Are You Seeing Me? (23 page)

THERE IS A LOT OF NOISE, so much commotion. Jackie Chan isn’t afraid of the earthquake. He is afraid, though, when he finds Just Jeans unconscious, her whole body on the floor except for one foot caught on the edge of the tub. He is scared out of his mind.

“Jus, can you hear me? JUS, CAN YOU HEAR ME?”

Jackie Chan positions her to the side, tilts her head back. He checks for breathing by bringing his cheek close to her mouth. He doesn’t feel anything. He turns her back over, checks for a pulse. No pulse. For maybe ten seconds Jackie Chan has bad thoughts:
I’m disabled, I’m a retard. How can I help my dying sister?
He wants to lie with her on the white tiles, let the ground open up and take them both. But he shakes the bad thoughts out of his head and starts compressions. Push fast and hard on the chest—that’s what you do these days. It doesn’t matter so much about the thirty-to-two cycles. Fast and hard compressions are more important. And go to a depth of around five centimeters for adults. Jackie Chan knows he’s gone deeper because a couple of ribs made a cracking sound.

After maybe ninety seconds, a weak pulse pushes against his fingertips. Jackie Chan repeats four times to make sure. He double-checks the breathing. It is there. He shouts again. “CAN YOU HEAR ME, JUST JEANS?”

Still no response. He has to get her to the hospital. Her vital signs are present, but they might not stay. And there might be other problems. Serious problems. Organ damage, internal bleeding. He might’ve punctured her lungs during the CPR. He wants to call an ambulance, but he knows the earthquake will have them all on duty. If the line isn’t dead, it will be busy. He has to get her to the hospital on his own.

Jackie Chan grabs his backpack, puts it over his shoulders, tightens the straps until they bite his skin. Then he puts a towel over her naked body and picks her up in his arms. Trying to support her head as much as he can, he carries her outside. There is damage in the hallway—pictures on the floor, potted plants knocked over. Overhead lights fizz and flicker; one near the fallen vending machine explodes in a shower of sparks. He suspects the elevators won’t be working, so he heads for the stairs. On the way down, he speaks to her. “It’s okay, Just Jeans. I’m here. I’m prepared. I’m ready.”

On the final flight of stairs, he stumbles and almost loses his grip. But he holds on. He is strong. Brave and strong. In the lobby, there are shocked people standing around, talking about what happened.

“Almost shook me out of bed.”

“Got under the table quicker than a squirrel up a tree.”

“Earth moved like that when Crosby scored.”

Even though he doesn’t like to do it, he shouts as loud as he can. “MY SISTER IS BADLY HURT! SHE NEEDS TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL!”

If there is one thing Jackie Chan has learned, it is this: nobody should live in a world of one. We need the people around us. And when earthquakes occur, people need each other even more. He knows somebody will step forward. Somebody does. A man with a long goatee beard and a Harley-Davidson T-shirt. His name is Joe. He says he heard on the radio that Richmond General is damaged and has lost power. He will drive them to Delta Hospital “super-quick.”

No lie, Joe maneuvers his Dodge Challenger like a stunt car, weaving in and out of traffic, avoiding fallen trees and power lines, eluding the rubble shaken loose from shops and buildings. Through every gear change, his hands are steady, his reflexes are sharp, his face is a mask of cool control. He really should be wearing a Ferrari racing suit rather than his Harley-Davidson tee. Rounding the corner adjacent to a Chinese shopping center, they discover a Mercedes Smart car has run the red light opposite and hit a fire hydrant on the sidewalk. Water is shooting into the air, and a small lake is blocking their direct path. In a flash, Joe grabs the emergency brake and pulls, urging the Challenger into a controlled, arcing slide around the spill. He corrects the oversteer—centimeters from the far-side curb—and boots them onto the new street.

Barely a minute later, they’re confronted by two stalled semis side by side on the blacktop, the space between them insufficient for a Dodge Challenger to squeeze through. As worrisome as the trucks are, of more immediate concern is the small army of sword-wielding Manchurian gangsters climbing out of the trailers and running full speed toward them.

“Friends of yours?” asks Joe.

Jackie Chan does three big shakes of his head.

“Could get a little rough here,” says Joe, putting on his sunglasses.

The Challenger plows forward. Gangsters bounce off the car, shrieking like angry lorikeets, swords wrenched from their fists to
clank
on the asphalt. A few roll up onto the windshield, over the roof and off the back spoiler. One manages to hang onto the hood for a brief second before he is zapped by a stray power line and loses his grip. Twenty meters from the semis, Joe angles the right side of the Challenger at a construction ramp set up for roadworks. When the tires meet the incline, he yanks the steering wheel left and stands the car up on two wheels. Jackie Chan wishes Justine was awake and recovered and healthy so he could share this astonishing show with her—he makes do with holding her upside-down body as tightly as possible and buffering her head from the passenger door with his arm. The Challenger enters the sliver between the trucks, the spaces on either side slightly greater than the width of Jackie Chan’s backpack. They hold their breath. A twitch in Joe’s sure hands will see them end up hopelessly wedged and overrun by angry, concussed gangsters. The man at the controls, though, is a statue. The Challenger pierces the front cabs, emerges into open road and bounces back down onto all fours.

“This could be a movie,” says Jackie Chan.

“It is,” replies Joe. “Hopefully, it has a happy ending.”

The biggest obstacles should be behind them, but a crisis of epic proportions still stands in their way. Approaching the intersection that passes under the SkyTrain, Jackie Chan studies the large pillars supporting the track. Maybe it is just his imagination, but one looks slightly bowed, like it’s tired and having trouble staying awake. If an aftershock hits now, the pylon could collapse, bringing the section down.

“You see it, Joe?”

“What?”

“That pillar is weak. Can we get around it?”

“Not if we want to get to the hospital stat.”

Jackie Chan doesn’t respond because it’s too late—they’re past the point of no return and the structure is indeed failing, a second rumble not required to send it careering to earth. He leans forward, trying to shield as much of Justine’s body as he can. He shouts, “LOOK OUT!” as cracks in the pillar become fissures, then chunks of falling concrete. Amid the booming noise, he hears Joe yell, “HOLD TIGHT!” and feels the push back into the seat as the accelerator touches the floor.

Cars bang and crash. A motorcyclist slides across the traffic island. A van in the lane beside them wears a hailstorm of debris, then bounds up over the curb and onto the sidewalk, scattering the panicked crowds. Entering the crumbling structure’s target zone, a bouncing slab clips the back right side of the Challenger, and the car fishtails. Joe pulls the steering wheel left to keep the surging vehicle on the road. Tires scream, mingling with the terrified voices of people running for cover. The deadly chaos is on top of them now. The disintegrating track is in free fall. Jackie Chan waits for the lethal blow that will spell the end, not just for Justine but for all of them. He thinks of LAPD motorcycle officer Clarence Wayne Dean, who fell to his death driving off a damaged freeway in the aftermath of the 1994 Northridge quake. He shuts his eyes as Joe blasts the horn and plunges the Dodge into the blinding fog of smoke and dust.

It’s a tragedy things have to end like this.

Unlike in the movies, Jackie Chan won’t save the day.

THE SCREEN DOESN’T FADE TO BLACK.

The credits don’t roll.

He opens his eyes as the Challenger bursts from the clouded ruins. They’re through! Alive! In one piece! Is it a dream? He kisses Justine on the forehead. Her right eyelid flutters in response. Jackie Chan can scarcely fathom that they’re okay, out of the madness and speeding along the shoulder of the road, headed for Highway 99. They stream by gridlocked traffic on the left. They whip past telephone poles, staggered but still standing, on the right.

“That, ladies and gents, was pure balls of insanity,” says Joe.

Jackie Chan looks over his shoulder and out the back windshield at the destruction. Sirens and flashing lights are everywhere. Fires have broken out in three of the surrounding buildings. Above the smoldering haze is a giant hole in the SkyTrain track.

“Givin’ ’er this way, we got about three minutes to the tunnel an’ about five to Emergency.”

Jackie Chan tells Just Jeans to hang on. He checks her pulse (he will do so every thirty seconds from this point forward). His heart pounds and his hands are wet with perspiration. Her pulse is still there. Weaker than before, like a tiny insect trapped under her skin, but it’s there. He tells her she is doing great.

“She okay?” asks Joe.

“Yes,” answers Jackie Chan, trying to keep his throat open and his voice steady.

Joe swerves the Challenger around a ditched fruit truck, then holds his phone through the front seats. “You need to call anyone? Let ’em know what’s happening and where you’re goin’?”

Jackie Chan tells Joe he has Justine’s phone in the backpack. He retrieves it and dials a number he learned by heart in recent days. The call goes to voice mail. He leaves a message of explanation:

“Mum, it’s your son, Perry. Justine’s hurt. She fell during the earthquake. Her heart stopped. You must come to the hospital…Don’t stay away.”

He has an overwhelming and terrible feeling the call won’t be returned.

THEY SCREECH TO A HALT outside Emergency. Joe asks Jackie Chan if he can help carry Justine in.

“No, thank you,” he says. “I’ve got it from here.”

Joe pats him on the shoulder, calls him a hero and assures him the movie will have a happy ending. Joe drives away like a regular motorist and not a stunt driver.

Inside, the waiting area is busy but not crazy. There’s no evidence of earthquake damage to the room itself, but there’s enough among the waiting patients. A young man wearing a tracksuit and a thick gold chain holds a towel streaked with blood against his forehead. A woman with blue hair and a tattoo sleeve—probably his girlfriend—sits in the next seat, studying her black fingernails. An old couple is together near the hand-sanitizer dispenser, discussing “the rumble” and prodding the iv protruding from the man’s skinny, wrinkled arm. A family of four appears to have a variety of injuries, mainly glass cuts. Jackie Chan thinks about rocking and groaning and using other things from his disability to get some attention, but he gets noticed right away. He tells the nurse at the desk, “MY SISTER IS BADLY HURT! SHE NEEDS MEDICAL ATTENTION!”

She hustles him straight through to a room. A different nurse is waiting—she asks for “the honey-bunch” to be put down on the bed. He hesitates. He studies the nurse’s face. Her brow is smooth. Her head tilts slightly to the left. There are wrinkles in the corners of her eyes. She probably smiles and laughs a lot. She looks kind. Jackie Chan lays his sister on the bed. The kind nurse tells him to wait in the corridor while the doctor performs some immediate tests. He doesn’t move. The kind nurse nods and begins to examine Just Jeans. He goes out.

In the corridor, he takes off the backpack. The muscles in his arms and shoulders and back are sore. He hadn’t noticed the pain before now. He keeps his comfort items close: seismometer in his lap, Ogopogo nestled in beside his right thigh,
Lost in Katrina
balanced on his chest. Jackie Chan doesn’t want to think about whether Justine will make it, or the unanswered call to Mum, or the ending of this movie, or if rebuilding is really truly possible when a disaster destroys everything you hold dear. He tries to focus on other things, good things—swimming, eating chicken nuggets, surfing the Net,
Thunderbolt
and
Rumble in the Bronx
. He thinks of old memories—a wash-and-detail of a vintage black GTO he once did at Troy’s, holidays at Rainbow Beach, his final day in high school. He thinks about his father’s best jokes. All these thoughts help him keep a lid on his boiling anxiety.