13. Road to Rescue
Chapter 13
Road to Rescue
Brain trying to process the surreal sight, heart hammering in her chest, Neve let instinct take over and pulled onto the shoulder, cutting the engine. She gave Reece’s shoulder a hard push. “Car off the road!” She didn’t wait for him to rouse. Grabbing her phone and down jacket, she jumped from the Tahoe and ran toward fresh skid marks where the car had left the road. The acrid smell of burned rubber filled her nose. About six feet below, the car sat mostly upright, its hood crumpled and the driver-door crushed. Smoke or steam or a cloud of snow—she wasn’t sure which—rose up.
“Oh shit!”
She scrambled down the slope, somehow pulling on her coat as she went. Searching out the gas cap, she crouched beside it but didn’t see any fluid, nor did she smell gas. She approached the driver’s door cautiously, sharpening her hearing. Nothing. The woods were eerily silent, as if a car hadn’t just been hit by an elk and veered off the road.
She peered through the driver’s window, and her brain needed a tick to process that the glass was white. In the next second, she realized airbag curtains were obscuring her view. Popping up, she checked the windshield. Covered in spiderwebbing cracks, it was also opaque from an airbag. Squeezing her eyes shut, she pushed two shuddering lungfuls of air through her chest to steady her rapid-fire breathing. She reached for the door handle. Fear of what she would find inside gripped her hard, but she pushed through it and gingerly unlatched the door, opening it a few inches.
“Hello? I saw you go off the road. Are you all right?”
An unsettling wheeze was her answer, followed by a moan and a rush of breathless words. Whoever was in there was alive! The adrenaline pumping through Neve’s veins surged anew, and she heaved the door open enough so that she could fight through the airbag and put her hands on a slight shoulder, an arm. The driver was a woman. Her head brushed Neve’s chest as she leaned in, and blood dribbled onto her sweatshirt.
“My name is Neve. I’m here to help. Can you hear me?” She was mildly surprised by the evenness in her voice.
“The baby!” The words were garbled, barely understandable, but they were filled with palpable anguish. The driver rocked feebly against Neve’s hold.
“Don’t move.” Neve squeezed her shoulder. “What’s your name?”
“Diane.”
“We’ll get your baby, Diane. Is there anyone else in the car?”
“N-no. Please,” Diane ended on a wail, her speech thick, unnatural.
Shouldn’t Neve hear a child crying? Some kind of noise besides this distressed mother? She didn’t dare entertain what the silence might mean. “Is your baby in the back seat?”
While she waited for a response, she twitched with questions. What should she do? Run to the passenger side to check on the child? Stay here with the mother? Her mind was laser-focused, yet she felt as if it were stuck in a sticky cloud.
The woman mumbled something unintelligible that escaped like the hiss of a deflating balloon. Neve picked out a few words that translated to a different plea: The woman didn’t want to die .
The damn airbag continued blocking Neve’s way. “Diane, I’m going to take my hand away, but I’m still right here. I’m getting out my knife so I can deflate the airbag.” No answer. Neve dug the pocketknife she generally carried from the front pocket of her jeans and quickly opened it. She’d read somewhere that you should never cut an airbag, but this vehicle had far more damage than any she could inflict on it.
“Stay with me, now. I’m going to get this airbag out of the way. Diane?” Neve struck the air bag, puncturing it. As the thing deflated, the woman’s face came into view. Blood ran from her mouth, soaking her chin and her clothing. Her eyes fluttered open and locked on to Neve. Recognition seemed to enter them, followed by a wildness. Neve didn’t think, simply grasping the woman’s cold hand and lightly stroking her face with her other hand. “I’m here, Diane. Right here.”
Dear God, please don’t die on me. Neve schooled her features so the woman wouldn’t see the panic welling inside her. If Neve’s was the last face Diane would see, then Neve needed to project kindness, comfort, humanity. She needed to be strong for this woman. She needed to—
“Neve,” came Reece’s deep, tranquil voice from right behind her. She latched on to that calmness and pulled it inside herself as she turned toward him. He crouched beside her. “Hey, let me take a look. Why don’t you go call 911?”
“Her name’s Diane, and she says there’s a baby in the car.”
“Anyone else?” His voice might have conveyed a serene vibe, but an undercurrent of urgency thrummed just below the surface. He was in full-on emergency mode.
“She said no. I’m not sure if the baby’s in the back or—”
“Hey, do you need help down there?”
They both turned. A man stood silhouetted at the edge of the road.
Neve sprang to her feet. “Call 911!”
“No cell service here. I’ll drive to the turnout and call from there.” He had to be a local if he knew where to pick up cell coverage.
“You have our mile marker?”
“I’ve got it.” He disappeared from view.
Reece had taken over Neve’s spot and was talking to Diane in a soothing voice as he quickly stepped through checking her airway and her pulse—routine emergency procedures Neve should have remembered to do herself. Diane seemed to waver between unconsciousness and a consciousness that kicked up a powerful urge to get to her child, no matter the consequences to her own well-being.
Neve was on the verge of dashing to the other side of the vehicle when Reece turned his moss-green eyes to her. They locked on to hers with an intensity that caused her to freeze in place. “Stay here with Diane.”
He stood, his movements calculated, deliberate, measured. In contrast to Neve’s inner ping-ponging, he seemed fully in control of his mental faculties and actions. She had no clue how the hell he maintained a cool demeanor in the face of such a dire situation, but she continued to siphon his strength, damn grateful he was there.
He rested a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “I checked for leaks and didn’t see anything that raises red flags, so there’s no reason to move Diane right now. We need to keep her where she is and keep her still. Can you do that?”
“I got this.” He was gone in a flash, and she repeated the mantra as she parked on the edge of the doorframe so she could face Diane, who sat motionless, her eyes closed. Blood continued flowing from her slack mouth, and Neve pulled off her scarf to soak it up. The woman came to in a panic and turned her head side to side. Neve grasped it gently and laid it against the headrest.
“Shh. I’m here, Diane.”
“My baby! Oh no, oh no, oh no!” Diane began to flail.
Oh shit, oh shit! Keep her still!
“My partner’s an EMT. He’s taking care of your baby right now.” Neve pulled off her coat and carefully tucked it around Diane’s shoulders and chest to keep her warm and immobile.
The woman seemed to gulp air. “Are you an EMT?” Again, her speech was slurred.
“I’m a doctor. Breathe with me now. Ready?”
Being hyped up wasn’t going to serve Diane well, and all Neve could think to calm her was to slow her breathing. She started talking the woman through box breathing, counting slowly in twos over and over and over.
Neve lost track of time as she bobbed along a hazy stream of thoughts. Every ounce of brainpower was honed in on Diane. Making her breathe, keeping her quiet, counting out their breaths.
The faint sound of a child crying reached Neve’s ears. Had she imagined it? Her question was answered moments later when she heard it again. This time, though, it was accompanied by a resonant, soothing voice. Reece. Reece had the baby and was talking to it.
Diane had slipped out of consciousness once more, and Neve felt for a pulse in her neck, relieved when it thudded under her fingertips, strong and steady.
An indeterminable amount of time passed in surreal silence, and then the world seemed to explode as emergency workers reached the scene and streamed down the embankment. She relinquished her hold on Diane, stood, and backed out of the way. Reece appeared, rounding the hood of Diane’s vehicle and standing so close to Neve she could feel the heat drifting from his body and warming her own.
A shiver moved through her. He dropped his arm around her shoulders. “Where’s your coat?”
She pointed toward the driver’s side, where two emergency workers were tending to Diane. “I don’t need it.”
“There’s nothing more we can do here, and they’ll appreciate us clearing out of their way. They’ve got the situation under control. Let’s get on home, yeah?”
She nodded dumbly and let Reece lead her up the slope to her Tahoe, where he pulled out a bottle of water and cleaned blood from her face and hands before doing the same for himself. Following his lead, she swapped out her sweatshirt for a clean one. Finally, without a word, he helped her into the passenger seat, then grabbed a blanket she always kept in the back seat and draped it over her. He slid behind the wheel, and soon they were rolling down the highway toward Fall River.
As they got closer to town, she finally screwed up the courage to ask if Diane’s baby was going to be all right.
“I think so, but there’s no way to know for sure until they get him to a hospital and take a look at his head. Her ‘baby,’ by the way, is a seven-year-old-boy named Christopher.” Prompted by more of Neve’s questions, he explained that he’d found a booster sitting cockeyed in the back seat on the passenger side.
“There was no baby. Well, not the way we think of one anyway. I’m sure to her, he is her baby.” Instead, he had found the boy crumpled on the floorboards on his side, with his head wedged at an odd angle under the front seat. “Either he’d been unrestrained during the crash, or he slipped his straps on impact. He was facing away from me, and I wasn’t sure if he was alive. There was a lot of blood, but head wounds are like that, so I couldn’t tell how bad it was. I had to take my time getting his head unstuck because I didn’t want to cause more damage. When I finally worked him out, he came to. The poor kid was scared and in a lot of pain, but he was conscious, so I take that as a win. I sat with him, talked to him, tried to keep him calm, like you were doing for his mom.”
“I wanted to do more.”
“I know, but you did plenty. You were calm, and that kept her calm, and that’s huge. You kept her going until the pros arrived and took over. Those guys, by the way? I know them all. Diane and her boy are being taken care of by the best.”
“I would say Diane and Christopher had the best with you being there.” She didn’t mask her awe. “Those steps you mentioned. They’re something like the ABCs, right? Airway, breathing, and circulation?”
“Exactly.” He gave her a sidelong glance, and a smile tugged the corner of his mouth. “Are the ABCs something you use on your patients?”
“Not exactly. It just came to me when I first got to Diane. I was going purely on instinct. It must have been something I picked up in a first aid class that stuck with me. Beyond that, though, I had no idea what to do. It must be second nature to you.”
“What you did—racing toward danger, being focused on helping—that doesn’t come naturally. That takes a lot of courage. I would have been there sooner, but it took my brain a second to wake up. Then I had to turn on your hazards so the first responders would be able to locate us—”
“I can’t believe I didn’t think of doing that before I ran from the car!”
“Hey, cut yourself some slack. You did everything right. More than right. Your instincts were spot-on. You didn’t freak out, and that’s something most people would do under the same circumstances. You had the situation under control, and that gave me precious time to get that kid’s head out from under the seat. Who knows what kind of shape he’d be in right now if he hadn’t gotten the help he needed? You were a stud, Neve.” Admiration threaded through his words—not something she typically heard in his voice—and pride bubbled in her chest.
“Do you think they’ll be all right?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll see what I can find out. With HIPAA, it’s hard to check on someone after they pass out of your care. Diane bit through her tongue, which explains all the blood. I’m hoping there aren’t any internal injuries adding to it, but with the impact and air bags …” The speed limit sign changed as they approached town, and he slowed the Tahoe. “I’ll tell you one thing. That breathing technique you used with her? Really effective. Where did you pick that up?”
“Box breathing? No idea. Maybe in yoga class?”
“Yoga? Is that something you normally do?”
“Yes. Every week at the rec center. Lately, I’ve taken over leading it because the real teacher is off taking care of her newborn.”
“I never knew that about you. Have you been doing it a long time?”
“Breathing or yoga?”
This elicited a chuckle, and she reveled in the lightness of the moment.
“Yoga.”
“Yes, I have, and the breathing technique too. Work is ninety-nine percent stress, and it helps me slow everything down. I thought she could use that, and it was all I could think of to calm her.” Reece was the poster child for serenity, especially under fire. His toolbox was no doubt overflowing with tricks way beyond her measly little breathing technique.
“Well, I think it was damn brilliant.” He held out his fist for a bump. “Great job. I’m glad you were there today.”
“You weren’t so bad yourself.” Her face heated as she met that fist bump enthusiastically. He was full of compliments today … and yesterday. Don’t get used to it. It’s just an anomalous blip on his behavior radar.
As soon as they crossed that line into Fall River’s town limits, they’d be right back where they’d started out the day before—except for that one little inconvenient detail recorded on a crisp legal document.