The Crash

Chapter 13

13

Hank carries me over to the sofa in their small living room and sets me down as gingerly as he can. I have to hand it to him—he’s making an effort to be gentle, although the pain is still horrible. It’s so bad that a sweat breaks out on my forehead, despite the fact that the living room is pretty chilly.

Polly crouches down next to me as I squirm to get comfortable. “Tegan, right?”

I swallow. “Yes.”

“I’m Polly.” She waves her arm around the room, which is illuminated only by the fireplace and the flickering candles. “As you can see, our power has gone out.”

I wipe a strand of wet hair from my face. “What about the phone lines?”

She shakes her head. “Sorry. They’re out too.”

I groan. “Oh God, what am I going to do? I need to get to a hospital.”

“The power and the phone lines will probably come back in the morning,” Polly says. “And the roads will clear out too.”

Tears gather in the corners of my eyes. “I think my left ankle is broken. I need to go to the hospital. Please .”

“We’re not going anywhere in this storm,” Hank barks in his gruff voice.

He’s right, of course, but his declaration causes me to burst into hysterical tears. Hank’s expression darkens—he’s irritated with my reaction, but it’s not like I can help it. Polly looks over at him with her lips pursed together. She seems like she wants to say something to him but then thinks better of it.

“Tegan, honey,” Polly says, placing her warm hand on my ice-cold one, “I’m a nurse, and I’m going to make sure you’re okay tonight. And then in the morning, we will get you straight to the hospital.”

Polly’s tone is calm and soothing. Immediately, my tears start to subside like a faucet is being turned off. She must be an incredible nurse.

“Hank,” she says, “let’s get some blankets for Tegan.”

The giant yeti of a man stares at me, writhing on his sofa, before speaking. “We should put her in the basement.”

An alarm bell goes off in the back of my head. “The basement ?”

Maybe it’s my imagination, but there’s a flicker of fear on Polly’s face, although it quickly vanishes. “We actually…um…we had the basement converted into a hospital room when my mother was sick. There’s a great hospital bed in there, a bathroom, and everything you could need.”

“I’d rather stay here,” I say weakly.

Hank lets out an annoyed grunt. He shoots Polly a look, and she flashes me a plastic smile. “The sofa isn’t very comfortable,” she says. “You’ll never be able to sleep here.”

While that may very well be true, the thought of being taken underground in this already remote cabin makes me feel ill. “I’ll be fine.”

“Tegan, honey,” she says in her soothing voice, “I know what you’re thinking. But I promise you, by around midnight, you are going to hate this sofa. It’s lumpy, and it’s got springs sticking out of it. You’ll never get comfortable, especially with that big old belly. We have an expensive hospital bed paid for by insurance in the basement, and that’s where you want to spend the night. Trust me. And then first thing in the morning, we’ll get an ambulance over here to take you to the hospital.”

I bite down on my badly chapped lower lip. I’ve been on this couch for only a minute, but there’s already a spring biting into my lower back. A jolt of electric pain shoots down my right leg. I hate to admit it, but she’s right. “Okay, fine,” I agree.

Hank has to carry me, because walking has become impossible. He mutters something under his breath before moving closer to me again. Now that he’s not wearing his coat, I can appreciate how very large and strong this man is. And when he easily scoops me off the sofa, I catch a whiff of wet snow and something else. Motor oil, I think.

He carries me down the long flight of steep stairs to their basement. I am so utterly helpless being cradled in his arms, and despite having agreed to this, I feel a sense of doom as he descends each step. Even with a broken ankle and the snow outside, when I was upstairs, it felt like I could leave when I wanted. But now that I’m down in the basement, escape is much more difficult—if not impossible.

But I can’t worry about that. Polly assured me in the morning they would call 911. Everything will be fine.

Polly follows us downstairs with a flashlight, which allows me to make out the contents of the basement. As promised, the room contains a hospital bed, reclining thirty degrees from an upright position. By the bed, there’s a seat with a bucket attached, which looks like it could have been used as a toilet. She shines the flashlight to illuminate a bookcase filled with magazines and paperbacks—whoever last occupied this room must have liked to read. The scent of alcoholic sanitizer permeates the air.

But in spite of the innocuous contents of the room, there’s something disturbing about this basement. It’s so quiet and still. And dark —without Polly’s flashlight, it would be pitch-black. And on top of the chemical smell, there’s another odor that lingers in the room. One that’s hard to put my finger on at first, but then I finally figure it out. It’s the sickening smell of decay.

Like someone died down here.

Hank lays me gently on the hospital bed. It’s much colder down here than it was upstairs, and a chill goes down to my bones. It’s still more comfortable than the couch though.

“Are you okay?” Polly asks me.

“It’s really cold.” My teeth are chattering. “You don’t have a fireplace down here, do you?”

She shakes her head. “I’m so sorry, no. But we’ve got tons of blankets.”

Polly goes into the closet in the corner of the room and retrieves two heavy blankets—one down and one wool—and she sends Hank upstairs to grab more. “Can I pull off your boots?” she asks me.

I hesitate. “Yes. But please be careful.”

She pulls off my right boot without much trouble. But the second she attempts to remove the left, the pain is like nothing I ever experienced. I let out an ear-piercing scream that echoes off the empty walls.

“Oh my God,” I gasp. “That hurts .”

“We need to get them off.”

“No.” I shake my head so vigorously the bed trembles. “Leave it.”

Polly shines her flashlight on my left boot, her lips pressed together. The thought of her trying to take that boot off again makes me physically ill. I would rather be stabbed in the eye with an ice pick.

“I’m a nurse,” she reminds me. “We need to see—”

“ Leave it .”

I don’t care what she says. Nobody is taking this boot off. Polly finally sees in my eyes that I mean business and backs down. Her gaze softens as she looks at my bulging abdomen.

“How far along are you?” she asks.

I place a hand protectively on my belly. I feel a kick, reminding me that despite the sorry state of my ankle, my baby at least is okay. “Almost eight months.”

“Wow,” she says softly. “Almost at the finish line.”

My chest tightens as it occurs to me that the stress of my accident could send me into early labor. What will I do if that happens here? Polly might be a nurse, but that doesn’t mean she knows how to deliver a baby—especially one that is premature. And even if she could, the last thing I want is to give birth to a baby here .

“Boy or girl?” she asks, distracting me from my escalating panic.

“Girl. It…it’s my first.”

“How wonderful for you.” Her face fills with tenderness. “What a blessing.”

“It…it wasn’t exactly planned.”

“Still. I’m sure she will be very loved.”

I shift in the bed. I hit a button that supposedly would make the head of the bed elevate, but then it hits me that it wouldn’t work with the electricity out. I guess I’m as comfortable as I’m going to get. I attempt to shift again, which sets off an excruciating wave of pain in my ankle.

“Polly,” I gasp, “do you…do you have anything for pain?”

She blinks. “I can give you Tylenol,” she says. “Nothing else is safe to take in pregnancy.”

Tylenol? For a broken ankle? Is she out of her mind ? But then again, she’s right. I’m pregnant—I can’t pop a bunch of pills.

“Fine,” I mumble. “I’ll take the Tylenol.”

“I’ll go get it for you right away.”

“Thank you, Polly.” I manage a smile that I’m sure is crooked. “Also, could you bring me my purse? Your husband put it in the back seat of his truck.”

She winks at me. “Sure thing. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

“Can…can you please leave the flashlight down here?”

The smile on her face wavers for a moment. She looks up in the direction of the door to the basement, where her husband disappeared a few minutes ago, her lips turned down. “Of course,” she says as she hands it over. “I’ll be right back.”

And then Polly disappears up the steps to the first floor of the house, leaving me alone in the dark basement with only the glow of the single flashlight to keep me company. As I lie in the hospital bed, surrounded by that sickening stench of decay, I can’t help but wonder if Polly’s innocent story about her sick mother was true. I cringe, remembering how Hank insisted that I be brought down here and Polly reluctantly going along with it. I suddenly wish I had refused.

What if this basement was used for a different purpose? What if I am not the first visitor to lie in this bed?

I wonder if the last person to occupy this bed made it out alive.