Participants:
| Scene Title | City On Defrost |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | As the city starts to come up in temperature, so does the body count. Liz Harrison and Kat Marks are part of the clean up crew. |
| Date | June 2, 2010 |
The world is defrosting. While the temperatures are still hovering around the freezing point there are still moments where the snow and ice can begin to defrost. From under the rubble, there are crews out pulling bodies from the snow. It's not been a pretty picture. In addition to Frontline, local rescue teams to include the fire department and paramedics are out as well, assisting in the clean up. One of those paramedics happens to be Katherine Marks. While the cold weather gear has been downgraded some, they are still bundled up fairly warmly as they work in these defrosting arctic conditions.
She's currently hunched over a body bag, slowly drawing the zipper up to cover the poor soul who lost their life in the cold, before she calls someone to haul it away and she looks around for someplace else to help.
The someplace else suggests itself pretty quickly. A blonde dressed in black is helping two police officers dig into a snowbank where a mangled leg has made clear that someone collapsed on the side of the road during one of the blizzards and froze to death right where he fell before being buried. Elisabeth and the two men are verifying that there are no indicators of foul play before allowing him to be taken to the coroner — not that any evidence really would have survived the snow and thaw that's going on, unless it was massive physical trauma, but they have to do the job. Tag anything suspicious for closer look.
She moves to stand up, nodding to the heavier-set man next to her, and then Liz steps away from them shoving her hand through her hair. She looks saddened but not as stressed as one might expect. As if this kind of recovery is not ripping her heart out, though she shows clear distress.
There are still functions of Kat's psyche that have not fully developed yet, though she has at least progressed from unintelligible phrases to complete sentences and has long ago been able to process complete sentences. It's as of the majority of 'June' has been removed from her, leaving just a few traces of the ecccentric street wanderer inside her. She doesn't recognize Liz from behind, all dressed up to keep warm.
Katherine walks up to see if there's something she can do to help. She places her hand gently on the woman's back and asks, "Is there something I can do to help?" She's never been one for empathy, and really this is no different other than she sees there is work to be done, moreso that she sees the woman is in some anguish over this all. It's not until she moves in front of Harrison that she sees who it is and smiles, "Liz." The gloved hand falls back to her side. "I didn't see you out here."
Elisabeth turns at the touch on her back, revealing that her hair is being held back by one of those fleecy skier headband things meant to keep ears warm without a hat. Her blue eyes are wary when she's touched, but she reflects both surprise and pleasure at seeing Kat. "Katherine," she replies easily enough. "Hard to tell who anyone is, with all of us muffled to the eyeballs in layers and fleece," she acknowledges. "Good to see you." She glances around and smirks. "Always seems to be scenes like this. How're you doing?" she asks as her eyes come back to the other woman.
It does seem to be very rarely that the two meet under normal circumstances. Never over coffee, just dead bodies. There's a nod from the medic as she gives a sigh. "I've bagged at least a dozen bodies today." As if that should explain how she's doing. Up in a nearby apartment building, workers are going door to door to see if anyone needs assistance. Those who don't respond, get their door opened by the landlord. Katherine turns to watch a stretching being carried from another of the buildings. "Even those indoors weren't immune from the cold, it seems." She nods in that direction. Her blue eyes turn up to catch Liz's and she gives a soft soft, "How are you?"
"At 100 degrees below zero? No… no one was immune," Elisabeth replies softly. She too watches the stretcher, still with that flash of sadness that all the rescue personnel the world over get in the wake of a disaster, that sense of tiredness that comes from working long hours to only recover bodies. Looking toward Kat, Elisabeth shrugs slightly. "All right, I guess. This is the fourth time I've done this detail," the first being 9/11, the second the Bomb, and the third the Municipal Building collapse, "and I think I'm starting to become a little jaded by it. Which is… probably not the best sign." She quirks her lips slightly on a sigh. "Whatever."
Tilting her head curiously at the use of that particular word, Kat begins to nod her head. "Watch out for that ice!" There is commotion over by those apartments as the man in the rear slips on some melted and refrozen ice and his legs come out from under him and tumbles down the stairs, dropping his load of the gurney, which in turns causes the front man to stagger, though he manages to release his load and the stretcher slides the remaining way to the bottom of the concrete stairs and comes to rest on the bottom, the body on top sliding off and into the snow.
"Shit! I think my leg is broken." Which of course prompts Katherine to turn abruptly and carefully navigate across the ice laden road to go over and to assist.
"Jesus Christ," Elisabeth swears softly. She is hard on Kat's heels, moving gingerly over the ice herself. "This is the eighth fall today," she tells the paramedic. "I lost two cops and a paramedic on my detail this morning. One dislocated his shoulder, one cracked his head when he went down, and the other one… hell, I don't know. Sprained his ankle maybe?" Wading through the snow and slickness, she gets to the other side of the gurney and starts to help the paramedic who isn't hurt get the bodybag back up on the stretcher.
Unfortunately, supplies are running low and there have been no replenishment in hours it seems. Katherine kneels down by the man with the broken leg. "It's fine. I can help. Just relax." She places her hands on the leg, giving it as best an exam as she can. It's then she notices the bone poking through the pant leg, "Okay. This is going to hurt like a bitch, but just try and relax." He nods to her as he grits his teeth and holds on tight.
Katherine glance up and around for something, then as another worker comes over to see if he can help is tagged, "I need anything hard. Wood, metal, stiff plastic. Whatever you can find. I need it and I need it right now." She glances up and over towards Elisabeth, "How's that one over there?" indicating the other downed worker.
Glancing at her companion and recieving a nod, Elisabeth calls back, "He's okay. Just slipped a bit." She grins at the guy. "This ice is sucking." Once things are settled, the blonde walks toward Kat carefully. "Shit…. how about a broom handle?" she asks the medic. "Someone inside is sure to have one."
There's a nod from the medic as she keeps her hands on the man's leg. "Going to need something to keep him warm and the next ambulance that comes through. Broom handle is fine, anything that I can use to form around this leg to keep it from moving." Katherine reaches for her com and clicks on, "NY42 here. We need an ambulance at my location to transport. Victim suffered compound fracture, but should be stabilized by the time you get here," provided the materials she needs can be located. She received an acknowledgement for her request and glances up at Liz, "You know what I can do, anything will help until we can get him out of here."
Elisabeth nods and makes her way up the treacherous stairs into the apartment building, walking into the first apartment with its open door and retrieving the broom that she finds in a small pantry next to the refrigerator. As she comes back down the stairs, her own feet fly out from under her in the same spot the medic lost his footing. Her hand is on the railing, so the worst that happens is that she wrenches her arm and slams her arse on the hard stairs with a grint of pain. "Oh fuck," she growls. "Ow. Here." She slides the broom across snow toward Kat.
"Fuck, Harrison. You see every body else flying about, you might want to be a little careful." It takes Katherine a moment to actually hear what she just said and she glances up and clears her throat. "Sorry. Are you okay? Are you hurt?" Katherine actually seems a little shaken by her rather frontal verbal assault that might actually seem a little like music to Liz' ears. Another worker has found a couple of two by fours, which'll help this out.
Focusing on her task at hand, Katherine reluctantly pulls off her gloves and handles the cold wooden pieces and begins to situate them against the victim's leg and with her hands, begins to mold a makeshift cast. The wood seems to just bend in her hands like clay as she gives a little push here. Because there are several pieces, she has to overlap them some and connect them so they don't fall apart. The other worker is wrapping the guy up in a blanket. Kat looks at her handiwork for a moment before tugging back on her gloves and turning her attention back to Liz, "You didn't break your ass, did you?" Believe it or not, it's spoken in all seriousness.
Indeed, it makes Elisabeth laugh when Kat retorts in that fashion. She remains sitting on the steps, unwilling to get up just yet. She's pretty sure nothing's broken, but goddamn that hurts. "I don't think so, no." Finally she reaches up to grasp the railing above her again, the one that saved her from being concussed — again — and hauls herself upright with a wince and a soft whimper. It's going to be a nice bruise, that's for damn sure, but she can move. "The cops up on four have three more bodies. A family. And they said the building's clear after that."
"It it hurts more than a few days, you might have it checked out." Her ass, yes. Kat finishes her cast and stands up. She will have to remove that before they head out, or they'll never be able to figure out how to get that off at the hospital. She wrinkles up her nose at the news that there's a family inside and exhales deeply. This is one of those really sucky parts of this job. She just nods, then steps over and offers out her gloved hand towards Harrison, if she's ready to be up on her feet yet.
Liz is already on her feet when Kat gets there and smirks slightly. "Aw, I'm touched, Kitty," she teases. "You're getting soft in your old age." Holding the rail tightly, the blonde goes to head back into the building one more time. The two can walk up the stairs inside easily enough. With two cops holding body bags, it shouldn't require more than the four of them. Especially considering what the cop told her they found up there. The small family had curled up together in one bed with all the blankets they owned trying to keep two adults and 3-month-old warm. It wasn't enough.
Unless, of course, you've nearly broken your ass. At least that's the thought that crosses Marks' mind, though she doesn't speek it aloud. But Katherine figures that Liz can handle her own. She does offer the former cop a smirk. Entering the room and Kat's cool blue eyes become even more cooler as she shakes her head and walks over and begins to assist in the bagging. She moves towards the adults, and it could possibly look like she's avoiding any contact with the children. After the man is bagged, she helps in carrying the body out of the room and down the stairs.
By contrast Elisabeth helps very gently bag the woman and the tiny child cradled to her breast. Rigor's come and gone, so it's been a while. The body bag is not as heavy as it might seem — the woman was not terribly large. The blonde is quiet, the paramedic with her also solemn at the bags they have to deal with. "Building's clear," Liz says when they finally have the bags loaded. She glances around for Kat Marks and comments quietly, "This job's a bitch," she comments mildly. "If you want to catch a beer sometime, now that things are trying to go back to normal, gimme a call."
Kat hasn't had a beer in a very long time. In fact, since returning literally from the dead, she hasn't had a beer at all that she can recall. At the sign of clear, she gives a sigh of relief and nods to the offer, "I think I'd like that." Normal? Really? Can they really get back to normal after something like this? Time will definitely tell. The sirens from a series of ambulance announce their arrival and the guy with the broken leg gets loaded into the van. "I should go back with him and make sure they can get this cast off." She climbs aboard the van and stop, peering back at Liz, "It's nice seeing you again." She smiles to the other woman before slowly to close the door.
It's so strange for Kat Marks to be nice to Liz that for a moment the blonde is speechless. And then she grins. "All right, then. Let's do it." She pulls a scrap of a receipt out of her jacket pocket and scrawls her cell number on it. "Gimme a call, lady."
Katherine takes the number, then closes the door. A few seconds later, the lights come back on again and the ambulance starts off slowly down the street.