If there had been a nicer day in San Francisco this spring Julie couldn't remember it. The short walk up the hill from the parking garage could be unbearably cold and uncomfortable in the winter. Today it was pleasant enough to consider not reporting to her accounting job.
Her jacket was lying open, allowing the fresh air to flow through her light blouse. Four hours in the sun and she could begin to have her tan back, she thought to herself as she approached the office building. Dutifully, she rode the elevator up to the fourth floor and wound her way through the maze of cubicles until finding her own. With her mind still on the outdoors, she plopped down in the chair.
Ten years ago the young professional would have called in "sick". But at thirty-two, she now understood the importance of showing at least a small amount of dedication to the company. She was a rising star in her department, not solely because of her flowing blonde hair and shapely 5' 4" frame. But those attributes certainly helped in a male-dominated firm.
Julie didn't need to play the sex card. She was intelligent enough and mature enough to prove her worth in many other ways. In fact, she had a personal policy of not dating anybody from work. She'd made that mistake once and lived to learn from it.
Down the hall, John was placing his lunch in the break room refrigerator. He was anxious for noon to arrive so he could take the meal outside and enjoy the day. In the meantime, he would be his normal quietly efficient self. Not many people in the company knew the thirty-six year old marketing supervisor very well, even those in his own department. Rarely did he spend more than a couple moments during the day conversing with other employees. But you could seldom walk past his office that he wasn't on the phone with a customer or clattering away on his keyboard.
He was lean and athletic, a jogger during non-working hours. He would bring his wife to the annual Holiday party, but otherwise never offered any details of his personal life. Despite his value to the company, John was one who could not show up for work one day and few people would notice or care.
Julie, herself, was somewhat surprised when she got a "Hello" out of John when they crossed paths on the sidewalk during lunch. She attributed it to the uncommonly enjoyable day.
By three o'clock Julie was spending more time thinking about what to do when she got home than the monthly report. She found herself staring blankly at a note tacked up on her overhead cabinet door. Sticky notes. She needed sticky notes.
Julie was happy to have this simple task allowing her to get up and walk to the supply room. Well, calling it a room was a stretch. It was really an oversized closet. Add the rows of shelving and even the small woman found it hard to navigate once inside.
She was one of the now infamous group of women in the office who campaigned to have the most often used items moved to the lower shelves where "normal" sized people could reach them. Still, many times she was in the closet thankful she was wearing pants and not a skirt, dreading the day she would be reaching an upper shelf when the door flung open. Today she wore pants.
With a small handful of notes in her possession, Julie turned to leave. She heard it before she actually felt it. The shelves were rattling. She stood in place and watched as they began to sway. Now she felt it.
Julie instinctively dropped the sticky notes and grabbed the metal frame of a shelf. The tremor increased in severity much more rapidly than she ever anticipated. Like all residents of the city, she had tried to imagine what "the big one" would feel like. This was worse than her imaginations.
She stumbled and cried out as a shelf behind her crashed over into another. The one she was holding slid away from her, cutting her hand in the process. Julie let go, free now to be thrown around the little space just like the pens, pencils and paper.
The next minute was total chaos. She fell to the floor and was immediately covered by supplies and shelving. The noise was deafening and she was certain the entire building was about to crumble on top of her. When would the shaking stop? Would she be alive when it did?
Initial screams that had echoed her own could no longer be heard. Were they all waiting, like her, for the infernal shaking to end? Julie was helpless. There was nowhere she could crawl to be safer. In fact, she couldn't move. Shelves covered her legs, but she didn't feel any pain other than the bumps sustained in the initial fall to the floor. And her hand.
But the continued quaking was the most important thing on her mind. She was sure that another fifteen seconds of it would bring the entire building crashing down. Dust was beginning to fill the air and she coughed uncontrollably. If she lived through the quake, she said to herself, she hoped not to die from suffocation.
Then it was over--as quickly as it came. The resulting silence was more deafening than the earthquake. Julie moved each of her four limbs to make sure she was...alive.
"Help!" she yelled.
Nothing.
"Is anybody there?" she cried out louder.
Still no response. Then she started to dig herself out. She surveyed the mass of metal above her and, like a game of pick-up sticks, decided which ones to try to move first. Several minutes of careful maneuvering, pushing and tugging allowed her to free her body of all entanglement. Despite several tears in her pants and two in her blouse, she was liberated.
Stopping for a second to catch her breath and say a small prayer of thanks, she looked for a way to the door. Julie began to move as if climbing over a child's jungle gym, the shelves settling under her as she progressed. The additional bumps and bruises this caused on her knees and legs was a small price to pay for the light she saw outside the closet door.
Julie pushed the door, only to have it bounce back at her after hitting something solid in the hall. She pushed once more and squeezed her body into the space that was created. Her back scraped against the door and her breasts were flattened by the door frame, but she escaped.
The scene that confronted her seemed unrealistic at first. Amid the swirling dust she was able to determine that the floor above had fallen at a forty-five degree angle onto her floor. Desks, cubicle walls, plaster and metal were everywhere. Occasionally, openings to the outside were visible through the tangled mess.
That's when Julie saw the first body. The lower half of a man stuck out from below a section of wall--motionless. A bloody arm was visible ten feet in front of the man. She covered her mouth in recognition of their fates.
"Is anybody here?" she said in a cracking voice. Julie couldn't make herself yell any louder. The dust and her own fear prevented it.
She saw and heard nothing that would indicate anybody else was around. Julie hoped that the people on her floor were able to head outside, somehow, in the early moments of the quake. But she feared the worse from the appearance of the space around her.
Just a few feet down the hall, or what was left of the hall, was the entrance to the break room. She gingerly stepped over the rubble and made it to the door. To her surprise, the room was relatively intact. She froze, however, when her eyes caught sight of a man lying on the floor under a single beam. Unlike the other bodies she had seen, this one was whole and accessible.
Julie leaned over the man, only to jump back with a shriek when he moved. When he turned his face she could see it was John. She nervously yanked on the beam enough for him to roll out from under it. A second later he was sitting up, groggily holding his head.
"Oh, my God, John. You're alive," Julie said.
"Kind of," the man said, coughing. "What the hell happened?"
"I'm guessing earthquake," Julie said, surprising herself with an attempt at humor under trying circumstances.
John tried to look around him, but clutched at his neck and shoulder instead. "Ouch. Geez. I hurt all over."
"You're lucky. We're lucky. I don't think everybody made it out."
John could tell from the sound of Julie's voice that she was serious. "Have you looked..."
Before he could finish his sentence, the pair was showered by spray coming from the sprinklers above.
"Oh, shit," Julie screamed, putting her hands on top of her head. She looked for a place to hide, but of course there was none. "How the heck can they still be working?"
She looked at the man huddled on the floor and, simultaneously, they broke out laughing...despite how much it hurt. Twenty seconds later, the flow became a trickle, and then stopped entirely. But the damage had been done. Both Julie and John were soaked.
Always the lady, Julie was more uncomfortable with the transparency of her blouse than the fact she was soaked. She crossed her arms in front of her and stood awkwardly against the sink.
