Chapter 1004: The West Stair Gives Way

The volunteer teacher brought Rosa a list of names instead of asking when the west washroom would open.

"Nine need help getting to a toilet. Four more can walk there, but they cannot wait in a line with the little ones watching. I can hang blankets for screens if someone gives me a place to put the buckets."

Rosa stood at the cafeteria tape with the list in her hand. The teacher had marked who needed a chair and who needed a second person to lift them. Forty-three names were still accounted for on this side of the building. The grandmother whose bed caster jammed had put a line through her own name and written I CAN WALK beside it. Rosa had watched her try. She could get upright if the bed rail held, but the cold made her fingers slow.

"Keep everyone away from the west stair until Waddell checks the landing," Rosa said. "I will bring the carts here and find you a private corner."

"The corner was supposed to be my classroom when this was over. Take it. But tell me how long the washroom is staying shut, so I can stop making promises I have to correct in front of people."

Rosa looked down the corridor. Beyond the tape, Waddell was kneeling beside the laundry grate with a lamp, and Gojaro had gone around to the exterior service walk. The ceramic closure had held through two gauge readings. Another tap came from below, low enough to pass through the floor beneath Rosa’s boots.

"I cannot give you a time. I can give you a decision before the next meal."

The teacher folded the list and went back to the cafeteria. Rosa kept the copy she had made. She wanted Waddell to hear the human version of a closed stair before he asked her to wait for another test.

She found him setting a pencil across two chalk marks beside the grate. The pencil rolled toward the washroom doorway when the floor tapped again. The bolts in the grate remained seated. The ventilation needle stayed where it had rested after the plug went in.

Waddell took the pencil off the floor. "The branch stayed shut, but the tap moved under us. Gojaro is checking the outer wall; stay back from the landing until he calls."

"The landing is where their only accessible washroom sits. The teacher has thirteen people on a toilet list already."

"That makes it a bad place to guess. If I wave thirteen people across a floor I have not checked, you will be carrying the first one back."

"And if the answer is closed, say closed. The teacher is trying to keep a queue humane with buckets and three blankets. She deserves to know which problem she actually has."

Rosa took the lamp and held it low along the wall. Old paint had flaked beside the washroom threshold. A fresh line ran through the pale dust below it, past the last stair tread and under a strip of rubber mat. She had crossed that mat on the first search. Its edge had been flat then.

Gojaro’s voice came over the radio from outside. "There is a gap under the outer landing. I can put two fingers into it. The station gate is still shut, and I have touched neither the hatch nor the pipe."

Rosa asked over the radio whether he could see a person.

"Only the back of the landing and the old drain. I went through that drain once to find Miriam. I will not do it again with an occupied room above my head and a floor already asking to fall."

Waddell studied the line in the dust. "We look at the washroom from this side. Nobody crosses the threshold. If the wall foot has shifted, I need that room off the shelter map before the next person wheels a bed past it."

He walked along the sound wall, careful of his sore forearm where the grate had struck it earlier. Rosa followed at a distance that let her watch his feet. The rubber mat lifted a little when another tap passed under them. Waddell stopped before the washroom door and pressed his wrench against the floor seam. A crumb of mortar came up against the tool.

"The bracket under this landing may have taken the last pull," he said. "I need to know whether the wall still has its weight."

"You can learn that from Gojaro’s side. Step back."

He was moving when the step nearest him dropped. Its front edge sank through the mortar and caught his boot against the door frame. The rest of the landing followed with a grinding scrape. Waddell threw an arm against the wall, keeping his head clear, but the boot stayed between concrete and steel.

Rosa had a web stretched across the south approach. She knew exactly what releasing it meant: the lane beyond the laundromat would be open until someone replaced her line. She pulled that fire away from the street and caught the fallen tread with it, keeping the heat off Waddell and well clear of the sealed hatch and the recovered heating plate stored behind the fire door.

"Gojaro, south lane is open. I need you here."

"I heard the floor. Give me the size of the break."

"One tread and the wall foot. Waddell’s caught."

She got her arms under his and drew him toward her. He cried out and slapped the wall with an open hand. His boot would not move. Rosa stopped before she pulled his leg out of joint. The web held a little of the tread’s weight; heat blackened the loose mortar beneath it.

"I have you. Tell me where it bites."

"Toe and outside of the foot. Get the weight off the frame first."

Gojaro came in through the exterior door without taking the short path across the landing. He had a length of timber from the service walk under one arm. He pushed its end beneath the fallen tread, then put his shoulder to the other end. The concrete rose barely an inch.

"Get his boot clear while I have the tread raised," he said. "My shoulder will not hold it here for long."

Waddell gripped Rosa’s forearm. With Gojaro holding the tread, she let the web slacken, locked both hands around Waddell’s calf above the boot, and eased it back. The sole tore. His foot came free inside a split leather upper, and Gojaro lowered the tread before the timber slipped.

The west washroom doorway fell another fraction as it settled. A sink pipe broke behind the shut door with a sound like a snapped spoon. Nothing poured out; domestic water on that sector remained closed.

With his arm across her shoulders, Waddell tested the damaged foot against the floor and pulled it back before she had to warn him.

"Your chair is ready on the cafeteria side of the tape," she told him. "Put your arm over my shoulder and let me get you there."

"The landing is carrying the return’s outer bracket. Mark the crack before someone puts a hand on that wall."

"Gojaro heard you. He can mark the crack while I get you into the chair."

Gojaro drew a wide line on sound floor around the fallen section. At the outer door he glanced south, toward the approach Rosa had left bare. He could see neither of the altered workers who had troubled Oscar’s barrier, but an empty lane proved very little.

"I can cover south or lift this tread again," he said. "I would like to know whether Miriam’s people are still below us, but an open street is a poor way to ask. Choose which job you want me doing."

"Cover the south approach and keep anyone from wandering in through this corridor," Rosa said. "The residents stay in the cafeteria. I will call you when Waddell is settled."

"You spent your whole outside net on one man. I can replace it, but if anything comes out of the station before I reach the lane, the teacher is going to hear it first."

"I know. I am taking him past the tape, then I will help the teacher keep her people off this stair. You can be angry about the gap after you have closed it."

Gojaro nodded and went back the long way. Rosa kept the lamp on the damaged floor until he had cleared it, then guided Waddell toward the tape. She called the teacher ahead of her. By the time they reached the cafeteria, Caelin’s aide had brought a rolling office chair and a folded blanket for Waddell’s foot. The teacher locked its wheels before Rosa helped him sit.

The grandmother stood beside her bed with a hand on the rail. She looked at Waddell’s torn boot, then at Rosa. "You told me you would inspect the radiator in my room."

"I did. He was hurt before we finished. The radiator waits; you do not. Please sit so I can show you the new washroom place."

"I do not want a bucket beside forty other people."

"You are right. I would not want my neighbors watching me either." Rosa crouched until they could speak without the neighboring beds joining in. "The west doorway broke. I cannot send you across it. I can put two food-service carts and three blankets around a chair in the corner, and the teacher will ask who you want to help you. You can tell us the arrangement is bad. You can also tell us what would make it bearable tonight."

The older woman looked past her at the teacher carrying folded screens. "I want the children moved away from the corner. And I want to wash my hands afterward, even if the water comes in a cup."

"Agreed. We can spare a cup from the sealed kitchen stock. I will put your requests on the list for everyone, not just you."

The teacher heard her and changed where she meant to hang the screens. She had been using the wall nearest the children because it gave her a straight line. Now she moved the carts behind the table where meal trays were stacked. That cost them one serving lane. She assigned two adults to carry food around the other side and told them why.

Waddell watched the rearrangement while Caelin’s aide cut away his boot. Two toes had swollen around a dark mark where the frame caught them. The aide padded the foot, set it above the chair seat, and made him promise not to put weight on it before someone with a better kit examined it.

"I can still read the facility map from this chair. Will you get it for me?" he said.

"Read it from this chair, with your foot up and the tape between you and that floor," Rosa answered. "You were right to keep the hatch shut. You were wrong to stand on a floor that had just told us it was moving."

He let her have that. Rosa got him the facility map and a pencil.

Oscar reported that his north door remained secure. Gojaro reported an empty south approach and no movement at the station gate. Neither report identified what had made the taps. Rosa asked them to keep saying what they had seen, not what a quiet minute tempted them to believe.

The teacher returned with the list. "All forty-three are here. Two have used the screened corner. Your south guard wants a drink, and the kitchen says we have eleven sealed jugs after this meal. What do I tell people about tomorrow?"

Rosa had wanted to promise a working washroom by dawn. The broken step was visible from where Waddell sat, and each new tap put dust on its fallen edge. She crossed the west route off the teacher’s list.

"Tell them I closed that washroom. We are keeping the screened corner and the assisted schedule, and I will ask the north team for water without sending a resident out to fetch it. Do not hide the short count. Let people tell you what they need before we decide where the last jug goes."

"They are already angry. One father thinks I saved the good jugs for staff, and I cannot blame him when he has watched me carry water behind a screen all afternoon."

"Show him the count and show him my name beside the washroom closure. I will tell him why the bottles are staying on this side."

The teacher took the paper back. She had one hand on the new screen before Rosa called her again.

"If someone tries to cross the tape because our corner is humiliating, call me before you try to stop them alone. That is my decision to explain."

The tap came through the broken landing. The washroom door shifted against its frame, and a bolt in the outer bracket slid far enough for Gojaro to see its clean shaft from the service walk. In the cafeteria, nothing moved. Rosa counted the beds with the teacher anyway, while Waddell drew the bracket and the occupied wall on the back of his map.