stacey caught up to Richard and fell in beside him while he pushed his mother through the halls towards the stairs leading to the lower level and the heliport.  "Mom...." Washington touched his mother's hand, felt for a pulse.  His face flushed.  "Mom!"

"Washinton, there's a storeroom down that hall.  It's got lots of those green scrub gowns.  I need one.  Get it, please!"

"My God!  Look at her!  She's dying!" Washington pulled at Richard's arm.  "Why weren't you seeing that she got proper care!"

"Washington..." Stacey cried, pulling at his arm.

Richard wanted to scream, Where were you, brother, all this time?  He wanted to scream, Shut up, smartass!  She's not going to die.  She's not!  I won't let her!  Instead he said, "Get that gown, like I said, and some rubber gloves if you see them.  Hurry!  The chopper will be leaving any second!"

"Where?" Stacey asked.  "Come on, Washington. Get off his case and help me find what he wants!"

For a second Washington still gripped Richard's arm, screaming accusations, then his hand fell away.  He turned and hurried off, with Stacey, to the storeroom.

For the first time in his life Richard didn't feel that old sense of inadequacy, that horrible call-to-action feeling he always got when his brother put him down, the feeling that set him screaming irrationally in self-defense.  He'd done the best he could; he didn't know what else he might have done under the circumstances.

As they entered the final corridor before reaching the holding room where the patients were moved out to the choppers, Richard halted.  "You guys had better stay here.  They'll be suspicious if they see the three of us.  I'll put on the scrub gown and hope they don't recognize me.  I've changed the tag Mom's wearing, so she doesn't look hopeless."

"Maybe I should take her in," Washington said. "They haven't seen me around."

Washington considered that for an instant, warring with himself over giving this final step to his brother.  Yes, he might be recognized.  Washington would not be, and he appeared older and more authoritative.  But he wouldn't let Washington take over, and it wasn't for ego reasons.  It was something he had to do himself because he could do it better than Washington.  He had a trait Washington didn't have, a trait the family usually hated him for because it was so unrelenting.  Stubbornness.  Persistence beyond reason.  When he wanted something, he went after it and worked for it or fought for it and hung on and pushed and sought loopholes and other exits until he got what he wanted most of the time.  Washington wasn't like that.  If he took their mother into that room and tried to get her on a chopper he might be stopped.  He might not find another way or push hard enough.  The one thing Richard knew about himself, whether it was a good trait or not, was that he'd get his mother on a chopper somehow.  Nothing and nobody would stop him.

He could hear voices, wheels rolling along the corridor to the outside, and the whir of helicopter blades at idle.  "I think I'd better do it, Washington.  Be back as soon as I can."   Without waiting for Washington's reply he donned the scrub gown, pushed the cap over his dark hair, and wiped his face to clear away some of the soot and char.  He then turned the corner into the corridor leading to the outside helipad.  An orderly in a green scrub gown just like his was rolling a gurney out the door.  The guard with the clipboard checked the patient through.

"Hold up!" he called, trying to deepen the timbre of his voice while controlling its trembled.  He started down the corridor at a run, pushing his mother on the gurney.  "This one has to go priority.  Wait up!"