Two vehicles—a sedan of some kind and a truck— are tangled in a heap in the center of the intersection a mass of crumpled metal and a shower of shattered glass. Despite the late hour, there are several onlookers along the roadside, and I spot the telltale flash of a camera phone. I’ve responded to dozens of calls to this intersection, and several people have died over the years. Here recently, a teenage boy bound for state college for baseball lost his life in a head-on collision. Its notorious in Lake County for being a hazard, and though they’ve tried to mitigate the dangers with flashing lights at the stop signs and speed bumps, it never fails that we get several calls a year just for this intersection.
I only see a flash of red and the sliver of a palm tree in the rear window of the sedan, but I know. Walker notices me turn to a statue and looks over as he gets ready to leave the ambulance. “You good, man?”
“They got a name on this patient?” My voice comes out hoarse. It’s pitch dark, but there’s enough lights coming from the emergency vehicles and the headlights of the truck tangled with the small car that I can see blood on the dash of the sedan.
It’s spattered on what’s left of the windshield, too. There are blonde hairs tangled in the glass.
Walker shakes his head, moves closer to get a better look at my face even though we should both be focused on the patient. “Not yet. Why?”
Beads of sweat coat my upper lip, moistening my words, the salt making me sick to my stomach. “Does that look like Tana’s car to you?”
He does a double-take at the sedan which is only a short distance away. He doesn’t seem convinced and looks back over to me. “What?”
“Pull up right fucking next to it.” I sweep a hand across my face to get rid of the sweat now streaming down it. I’m gasping for breath and expelling it in heaving shudders. This isn’t like me. I’m always in control at a scene. Always. I’m the one who tells the rookies and even sometimes the more experienced guys to keep their cool, take a breath and work the problem. But the more I try to find my sense of calm, the more it spins away from me.
“Are you sure?” Walker asks.
“Yes, I’m fucking sure. Pull the fuck up next to it.” My limbs are shaking and there’s a pain in my chest, but I have to focus. If I’m right—and I hope to fuck I’m not—but if I am, she’ll need me to keep it together. I have to keep it together.
With one last wary look at me, Walker puts the ambulance into gear. “Yeah, man. Okay.”
He whips the ambulance around as fast as he can, and I jump out before it stops moving. I’ve always been cool under pressure, it’s what drove me to become a first responder after I left the military, but tonight? I can’t seem to get a bead on things. It’s moving too fast for my thoughts to process, to make sense of it all. The sedan is a red Corolla. Or it used to be before it was T-boned by a black truck. What was left of her car is unrecognizable. It looks more like a UFO than a sedan. Heart in my throat, I race to the site of the collision.
“Get the backboard, the neck brace, and call my fucking wife!” At this point, I don’t know who I’m shouting at. I’m just praying the person ejected wasn’t Tana. It can’t be her.
I can’t picture a world in which Tana is dead.
I’m the first one to her car. Walker and Zeke follow close on my heels with all the supplies I left behind. The windows are shattered, the driver’s side is still intact, and I can see a body through the kaleidoscope of glass on the other side. The tableau is revealed by the flashing strobe lights and jerky flashlight beams from the cops and other firefighters.
“Tana!” I yell, even though the logical part of my brain knows she’s probably unconscious. “Tana!”
Zeke comes up behind, places a level hand on my shoulder, and I immediately shrug out of it. “Get ahold of yourself,” he says quietly. “Do you need a minute?”
“I need you to get out of my fuckin’ face,” I growl.
“I don’t know what the fuck is going on with you—”
“It’s his wife,” Walker interjects. “He thinks this is her car.”
There’s muffled talking following that statement, but I can’t hear it over the roaring in my ears. Eventually, someone comes to my side and brushes my hands away from the door. I turn, snarling at the intruder, and then I’m pulled bodily away from the car by the captain.
“You aren’t doing her any favors right now, Alec. Let us do our job. We’ll get her out.” There’s a reason why Zeke is the captain. Nothing seems to faze him, not even me coming apart at the seams right in front of him. Later, I’ll appreciate his stoicism. Now, it makes me want to rage.
“Is she alive?” I bark out to Walker, who has managed to get the driver’s side door open. “Is she breathing?” I don’t even think to fight against the captain’s hold. All my focus is on Tana’s lifeless body.
“We’ve got a pulse,” I hear.
The captain doesn’t say anything when my knees go a little weak. They shout her vitals, discuss her various injuries, and for once, my head is completely blank through the chaos.
“Is she alright?” I ask, but I’m not certain anyone can hear me. The din of an accident scene is always overwhelming. The shouts and screams of loved ones or the injured themselves. Barked orders from first responders. Cackles from radios clipped to belts. I’m always able to focus through it all. Always. That’s what makes me good at my job. That’s why I love what I do. I thrive in the chaos.
“Is she alright?”
Zeke and Walker share another loaded look, and if it wasn’t Tana laying there bloody, I woulda had to cold cock one of them for treating me like a patient.
“Goddamn it, someone tell me if she’s alright or let me work on her.”
Walker grabs me by the arm and pulls me to the front of the car. I fight him every step of the way. “Hold it together, man. Let them do their job.”
“Unless you want my fist in your fucking face, you’ll tell me how my wife’s doing. You know you’d do the same thing if it were Avery.” His lips press together at the mention of his girlfriend and the mother of his baby girl.
“Look. She’s sustained mild head trauma, potentially resulting in a concussion, but no significant findings of brain injury. She’s got a flail chest, probably due to broken ribs. Her vitals are all within normal limits. Pupils are round, reactive, and equal.” As he speaks, I keep my eyes on her. They’re putting her in a c-collar and spinal package. “Captain wants to fly her out to a level one trauma facility. You can’t ride with her, but—-“
Before he can answer, I rip away from his hold. “Alec!”
The captain stops me before I can climb back into the ambulance. “You’re not going anywhere like this.”
“Try and stop me,” I snarl.
“Let me give you a ride back to the station, and I’ll take you up to County in my truck. You’re in no condition to be driving anywhere.”
“I’m fine,” I say, although I most certainly am not. I can’t stomach the thought of being away from Tana, not until I know the extent of her injuries.
“Bullshit,” Zeke says quietly, calmly. How he can be so fucking calm, I’ll never understand. “Get in the rig. I’ll take you back. There’s nothing you can do for her going off half-cocked like this, and you know it. Don’t argue with me.”
Knowing arguing with him will only cost me precious time, I do as he says. The sooner we can get moving, the sooner I’ll get to the hospital.
I'm lost in thought during the entire drive back to the station, assaulted by memories of her face behind the window. Bloody. Broken. She’d seemed so small. So fragile.
My hands are sweating. I wipe them on my legs and wonder if the captain is purposefully driving at a snail-like speed to piss me off. He keeps in contact with Med 1, who are responsible for transporting Tana to the helicopter. They make it there successfully, and she’s soon on her way to County Hospital, an hour drive away but a short twenty-minute flight. Due to the broken ribs and possible head trauma, it’s safer to fly her by helicopter than transport her by ambulance.
Zeke is quiet for most of the drive to the hospital. What can he say? Not a damn thing. He relays each update. When they take off. When they land. After that, there’s not much we’ll know until we arrive at the hospital. Which seems to take an eternity.
When we arrive, I’m out the door and at the emergency desk like a shot. When I get a nurse, I say, “I’m Alec Dorran. My wife Tana was in an MVA. She was just brought here by chopper.”
The rest is a blur. She’s in critical condition and in the ICU. Someone leads me to her room where I see her through a small window, hooked up to monitors and covered in stark white bandages.
There’s only one thing that sticks out from the litany of information the doctor spits out at me.
“We won’t know the extent of her injuries until she wakes up.”
What could be worse than this? I wonder.
Please wake up. Please.
I fall asleep holding her hand and hoping I’ll see her eyes again in the morning.
Please come back to me.
I can’t lose you.