6. Six
Six
LENA
“H ey there, little lady,” a faint but familiar voice encourages my eyes to flutter. “Lena, do you hear me?”
My eyelids feel weighted as they peel open. Jack Harvey looms over me, upside down. He wears his usual dirty overalls, dingy baseball cap, and a wide-mouthed smile.
Through an incomprehensible haze, I say, “I used to think you and Alice were serial killers.”
“Did ya now? We get that a lot,” he says. “How ya feelin’, sweetheart?”
“This is a weird dream.”
“This ain’t a dream. Don’t you go fallin’ asleep, ya hear?”
“What’re you doing here, Jack?” I ask faintly, though I don’t know where here is. My eyes don’t seem to be reporting properly to my brain, like the connections have been shaken loose, probably thanks to my massive headache.
Upsidedown Jack is on his phone, murmuring to someone else while talking to me—it’s very unlike him. “Is that Alice? Tell her I said hi… and thanks for Ben. Always, thanks for Ben.”
Alice’s extensive contacts led to me calling Ben Wright to help with my parents’ gun collection after Mom died. Fuzzy memories swirl of bonding with him over guns and cupcakes. “He eats them in two bites.”
Lightheaded, I close my eyes. Now doesn’t seem the right time to talk cupcakes. Silly goose . I smell them in the air, though. Scents of lemon and cream cheese mix faintly with swamp and gasoline.
“Lena, stay with me, hon.”
His stern words force my eyes wide open. What the fuck am I seeing?
“Holy shit!” I gasp. The dark cave I somehow imagined is my car—twisted, broken, distorted.
Reality is a funhouse mirror. Everything’s wrong.
It’s a nonsensical tangle of nature and car—tan plastic and leather, dark metal pieces, and glass everywhere, juxtaposed with ditch water, a dirt mound, and thick tree roots pushed into the side like a passenger.
The cracked windshield lies against black mud, murky water seeping through the gaps.
The dashboard is crinkled like a can underfoot and spotted with purple icing and yellow cake bits—Millie’s cupcakes.
The dashboard and steering wheel are jammed into my lap with a deflated airbag in between. Too much pressure.
And blood.
There’s fucking blood! Smeared against the airbag, on my shaking hands, splattered over the gauges. My hair dangles against broken roots, cutting through the car over my head.
Not over me. Under me.
Jack’s not upside down—I am! My seat belt holds me in place.
“Call Ben.” My voice sounds unsteady and unfamiliar. “Please, call Ben.”
“Stay calm, Lena. We’re trying to reach him. Everything’s fine, but you shouldn’t move. Help’s comin’. Okay, darling?”
Where am I?
My head throbs, just trying to put the fuzzy pieces together. Driving. Dinner plans. Ruthie.
“Jack! Jack!”
“Right here, Lena.” His massive frame blocks the sunlight as he leans in.
“Call Dot, please. Ask her to pick up Ruthie from preschool. Tell her to haul ass.” Tears flood my eyes that I can’t do it myself. I wriggle in my seat, desperate to pull through the smashed driver’s window. I’m too cramped, too constricted, and panic surges through my broken fortress.
Ignoring the pain sharply cutting up my body, I squirm to reach my phone, lying on the dashboard. “Use my phone, Jack.”
He fishes it from the dashboard nook by its charging cable. Then, with a grin, he holds it up to show me its intact screen.
“Lucky break, huh?”
I tell him my code, and I’m grateful to see the home screen appear. With his phone tucked against his ear, he scrolls through mine. He calls Dot, who answers on the first ring, and relays my instructions.
When he is done with her, he calls Ben on speaker.
No answer.
“Try again, please. Keep trying.”
He obeys, saying, “Her head seems to be working, kinda, but she’s startin’ to freak out,” into the other phone.
No answer. His voicemail clicks on. “Ben, it’s Jack Harvey on Lena’s phone. Call us back. It’s an emergency.”
A million fears rush me at once. Why isn’t he answering? Has something happened to him? Is he hurt? Or is he avoiding me? He’s mad about this morning. He doesn’t want to talk to me.
I know not to listen. These thoughts aren’t my reality. Ben wouldn’t intentionally snub me. More likely, he’s on a difficult call that’s keeping him occupied. Years of therapy have taught me to focus on what I know , not what I think .
But Ben’s never failed to answer before.
Jack laughs as he juggles the phones and eyes the mess around us. “If you’d gone one foot to the left, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. It’s a dang miracle.”
One foot to the left —tree branches would’ve impaled my head. This doesn’t help. I brace my right hand against the steering wheel to keep it from shaking.
I can’t move my left hand or feel anything but immense pressure on my legs.
The pain intensifies with every passing second, like my body is catching up. Or maybe it’s in my head. That hurts, too. My headache makes me woozy. Sirens echo in the distance, growing closer.
Jack narrates the action quickly. “Police are here. Fire truck, too. They’ll have you out in a jiffy, Lena.”
“Ben’s on duty downtown. Ask the police to contact him,” I say.
Jack steps away. I see booted feet coming together around the pavement’s edge.
“Hey, Lena,” another voice says. “You’ve gotten yourself in quite the pickle here.”
“Donny,” I say, remembering the fireman from the numerous times I called 9-1-1 when caring for Mom. “I can’t reach Ben.”
“Officer Bennett is contacting Wilmington PD right now. How you feeling, dear?”
“Um, anxious. My head hurts, my legs, I can’t move my arm.”
“Let’s get you out of there, huh?”
An embarrassingly strenuous and complicated effort ensues—six firefighters with a slew of tools, two police officers directing traffic, and Jack Harvey navigating two phones and a chainsaw, which he keeps in his truck, of course.
When they finally brace my neck, pull me onto a straight board, and lift me onto a gurney, I expect a squishing suck-noise, like a sardine freed from a tin.
Instead, I hear collective sighs and muted praise as they congratulate each other on a safe extraction.
“Dot’s got Ruthie,” Jack reports. “They’ll meet you at the hospital.”
“WPD says Lt. Wright took PTO today,” Officer Bennett adds. “He’s off duty. Is there anywhere else I can call?”
My mind blanks. Off duty? PTO? Maybe it’s the bump on my head, but these words don’t make sense. It’s Thursday—Ben works on Thursdays. “Um, I don’t know.”
Jack checks the family calendar app on my phone with my help. Ben might be at the dentist or getting his hearing check-up.
“Nope. It says he’s at work.” Jack’s perked brow and I-don’t-know expression incite more anxiety, like we’re both thinking the same thing. This isn’t like Ben.
Donny squeezes my shoulder. “Don’t worry, Lena. We’ll find him. Let’s focus on you right now, huh?”
They roll me toward the ambulance, rattling off questions and taking vitals. But my thoughts are on Ben, as if my racing worries might force him to materialize.
“I’ll be right behind you,” Jack says as they slide me inside the ambulance. “I’ll stay with you at the hospital until Ben arrives—Alice’s orders.” He tucks my phone into my good hand.
On the drive, Donny affixes me to an EKG and oxygen.
He reports his findings to me and the hospital.
Elevated heart rate and blood pressure. Possible concussion.
Multiple abrasions and minor lacerations.
Suspected fracture. But everything he’s saying and doing is secondary.
I stare at my phone, willing Ben to call.
Arriving at the hospital and undergoing care feels like background noise, like I’ve left the TV on in the other room while I’m busy with something else.
My fears compound the more time passes without hearing from him.
Jack checks the hospital to ensure Ben isn’t there, too, in some weird coincidence.
No. He calls Ben’s captain to see if he has more information.
Nothing. Alice drives to Saddletree and looks for Ben on the off-chance he’s home and lost his phone. Again, nothing.
With every lull, I send wonky, one-handed texts and try calling, only for it to go straight to voicemail.
I add up the time since the first call. One hour to two and now three. Desperation forms in his silence. I remember this feeling from my first marriage—that sickly unease of worry and suspicion when Mark started communicating less and coming home later, until both stopped altogether.
I’d been so stupidly devastated, like an idiot clown, not expecting the pie in the face, though I’d seen the pie, sensed the pie, and knew it could happen.
But no one ever thinks it’ll happen to them. Then, it does.
The hospital curtain waves as shadows move by it. “Lena!” Dot’s voice is unmistakable.
“Here! I’m here!”
She strong-arms the curtain and gawks at me before dropping Ruthie’s hand and rushing into my arms.
“Gentle,” I whisper into her pitch-black hair. “I’m okay.”
“You fucking scared the shit out of me,” she whispers back sternly. She pulls away and takes a long look at me with an expression that’s a strange cross between seething and ecstatic.
“Sorry,” I say, sinking over what I’ve put her through. I spot tears in her eyes as she takes me in—actual tears—and Dot prides herself on her impenetrable outer shell. “You’re the crier; I’m the badass,” she often jokes.
She entangles me in a second hug before stepping away. “Is that mud… and purple icing in your hair? You look like shit, babe.”
Ah, there’s the Dot I know and love.
“Auntie Dot, bad word!” Ruthie’s hands go hip-side as she gives Dot a parental stare-down—I’ve taught her well.
Dot raises her hands submissively. “My bad.”
Ruthie’s boots squeak as she climbs into my bed for a gigantic bear hug. “Mom, are you okay?”
I breathe her in and hold her close despite the aches it causes. With a warm smile, I say, “Yes, I’m fine, honey. Bumps and bruises, that’s all. Thanks for being a good girl for Auntie Dot.”