Fortunately, neighbours had told us that the house owner was a loner, so we probably wouldn't find any other bodies on the way.
It took a lot of effort from the team, but finally we found a hand, then an arm, then a whole living breathing person. He was unconscious but alive. Miraculously, his body lay inside a pocket formed by the way the beams fell, protecting him from the slate and stone around him.
We checked his extremities; all seemed clear. But when we came to drag his bruised body out to safely, it wouldn't come - it was caught somewhere.
I put my hand down the far side of his body into the dark to see what the blockage was. He was naked so there was no clothing snagged; his knees were free to move; there was nothing impaled into his chest.
I had to check the only place left, and found that it was his penis! What a horrible discovery - one of the beams had come crashing down right onto his cock, pinning it against part of a wall.
He needed medical attention; he needed to be moved to hospital, and one thing prevented us. It would be impossible to move the beam without the house coming down on top of all of us. To save his life, we would have to amputate. But, on the positive side, with a crush injury like that, there would be little left to remove.
After a brief discussion with the doctor at the scene, there were really no other options, so he set to the task. He was about to apply the scalpel when he realised the injured man was becoming conscious.
He was in quite a daze and delirious as he tried to move but was tethered by his genitals. He kept muttering something which sounded like "Keys, keys" but it made no sense.
The doctor pulled himself out from the hole in the rubble, and said to me, "There's something strange about this situation, something that just doesn't add up. If he has the sort of trauma we think he's had, there should be blood everywhere but there's almost none. And his vital signs aren't consistent with trauma either. And then he keeps talking about keys or something."
Then Barney, one of the junior firefighters who was listening in, spoke up. "Perhaps if his, er, penis were protected by something, it would be safe from crushing by the beam?"
"What, you mean like some sort of hard tube? But then why couldn't we just pull him out of it?"
"Well... perhaps he's got... it could be... It's just that my girlfriend... we like to... oh, just take a look." He unzipped his fly and pulled out a black tube surrounding his cock. "I can't take it off, there's a lock, my girlfriend likes to... what I'm trying to say is, perhaps he has one of these. Perhaps he's unharmed and you shouldn't cut anything off."
I was a bit stunned, seeing my colleague's cock locked into... something. But he had a point!"
I went back into the rubble and felt around the man's cock. Sure enough, it felt like some sort of a tube in there. "Hand me the pliers!" I shouted.
I tugged at that tube, the way I never could have done if it was his flesh. It started to give, and after a lot of struggling, it was free of the beams that were pinning it down.
We quickly pulled him out of the hole and into an ambulance.
Barney stopped him and looked at his tubed cock. "My God, he's got a triple!" I could see along the length of the tube were three small disks that looked like they might have been small keyholes, but the force of the beam had crushed them beyond ever taking a key again. "He has three piercings through his penis securing the tube in place, and it doesn't look like they're ever coming out."
They saved his cock and saved his life, but only for a lifetime of frustration.
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