Mount Mercy

I tentatively reached in again and held her wrist, feeling for her pulse. She was shockingly cold: she couldn’t last much longer.

“Beckett!” I turned and saw Corrigan watching me, horrified. “Get your hand out of there!”

“I’m just checking her pulse. I can pull it back.” But I knew what he was afraid of because I was thinking the same thing. If she grabbed me in panic and held on as the car went over... or if the door closed on my arm…. I tried not to look at the town spread out below, the houses like toys.

Corrigan was cursing himself. “Why didn’t I bring a fucking rope?”

I shook my head. I hadn’t thought of it either. We were doctors, not rescue workers. Then I finally found her pulse: weak and getting weaker. “I think she’s bleeding from somewhere,” I told Corrigan. “We have to stop it or we’ll lose her.”

He was looking around frantically for something to use. “As soon as we make sure the car’s safe!”

Sophie gave a low groan. I could feel the life draining out of her. Corrigan was right, it was way too dangerous. But….

I’d never understood why ER doctors took the chances they did. By the time patients reached me, those choices had already been made, for better or worse. I never knew how easy I had it. Because now, kneeling right next to this woman, watching her die….

What would he do?

I grabbed the surgical kit, ran around to the other side of the car, and quietly opened the door. By the time Corrigan looked round, I was sliding into the passenger seat, lowering my ass into it as if it was upholstered with eggshells. “Beckett, no!” he yelled.

I touched down, holding my breath… the car didn’t move.

I tried to do everything in slow motion, to make every movement smooth and steady, even though I was a bag of nerves. I pressed my back as hard into the seat as I could, trying to get my weight as far back as possible. Shining a flashlight down into the foot well, I saw I’d been right: Sophie was bleeding steadily from her calf. I could see where her ankle was pinned by metal that had bent inward.

Corrigan arrived, frantic and out of breath. “Get out of there!” The Irish in his voice was stronger, when he was stressed.

He put out his hand to grab me, but I shook my head: even that, I had to do gingerly. “I can do this,” I told him. “If I don’t, she’s dead.”

We stared at each other. I saw his hand twitch. He wanted so badly to pull me out… but at last he nodded.

Getting an IV needle into her vein took five tries. My hands were numb and stiff with cold, the tips deathly white, and I could see each panicked breath I took as a dense little cloud. I finally got it in and hung a bag of blood from a coat hook: that was a start, but it wouldn’t do any good unless I could stop the bleeding.

Very, very carefully, I rolled forward and down until I was lying across Sophie’s lap, my head, and shoulders in the footwell. I tried not to think about the fact that there was nothing underneath me but a hundred foot drop. Holding the flashlight between my teeth, I tried to imagine I was back in the nice, safe OR, with Bach on the speakers and Krista cracking jokes and Lina keeping an eye on the anesthetic and Adele passing me sponges and—

It all seemed really, really far away.

But I could see the bleeder, I could see it, it was right there, and if I could just rotate the leg a little—

As I clamped the bleeder, Sophie cried out and arched in pain under me. My stomach dropped through the floor. “Sophie! Please don’t move!”

She groaned and thrashed.

And the car started to slide.

I tried to back out, but there was no quick way to do it: I had to twist myself back up into my seat. As my eyes came above the dashboard, I saw the nose of the car tilt down, more of the town lurching into view. I lunged towards the door, but it was too late to climb out: the door was already over the edge.

28

Dominic

WHEN RACHEL was about a year old, Chrissy bought this fancy backpack. It was a complicated web of straps that looped around me and around the baby and basically let her ride on my back. I thought it was stupid, but Rachel loved it: as soon as I had her in it, she was chortling and clapping, happy at suddenly being six feet off the ground.

And then... there was this noise. A hissing, nylon slithering. I felt the straps go loose across my chest. Either the thing was defective or I hadn’t done it up right, but she was falling. And I did what you’d do, on instinct, which is to turn around, but of course that didn’t help because she went with me. And I could hear her laughter turn into a wail and feel the straps coming loose but no matter which one I grabbed, it didn’t seem to help, and I knew she was falling but I couldn’t stop it—