You’re sitting at your desk when the earthquake hits. It's an eerie feeling. Everything is moving. You want to brace yourself against something, but whatever you choose is moving as well. It's as if you're on an oversized water bed and the universe is jiggling. There is no central anchor point, no place to go but to stay on the rollercoaster and enjoy the ride.
The next thing you notice are all the things falling over, off of the shelves, off of the edges of table tops and bookcases. Items that you would never imagine to be movable are suddenly dancing and sliding off, finding a new common bottom to fall to.
Next you start seeing cracks in the walls, and larger things begin to tumble - curtain rods along with their curtains, wall clocks, fluorescent light bulbs, then entire light fixtures. Next parts of the ceiling start cracking and coming down, and if it's particularly bad, the entire ceiling just drops in seconds. That whole bit about get under a desk is fantasy. There isn't time. You hear the crack, you look up, and it's in your face that quick already. You can't drop faster to the ground than the floor above you is dropping down on you, some stupid law of gravity insists.
As things crash on your head you still do the natural thing, you fall to the floor parallel with all the debris. As it's falling and you have some presence of mind and are still able to, you crawl under that heavy metal desk that you hated so much. Those nice cherry wood desks the boss had, or that minimalist modern office furniture in the cubicles with the faux wood laminated with fake wood patterns that looked so cool - they didn't survive the ten tons of concrete and accompanying employees in the five floors above you that came tumbling down. That metal desk you loathed, to which you felt you were chained to for the past year actually held its own, and spared you from being crushed to death instantly.
Finally, the rumbling stops. But now you can only hear your own coughing. There is so much dust even in this tiny confined space that you are gagging. And though you crawled under the desk to get out of the plaster of paris waterfall, you realize there is crushing pressure on your feet and you can't wiggle them free. They didn't make it to safety and are being pinned down by something heavy and the pain is unbearable. But you can't think straight, you are coughing so hard after inhaling so much concrete and drywall dust.
Finally the coughs subside to a tolerable frequency. You finally voluntarily open your eyes and think you are blind. No, you're not blind. There just is no light. Absolutely pitch black darkness. Something is in your eyes, they are watering. You rub them with dirty fingers but you still can't see. There is no light.
You now realize you must do something about your feet. They are being squeezed unmercifully. You try to pull them out from whatever is crushing them but you can't. You begin to panic. You twist and squirm and try everything possible. Finally, you get you left foot to scrape out of shoe and sock and tear flesh against rock hard concrete, tearing skin as you freak out trying to get free. You cry out loud at the self-inflicted pain for freedom, but you finally get one foot free.
Now you work on the other foot, but it is securely pinned. It’s not moving an inch. You can't even reach it comfortably due to the odd angle you are laying at. You struggle, but finally succumb to exhaustion, and you lay your head down to rest.
Now with eyesight gone your hearing becomes a little more acute. Though there is an eerie silence, like nothing you have ever heard before in a busy office. Then you realize you now hear some feint noises. Human sounds, you think. There's the unmistakable coughing just as you had. The memory is like seeing someone yawn and now you go into coughing fits again. Once it subsides, you now hear crying, moaning, distant but distinct.
You call out, but your voice is scratchy. The dust you inhaled is making you hoarse. You cough again. You call out but only hear your own voice. You think you may have heard someone call, but you're not sure. Maybe it's just your own imagination.
Your eyesight starts playing games with you. Little sparkles appear before your eyes. You're not sure if your eyes are open or closed. You blink. They were closed.
You go back to the pain in your trapped foot. You try to reach for it, to explore what's holding it down. But you can't get to it. You try to sit up but bump your head on the bottom of the pencil drawer. You reach around with your arms to explore you confined space. It's maybe three feet by three feet, not very much. The floor below you did not give way, but the five floors above you are sitting on your metal desk that you used to hate so much. Now you're feeling a little more forgiving.
You call out again when you hear someone else's anguished cry. But it was distant, and they don't reply back. You keep calling out asking if anyone is alive? You think you hear a human voice, but it's muffled, hard to distinguish.
You give up for awhile. You lay down and just think about what you can do. Not much. You're trapped. All you can do is wait for rescue. You feel your first foot that you freed. It's scabbed over now. The scratches were nasty, but the bleeding seems to have stopped. You go back to your other foot, but it's held down tight. You realize you can't feel the toes in that foot. This is not good.
You lay back down and assess your situation. You have no food, no water - damn, why did you have to think about water? You now realize you are thirsty. You're becoming uncomfortable. You want to stretch out but cannot.
This is becoming both ridiculous and insane. You then realize, if your building was this bad, probably many others are the same. You probably have little chance of making it.
Time goes by. You don't know how long. You become morose and sleepy. You are tired of being in one uncomfortable position. You are hungry and thirsty, and you have to pee. You hold it in. You lay there for what seems hours. Occasionally you call out to see if anyone will respond. But there's not much going on. Even the few groans you thought you heard before are gone. You are alone, utterly alone.
You start giving up hope. Hours have gone by, and not a sound. You search around for something to make a noise with. You actually find your stapler. You start knocking this against the side of the metal desk making a clanging noise. Then you stop and listen. Nothing.
You keep waking up every few hours and call and shout and clang some more. You have no idea what time it is. Your cell phone was in your coat pocket, but that was across the room. No hope of getting to it. You wished you had kept some snacks in your desk, but your managers had strictly prohibited that due to the pest problem. You're so hungry now, you would eat those pests if they dared crawl over you.
You lay there, having no idea how much time has passed. You also realize your pants are wet. You went at some point in your sleep. Luckily it doesn't smell. Too much. You sit up and with your stapler try to dig your numb foot out, but it's useless. You can't even make a scratch. You give up and lay your head back down. Odd as it may sound, you find a contortioned position that is actually comfortable, or the least discomforting.
You now start thinking. Thinking about your life, your loves, your friends, your family. Memories come rushing back rather vividly. It's not your life flashing before your eyes, but a lot of thoughts go through your head. You have some regrets. You wish you had never said that to... You actually start to cry. The tears that roll down to your lips you hungrily lap up. Salty, but still at least something. You cry more.
It's got to have been days. You just don't know. You don't care. How long can a human body go without water? Wasn't it three days? Has it been one day? Two? Three? You don't know. You don't care. You are tired, so tired. You're just laying here but it's tiring. Like vacation trips are tiring. You never understood that paradox. You thoughts start drifting in all sorts of odd directions. You finally close your eyes and go to sleep.
You wake up to a sound. A loud pinging noise. You try to sit up but find yourself extremely weak. You hear the sound some more. It actually has a pattern. You take you trusty stapler and bang the desk. The stapler jumps out of your hand. You have no grip. You curse, find the stapler and bang some more. The sound hurts your ear.
But the pinging sound makes a pattern now. Three rapid pings, three slow, three rapid. You repeat that same sound. Several times. Wasn't that the pattern for SOS you read about in some teenage detective book back in middle school? You bang out the same pattern, loudly, it rings in your ears painfully but you don’t care. The distant sound repeats it as well. Now the sound has a different pattern. You match it. The sound stops. So now you bang some more. But suddenly you hear loud sounds. Motor sounds. Construction crane types of sounds. You bang wildly with energy you didn't think you had.
And then after awhile, you hear crumbling sounds, then the sound of a distant human voice. You call out, they reply! Hang on, they say. Help is coming! You begin to cry again, but there are no tears. You bang wildly a few more times. You know, this old metal desk wasn't so bad after all.
***
“Emergency teams have been pouring into western China's Qinghai province, a day after a deadly earthquake devastated the mountainous region.
Thousands of homeless people and casualties are waiting for help.
Officials say 617 people died and 9,980 were injured when the tremor hit Yushu county early on Wednesday, while a further 313 remain missing.”
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