Page 79 of Breathe
In the lull after the cacophony of the explosion he heard, “Yes! Help us! Help!” from below him. The concrete stairs weren’t burning, but the acrid chemical smoke was being dislodged around Kane’s head, and he knew he barely had a minute to help them.
He was sweating but felt very cold. Looking down the stairwell, at first he just saw gray: gray stairs, gray railings, gray smoke. He ran down the first flight of stairs, calling out all the way, and being answered. The ground-level exit doors at one end of the stairwell were blown inward and the outer wall had collapsed on top of them. The stairs leading to them were buckled, pieces of rebar sticking out where some of the stairs should have been. A woman, whom he only saw because she was wearing some kind of festive necklace and, ludicrously, it was flashing red and green at him, was crouched next to an unconscious figure who appeared to have just one leg sticking out in front of him.
“He’s stuck!” the woman moaned. “I’m stuck! His leg...”
The man, who must have weighed upwards of three hundred pounds, was slumped over one of the holes in the stairs. Kane got to them as quickly as he could while trying not to break his own neck. The man’s leg was stuck in the hole; when he’d fallen through he must have hit his head on something and passed out. The woman’s arm was pinned between him and the wall.
The acrid smell was making Kane cough. The woman’s breath was coming in short, terrified sobs. He tried to roll the man’s shoulder away from the wall, but the dead weight slipped out of his hands. He had to kneel down in the rubble and use all his strength to pull the man away from her. She gasped in pain but was finally able to get her arm out. She stood up at once and began to run down the stairs.
“Stop!” he shouted. She kept running. He couldn’t blame her, but he couldn’t move the man by himself, and he could tell he was losing lung capacity by the second. “Wait!” he pleaded.
The woman looked at the doors at the other side of the stairwell, that weren’t damaged, that led to safety. She looked back at Kane, wasting seconds in indecision. He tried to get his arms under the man’s shoulders to pull him out, but he was too heavy and his leg was too wedged in the hole. Kane tried again; his hands slipped again.
He couldn’t do it, he thought frantically. Couldn’t save him. He met the woman’s eyes. She was feet from the door, waiting for him, and any moment there could be another explosion or the chemical fog above them would lower and kill them both.
He couldn’t do this.
He didn’t need to.
“Go!” he yelled, and let go of the man. He stood up, dislodging the fog, setting himself coughing so hard he almost fell down the rest of the crumbled stairs. Bent double, he used the last of his energy to run to the woman and barrel his way out of the doors.
“My boss is there!” the woman shouted, pointing behind them; Kane couldn’t speak. Two firefighters, wearing breathing apparatus, pushed past them through the doors, and he was finally able to sink to the icy ground and let everything swim to blackness.
