A little East of Paris: Power-tools

“My name is Gwain McCampbell. Thanks for showing up so quickly.”

The man on the other side of the door sounded surprised. “My name is Cletus Wagner but I go by Chuck or Chuck-Wagon” the man replied.

“Pleased to meet you” Gwain responded.

He looked over at Olivia and saw that she was starting to melt-down.

“Write that down. Write down his name, what time it is, what he says, what the tools sound like. Write down EVERYTHING!” Gwain commanded her.

She immediately put pencil to paper and started writing as if the devil was chasing her pencil.

“Can you tell us what you are doing, sort of give us a running commentary. Especially if you are going to use power-tools that might be noisy?” Gwain asked Chuck, glancing over at Olivia. “We are getting little bit jumpy in here and would appreciate having enough time to stuff our fingers in our ears.”

“Yeah. Sure. No problem” Chuck grunted. “I am scraping as much of the expanding foam out of the cracks as I can with a screwdriver. As warm and as humid as it is, it is setting pretty fast.”

“I am looking for a place to wipe off my screwdriver….I am going to wipe the foam off on the top of my toolbox. Getting the foam off of a painted surface is almost impossible to do without damaging the paint….Ok, I am scraping out some more foam…”

Part way through the evolution, Chuck used his cell-phone to call his boss. Chuck asked him to bring the security tool-bit.

“What is a ‘security tool-bit’?” Gwain asked.

“I need to pull the door-hinges” Chuck told them. “Our hinges have a set-screw to make it difficult for people to break into offices and the set-screw has a weird head you can’t just unscrew it with Allen wrenches.”

A couple minutes later, Chuck’s boss called back. Chuck put it on speaker. “Hey, how urgent is your project? The bit wasn’t in the drawer” the disembodied boss informed them.

“It is urgent” Chuck said in a matter-of-fact voice. “Some pranksters glued a professor and a student into one of the old offices in the Language Arts building.”

“I have you on speaker because the professor said knowing what is going on will help keep them calm” Chuck said.

“Crap!” is all the boss said. Then after a few heart-beats, “I am sending Bernie over with the angle grinder and a bunch of cut-off discs. Try not to set the building on fire.”

Chuck heard Olivia gasp. “He was joking. The cut-off wheel makes sparks but there is nothing flammable within 20 feet of here. It was just a stupid joke.”

Chuck didn’t bother to tell Olivia that the glue WAS flammable. He sent a text to his boss. “SEND SEVERAL FIRE-EXTINGUISHERS!!!” He also didn’t tell the occupants that the old offices had very little ventilation. They were never intended to be occupied for long periods of time with the doors closed. It was Chuck’s opinion that there were some things the people trapped in the room were better off NOT knowing.

Gwain looked at Olivia, thoughtfully.

“A lot of people who have anxiety issues carry a few ‘rescue’ meds. If you have some, this would be a good time to take them” Gwain offered.

Olivia looked surprised. “I think I might have something!” she said. 

She started digging around in her purse and pulled out some small, pink tablets*. “I forgot I had these. They put me right to sleep” Olivia said.

“You might just want to take one… just to take the edge off” Gwain suggested as he handed her an unopened bottle of water.

“OK, Bernie just showed up with the angle grinder. It is going to get loud in there” Chuck informed them.

“What I am going to do is every time I stop grinding, I will wait at least ten seconds before I start again. That way you can talk to me if you need to say something” Chuck said.

“I appreciate the heads-up” Gwain said as he stuck his finger tips into his ears.

Gwain didn’t think the grinder was that loud when Chuck started it. He quickly changed his mind when the cutting wheel touched the steel hinge and made the door vibrate like the head of a drum. The noise was harsh and grating and amplified in the small space.

It was really rough on Olivia.

Chuck stopped cutting after a half minute. “How are you guys doing in there?”

“Not so good” Gwain admitted. “Miss Benavidez just took a tranquilizer. Do you suppose you could just hang-loose for fifteen or twenty minutes so it has time to take effect?”

“Yeah. No problem” Chuck said. “I can get some fans while we are waiting. Oh, and I am getting a crowd of people who want to talk with you.”

The next voice Gwain heard was von Tersch, the Department Head. “How are you doing in there?” von Tersch asked.

“Not so hot” Gwain admitted. “Can you shoo-away the gawkers? There are some things we need to discuss privately.”

Mystified, von Tersch directed Violet to remove the small crowd of on-lookers.

“Ok, we are in the clear, what is up?” von Tersch asked, expecting Professor McCampbell to go high-maintenance on him.

“I am in the office with Miss Benavidez who is one of our Freshmen. Miss Benavidez is experiencing a mental health emergency. We are dealing with it for now, but as soon as this door is popped off, I NEED to get Miss Benavidez to the Student Health building for observation.” Gwain told him.

That was NOT what von Tersch expected, or wanted, to hear.

Gwain continued, “We are going to walk over there and we don’t want to run into anybody who is going to stop us and ask questions.”

“Wouldn’t an ambulance be faster?” von Tersch asked.

Looking over at Olivia, Gwain responded “I don’t think Miss Benavidez will want to be in confined spaces so soon”

Olivia vigorously nodded her agreement. Walking in the open seemed like a great option.

More quietly, Gwain asked Olivia “Do you have any friends you want to walk with. We can try and find them…”

Olivia shook her head “No”. She had no close friends at college, nobody she had confided in, nobody who she could trust to keep her issues secret.

“Miss Benavidez agrees with just me and her walking over to the student health center like it is not a big deal, but I WANT the skids to be greased. I want somebody over there waiting for her at-the-door and I expect her to get treated like royalty” Gwain said.

“Gotchya. Just you and her taking a quiet walk across campus...I might send along a couple of people to clear the path but…” von Tersch said…

“Oh shit! A television truck just parked in front of the building” von Tersch exclaimed.

Gwain looked over at Olivia and repeated his mantra "Who, what, how, where, when and why. Keep writing!"

Looking at the number of pages that she had written, Gwain added "Go back and number each page and circle the number. Put your initials at the bottom. Just do it."

* One of the off-label uses for diphenhydramine (also known as Benadryl) in mental health situations is as an emergency sedative. It is commonly available in two-tablet, sealed, tear-open packets.