Still Life
Still Life
Darkness darkness long and lonesome
As the day brings me here
I have found the edge of sadness
I have known the depths of fear
– Jesse Colin Young, "Darkness, Darkness"
1.
The young teacher almost forgot the book. She had written a note to herself on a bright, yellow sticky and placed it on the doorknob of her front door. Don’t forget the book, dummy! it read. She turned around with a lighthearted groan and retrieved the large paperback from her bookcase. She was pleased with the gift idea and hoped he would be too.
2.
“Ms. Danby?”
“Yes, Dylan,” she said, "how are you doing?"
“I have a headache,” the boy said, "it really hurts. And I’m thirsty."
“Did you hit your head,” Lauren Danby said. She is an art teacher at Grand Lake Junior High and Dylan is one her students, fifth period.
"I think so, I don't really remember." Dylan is a bright student, good in math and science, according to Mr. Franks and Ms. Johannson, respectively. He’s not the best at drawing, but he shows a keen eye in composition for a 14 year old, which she is very excited about. He also does very well in layering when painting with watercolors.
“That’s okay, maybe we can find you some water,” she said, even though she knew this was improbable.
“Ms. Danby?”
“Yes, dear,” she said, wanting to sound comforting. Headaches can be bastards.
“You don’t have to hold my hand,” he said.
“I know, silly, I want to,” she said, and gave a light squeeze.
3.
Dylan was leaving his fifth period class that day, but she asked him to stay a few minutes. When the room was theirs, she told him how impressed she was with his progress in her class. He seemed genuinely touched by this extra attention. Ms. Danby is one of his favorite teachers. She gave him a book, out of her personal collection, and it was received with great enthusiasm, How to Draw from Memory. This exchange happened recently. Very recently. The book is probably still around here somewhere.
There was silence now, which Lauren didn’t like. It is too easy these days for teenagers to become depressed or despondent, especially when they’re under a lot of pressure. She wanted to keep him talking, to take his mind off the pain in his head and who knows where else.
4.
She remembers the day when she set up a table in the center of class and piled on random objects: a potted plant, a bowl of plastic fruit, some polymer clay figurines her students made for a previous lesson, an artist’s wooden, poseable dummy. Still life charcoal pencil drawing was the exercise, with an emphasis on shading. When she went around the room, she saw the scene from various angles. When she got to Dylan’s sketch, she noticed a few things that were not on the table: a rocket, a girl in a bikini, Godzilla, the Air Jordan logo. He has quite an imagination.
“I heard you had a thing for Hannah,” she said, trying to keep her voice cheery and upbeat, and not too serious. She knows Hannah, a nice girl, maybe a little overly concerned with her looks, but intelligent and friendly and enthusiastic about schoolwork. And yes, teachers do gossip about their students from time to time.
“Ah, Ms. Danby, I don’t know,” Dylan mumbled.
“Well, I had a big crush on someone when I was your age,” Lauren said. Keep talking, she thought. That's the best thing. She noticed something about her feet.
“Really?” Dylan was maybe a little too old to still believe teachers lived at school and had no private lives or were ever young, but Lauren was hopeful this conversation would help take his mind off his current troubles.
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “His name was Timothy. All the adults called him Tim or Timmy, but all of his friends called him TJ. We shared only one class together. Guess which class.” She was barefoot, that was it.
“Art?” Dylan guessed correctly.
“Yep. I would hope and dream that he would come over to my table and strike up a conversation with me and we would become a ‘thing’ and I would get to call him TJ,” Lauren said. She felt a painful cramp in her shoulder just then, and an ache in the elbow above the hand that held Dylan’s hand. “But he never did, and I was too shy to ever approach him.” Why was she barefoot?
5.
Dylan must have said thank you seven times after Ms. Danby gave him the book. He told her he was going right home after school to start reading it, after a quick game of basketball with his buddies, that is. It irrigated her heart with warm, fuzzy feelings to know he appreciated the gift, and that maybe one small gesture like this could make a difference in someone’s life.
More silence now. It is becoming very difficult to gauge the length of the silences. Sure, there were extraneous noises but the quietness from the owner of the hand she still held was disconcerting. She wanted to hug him, comfort him more, but she knew these things were impossible. Her shoulder had gotten worse, in fact her entire arm was getting numb. Her own headache had blossomed and was now making her nauseous. Her feet…
“You just have to go up to Hannah and start a conversation,” she continued, as if the words she spoke about TJ occupied the same minute as the words about Hannah, when, in reality, they weren’t even in the same hour. “It doesn’t matter the topic, just break the ice, as they say.” This last line she uttered almost three hours later still.
6.
Lauren was having trouble remembering if Dylan put the book in his backpack and walked out the door, or if he carried it in his hand, or… She heard machinery. It was a distant reverberating noise. It sounded miles away. The pain in her leg pulsated with the rhythm of the noise. She remembered now, Dylan was flipping through the pages of the book while she told him of one particular technique she liked. That was right before the rumbling. And then she was flying.
Wow, her head hurt. This was some serious pain. She kept extra-strength Tylenol in her desk drawer but there’s no way she’s getting any of that.
“Dylan?” she said. “You awake?” She couldn’t see him, of course, so she squeezed his hand. “Dylan?” Where was the book? He was flipping through the pages. Flipping. And then she was flying...
He finally squeezed back. “Yeah,” he said softly, “sorry, I think I passed out for a bit.” He coughed. She was glad to hear him do that, coughing was good. Coughing meant breathing, and breathing meant alive. No Tylenol for me.
“It’s okay, honey,” she said.
“Ms. Danby, I have to pee,” he said sheepishly. He sounded so young.
“Just go in your pants, Dylan, that’s what I did,” she told him matter-of-factly, as if she was explaining how to blend colors with oil pastels. This was seven and a half hours after the darkness hit. And the flying.
7.
Oil pastels are Lauren’s favorite medium. Once, a professor in college gave her a set of oil pastels. A very expensive set, from France. She wasn't a math major but she recognized the equation he presented: I buy you gifts + you sleep with me = a very good grade. She left the unopened box on his desk and dropped the class.
She slept. She had to. Dylan's hand was comforting; she was relieved to know that she wasn't going through this alone. The barking woke her up. Hours passed before she heard it again. Her entire body ached, at least those parts of it she could feel. She wept, but no tears came out. The pain was now becoming unbearable. No Tylenol. Sleeping and weeping were her favorite hobbies now.
8.
The barking dog was back. When she was 16, she was trying to finish a report on India for school but the damn dog next door kept barking. So annoying. Why was she barefoot? That stupid dog, she thought. How did he find her here? I was flying and now I’m here. Now I can’t move. Except my hand. Thank God for Dylan. Silence. Machinery. Barking dog. Why was it so hard to discern the acoustic variations between them? When she was 16, she bought herself some colored pencils with her babysitting money. She used to babysit.
“Dylan?” It came out as a dry croak. Dylan was mad at her, she thought. The “silent treatment” they called it. You don’t have to hold my hand. Silly boy. Stupid dog. When she was young, her parents wouldn’t let her and her brothers have Pepsi unless it was Thanksgiving or someone’s birthday. Lisa Jacobs could have Pepsi anytime she wanted. Lisa Jacobs had Orange Crush and A&W root beer. Anytime she wanted. Anytime. Lisa.
He’s mad at me because I got to fly and he didn’t. I lost my shoes and Mom’s going to be mad. She slept. When she was eight years old, there was a solar eclipse. Her dad had built a contraption so they could look at it safely. She stared at it in fascination as the shadow of the moon slowly blotted out the bright circle. ‘It got all dark, Daddy,’ she had said to him. ‘Yes, but you’re still so bright,’ he said, and kissed her on her forehead.
9.
Lauren woke up hours later. She tried to call out to Dylan but it sounded like ”Di-in.” So thirsty. I can’t have a Pepsi, Mom will be mad. She could barely feel Dylan’s hand in hers, but it was there. Her entire body was numb. So much pain. The small table she called the ‘prop table’ was on top of her. She had been flying. Dylan was mad at her. The dog was barking again. It sounded like it was next door. Her report is due tomorrow. “Di-in?”
Lauren Danby heard the noise after another hour of napping. She liked napping, her new hobby. The machines are here, Tom Cruise told her. Nope, it was Tom Hanks. She saw a movie, Tom Hanks was in it. What was the name of that movie? The Silent Treatment? Tom said the machines are here. She could hear them, but she perceived the sound as the ocean. He was flipping the pages. Where are her shoes? She jumped under the table. Dylan ran. He was flipping the pages then he ran. She tried to squeeze his hand. She had no energy left. Just go in your pants, she told him. Tom said the ocean is here.
“Dylan!” she screamed but it was only in her mind. There were other voices in her head, too. Shut up, I’m trying to sleep. Stupid dog. How do I get my feet in that ocean? Nap time.
10.
Something rough touched Lauren’s foot. Her dusty eyelids opened. This was new, she thought. She wanted to sleep, but this was new. This was new. Someone was talking to the dog. Bad dog.
“Uhh,” she managed, but in her mind she had said, “Hi, I’m Lauren, please help me.”
“Ma’am,” the voice said.
“Di-in?”
“Are you okay, ma’am?” Dylan never called her ma’am. “Can you hear me?” This was louder and clearer. Loud and clear. Definitely not the silent treatment. The dog barked but the ocean stopped. No, the machine. It stopped. Tom was wrong. No Pepsi for you.
“Uhh,” she grunted again. He was touching her foot, now her ankle. Where were her shoes?
“Ma’am, my name is Danny, I’m from Fire & Rescue. Can you hear me?” This was not Dylan, he didn’t even have a job. Dogs can’t talk.
“Mmmmaah,” she said. Do you have my shoes?
“Okay, great. We’re going to get you out of there. It may take some time, so we don’t hurt you, but I’m going to slide up a tube so you can have some water. Okay?” Danny said. He sounded very nice, she thought. But I want Pepsi.
“Uuhmmah,” she said. Translation: “Thanks very much, Danny.”
11.
Daniel Harding was true to his word. He and his nice friend shimmied a plastic tube up her side. At first, it got snagged on a table leg and again on her shirt, but it finally brushed up against her chin and then her cheek. Lauren decided that it would be most helpful if she got the end of that tube into her mouth. The dog stopped barking. She could see some light now, Danny’s flashlight, she assumed. It hurt her eyes. They were dusty. He still held her ankle and was fishing the tube back and forth.
The tube had a flexible bit at the end, like a bendy drinking straw. Wait, that’s exactly what it was, a bendy drinking straw attached to the end of the tube, and it was now in her mouth, and cool water was slowly dripping from it. Not only water, but very nice painkillers and an anti-anxiety drug, but she wouldn’t know about that. She heard more people now, and the machine, and the rocks, and she saw more light. It got all dark, Daddy.
“I’m still here, ma’am,” Danny called to her. “I’m not leaving you until we get you out of there. Then we’re gonna take you to the hospital and fix you up, good as new. Okay?” Danny was wrong about that one, but he was right about it taking a while. It took over three hours to extract Lauren from the rubble. In that time, they added saline and sucrose to her water tube. But Lauren was not going to be ‘good as new.’ No way, Jose. She was going to be broken for a very long time.
“Uh-kay,” Lauren said, between sips. The water was glorious. She still was in horrific pain and incredibly fatigued. The only parts of her body she could move was her chin, the ankle that Danny was holding, and the thumb and pinky around Dylan’s hand. Yes, the water was wonderful, but it didn’t do anything about her aching head, which was wedged between parts of a cinder block wall that used to be part of her classroom. There was a hole. I was flying.
12.
At hour three, they had uncovered most of her body and were able to get the prop table, crushed legs and all, off of her chest. The prop table that saved her life. The one she used for still life displays. The one she jumped under when Dylan ran.
“Dyl-in,” she said sleepily. It seems she regained a small fraction of motor skills in her tongue. Also, the painkillers must have a drowsiness effect, but she wouldn’t know that either. Sleeping is her new hobby. She wanted to let Dylan know that there was water over here. Over here, on this side of the wall. He ran. His hand was cold now. She needs to tell Danny that Dylan wanted some water, too. The machine is too loud now.
“Dah-nee,” she manages, but it’s no more than a whisper.
“You’re doing fine, ma’am. A few more minutes and we’ll have you out of there. Stay strong.” He beamed down at her for a second, then returned to work. To be honest, he couldn’t look at her for long periods. The slow revealing of her slender, mangled body was too much to ponder for any length of time. This was only his second search-and-rescue operation and he had a stellar “bedside manner” but the sight of one lifeless body after another was taking its toll.
Danny and his friends were busy removing cement rubble, the remains of art class tables and stools, and junior high school ceiling and roof debris from the teacher’s broken body. Lauren was on her side, laying on a ten degree incline, with her left arm extended above her and her right arm curled under her. Her left leg was crushed and bleeding, it didn’t look good. They would have to be extra careful extracting her from these ruins.
13.
It took three hours and thirteen minutes to fully uncover Lauren Danby. The risk of another collapse was on everybody’s mind. It took another twenty eight minutes for the medical crew to decide how best to transport her out. She was semi-awake for some of it but she won’t remember the exact moment she let go of Dylan’s cold hand. She didn’t even realize it happened because her own hand was so numb. By this time, they had replaced the water tube with an IV drip which contained a sedative. Danny was there the entire time; he would not leave her until she was in an ambulance. He comforted her with his words, even though she didn’t hear most of them.
When she was on a stretcher and finally out of her demolished classroom, she only had enough energy for two questions, so she asked Danny, “How big?”
Danny knew exactly what she meant, and said with a grim expression, “8.1.” Lauren’s face crumpled as she realized the implications of that simple number, care of Dr. Richter. One tear managed to escape as she sobbed quietly. Danny had to turn away or the sight of the young teacher would have him too emotional to continue.
Lauren’s second question was only one whispered word, “Dylan?”
Once again, Danny knew her meaning, but it took him some time to answer. He wanted to save lives. He wanted to rescue people in distress. But this… This was hard. Finally, he cleared his throat and said, “Dylan’s been… um… accounted for.” But Lauren was asleep again and never heard his response.
14.
Lauren Danby was sitting at her desk, waiting for the end of her fifth period art class. It was her last class of the day and she was looking forward to a trip to the ladies room and a cup of hot coffee in the teacher’s lounge. Her feet were killing her. Today was the first day she had worn her brand new shoes. They felt fine in the store, but after five hours on her feet they were pinching and hot. When the bell rang, she slipped them off and wiggled her toes. She almost let out an audible “Ahhh.” The coolness of the tiled classroom floor was heavenly.
“Okay, everybody, see you tomorrow,” she said, hoping it didn’t sound too gleeful. Most of the nineteen students in her class would be dead in a few minutes. She stood up, luxuriating on the cold linoleum floor, and said a word or two of goodbyes to the students that passed her desk. When Dylan Monroe passed, she asked him to stay behind. She gave him the book, which he seemed to really appreciate, and she started to explain her technique of seeing things broken down into basic geometric shapes as he flipped through the pages.
15.
That's when the rumbling started, she could feel it under her bare feet. The clock on the back wall fell off its hook and a window shattered at the rear of her classroom. They both looked at each other and quickly made it over to the window. She was mindful of the glass on the floor as she looked out over trees and the parking lot. Her classroom was on the third and uppermost floor. The rumbling got louder. The ceiling cracked like it was made of styrofoam. Dust and debris started to fall on them. The floor started to undulate. Behind Lauren's desk, the entire eight-foot wide blackboard fell with a cantankerous bang.
“Let’s go! ” Dylan shouted, barely audible over the awful grating uproar. He started to run for the door.
“No! Dylan, under the prop table,” she shouted back, knowing it was sturdy, gauging it had enough room for two. Either he didn’t hear her or he decided to ignore the advice and was through the door. That’s when a chunk of ceiling fell, striking her on the side of her head, immediately causing blood to flow. The vibration beneath her feet was so intense now she could hardly stand up. She wobbled her way to the prop table.
The prop table was against the same interior wall that was shared by the hallway on the other side, Dylan’s route. She saw Maxfield Parrish come down from the wall. Magritte came down. Andy's tomato soup cans were on their way to being crushed like… well like a tin can in a trash compactor. Oh, no, Vincent came down. These were all prints she had framed with her own money, hoping to inspire her students with the different techniques of famous painters.
She dove for safety under the table. That’s when the floor beneath her collapsed, and for several seconds she was in mid air as the room, the floor, the prop table, and the art teacher fell thirty five feet onto the first floor of the school. She was flying.
16.
Dylan, on the other hand, had turned right out of the classroom’s doorway - the stairway was in that direction. He saw at least twenty fellow students and a few teachers crowded around the stairwell entrance down the hall. All of them were screaming. He took five steps toward them when the hallway floor collapsed and began falling into the first floor. He fell with it, slamming the left side of his head on the floor.
It took approximately seven seconds for Dylan’s and Lauren’s part of the third floor of Grand Lake Junior High to completely crash into the lower floor. In that time, several things happened. A crack in the wall between the hallway and Ms. Danby’s classroom became a large hole and, through the dust and debris, Dylan could see Ms. Danby floating in midair, between the prop table and the floor, her arms extended, like Supergirl. Her face was bloody and held a frozen, terrified grimace. He automatically, with no forethought, reached for her, arm extended, because he thought she was doing the same.
Lauren saw Dylan for probably the same amount of time it takes to blink. She saw him reaching for him, fear on his young face. Of course, gravity has no sympathy for students or teachers in life threatening situations and slammed the two bodies into the wreckage below. Lauren was no longer flying. She had landed. The last thing that went through her mind before passing out was that she had kept Dylan after class for those precious few minutes. He might have been able to have made it out of the building before the collapse. Instead, he was flipping pages.
17.
There was no way for Lauren Danby to know the amount of time that had passed since thinking that thought. In her shaken mind, it was less than a minute. In reality, it was over four hours. She also couldn’t have known that her collapsed classroom was not only pancaked on top of Mrs. Watson’s English class, but that Kate Watson and eight of her students, Hannah included, lie dead beneath her.
It is also fair to say that it would have been highly unlikely for Lauren to realize that the prop table she leaped under had actually saved her life, preventing several thousand pounds of wood and concrete from smashing down on her. But when the four legs buckled upon impact, the table effectively stapled her down to the rubble beneath her. This left her lying on her side, left arm outstretched, right arm twisted under her, left leg crushed, right leg caught between a steel I-beam and a student’s desk, her shoulders pinned down by the prop table. She was unable to move almost every part of her body. She was now still. As still as an artist’s wooden, poseable dummy after school is let out for the day.
But the last thing that Lauren couldn’t have known, was that the large hole in the wall that separated her and Dylan on that terrible afternoon clamped down shut, as fast as it had opened up. Unfortunately, Dylan’s hand was still in the classroom while the rest of his body was in the hall. The impact of the cinder block wall crushing together again, like a crude guillotine, completely severed poor Dylan’s hand from his arm. It tumbled down with the rest of the rubble, eventually taking its final resting place next to Lauren’s own hand. Since it was the only part of her body that had any agility, she naturally felt around upon regaining consciousness.
She held his hand in sympathy and apology, and for the next three days, she never let go.