Читать книгу Every Wickedness - Susan Thistlethwaite - Страница 9

The rat likes the cheese

Not the trap

But rats gotta eat

Don’t they?

“Traps”

Abigail Collins, #584

StreetWise

Wednesday, May 17, 7 p.m.

I was late to the reception, of course. That’s what Kelly had intended. But what she didn’t know, and I had no intention of ever telling her, was that it didn’t really matter all that much. Her Dad would probably have an emergency and be later still, if he made it at all.

You have to have a pretty thick skin to date a surgeon. I’d discovered that nine times out of ten you were left at the restaurant, reception, dinner party, opera (pick one), either dateless or abandoned after he got an emergency call.

Oddly enough, it didn’t seem to bother me, a fact Tom found astounding. I’ve always liked surprises—it was the unpredictability I actually liked. Will he? Won’t he? And the times we did get together became all the sweeter for it. Augustine of Hippo, a really randy Christian saint, wondered why, when he was a kid, pears he’d stolen out of an orchard tasted the sweetest. Why is stolen pleasure sweeter? Augustine couldn’t figure it out (well, actually he thought it had a lot to do with human sin, but I couldn’t buy that convenient out). I did respect his insights into the perversity of the human soul though. A lot.

The Anderson building was directly in front of me now. Ames Anderson was a wealthy racetrack owner and he’d bankrolled this hospital construction project with a single, fifty million dollar donation. Atonement? Tax write-off? Probably both. Though, can one genuinely atone while also reducing your tax bill? Kind of ruined the sacrificial aspect of atonement, I mused.

Tom had told me this pile of steel and concrete was going to double the number of beds at the hospital. His voice had carried both awe and worry. The clear trajectory in medicine these days is to reduce both health care costs and delivery, and thus increase profits. Eventually, I thought, health care could completely disappear for all but the rich. So why expand the in-patient capacity when reducing costs and increasing profits meant sending people who’d had surgery home before they passed go? Who knew? Privately I thought the honchos who ran this university hospital thought so much of their august brand (“First in Medicine!”) that they figured they could buck these obvious trends. Well good luck with that. The titanic plates that were moving under American society these days were crushing all kinds of human care, and health care was sitting right on a major fault line and the cracks were getting wider.

As I turned the corner on University Avenue, a concrete truck was just pulling out from the ramp that divided the block-long building into two sides on the ground level. Above, an arch on the second level connected the two halves. It seemed to me that these construction guys were cutting it a little close, since not a hundred feet further down the block, long black limos were discharging formally attired attendees under a rented marquee. Even though the month was May, the covered walkway was a smart idea. In Chicago, it could have been snowing. And just because it wasn’t snowing this minute didn’t mean that this clear, fairly warm night would remain so. It was common for a front to surge down Lake Michigan from the North Pole and drop the temperature 30 degrees in an hour. Well, make that half an hour now as abrupt and violent climate change was accelerating and aggravating our weather patterns.

As I got even closer I could see some demonstrators on the sidewalk across from the entrance the reception-goers were using. I’d read about these protests not only in StreetWise, but also in the big Chicago papers. The people of the neighborhoods surrounding the university wanted a trauma center to be included in this multi-million dollar medical skyscraper. Nightly shootings in these areas took lives that might have been saved if there had been an adult trauma center close by. And so far there was no adult trauma center planned here, or anywhere in the hospital complex that I knew of. Signs read “Save Our Youth” and many were wearing “Trauma Center Now” tee shirts. I knew negotiations had started, but if demonstrations were still going on, no trauma center deal had yet been struck.

I just stopped walking and looked at the faces. I wondered how many of the older African American women and men who were demonstrating had lost children to gun violence. Their faces were grim, and determined. A small group of what looked like students, many of them white, stood behind them, partially hidden by the signs carried by the front line of demonstrators. Good for them. They knew where to stand, too, behind those who were literally on the front lines of this battleground. But they were up against not just the money and power of this particular hospital, but a whole national shift toward health as a profit center. And if it wasn’t profitable, death of the unprofitable was clearly the preferred business plan. I made a mental note to check if these protestors had a website, see how I could help.

Finally, I turned in at the marquee and approached a reception table. I presented my invitation. Much to my amazement, the young woman behind the table in black sheath, pearls and a vacant face plunged her hand into a large cardboard box next to her chair and pulled out a white construction helmet with the words “Anderson Building” printed across the front in maroon letters. She handed this to me, showing no embarrassment at all. I took it from her, too bemused to do anything else. With my construction helmet dangling from my hand along with my tiny evening purse, I walked into the building. I stopped walking again, my stomach churning from the contrast between the needs of the demonstrators outside and the obvious luxury here.

Nearly a hundred people in formal wear carrying hard hats in one hand and drinks in the other were milling around. Waiters circulated with trays of hors d’oeuvres, but there were few takers. Unless the waiter dropped the crab puff or bacon-wrapped scallop into your construction helmet, there was no way to get the food and hold a drink as well. That was currently fine with me, and with my upset stomach.

The area where the reception was being held was obviously going to be the main lobby of the new hospital building. It was several stories high—and it seemed from looking up that this would continue—and was an impressively large space. Of course, the lack of walls helped with the sense of immensity. The concrete floor had been swept and all the construction equipment pushed back behind ropes along what would be the outer wall of this area. Above this atrium-like lobby, I could see floors rising in tiers—ropes had been strung along them to keep people from falling off. The effect was rather like the back of a huge doll hospital, a Barbie-becomes-a-brain-surgeon set. Now that the toy manufacturers had Barbie stop saying she hated math, there might be a chance of that. I stood still and marveled at the size of this lobby. The architect must be aiming for a Hyatt-hotel kind of effect. I’d heard, in fact, that this atrium would contain a Starbucks coffee shop, a decent restaurant and even a few shops. Now that airports are virtually indistinguishable from malls, maybe hospitals would also begin to resemble malls. The future promised that the whole country would become one giant mall called “Everywhere U.S.A,” though since more than half the country couldn’t make a living wage, how all this buying would take place with no money was a mystery. I pulled myself away from these morbid cultural reflections and began to look for Tom.

I was amazed to actually see him. He’d made it. I’m tall, but Tom is taller still and it’s relatively easy for us to find each other in a crowd. Tom was standing with a small group of men, listening.

Tom’s ability to listen continued to move me—his tall figure bent toward whoever was speaking, giving them his full attention. Even though I was too far away to see him distinctly, I knew his clear blue eyes would be focused in thought behind his wire-rimmed glasses. The skin at the corner of his eyes was permanently crinkled from that intent look. His sandy hair, graying a little at the temples, was too long and fell forward over his forehead when he bent his head. Tom’s gaze was total—he was never, like many doctors, or academics for that matter, obviously mentally elsewhere. He was more like a cop in this. He was always present. And his look made you (or at least made me) want to trust him and tell him everything, a trait I’d found uncomfortable a couple of times already. I felt the rush of pleasure I always have when I see him. I wondered if I would continue to feel it.

I approached the group quietly and slipped my arm through Tom’s. He gave it a squeeze and continued listening. I glanced over at him and noticed his bow tie appeared to have been tied by a monkey. An inept monkey.

The man holding forth in the group could only be an administrator. He was so smooth he appeared to have been lacquered. He was short and his baby smooth, pale face, immaculate hair, and buffed nails positively glistened in the glare from the bare bulbs strung over our heads. His bow tie, I noticed, was perfectly symmetrical. Of course, he probably slept in formal wear and therefore had a lot of practice tying the tie. He looked remarkably like Fred Astaire; I hoped he didn’t dance.

“The additional beds will not ever be a financial drain—they are a wonderful source of revenue,” he was saying with that palms up, ‘trust me and buy this Edsel’ gesture that dishonest car salesmen have. His speech was audibly italicized.

“But why are there nineteen operating rooms? The original plans we saw called for forty,” said an older man with a completely gray head, his stoop and his tired eyes labeling him a surgeon. His tone wasn’t hostile, but it was not a tone I’d like used to me. It conveyed very clearly that he knew he’d been lied to, he was being lied to now, and he expected to be lied to again in the future. It was both weary and contemptuous.

“I’m sure the hospital planning committee took all the departments’ needs into account,” said Fred the Administrator, doing a little administrative two-step. I was wrong. He did dance. He looked around the circle, making excellent eye contact. The gray-haired doctor gave an audible groan.

I looked around the group as well, since I couldn’t quite make out what they were talking about. Next to Fred the Administrator was the tired doctor, then another older man, this one heavy-set and running to fat in the stomach area. This is not the physique that men’s formal wear flatters. His cummerbund looked like it was a large bandage around his middle, keeping his stomach from exploding. Despite his weight, his carriage was very erect, almost stiff. This rigidity extended to his face. His lips were pursed so tightly they were white and his eyes behind his authoritative black eyeglass frames stared straight at Fred. He was probably struggling to hold on to some very choice words.

And holding on to the rigid guy’s arm was a stunning young woman, easy half to a third of his age. A trophy wife? Her long blond hair flowed like a veil down her back, nearly reaching the hem of her tiny little black skirt. Below the skirt, tanned, slim legs led gracefully to high-heeled sandals. Her spaghetti strap top revealed she was thin, way too thin in that anorexic fashion model way that’s come back into style to encourage girls like Kelly toward depression and eating disorders. I know it threatened me and I’m supposed to be a grown-up. I sighed. She was exactly the kind of woman, well, girl, really, who had always made me feel like I was a hundred-foot-tall freak. She was none too subtly pulling on the rigid guy’s arm, trying to move him away from the circle. He was plainly having none of it. The fact that he wasn’t budging, and that none of the other men appeared to be drooling over her, was revealing. Despite the empty phrases the administrator was rolling off his tongue with practiced ease, the docs were very nervous about this construction project.

I thought I’d make the lacquered administrator nervous instead.

“What progress are you making on opening an adult trauma center?” I asked, loud enough to be heard over the cocktail party noise and, if truth be told, even a little louder than necessary.

What people call ‘an embarrassed silence’ ensued. But only briefly.

The lacquered administrator was more than a match for my pushy question and me. He made a move worthy of Fred Astaire in his suave Top Hat film and made his escape without even looking at me, let alone answering my question. He turned gracefully and glanced across the room, and then he swiveled back and made little depreciating ‘sorry about this’ and ‘need to see about that’ murmurs all accompanied by backwards motion and hand-waving. He was gone in the twinkling of an eye.

Tom and then other men looked at each other and frowned. Then by mutual consent they gave up and the group dispersed. Tom turned to me.

“Was that one of the lower-level administrators?” I asked, having never seen him before.

“There’s no one lower than Mandel Griffiths,” Tom said dryly.

“So no progress on a trauma center?” I asked.

“We need that here. There’s no doubt,” Tom said seriously. “But adult trauma centers are very expensive and you see what kind of compassionate, visionary leadership we have to deal with.” Tom nodded his head in the direction Mandel Griffith had taken when he’d danced away. “I’d say the odds were slim, but the community pressure is getting to them.”

Good, I thought. Now I’ll definitely look for that website.

“Did Kelly get to your house all right?” he asked, obviously wanting to talk about anything other than Mandel Griffiths, the lowly administrator, and his complete lack of vision and compassion. Of course, Kelly would not have been my choice as a new topic of conversation.

I steered him toward the bar that was set up along the wall on the far side of the room while I pondered how best to answer the question.

Honesty, I thought, stick to honesty.

“She was late, but she made it finally. I really don’t think she likes having to come over when you’re out, Tom. It makes her feel like you think she’s a baby.” Somebody had to tell him and Kelly wasn’t having much success.

Tom stopped walking and disengaged his arm from mine.

“She’s a young girl and this is the city.” He even stuck his chin out.

He’d actually used those same words when we’d talked yesterday about Kelly’s coming over. Did I say Tom listened? I take it back. Where his daughter is concerned, he’s just as thick as any other father. Maybe more so as he was a new custodial father. I started to argue and then stopped. Not with a hundred over-dressed people surrounding us all carrying hard hats. It was not the time for this conversation.

“Come on,” I said, taking his hand. “I’m thirsty.”

He came along reluctantly, but loosened up a little as I played surreptitiously with his fingers. He greeted friends and made brief introductions along the way as we struggled through the crowd to get two watered-down drinks. As I weaved my way through the crowd, saying hello six or seven times to people I would never remember, my mind was on Kelly and Tom. Tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll tell him that how he raises Kelly is his business, but no more leaning on Carol, Giles and me. Right. I knew I sounded like Scarlett O’Hara.

We finally obtained our drinks and escaped from the crush close to the bar. We wandered around and joined a small crowd clustered in front of some sketches of what the final building would look like. The proposed outside wasn’t too bad as it was drawn, with raised columns drawing the eye upward and masking the sheer size of the building. Of course, it was also surrounded by beautiful landscaping and happy, healthy people strolling in and out. It didn’t exactly say ‘sick and injured people welcome here.’

Two men up front were answering questions.

“Yes, that’s correct. There will be valet parking. Here.” A very large man pointed with a blunt finger to the sketch. “And you do have to tip,” he said. A ripple of laughter went through the crowd. The guy seemed witty; perhaps that was a way he’d learned to deflect attention from his sheer size. He was huge. Probably about six and a half feet tall and he had flaming red hair. His large frame was carried by enormous shoulders. Really, he had wrestler or weightlifter shoulders and was still in pretty good shape, though he could be in his mid-forties or even older. Still the shoulders were impressive for someone who probably now spent a lot of time behind a desk. People call Chicago the “City of Big Shoulders,” probably because of its brawling, upstart history. Boy, did this guy fit right in. He gave the impression of leashed power and his civilized formal attire only served to underline that contrast. He should have been wearing a fur vest and a helmet.

Next to him stood another man who looked like a midget, but in actuality was probably no shorter than Mandel Griffiths, the lowly administrator. He was slender, almost reed-like compared to the beefy-barbarian guy. Architect and contractor, I’d bet. The reedy man was answering a question from someone in front, but so softly I couldn’t hear. Tom and I moved wordlessly away.

Tom was almost immediately buttonholed by a tall, gray-haired man in a dark suit, no tux. He was about Tom’s height and spoke rapidly into Tom’s ear, his agitation evident in his tense body. Tom smiled apologetically at me and listened. I let my attention wander over the room and spotted one person I knew, the new head of campus security, Commander Nicolas Stammos.

I had wrangled some release time to “consult” with campus security as part of my new employment arrangement, but it was still not clear exactly what that meant. My new department chair, Adelaide Winters, had decided what that meant was I was on the faculty committee that was a liaison to the campus police to handle student complaints and so forth. I’d been to two meetings now, and at the second I’d met Stammos when he’d come to answer questions about the Maddox investigation. He’d looked to me like a Greek resistance fighter from World War II. He was short, but he could have given the contractor a run for the money in the shoulders area. He had pockmarked, swarthy skin, and black hair with no trace of gray. He was probably pushing fifty, and I found that a tad suspicious, but I also couldn’t imagine Stammos putting dye on his hair.

I watched him as he moved across the room, away from where Tom and I were standing. He went toward the rear wall where there was a staircase. His tux fit him well, must not be a rental, and he moved rapidly, with purpose. He was no mingler. I took a sip of my drink. I had no intention of crossing the room to speak to him. I found him immensely intimidating.

That intimidating manner had alienated the faculty on the liaison committee too, though his presentation had been excellent. His deep, slightly accented voice had been gripping when he had claimed Jimmy Maddox was ‘one of ours’ and that the campus police were working closely with the city police to find his killer. But most faculty had been critical of him after he’d left. In Chicago, the level of trust in the police would not have filled a shot glass, and with good reason. That attitude of suspicion and even hostility spilled over onto the campus police as well. There were mutterings about an unspecified ‘cover up’ or snide remarks about the campus police as ‘glorified crossing guards.’ Stammos was no crossing guard. He was a decorated former New York City police captain. The campus police in general, at least the ones I’d met, were competent professionals. I’d made a friend on the force, Alice Matthews, and we grabbed coffee together on campus when we could squeeze in the time. I’d tried to stand up for the campus cops, and draw their attention to what Stammos had said rather than vague stereotypes, but I had not endeared myself to my faculty colleagues as a result.

I continued to scan the room, but I didn’t see anyone else I knew, except a tall student working as a waiter. For campus cops, I knew there would be a duty roster for a big reception like this. Today, big gatherings were by definition security risks, and not just because free food and drinks were being served. The fact that the university hospital was spending so many millions on a fancy new building when health care services for the surrounding poor communities were almost non-existent was generating a lot of ill will and even protest, witness what was happening outside. I didn’t see any of the university teaching faculty I knew either. Not surprising though. The hospital circle and the teaching university circle did not often overlap and I doubted they’d socialize.

Besides, this was in the nature of a fundraising event and even the highest ranks of academics today don’t command the salaries they once did. I imagined the tickets for this event were in the neighborhood of $500 each. As Tom’s guest I hadn’t paid my own way, but I guessed the cost from the fact that both crab and shrimp were on the trays of the circulating waiters.

The tense guy was still hissing in Tom’s ear, so I turned slowly around to look at the shape of this building in the making. It was kind of interesting to see the bones of the thing before the actual plaster smoothed over all the innards. At the opposite side from the stairs Stammos had approached was another, obviously temporary staircase that led up to the first tier of the floors that surrounded the atrium. A crowd was gathering at the foot of the stairs and they were donning their hard hats. Probably a guided tour. Suddenly, Tom took my arm, startling me out of my reverie. The agitated man had disappeared. Tom looked where I was looking.

“I’d like for you to see this place, but not like that.” Tom nodded his head in the direction of the tour group, and I could see that Mandel Griffiths was preparing to lead it. I agreed. That was an item on the evening’s program to be avoided at all costs.

“You’ve seen it? When?” I asked.

Tom shrugged.

“I came through with the Dean last week. This operating room thing is a fiasco. How can we even think of doing Level One Trauma and have so few operating rooms? We have our operating suite cut in half, but have our own private elevator. It’s insane.”

Tom’s face was grim as he gazed at the upper tiers of the exposed building, obviously contemplating riding up and down in his private elevator with no place to operate on patients.

“Come on,” I said. I drew him toward the place where I’d seen Stammos head to another set of stairs, nearly hidden behind a roped off area with small machinery and tools. I gestured in that direction.

“Show me. Give me a private tour.”

I didn’t have to tug him very hard. We deposited our wine glasses, still mostly full, on the tray of a passing waiter, walked over to the roped off area, and quickly ducked under. Nobody stopped us, so we continued on up the stairs.

When we’d climbed halfway, I felt a tug on my cape.

“Let’s say hello as long as we’re up here,” said Tom, drawing me back down a step and into his arms.

“Let’s,” I agreed, leaning into his warm lips. This evening was improving by the second. When we freed ourselves, I took a second to retie his bow tie that had come completely undone. I felt a sudden pang for my dead husband, Marco. How many times had I done that for him? I turned, confused and curiously ashamed. I tried to shutter my face, smoothing it out so the pain wouldn’t show and hurt Tom. Even touching Tom had, at first, elicited the same jolt of guilt, but I was overcoming it. Gradually, I guessed, intimacy with Tom would seem normal. That would be the ultimate betrayal then. I shivered and tried to focus on climbing unfinished stairs in heels in the semi-dark.

“The surgery suite is on the third floor,” Tom said quietly as we continued our climb. I wondered if he’d seen my sudden discomfort. I could feel his eyes on my back.

We took a quick peek out of the stairwell as we turned to go up the next fight, but we didn’t stop. When we got to the third floor, Tom took my hand. Used coffee cups and fast food wrappers littered the floor along with loose nails and stray boards. This area had not been cleaned up for the tours, obviously. We probably shouldn’t be up here at all, but as long as we stayed near the outside where there was some light, I figured we were okay.

“Where exactly will your clinics be?” I asked, peering around the shadowy space that was punctuated by pillars that would contain not only the heating and air conditioning ducts, but with the addition of the extensive wiring and gas pipes that hospitals need. Duct work also radiated out overhead, looking like the intestines of the building, exposed for their own surgery.

Tom pointed over to the left and I could dimly see rooms framed in lumber that would eventually be the small examining rooms.

“But this is what I really wanted you to see,” Tom said, holding on to my hand and leading me toward the east end of the building.

I gasped in delight. There was framing for a huge, two-story picture window. The height of the building raised the window level above the surrounding buildings. Several blocks away, Lake Michigan stretched out like a silvery-gray invitation to infinity. If you stood back about twenty feet from the window, the line of the lake seemed to meet the bottom of the window and draw you toward the gray horizon. The sense of expanse was immense.

My respect for the reedy-little architect guy rose if he was indeed the one who’d designed this. There was a serenity to this design that might be of comfort to those who would spend anxious time in this lounge in the future, whether a patient awaiting treatment or a concerned family member or friend. I tried to empty my mind and let it move toward that horizon.

Tom came up and stood next to me and silently we just looked at the silver water blending into a silver sky.

The silence was broken suddenly, horribly, by a scream and then a sickeningly flat thud coming from somewhere behind us. Tom and I started. I know my mind had been so far away that it took me a minute to react. We turned and as another scream reached us, we started to pick our way as fast as we dared toward the direction from which the sounds had come. It was from somewhere in the middle of this floor. Even now we could still hear muffled groans and cries that were becoming more faint.

“Watch it!” Tom yelled at me as I darted ahead of him. “The elevator shaft is somewhere right near here.”

Since we were further into the center now, we’d lost a lot of the light. The sounds were growing even fainter, but I could still hear them. Clearly we were getting closer. I continued to speed up and I stepped on a small piece of pipe and almost fell. Tom grabbed my arm to steady me and took out his cell phone with the other. He turned on a spotlight app on the cell and a beam of light showed us more scattered pipe and lumber on the floor. And then I saw a huge black column with an even darker square in it about twenty feet ahead.

“I think that’s where the noise is coming from. Let’s take a look.” My voice was loud in the cavernous space. We held hands and advanced as rapidly as we could, stepping over or around the debris.

We got to the dark square open on one side of the concrete shaft that went up to the ceiling. The opening, where the elevator doors would be, was blocked by a single two-by-four railing nailed to sawhorses on either side. I kneeled down at the edge, oblivious to the sequins that scattered as the long dress was rubbed by the rough concrete floor. Tom shone his cell phone beam into the hole. It was the elevator shaft, and about three floors below us a pale object writhed on an opaque surface. I looked at Tom and saw my horror mirrored on his face. The object was an arm, part of a shoulder and a cheek. The hand attached to the arm was moving. The problem was, it was moving on the surface of what was obviously still-setting concrete. Someone had fallen into this elevator shaft and had landed on the just-poured concrete base. The person was drowning in concrete.

I gazed dumbly into the shaft for a moment and began to think. How to reach this person? There were shadowed areas in what must be the entry for each floor’s elevator entrance, but they were boarded shut. It would take too much time to run back down to the first floor and try to find something to pry those boards loose.

What then?

I looked around frantically and my eyes lit on a big coil of rope bunched over and around some of the lumber. I grabbed Tom’s hand and yanked him toward the rope. Seconds counted. If the person wasn’t pulled out soon, he or she was surely dead.

Tom let go of my hand as I started to tug on the rope. He yelled, “Are you crazy? We need to get help.” He quickly dialed the campus emergency number and efficiently gave our location and a description of this tragedy in the making.

I paid him little attention. By now I had freed the rope where it had been looped around the lumber and I was pulling it over toward the shaft.

“Help won’t come in time,” I puffed as I continued to tug on the heavy rope. It had bits of concrete encrusted on it and it was unbelievably rough and stiff in my hands. I thrust a coil of it into Tom’s unwilling arms.

“Pull!” I grabbed the rope further down and yanked. As it uncoiled it was clear it was very long. But was it long enough? I estimated 3 floors at perhaps more than 20 feet per floor. Maybe. Maybe it would reach.

I pulled the end over to the closest pillar and started looping it around. I swore as my long dress nearly tripped me up. I’d already lost the cape somewhere. I made a double loop and a slipknot. I pulled on the tied rope and it held. I went over to try to see down into the shaft. Without Tom’s cell phone light, it was a black hole. Tom couldn’t hold his cell phone light on me and also hold the rope. I frantically looked around again. About 25 feet away I saw a tripod with two work lights. I ran over. It appeared to be cordless. Battery maybe. I turned it on. Bright light blazed out. Great. I picked it up and hurried back. I positioned it so the lights pointed down into the shaft. I took a quick look. The shoulder had disappeared. The fingers on the hand were still moving.

I handed part of the rope to Tom.

“Lower me down as fast as you can manage. If I can reach the arm, I’ll tie the rope around it. There’s an opening about two or three feet from the bottom. You can’t drag us both up. I’ll climb in the opening and wait.”

“No, Kristin,” Tom said firmly. “I’ll do it.”

I faced him and looked directly into his face.

“Have you ever rappelled?”

“No.” Tom looked back unflinchingly at me. “But look at how you’re dressed. I need to do it.”

I realized he was right. Well, about how I was dressed. I had already kicked off my shoes. I pulled down the zipper of my dress, shrugged it off my shoulders and it fell to the floor with a clatter of scattering beads. I kicked it aside and looked back up at Tom. I was wearing only panty hose and a teddy. Well, this was not the way I had imagined undressing for Tom. Too bad.

“I have rappelled. Lots. Besides you’re stronger in your upper body than I am. You need to work the rope. Wrap it around your waist twice and brace yourself on the pillar.”

I have to say this for surgery. It trains people to think quickly in life and death situations and Tom didn’t argue any more. His face drew in on itself and he focused on the task. He moved to the pillar and wrapped the heavy rope around his dinner jacket.

I made a loop in the rope around my waist and padded to the edge of the shaft in my stocking feet, dragging the rest of the rope behind me. My eyes fell on the construction helmet I’d dropped in my haste to get the rope. What the heck. I reached over, picked it up and slapped it on my head, fastening the strap below my chin. I turned back toward the shaft and called out to Tom.

“Let out about 3 feet at a time. We don’t have time for a slower descent. I’m ready now.”

I fit my body under the two-by-four, turned my back to the shaft and leaned back. As I went over the edge with the slackened rope I saw Tom’s pale and intense face watching me.

A second later the rope slackened again and I bent my knees and pushed out from the wall. The surface was pitted and pockmarked with recently poured concrete and the soles of my feet burned. My hose had already shredded. Again the rope slackened and again I pushed out. Too much rope this time. I skidded and missed the wall with my feet as I came back in. I hit the wall and the helmet took the brunt of the blow that would have otherwise probably broken my nose. What do you know? These helmets had been an excellent idea after all. Despite its protection, however, I’d had the wind briefly knocked out of me. I scrambled to regain my footing and lean back out. My bare feet could get little purchase on the wall and I scrabbled in vain for what seemed like minutes until I had my balance again. Good thing. Just as I got my footing, Tom let out another length of rope. I jumped and landed, this time with my feet hitting the wall. I jumped, landed, jumped, landed. I looked down on the next landing. I’d come a fairly long way. I needed another 6 feet and I could reach.

The work light was doing its job, though it made looking up difficult. Looking down I could still see part of the hand on the congealing surface, but it was still, as though imprinting the jellied skin like some hideous parody of the plaster molds the kids had made of their hands in kindergarten.

Two more jumps and I was hovering about a foot above where the body had landed. My hands burned from the rough rope, but this would not be a good time to lose my grip or I’d fall into the same suffocating muck.

I shouted up to Tom to stop letting out rope. I hoped to hell he heard me.

I was now almost horizontal to the surface and above the arm. I had to tie the rope around the person’s wrist with one hand while not losing my grip on my part of the rope with the other. I felt the rope around my waist. It seemed secure. I let go with one hand and picked up the trailing end of the rope. We’d cut it close with this rope. There wasn’t much left.

I made a loop and tried to lasso the hand as it sank deeper into the sludge. This wasn’t working. I needed two hands. Could I risk letting go with both hands for a second? Would the coil around my waist hold me? It was now or never. I was going to have to dig the hand out of the surface as it was.

I let go with my other hand and reached into the slimy concrete. I felt the hand. It was freezing cold. I held on to it with my left and wrapped the rope around the wrist with my right. I had her. For it was a her. The hand I held above the surface was manicured with long red nails and several rings. Rings that had scratched me when I’d reached under the surface to grab the hand. I tried to make a secure knot and sickeningly felt myself slide closer to the surface. My torso was now only inches from the glistening veneer that appeared to be a floor but was really a death trap. If I slid further, the floor would swallow me whole.

“Pull up!” I shouted as loud as I could. “Pull up about twelve inches.” I was now about fifty feet below where Tom was straining with the rope and the part looped around my waist was tightening. My thin teddy had already shredded and the rope was cutting directly into my skin.

There was no response. I frantically pulled the knot tight around her wrist, prayed it would hold, and screamed again, “Pull up! Pull up!”

At first there was no motion and I felt panic start in my chest. Then the rope started to move. I was rising.

As I started to rise, I bent my knees and inched my now bleeding feet into an opening about just over a foot above the clotted surface. My feet slid in and I bent my knees more to get my whole body into the indentation left in the shaft for another elevator door opening. It was only eighteen inches deep and a plywood board met my feet as I slid into the crevice. I could feel countless splinters pierce my scraped feet. It hurt like hell. I scooted my butt sideways into the opening and slid in as neatly as you would slide a corpse into a medieval wall burial. Well, nice image, I thought.

When I could sit up, I yelled to Tom to just hold on. There was an answering yell that I took to be assent. I tried to quickly shrug out of the looped rope around my waist, but its concrete encrusted surface resisted my efforts. Finally I got it off me. For a minute I felt the panic again. If I fell off this narrow shelf, I would be drowning in concrete too.

I took a breath and let go of the rope. I yelled to Tom to pull up. Pull up hard.

The rope started to ascend more quickly and the hand came out of the slime. She had sunk some while I was getting the rope off of me. Then came the arm, a shoulder and a torso, the concrete seeming to pull back on the limp form, resisting letting go of its prey. The body moved slowly upward, past where I crouched on the ledge, in a hideous parody of the resurrection of the dead.