| General Fiction posted January 6, 2017 | Chapters: |
...11 11 -12- 14... 
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  |
Read Author's notes for a summary of chapters.
A chapter in the book The True Test
Leadership
by jusylee72
| Background The True Test, Chapter one Teachers are asked to stay late for mandatory Standardized Testing in the auditorium. Towards the end of the training, something causes a massive explosion. |
We were eating breakfast, Rice Crispy bars, cereal and the last of the milk we had salvaged. We were in small groups socializing in a weird way. Not sure whether to constantly worry of to just pass the time.
Doug walked into the room and stood on the conducting platform. " Timothy Sanchez, our principal died about an hour ago. He did wake up briefly and asked me what happened. I tried to explain to him as quickly as I could, but his eyes just stared at me, wanting more. I couldn't save him. I did all I could."
In the last two days, Doug rarely left the Second Band Hall. We brought him food. We tried to relieve him and tell him he needed sleep. Neil, the head coach, had taken him out for about four hours and demanded he got some sleep. We forced him into a small practice room and gave him a blanket for a pillow. Five hours later he was back in the triage room.
Having never been in a survival situation before I began observing how we were reacting. Denial was a major emotion. It kept us going.
"My family will be waiting around the corner."
"My husband would crawl over barricades to save me."
"The national guard will find us soon."
The reality was oppressing. There were still no planes in the sky. There we no helicopters. Only silence lived in the sky.
Another realization hit me.
Timothy was our leader. He was our boss. We admired him 80 percent of the time and grudgingly complied when we didn't agree with him. He had so many people, teachers, students, other administrators to deal with and get to know. Yet, I knew that he had been in my classroom and understood my strategies. He knew that I did my job in a unique way. After observations, he would give me suggestions on ways to improve. However, there was always this respect he gave me. He knew that my skills were needed where I worked. Most of all he would tell me that our choir students wanted to be there. To him, that was enough. I may not be the perfect teacher but the students in my room wanted to be there and they wanted to learn.
That alone made me want to keep teaching.
He was gone now.
Now there were new problems.
We had all ignored the fact that the auditorium was a tomb. The hard brick walls had shielded us from the death smell that we knew was inside of it. Now, another one of our own had died. Should we place him in the tomb? Do we have a ceremony? We have no family members to tell us what rituals he would want. We can't keep him in the other band hall. The days of taking care of our own dead had been over for years. We had specialists who would come to our doors and take away our dead, embalm them, cremate them.
My mind went back to my Mother. Her fourteen-year-old brother died in a tobogganing accident in the early 1930's. They put a wreath on the door. They had the body in the house, washed by family and the local undertaker. The viewing was at home. Her Mother, my grandmother, was never the same. She changed from a loving parent into an angry survivor. He oldest son was dead. She blamed my Mother for the accident.
My Mother and Richard were supposed to go to a basketball game that night. Their parents were out at a social event. It started to snow. The entire neighborhood of preteens and teens thought about how much fun it would be to toboggan. So instead of the game, they stayed home. They were laughing and taking turns on the long downhill street they lived on. None of them thought that a car would come across the bottom street at the exact same moment that four mini adults would descend. The car struck them. Two died. My uncle immediately. One became a paraplegic. One recovered.
Police cars were outside when the parents came home.
My grandmother and grandfather were told that their son was dead. My grandmother turned to my mother and said, "Why wasn't it you?"
That one night clouded their relationship for the rest of their lives.
My mind came back to my own reality.
Doug was talking.
"We have to decide what to do with our dead. We can't keep them. For now, our best choice is to isolate them in the auditorium. I will need people to help me. We have to decide within the next few hours."
All of our usual ways of dealing with death were lost to us. There was no pickup service. Scientifically, we had a decaying body rotting in the next room.
The volunteers did so silently. They simply walked up to Doug, then turned and went into the next room. They used one of the xylophones to lay him on and take him to the auditorium. Many of us wanted to have a small service for him, yet the idea of organizing it crippled us into inaction.
Denial was no longer a part of our world.
Doug walked into the room and stood on the conducting platform. " Timothy Sanchez, our principal died about an hour ago. He did wake up briefly and asked me what happened. I tried to explain to him as quickly as I could, but his eyes just stared at me, wanting more. I couldn't save him. I did all I could."
In the last two days, Doug rarely left the Second Band Hall. We brought him food. We tried to relieve him and tell him he needed sleep. Neil, the head coach, had taken him out for about four hours and demanded he got some sleep. We forced him into a small practice room and gave him a blanket for a pillow. Five hours later he was back in the triage room.
Having never been in a survival situation before I began observing how we were reacting. Denial was a major emotion. It kept us going.
"My family will be waiting around the corner."
"My husband would crawl over barricades to save me."
"The national guard will find us soon."
The reality was oppressing. There were still no planes in the sky. There we no helicopters. Only silence lived in the sky.
Another realization hit me.
Timothy was our leader. He was our boss. We admired him 80 percent of the time and grudgingly complied when we didn't agree with him. He had so many people, teachers, students, other administrators to deal with and get to know. Yet, I knew that he had been in my classroom and understood my strategies. He knew that I did my job in a unique way. After observations, he would give me suggestions on ways to improve. However, there was always this respect he gave me. He knew that my skills were needed where I worked. Most of all he would tell me that our choir students wanted to be there. To him, that was enough. I may not be the perfect teacher but the students in my room wanted to be there and they wanted to learn.
That alone made me want to keep teaching.
He was gone now.
Now there were new problems.
We had all ignored the fact that the auditorium was a tomb. The hard brick walls had shielded us from the death smell that we knew was inside of it. Now, another one of our own had died. Should we place him in the tomb? Do we have a ceremony? We have no family members to tell us what rituals he would want. We can't keep him in the other band hall. The days of taking care of our own dead had been over for years. We had specialists who would come to our doors and take away our dead, embalm them, cremate them.
My mind went back to my Mother. Her fourteen-year-old brother died in a tobogganing accident in the early 1930's. They put a wreath on the door. They had the body in the house, washed by family and the local undertaker. The viewing was at home. Her Mother, my grandmother, was never the same. She changed from a loving parent into an angry survivor. He oldest son was dead. She blamed my Mother for the accident.
My Mother and Richard were supposed to go to a basketball game that night. Their parents were out at a social event. It started to snow. The entire neighborhood of preteens and teens thought about how much fun it would be to toboggan. So instead of the game, they stayed home. They were laughing and taking turns on the long downhill street they lived on. None of them thought that a car would come across the bottom street at the exact same moment that four mini adults would descend. The car struck them. Two died. My uncle immediately. One became a paraplegic. One recovered.
Police cars were outside when the parents came home.
My grandmother and grandfather were told that their son was dead. My grandmother turned to my mother and said, "Why wasn't it you?"
That one night clouded their relationship for the rest of their lives.
My mind came back to my own reality.
Doug was talking.
"We have to decide what to do with our dead. We can't keep them. For now, our best choice is to isolate them in the auditorium. I will need people to help me. We have to decide within the next few hours."
All of our usual ways of dealing with death were lost to us. There was no pickup service. Scientifically, we had a decaying body rotting in the next room.
The volunteers did so silently. They simply walked up to Doug, then turned and went into the next room. They used one of the xylophones to lay him on and take him to the auditorium. Many of us wanted to have a small service for him, yet the idea of organizing it crippled us into inaction.
Denial was no longer a part of our world.
, Teachers have to stay after school for mandatory Standardized Test Training. Many of them sense something is wrong. They want to go home. They stick to their obligations. When the explosion comes they have no idea that an earthquake, the largest ever recorded, has ruptured the gas lines outside their building. Most of Texas is destroyed. All around them is devastation. The Auditorium is damaged. They are able to get to the band hall across from the auditorium. They have no idea how much damage surrounds them. They are a group of about 70 teachers and administrators, custodians, etc. They have so many different talents and skills. How will they survive?
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