Chapter 1: Survival by Lust
It's a long-recognized rule that you don't get sexually involved with the people with whom you work. I followed that rule religiously until a building fell on me. Literally. My life in all its aspects - personal, professional, and most of all sexual - has never been the same since. I didn't just break the rule. I mutilated it.
Karen was our departmental administrative assistant, although we still referred to her as our "secretary." I'd served a term as department head and returned to the faculty while another professor had served a term as department head. Now I was back again performing department head's duty. This made Karen "my" secretary, although that is a completely inaccurate portrayal of her duties. Primarily she kept me up-to-date on - and edited - the various reports I had to write, meetings I had to attend, etc. She truly ran the department, allowing me to be department "head." Only the misinformed or uninformed thought I was really in charge, and I made this plain to anyone who would listen.
Karen was in her mid-to-late thirties, so about a decade younger than I was. She had two teenaged children, and she was certainly a loving, caring mother and wife. I was fully aware that she was a woman, although I didn't think of her as a possible sexual partner. I was happily married, and I had been completely faithful to my wife Lori for more than 20 years. Besides, Karen never did anything to suggest she was "available." I felt absolutely no erotic attraction toward her, nor, apparently, did anyone else.
Moreover, Karen was almost plain, and nobody would even call her pretty. She had a nice smile, and her eyes were warm, friendly, and alertly intelligent, but she was clearly no beauty. She wore almost no obvious makeup, and her lipstick was a subdued shade of pink. Except when we had "dirty" jobs to do, she was always professionally dressed in skirt, blouse, or dresses. Her dresses were usually ankle- length and were never revealing or teasing. For years I'd thought of her as flat-chested, but one day when she had arrived for some cleanup work wearing jeans and a work shirt, I could clearly see that she had been hiding her C-cup-sized breasts by dressing cleverly. She did not dress to attract, entice, or excite the men at work.
Most importantly in terms of our working relationship and friendship, Karen was intelligent, bright, and witty. She enjoyed her relatively low-paying and low-prestige job by doing it exceptionally well. She had saved my ass on more than one occasion because of her intelligence and good common sense. She was on a first-name basis with all of us - at least when students were not around. She was a vital part of our departmental team. But nobody lusted after her. Certainly I did not. She was a trusted and loyal friend and co-worker. Nothing more.
The most suggestive action any of us had ever done around Karen was to tell slightly risque jokes. We never told overtly crude stories in her presence, but she was always one of the first to laugh at some of our off-color remarks. She would say, "That's really bad!" And then giggle. She and her husband Chris were among my friends, and our two families often socialized at departmental events, public school functions, and the like.
Karen and I had formed a strong friendship. We were completely open with each other, and we often discussed extremely sensitive matters, knowing what we said would go no further. Most of the time the issues concerned student or faculty matters, but we also occasionally shared personal problems. Neither Chris nor Lori ever learned about most of these conversations. Our friendship and working relationship were based upon this complete trust and honesty. There was nothing suggestive or sexual about the manner in which we related to each other, but our trust in each other was powerful. It was this complete trust that led us to our "problem."
Our department had recently moved from a run-down building to a brand-new facility. The department had occupied our old building for more than forty years, and it had become a running joke that it was ready to fall down. Whenever we had strong winds, the shrieks and groans in the walls made it sound haunted. It had been cited as "potentially structurally unsound" nearly a decade earlier, but we continued to work in it because we had no other place to go. Now our new building was ready, and we had moved out.
Our old - truly ancient! - building had been stripped of everything of value, but one Saturday morning in mid July, Karen and I were checking every room one last time. We were both dressed in jeans, work shirts, and sturdy boots. We stepped over unidentifiable spills, crawled and poked into dusty closets, and generally looked at everything. It was as far from an erotic adventure as anyone could imagine. We were scrounging around on the second floor of a four-story building. We thought we heard some other people working elsewhere in the building, but we hadn't seen them yet. The air conditioning was off, and we were getting dirty, grimy, and sweaty.
Karen had found a forgotten box of old paper files, and she was sitting on the floor going through them to see if any were valuable enough to save. I was across the hall, looking through ancient built-in cabinets. I found another pile of old files, and I carried them into the sunlit room where Karen was working. "Don't get up, Karen! I've found some more great old stuff for you to check through!" I announced as I walked through the doorway.
"Hey, thanks a whole lot, Bill! That's just what I need to . . ."
There was a sudden rumbling, and we heard creaking and grinding sounds. The window behind Karen cracked with a sharp snap, and the broken glass fell out. I turned toward the door as Karen jumped to her feet, and I reached back with my left hand and grabbed her left wrist. "We've got to get out of this damned place! It sounds like it's going to fall down!" I yelled. She held onto my left arm with both hands, and I pulled her toward me and started through the door.
The floor we were standing on suddenly tilted, then gave way. I grabbed the door frame with my right hand, and kept my grip on Karen's wrist. The door frame came apart in my hand, and I felt myself twisting and falling. We both screamed as we fell, then we collided as our fall momentarily slowed. The floor continued tilting, and I couldn't regain my feet. I felt Karen gripping my left wrist with her left hand, and we both grabbed with our right hands for something solid to hold onto. After several loud, high-pitched squeals, the floor shifted even more and then dropped, and we fell again. There was so much dust in the air that I couldn't see, and things were falling and crashing all around us. All I could hear was our screams and a loud, continuous rumbling and roaring. We came to an abrupt stop, and something hit me on the back of my legs. Before I could cry out, I received a sharp blow to my head. I heard Karen screaming in pain as I blacked out. I heard someone calling my name. She sounded far away. "Bill! Bill! Wake up! Bill!" My head hurt, and I moaned, then drifted back into the darkness. As I slipped away, I realized my arm hurt, too, and also I could feel something pressing on my legs but . . .
I was having a nightmare about my body being ripped apart. I became aware of a sharp pain in my left arm as I wiggled my left hand, and I was abruptly wide awake. I tried to move and found that I was completely immobilized. "Shit!" I cursed.
"Welcome back, Bill! Thank God! I was afraid you weren't going to regain consciousness!" Karen said. Her voice came from just to my left, but was muffled. My head was turned away from her, and I couldn't move it. Her body was lying partially across mine, and I could feel her pressing against me as she breathed.
I took a deep breath and immediately regretted it. Dust filled my throat and I coughed, again and again. Each time I did so, Karen groaned. "Bill! You're hurting me! Try not to do that!"
I finally stopped coughing. I spat out the dust and tried to look around. There was some faint light, but I couldn't turn my head toward Karen. All I could see was a large piece of wood, pressing against the side of my head, holding it down. It also created a small open space in front of my mouth. I could see my breath stirring dust as I breathed. I managed to move my right arm up and around a piece of debris, and I could almost touch my face. I could move my left leg, but there was something in the way and I couldn't even reach my waist with my right hand.
"How long have I been out?" I asked.
"I don't know. At least a couple of hours. Probably longer. Are you hurt?"
"Yeah, but mostly I'm just pinned under something. I can feel all my fingers and toes, so I'm probably pretty much in one piece. You?"
"The same. I'm hurt, but not too seriously. I just can't move."
"What the hell happened? And where are we?"
