Ten Deep Breaths

Sensitive content such as coarse language, violence and mental health.

I have to fire someone today. 

My eyes fly open as I wake. I feel like I have a weight pressing on my chest as it tightens. Great, here comes the anxiety. I lie there awhile before I begrudgingly roll out of bed and ready myself for what I only expect will be a shit day. I slowly make my way downstairs where my husband has breakfast and a coffee waiting.

“Good luck today. Remember, you’re a boss ass bitch,” he says as he kisses me goodbye.

I sigh. I don’t feel like it right now. People perceive me as a boss ass bitch. Internally, I feel like a complete imposter. Logically, I know it’s the right decision, but every time I have to do this, it chips away at my heart. Intrusive thoughts invade and my mind spirals into worse case scenarios and I panic about what will happen to the person. I always wonder where they go and how they’re doing. Sometimes I wish my heart was made of stone, so I didn’t care so much. 

I close eyes and take ten deep breaths.

Opening them, I take my last swig of coffee, get up and put my ‘firing’ blazer on. This one makes me look like a boss, even if I don’t feel like one. I grab my keys, lock the house up, and get in my car. I’m heading to the city to do a leadership presentation prior to going to the office for the meeting I’m dreading. It’s ironic I have to stand in front of a group of aspiring leaders when I don’t feel like one, especially today.

I finish the presentation and stay behind when three students approach to ask further questions and tell me they learned a lot. We’re standing near the entranceway to the school. I thank them for their feedback and wish them luck in their careers and turn to get into my car. Gripping the steering wheel, I feel the anxiety come back as I mentally prepare myself. I close my eyes to take another ten deep breaths.

That’s when the world goes mad.

My eyes fly open to find the earth bucking and power lines flashing as transformers erupt into flame. Cars crash, horns blare, and screams rent the air. I’m still parked outside the school, but a car crashes into me from behind. The airbag goes off and I’m temporarily stunned.

I pass out briefly, but the world comes back and I notice the car smells like it’s burning and I panic. Unbuckling, I force my door open and fall out of the car, only to be nearly trampled by people running past.

I stand to look around at the tremoring buildings with shattered glass falling from high above to the street below with people screaming as shards hit them as they throw their hands up and run. The nearby telephone poles are on fire as the explosions from the transformers spread shocks of electricity down the cables. Chunks from buildings are shaken loose and fall from the sky, raining down on the cars, crushing them.

I must get off the street and find shelter.

I scan around and realize I’m a few blocks from the old art gallery up the hill. It’s a shorter building, but ancient and sturdy. I don’t know why this feels right but my legs start to move.

Someone grabs my arm. It’s a student I spoke with after the presentation. Tears streak her face as she holds up her friend between her and the other student. The back of his head is oozing blood. The falling debris must have hit him in the head.

“Help us,” she wails, “we can’t get back into the school.” I stare at them, but nod. There’s no time to question this.

“Come with me,” I say, and we run as fast as we can with their semi-conscious friend between them. We run past a car with the airbags deployed to see two young children in the backseat crying and screaming. Their mother is in the front, unmoving.

“Get to the gallery. I’ll catch up!” I shout at the students. I knock on the window of the car and yell. The mother doesn’t respond as blood runs down her face. I whirl around, looking for anything to help me get into the car. I see an enormous concrete block that must have fallen from a building. I pick it up and start slamming it against the passenger window. It smashes and I clear the shards before opening the door. The mother begins to groan and stir. First thing she does is look back at her kids.

“Can you move?” I scream through the noise of the quaking earth. She slowly leans back and moves her legs, nodding blearily. “Get up and get your kids. I know where to go.” I get her out of the car and help her stand. She’s unsteady but moves to the back to get the kids out. 

Ahead I see sirens and a police officer emerge from his battered car. He looks dazed and confused. I run to him and grab his arm and drag him to the mother and kids. 

“Help her and follow me!” I order as we each grab a child and move. I see the students ahead approaching a group of people huddled together against the cars jamming the streets under their protesting signs as debris continues to fall.

I scream at them to move, but they can’t hear me. Leaving them, I direct the students to the gallery entrance. It’s locked. The officer rushes past me with the mother and child with four other officers close behind, assisting other people. Apparently, he’d radioed anyone nearby to come to the gallery. He passes the child to the mother and pulls out his baton and begins swinging at the door. The other officers assist and eventually they haul the door open.

Alarms blare as we hold the doors open and wave everyone inside. We can see people in their vehicles, either injured, passed out or dead. A few of the officers and I run back to the group huddled on the ground to find a discarded megaphone. I pick it up and shout into it for everyone to get inside. The officers bang on car doors and shatter windows to get people out. 

By now, over a hundred people are inside, huddled against walls. The earth continues to tremor. There’s no one else outside we can help, so we close the doors and find a wall to huddle against. The officer I had asked to help the mother and children is near me, huddled against the wall with his hands above his head.

The art rattles off the walls and we can hear it crashing to the ground on the floors above. People are wailing as we wait for the world to still. I grab a fallen art piece in its frame and hold it over me, as if that will help should the building collapse.

Slowly, the earth stills. The alarm is deafening. I get up to locate the office to find someone at their desk, pinned between it and a bookshelf. At first, I think they’re dead until I hear a faint call for help. I scream into the lobby for aid and a man and woman appear. We lift the bookshelf off to find an elderly man beneath, injured but alive. He tells us the alarm code to turn it off and the lobby falls silent. Then a child’s cry fills the space and people begin to moan in pain and fear.

I go back into the lobby to find the students huddled against a far wall, their friend between them. One of them is putting pressure on his bleeding head.

First aid. We need first aid.

I still have the megaphone with me, so I blare into the crowd. “Is anyone a doctor?” A woman emerges and says she’s a nurse. Nodding, I gesture to her to follow as I go back to the office to find some first aid equipment and hand it to her before going back to the lobby to stand on the stairs up to the next floor.  

“Anyone else know first aid?” A few people put their hands up. I look to her and say, “Here’s your team,” and I direct them to follow the nurse to assess the injured people and do as she says. Now the officers have joined our small group along with one of the students.

“What now?” she asks. I realize she’s asking me specifically. I look around at the group standing with me to find them all looking at me. 

“I don’t fucking know!” is what I want to say, but instead I look at my phone to find it has no connection. Thoughts of my husband race through my mind and I taste bile in my throat, but I can’t think of that right now.

“No one’s phones are working. The network towers must have been hit,” one of the officers says.

My brain spins. What are humans’ basic needs? Food and shelter. We have shelter, now we need food. The elderly man from the office is nearby.

“Is there food in here?” I ask him. He nods.

“There are vending machines and a cafeteria. I don’t know how much food is stored though,” he says.

“Alright. You three go check out the inventory and report back what we have. Go through all the vending machines as well. Find out how much water there is. We’re screwed if the tap water can’t be drunk right now.”

I gesture for the remaining group to follow me, and I go outside to look around the flooded streets. There are people emerging from surrounding buildings or looking out of windows. The streets are covered with debris, making it difficult to move. I see the signs on the ground from the protestors. 

“Grab those and bring them inside,” I say as I look over my shoulder to the people standing behind me gazing around in shock.

As they do this, someone else comes up to me, shaking. They’re trying to explain something to me in a language I don’t understand, but gestures wildly with their hands. Someone else joins them who speaks English and translates, fear filling his gaze. 

“He’s explaining that after earthquakes, tsunamis can follow and we’re right on the ocean. We might be okay because we’re quite far down the inlet and up a small hill, but if it’s big enough, it could flood the city.” My heart sinks and my mind races again. 

“Get everyone upstairs to the top level. The gallery is only eight storeys high, but it’ll have to do.”

He grabs the megaphone from my hand and starts shouting for everyone to get upstairs, to grab anything they can and help the injured. The electrical is out in the building so the elevator is not an option. 

With what felt like a decade to get everyone and the food upstairs, we finally settle, and watch. The inlet does seem lower than usual with some of the yachts docked at the harbour leaning sideways, grounded. 

The world goes quiet. 

“Look,” someone whispers. In the distance, past all the towers, we can see it. A colossal wave approaches the city. 

“It’s going to hit the west side of the city first,” someone says. There are a hundred tall towers between us and the wave, but the inlet runs past us only a few blocks away.

“Are we high enough?” someone else asks. The art gallery is up a slight rise compared to the buildings by the water, giving us a view overlooking the city, but it’s not much higher.

I’ve killed these people, I think.

The wave hits the first tower, crashing over it and onto the next. The windows are smashed through. Anyone in the first twenty levels of that tower would not have made it. We watch as the wave crashes through the towers like they’re paper as it floods the city. Cars are swept between the buildings as the breaking wave hurtles towards us, the water finding its way through the city. 

By the time it reaches the gallery, it’s half the size and moving slower. It still crashes against the lower levels, rocking the entire building. We watched other towers topple with the weight of the wave, but the ancient stones seem to endure. I watch the water climb the walls as the wave continues to stretch through the city, cars slamming against the walls. 

The water has climbed to the fourth level. Fifth. Now sixth. Just when I think we’re done for, it seems to slow and still. I look past our building and the water stretches out beyond what I can see, but it’s stopped rising.

Cheering slowly begins throughout the crowd as the water subsides. We watch for hours, the water never fulling abating, but the water is only has high as the fourth level now. We don’t look too closely because it’s not just cars floating by, but other horrible things.

The sun has set and it’s getting cold. The food has been thrown to one side of the floor and I approach to take stock of what we have. People demand food for their children and the officers join me to surround the food. The man who had shouted at all of us to get upstairs hands me back the megaphone. 

I shout to the crowd that we will distribute the food fairly once we’ve organized it and taken stock of what we have. We’ll have to ration it because we don’t know how long we’ll be stuck here. The other student steps forward to offer their help with sorting and other people volunteer. Once we have a group of ten, I assign one student to determine how we want to organize everything and leave them to it. 

I ask the same officer I first met to join me in searching the eighth floor to find what other supplies we have. We’re in the modern art area of the gallery. We find sheets covering some of the art and collect these. We gather a few more people to help us pull art from the walls and hand out pieces so people can build little barricades to separate themselves from others for sleep.

We build an area for the injured and throw the sheets up here for privacy or for bandages as the first aid people assist the nurse with addressing the wounded. 

By now, the food had been sorted. They hauled desks from another room to put out food to distribute for dinner and a line has already formed with people sitting with small portions, eating with their hands since utensils aren’t available. Everyone is given a bottle of water and warned to drink it sparingly. People are impatient, and the distribution of food takes hours, but eventually everyone is fed. 

We pile any burnable packaging into piles spread out on the floor throughout the floor and light small fires with the materials from the protesting signs. We fill pop cans with water from the still flooded fourth floor to put out the fires if need be. People huddle around the fires, some falling asleep in their little barricades, others sitting wide eyed, staring around at everyone or at nothing. I watch as a peace sign slowly burns away to ash.

Eventually, officer number one approaches me to suggest I try and get some sleep, having done all I can to help. I finally learn his name is Jason and he has a wife with two children and he’s barely keeping it together due to his worry. I grasp his arm and squeeze, but there’s nothing to say. We’re all worried.

We live like this for the next two weeks. Some people succumb to their injuries. Arguments ensue over space and food, and we do all we can to keep some semblance of order. One day we hear a helicopter in the sky calling out for survivors. Jason and I race to the roof and wave frantically. Across the city we see small groups of people on other rooftops doing the same with helicopters landing and taking people away.

This went on for days until finally they make it to our roof. Me and Jason are part of the last group to be flown out of the city. We learn of the natural disasters caused by technology and human error and the cataclysmic results across the world. We are taken to a safe zone, away from the mass destruction in the cities. Here we are given access to satellite phones to contact our loved ones, or at least, attempt to contact them. My art gallery group continues to stick with me as one by one we learn the fates of our friends and families. Jason still can’t reach his.

Eventually, I get a hold of my husband. He’s been taken to another area of the country. He wants me to come to him, but I look around at the bedraggled group of people with me and tell him I can’t yet, not until they’ve all found their families, too. Once a leader, always a leader. I finally feel the tightness in my chest loosen and my shoulders relax. 

I close my eyes and take ten deep breaths. 

When I open them, I’m sitting at my kitchen table, holding my coffee. I can still feel the kiss goodbye on my lips from my husband as he wishes me luck with my shitty day. I down the rest of my coffee and throw on my ‘firing’ blazer, feeling more powerful than I had ten breaths ago.

A smirk crosses my face. Intrusive thoughts be damned. I survived an apocalypse; I can fire someone today.