Status: Active
Fireproof
003
“Let’s roll guys.” Jep was yelling as Criss and I ran back into the station and started pulling our gear on.
“What do we have Jep?” I asked.
“Multi-vehicle accident on the Black River bridge. Injuries reported, reports of people still trapped in the vehicles and a possible water rescue.”
“Shit.”
I grabbed an extra bag of equipment for the possible water rescue and jumped back into the truck as it rolled out of the station, lights flashing and sirens blaring. The skies continued to get darker as a few drops of rain had started falling. Criss helped me get suited up in the harness just in case the water rescue ended up going down. Black River was notorious for its fast current and cooler than average water temperatures. The last thing I wanted to have to do today was fight the fast current, but with the weather getting worse by the minute, it was best to go ahead and be prepared.
“You know that feeling that you get that something isn’t going to go right and you hardly ever get those feelings but when you do, that’s usually how it goes?” I asked Criss.
“Shut up, Parker.” Pete said, knowing that I had that feeling that something wasn’t going to go right.
“We’re going to prevent that feeling from being right.” Criss said
“I hope so too.”
We fought our way through the backed up traffic and finally made it to the bridge which was nothing less than a scene of chaos. We were the first department on the scene so our first step was to assess exactly what was going on. My first sweep of the scene showed the smashed front of an eighteen wheeler and a huge bus lying on its side hanging halfway off of the bridge. It wasn’t hard to see the bus swaying on the bridge as the winds picked up from the upcoming storm. If there was anybody still in that bus I knew we had to act fast.
“We’ve got three people trapped in that bus! It’s going to fall. You have to get them out of there! They’re hurt!”
I didn’t even get out of the truck before I was met by two guys, both injured, begging for us to help their friends. After getting a good look at one guy and then looking at the other, I realized that they were two of the members from the world famous rock band Motley Crue. My dad had absolutely loved Motley Crue and had made at least one concert on every world tour they had ever done. Something told me that out of all the towns they traveled to and could have had this happen in, that if it had to happen my Dad had a hand in it happening here in my town. I knew my Dad was trying to tell me something, to do anything and everything I could do to help get these guys on their way to recovery and back to their fans.
“Alright, buddy. Calm down okay? We are going to do whatever we can to help everyone. You’re hurt and you need to sit down and take it easy okay?” I said looking at the world famous Tommy Lee. He was guarding his shoulder and arm and had all sorts of cuts and bruises on his face and shirtless body.
“Okay, but please.” He pleaded, on the verge of tears. “Those are my brothers.”
“Tommy,” I called him by name to hopefully be a little bit more personable with him. “It’s going to be okay. Sit in the truck until the ambulance gets here, okay?”
I took my thick, smoked stained jacket off and wrapped it around his shoulders, his eyes wide from me calling him by name and he probably wasn’t far from going into shock. I opened the door to the truck and helped him in and turned to face the blonde haired singer Vince Neil, who had a very dazed look on his face. He had some sort of head injury for sure.
“Hey man. Can you tell me your name or what day it is today?”
He stared at me blankly before slowly shaking his head. “No..I can’t. I know I should be able to but I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. You’re doing great. Take a seat in the truck with Tommy okay? This is Pete and he’s going to hang out with you guys and check you out until the ambulance gets here.”
“What’s going on?” Pete asked. He had grabbed the first aid bag out of a storage compartment on the side of the truck.
“Probable head injury on the blonde haired guy and not sure what else. Possible shoulder and arm injury to the other and he has multiple bruises and lacerations.”
“Got it. Parker, be careful.”
I turned away from the truck and put my helmet on, trying to shield some of the driving rain that had started falling, from my face. I found Jep, Criss, and Michael over by the bus, assessing the situation and trying to figure out the best approach to this messy situation. One thing was for sure, the wind was picking up and that bus wasn’t going to be able to handle much movement on the inside and the wind too. The river was waiting anxiously below, but the current wasn’t quite as fast today as it normally was. The bad weather had the water moving pretty roughly though which wasn’t much better.
“What do you think Park?” Criss asked as I walked up.
The bus was laying on its side, leaving the opposite side facing up. One of the windows towards the back of the bus had been shattered either during the wreck or by one of the guys to give them a way out. That seemed to be our only option at this point for any of us to get into the bus and get the others out.
“Let’s get a ladder and a truck over here. We can rest the bucket on the side of the bus to hopefully add some weight to it. I’ll use the ladder to get into the bus and see what I can do and Criss can wait in the bucket to help pull them out.” I suggested. “But we need to go now.”
“Parker, that’s a little too risky.” Jep said.
“Jep, if we hurry we can do this. We have no other option at this point and I’m not going to sit around and wait on this bus to fall into the river. That would eliminate any chance at all at getting them out alive if they are.”
“Alright, Lieutenant. I trust your judgement. Radio and let us know what you have going on when you get in there.”
I waited as Jon, our truck driver, got the truck positioned right to lower the bucket at the end of the truck ladder onto the bus. Criss controlled the truck ladder from the bucket and got us positioned over the busted out window. I lowered the free standing ladder down into the bus and slowly made my down it, revealing just how unstable the bus was on the bridge. The thought of taking a plunge into the river scared the hell out of me, but not saving these guys’ lives scared me even more. Saving lives and helping people was in my blood, even if it meant sometimes putting my own life in danger.
I made my way slowly from the back of the bus which seemed to be a sleep area. One of the guys, their lead guitarist Mick was lying in the aisle in a puddle of blood, but was alert and moving slowly. At the front of the bus I could see one body on the floor, the upper body slanted down the steps that led up from the bus door, and the other body was the driver who was hanging from the driver’s seat which he was strapped into. My guess was that the two up front were going to be the worst, if they were even alive.
“Thank god.” Mick said as I knelt down beside him.
“Hey, buddy. My name is Parker and I’m with the fire department. I’m going to do my best to get you out of here okay?”
“Okay. I’m not bad. Just my leg and hip and my arm. Just tell me what you need me to do.”
“Do you think you can walk for me? I’m going to help you.”
“I’ll make myself.”
“Alright. No neck or back pain?”
“I’m hurting everywhere but I don’t think I’ve broken anything.”
“Parker, wind is picking up and changing directions. You gotta hurry. What do you have in there?” Jep said over the radio
“Fixing to come out with one. Alert and oriented, moderate injuries. The other two are at the very front of the bus and appear to be critical. Get some helicopters out here if they will.”
“Roger that.”
“Alright buddy. I’m going to put this neck brace on you just as a precaution. I would love to have no neck and back movement but that’s not an option right now. Alright. We’re going to get up slowly and walk as quickly and calmly to the back of the bus as we can.”
I let Criss know we were headed back to the ladder as we made our way back. I wanted to meet whoever had designed this bus and shake their hand because along the floor was a set of drawers to store things in and that was the only space to walk on to keep us from having to climb over couches and tables. Mick was doing a great job and fighting the pain as we went. From what I could tell our movement wasn’t affecting the bus too much but he was going to be the easiest of the three getting out.
“Almost done Mick. I’m going to help you up this ladder and Criss is going to take over.”
“You guys are amazing.”
“Not as amazing as Motley Crue. This wasn’t how I pictured meeting my favorite band, but I’ll catch a show in the future.” I said trying to lighten the mood.
“I’ll be looking forward to it.”
I smiled and gave Criss a thumbs up as Mick was pulled to safety and I turned back for the other two guys. I creeped slowly to the front of the bus and checked the man hanging from the driver’s seat. As I had feared, I got no pulse. There was no way I could lower him from the seat without some of his weight falling to the bus and that was not what I needed right now. As bad as I hated to, I turned away from him and to the final member of the band, the world famous Nikki Sixx. His pulse was there, but faint. I grabbed the waist of his pants and gave a hard tug to pull him from the awkward position he was in. This was going to be fun getting his lifeless body back through this mess of a bus.
As I was trying to calmly lift Nikki to carry him out of the bus, the bus gave a violent lunge forward, suddenly making the task before me much more difficult. I held on with everything I had to keep myself standing and not let go of Nikki, who was starting to stir and grunt a little bit, no doubt because of the pain he was in.
“Parker, you’ve got to get out of there. It’s not safe anymore and it’s not going to last long. We’ve got to move the bucket.” Criss said over the radio.
I didn’t answer him as I concentrated on taking slow steps towards the back of the bus. It was moving a lot more now, causing me to have to stop every few steps to regain my balance. I wasn’t the biggest of girls, maybe a hundred and thirty pounds soaking wet. I could hold my own with carrying out people on my shoulders, but the bigger people I usually had back up on. Nikki would have been one of the guys I would have requested help with because he was tall and muscular. I couldn’t lie and say that I wasn’t struggling. Every muscle in my body was burning, but I wasn’t giving up.
“L-leave me. Save yourself pl-please.”
Nikki’s raspy pained voice scared the hell out of me as we inched closer to the back of the bus.
“I am saving myself. And you’re coming with me. If I leave you, I’m staying too.”
At the back of the bus I could hear the bucket being moved from where it had been resting on the side. There was a lot of yelling and commotion going on that I couldn’t hear as I fought to take each step. I came to within arm’s reach of the opening that separated the back of the bus from the front but I never made that last step to pull us through the opening.
The sound of the metal of the bus sliding against the concrete bridge was deafening, and shrill enough to make every hair on a person’s body stand straight up. I knew what was happening but there was nothing that I could do to stop it. I heard Criss and Jep yelling over the radio, felt the weight of Nikki being lifted off of me as we took the fall with the bus. My only thought through out all of this was that maybe I was fixing to see my Dad again.
The fall lasted only for a few seconds but it felt like an entire century. The impact of hitting the river was hard and painful as all of the stuff from the rest of the bus fell and landed on top of us, including the ladder we had been using at the back of the bus. My world went black for a few seconds and then I came right back, slowly realizing that I was still stuck in this nightmare.
The bus was now in an upright position and taking on water as it was slowly sinking. Nikki’s lifeless was body had landed right next to me after the fall and was beginning to float in the rising water. I pushed myself up and reached for him, crying out at the sudden immense pain that overtook my body. I pushed the pain to the back of my mind as I looked around to figure out how we were going to get out of here. The shattered windshield had been pushed in on one side from the impact of the bus hitting the water nose first, leaving us a pretty good escape route. I took one of the clips on my safety harness and clipped it to a belt buckle on Nikki’s jeans just so we were connected in some way, and I began the task of getting us out of the bus.
Getting out proved to be not quite as difficult as trying to get him through the bus had been and now that we were in the water the only task was keeping us both afloat. There were a big group of people gathered on the shore of the river as we made our way slowly, fighting the current. Finally, after what seemed like another century and a half I drug myself and Nikki onto the shore, and checked to see if he still had a pulse. When I didn’t feel one, I placed my hands on his chest to start CPR, or thought I was anyway. My body had other plans.
“Fuck!” I yelled.
I collapsed to the ground beside Nikki completely exhausted and in pain. My left shoulder wouldn’t do anything when I tried to do the first chest compression and I knew that I had reached my breaking point. Nikki’s lifeless face was the last thing I saw as we were both surrounded by firemen and paramedics and my world drifted off into a black uneasy peacefulness.
“What do we have Jep?” I asked.
“Multi-vehicle accident on the Black River bridge. Injuries reported, reports of people still trapped in the vehicles and a possible water rescue.”
“Shit.”
I grabbed an extra bag of equipment for the possible water rescue and jumped back into the truck as it rolled out of the station, lights flashing and sirens blaring. The skies continued to get darker as a few drops of rain had started falling. Criss helped me get suited up in the harness just in case the water rescue ended up going down. Black River was notorious for its fast current and cooler than average water temperatures. The last thing I wanted to have to do today was fight the fast current, but with the weather getting worse by the minute, it was best to go ahead and be prepared.
“You know that feeling that you get that something isn’t going to go right and you hardly ever get those feelings but when you do, that’s usually how it goes?” I asked Criss.
“Shut up, Parker.” Pete said, knowing that I had that feeling that something wasn’t going to go right.
“We’re going to prevent that feeling from being right.” Criss said
“I hope so too.”
We fought our way through the backed up traffic and finally made it to the bridge which was nothing less than a scene of chaos. We were the first department on the scene so our first step was to assess exactly what was going on. My first sweep of the scene showed the smashed front of an eighteen wheeler and a huge bus lying on its side hanging halfway off of the bridge. It wasn’t hard to see the bus swaying on the bridge as the winds picked up from the upcoming storm. If there was anybody still in that bus I knew we had to act fast.
“We’ve got three people trapped in that bus! It’s going to fall. You have to get them out of there! They’re hurt!”
I didn’t even get out of the truck before I was met by two guys, both injured, begging for us to help their friends. After getting a good look at one guy and then looking at the other, I realized that they were two of the members from the world famous rock band Motley Crue. My dad had absolutely loved Motley Crue and had made at least one concert on every world tour they had ever done. Something told me that out of all the towns they traveled to and could have had this happen in, that if it had to happen my Dad had a hand in it happening here in my town. I knew my Dad was trying to tell me something, to do anything and everything I could do to help get these guys on their way to recovery and back to their fans.
“Alright, buddy. Calm down okay? We are going to do whatever we can to help everyone. You’re hurt and you need to sit down and take it easy okay?” I said looking at the world famous Tommy Lee. He was guarding his shoulder and arm and had all sorts of cuts and bruises on his face and shirtless body.
“Okay, but please.” He pleaded, on the verge of tears. “Those are my brothers.”
“Tommy,” I called him by name to hopefully be a little bit more personable with him. “It’s going to be okay. Sit in the truck until the ambulance gets here, okay?”
I took my thick, smoked stained jacket off and wrapped it around his shoulders, his eyes wide from me calling him by name and he probably wasn’t far from going into shock. I opened the door to the truck and helped him in and turned to face the blonde haired singer Vince Neil, who had a very dazed look on his face. He had some sort of head injury for sure.
“Hey man. Can you tell me your name or what day it is today?”
He stared at me blankly before slowly shaking his head. “No..I can’t. I know I should be able to but I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. You’re doing great. Take a seat in the truck with Tommy okay? This is Pete and he’s going to hang out with you guys and check you out until the ambulance gets here.”
“What’s going on?” Pete asked. He had grabbed the first aid bag out of a storage compartment on the side of the truck.
“Probable head injury on the blonde haired guy and not sure what else. Possible shoulder and arm injury to the other and he has multiple bruises and lacerations.”
“Got it. Parker, be careful.”
I turned away from the truck and put my helmet on, trying to shield some of the driving rain that had started falling, from my face. I found Jep, Criss, and Michael over by the bus, assessing the situation and trying to figure out the best approach to this messy situation. One thing was for sure, the wind was picking up and that bus wasn’t going to be able to handle much movement on the inside and the wind too. The river was waiting anxiously below, but the current wasn’t quite as fast today as it normally was. The bad weather had the water moving pretty roughly though which wasn’t much better.
“What do you think Park?” Criss asked as I walked up.
The bus was laying on its side, leaving the opposite side facing up. One of the windows towards the back of the bus had been shattered either during the wreck or by one of the guys to give them a way out. That seemed to be our only option at this point for any of us to get into the bus and get the others out.
“Let’s get a ladder and a truck over here. We can rest the bucket on the side of the bus to hopefully add some weight to it. I’ll use the ladder to get into the bus and see what I can do and Criss can wait in the bucket to help pull them out.” I suggested. “But we need to go now.”
“Parker, that’s a little too risky.” Jep said.
“Jep, if we hurry we can do this. We have no other option at this point and I’m not going to sit around and wait on this bus to fall into the river. That would eliminate any chance at all at getting them out alive if they are.”
“Alright, Lieutenant. I trust your judgement. Radio and let us know what you have going on when you get in there.”
I waited as Jon, our truck driver, got the truck positioned right to lower the bucket at the end of the truck ladder onto the bus. Criss controlled the truck ladder from the bucket and got us positioned over the busted out window. I lowered the free standing ladder down into the bus and slowly made my down it, revealing just how unstable the bus was on the bridge. The thought of taking a plunge into the river scared the hell out of me, but not saving these guys’ lives scared me even more. Saving lives and helping people was in my blood, even if it meant sometimes putting my own life in danger.
I made my way slowly from the back of the bus which seemed to be a sleep area. One of the guys, their lead guitarist Mick was lying in the aisle in a puddle of blood, but was alert and moving slowly. At the front of the bus I could see one body on the floor, the upper body slanted down the steps that led up from the bus door, and the other body was the driver who was hanging from the driver’s seat which he was strapped into. My guess was that the two up front were going to be the worst, if they were even alive.
“Thank god.” Mick said as I knelt down beside him.
“Hey, buddy. My name is Parker and I’m with the fire department. I’m going to do my best to get you out of here okay?”
“Okay. I’m not bad. Just my leg and hip and my arm. Just tell me what you need me to do.”
“Do you think you can walk for me? I’m going to help you.”
“I’ll make myself.”
“Alright. No neck or back pain?”
“I’m hurting everywhere but I don’t think I’ve broken anything.”
“Parker, wind is picking up and changing directions. You gotta hurry. What do you have in there?” Jep said over the radio
“Fixing to come out with one. Alert and oriented, moderate injuries. The other two are at the very front of the bus and appear to be critical. Get some helicopters out here if they will.”
“Roger that.”
“Alright buddy. I’m going to put this neck brace on you just as a precaution. I would love to have no neck and back movement but that’s not an option right now. Alright. We’re going to get up slowly and walk as quickly and calmly to the back of the bus as we can.”
I let Criss know we were headed back to the ladder as we made our way back. I wanted to meet whoever had designed this bus and shake their hand because along the floor was a set of drawers to store things in and that was the only space to walk on to keep us from having to climb over couches and tables. Mick was doing a great job and fighting the pain as we went. From what I could tell our movement wasn’t affecting the bus too much but he was going to be the easiest of the three getting out.
“Almost done Mick. I’m going to help you up this ladder and Criss is going to take over.”
“You guys are amazing.”
“Not as amazing as Motley Crue. This wasn’t how I pictured meeting my favorite band, but I’ll catch a show in the future.” I said trying to lighten the mood.
“I’ll be looking forward to it.”
I smiled and gave Criss a thumbs up as Mick was pulled to safety and I turned back for the other two guys. I creeped slowly to the front of the bus and checked the man hanging from the driver’s seat. As I had feared, I got no pulse. There was no way I could lower him from the seat without some of his weight falling to the bus and that was not what I needed right now. As bad as I hated to, I turned away from him and to the final member of the band, the world famous Nikki Sixx. His pulse was there, but faint. I grabbed the waist of his pants and gave a hard tug to pull him from the awkward position he was in. This was going to be fun getting his lifeless body back through this mess of a bus.
As I was trying to calmly lift Nikki to carry him out of the bus, the bus gave a violent lunge forward, suddenly making the task before me much more difficult. I held on with everything I had to keep myself standing and not let go of Nikki, who was starting to stir and grunt a little bit, no doubt because of the pain he was in.
“Parker, you’ve got to get out of there. It’s not safe anymore and it’s not going to last long. We’ve got to move the bucket.” Criss said over the radio.
I didn’t answer him as I concentrated on taking slow steps towards the back of the bus. It was moving a lot more now, causing me to have to stop every few steps to regain my balance. I wasn’t the biggest of girls, maybe a hundred and thirty pounds soaking wet. I could hold my own with carrying out people on my shoulders, but the bigger people I usually had back up on. Nikki would have been one of the guys I would have requested help with because he was tall and muscular. I couldn’t lie and say that I wasn’t struggling. Every muscle in my body was burning, but I wasn’t giving up.
“L-leave me. Save yourself pl-please.”
Nikki’s raspy pained voice scared the hell out of me as we inched closer to the back of the bus.
“I am saving myself. And you’re coming with me. If I leave you, I’m staying too.”
At the back of the bus I could hear the bucket being moved from where it had been resting on the side. There was a lot of yelling and commotion going on that I couldn’t hear as I fought to take each step. I came to within arm’s reach of the opening that separated the back of the bus from the front but I never made that last step to pull us through the opening.
The sound of the metal of the bus sliding against the concrete bridge was deafening, and shrill enough to make every hair on a person’s body stand straight up. I knew what was happening but there was nothing that I could do to stop it. I heard Criss and Jep yelling over the radio, felt the weight of Nikki being lifted off of me as we took the fall with the bus. My only thought through out all of this was that maybe I was fixing to see my Dad again.
The fall lasted only for a few seconds but it felt like an entire century. The impact of hitting the river was hard and painful as all of the stuff from the rest of the bus fell and landed on top of us, including the ladder we had been using at the back of the bus. My world went black for a few seconds and then I came right back, slowly realizing that I was still stuck in this nightmare.
The bus was now in an upright position and taking on water as it was slowly sinking. Nikki’s lifeless was body had landed right next to me after the fall and was beginning to float in the rising water. I pushed myself up and reached for him, crying out at the sudden immense pain that overtook my body. I pushed the pain to the back of my mind as I looked around to figure out how we were going to get out of here. The shattered windshield had been pushed in on one side from the impact of the bus hitting the water nose first, leaving us a pretty good escape route. I took one of the clips on my safety harness and clipped it to a belt buckle on Nikki’s jeans just so we were connected in some way, and I began the task of getting us out of the bus.
Getting out proved to be not quite as difficult as trying to get him through the bus had been and now that we were in the water the only task was keeping us both afloat. There were a big group of people gathered on the shore of the river as we made our way slowly, fighting the current. Finally, after what seemed like another century and a half I drug myself and Nikki onto the shore, and checked to see if he still had a pulse. When I didn’t feel one, I placed my hands on his chest to start CPR, or thought I was anyway. My body had other plans.
“Fuck!” I yelled.
I collapsed to the ground beside Nikki completely exhausted and in pain. My left shoulder wouldn’t do anything when I tried to do the first chest compression and I knew that I had reached my breaking point. Nikki’s lifeless face was the last thing I saw as we were both surrounded by firemen and paramedics and my world drifted off into a black uneasy peacefulness.