Chapter 55
None of this makes sense, Troy was leaving town at six thirty. What the fuck is his SUV doing in a ditch beside the highway a few miles outside Sky Ridge three hours later?
I rush across the road.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“Hi, Laurel, this is Rowan Kingsley. I’m off Route 12, just past Yarmouth Line near the Pinery Motel. There’s been a car accident. One vehicle swerved to miss an Elk, hit a metal guardrail.”
“They okay, man?” An older man comes darting across the road from the pick up that was in front of me.
“I don’t know. I’m a medic, are you okay?” I ask him. He looks fine, the vehicle sustained no damage.
“Yeah, I’m good, man. Holy shit, look at that front end…” he rambles on as I get back to my phone.
“Okay, Rowan, we’re going to send a team out right away, can you see the patient? Will they need an airlift?”
“I’m just approaching now, I’m not sure yet,” I tell her as I notice the smoke coming from under the hood.
“Stay back, okay? I have an ambulance on the way,” I tell the man from the truck.
He nods and says something about waiting with me in case I need him. As I get closer I can hear yelling for help. But it’s not Troy, it’s a female voice. My heart rate spikes, and I break out in a cold sweat as I rush to the vehicle. I swear to God if it’s Violette who’s injured, I might fucking pass out. I run the last fifteen feet, getting close enough to see that, thank Christ, it’s not Violette.
“There are two patients, vehicle is front loaded against the rail, smoke is coming from the hood. One male, early thirties, unconscious,” I check his pulse, it’s steady. “but alive, bleeding from the head. His injuries, I’m unsure of at this time. One female late twenties, significant bleeding from her forehead and her right arm. Looks like fencing from the roadside has punched through the window and given her a deep gash.”
Actually, it looks like she’s damn lucky she still has an arm .
Metal fencing is embedded in the front end, the windshield is shattered from the impact, and it’s obvious that the broken glass has cut them both to shit.
“Can you hear me?” I ask the woman in a calm voice as I approach. I search for any immediate dangers surrounding the vehicle, and aside from that smoke, I see none. Her door is mangled and part way opened and she’s clinging to her bleeding limb but her fingers are doing nothing and she’s losing blood, fast. She’s moving her head without trouble but she’s hysterical.
“Don’t move,” I tell her as I rip off the bottom of my shirt, creating a tourniquet of sorts to wrap around her arm and slow the bleeding. “What’s your name?” I ask her
“Angela,” she answers crying.
“Okay, Angela, I’m Rowan, I’m a trained emergency responder but I’m off duty. Help is on the way, but every move you make exerts you and causes you to bleed more, and right now we don’t want that, okay?
She nods as she sobs.
“Are you hurt anywhere else?” I ask, pushing aside the deflated airbag.
“I hit my head. I don’t know where.” I look her over, her pupils are okay. If they can get here and get the bleeding stopped, she should be fine.
“You’re going to be okay, but you can’t move. Help is on the way. I need to go to the other side of the car now and check your driver,” I tell her, picking my phone back up and moving to Troy’s side of the vehicle.
“Laurel?”
“I’m here, Rowan, the team is less than five minutes out,” she confirms.
“Female is bleeding. A lot, but stable, no neck fractures, no loss of consciousness. Just checking the male now.”
“Right place, right time, Rowan,” Laurel says. She’s been the dispatcher for years and the whole crew knows her.
“Yeah,” I mutter, going around to Troy’s side of the SUV. When I get there he’s coming to, groaning.
“Troy, I need you to stay as still as you can, okay?” I let it register that of all the car wrecks I could pull up on it would be Vi’s ex. I just threatened to kick this guy’s ass three hours ago.
“I don’t even know his name,” the girl says. “We just met at Barracuda,” she adds, mentioning the only strip joint in Sky Ridge, tucked in an old warehouse downtown. “I tend bar there,” she adds. “We were going to the Pinery Motel.”
Troy opens his eyes as I’m making sure his door is safe to open. I don’t like the amount of smoke coming from the hood, it’s growing thicker by the second and is likely to catch fire any minute. Hot metal, combustible fluids…never a good combination. I try to reach in and shut the car off in hopes of stopping the smoke but I can’t. The front dash is pushed right up against Troy’s body. He doesn’t appear to be bleeding anywhere but from his head, and that cut is deep above the bridge of his nose.
“My neck is fine,” he croaks out, assessing himself. “My arm is fractured, possible broken ribs,” he adds. At least him being a doctor is coming in handy a little.
“You’re a firefighter,” he says.
“I’m also a trained medic. It’s one of my jobs in the offseason.”
“Fuck, my head” he groans. The way he’s sandwiched in, they’ll be lucky if the team doesn’t have to cut the roof off to get him out.
“You’ve got a broken nose and a nasty cut at the bridge.” I tell him as I check my phone. “ETA, Laurel?.”
“Less than one minute, Rowan.” she replies.
“I need to get out.” Angela says in a panicked voice.
“Let the medics get here first. They have equipment that I don’t, and they’ll be here any second.” I tell her again.
“I’ll keep my eye out,” says the truck driver.
I nod at him and then look back at Troy. He looks at me. Understanding clicks between us. He didn’t have to go for a shift. He went to the strip club to hook up and he left his daughter to do it. And he could’ve just died.
“I’m sorry,” he says, fear in his eyes.
“Just stay still,” I order.
“Here they come!” the man from the truck calls out. I glance up to see their lights.
“Okay, they’re here. You guys are going to be alright,” I tell them both as I lean back on the door frame and wipe my sweat covered brow.
Fucking Christ, of all the accidents to land on.
I’m here, Jacob, I hear you.
Ten minutes later both Troy and his new friend are loaded into separate units. Troy is slipping in and out of consciousness. He’s got himself a pretty good concussion.
“Can you ride with us? Let us know what happened so we can prep the ER?” As luck would have it, one of the EMT’s is Scottie, Cal’s girlfriend.
“Yeah, sure thing,” I tell her.
She nods and gestures for me to get in the back with Troy. I give her the run down and she radios in the details to Bakersfield.
While she talks with them, Troy reaches out and weakly tugs at my shirt.
“You think I’m an asshole,” he says.
I look at him and wonder why such a thing would even matter to him right now.
“I’m the guy who dropped my daughter off to go meet someone…to serve my own needs,” he mumbles semi-coherently to himself.
That’s one way to put it.
“What I saw tonight doesn’t shape my opinion of you one way or the other. My mind was made up about you the moment we met,” I tell him, leaning back against the ambulance wall.
He coughs and then cringes; he’s definitely got some broken ribs.
“Always the hero, I guess. Eh, hotshot? Would’ve been easier for you if you just kept on driving and let the car catch fire.”
I look down at him and shake my head. There’s something different about him, like he’s realizing what a shitty excuse of a human being he’s been. Near death will do that to you, I suppose.
“It still is easy for me, Troy. I love Violette, and she loves me. Nothing you’ve done or try to do will ever change that.” He grimaces and grunts as he tries to shift his weight. “And you know, I didn’t save you to be kind, or to fill some sort of hero complex. I saved you for her, ” I tell him pointedly.
Scottie is off the radio now and pretending like she’s busy doing anything but listening to us.
When Troy doesn’t say anything, I continue, knowing in his condition after this experience my words might actually fucking sink in. If they don’t now, they never will.
“Hollie deserves to have you be there for her, even when it isn’t easy. She deserves to have you put her first and she deserves to have you remind her every goddamn minute that she can count on you. You can’t be there enough, understand?” I ask as we pull up in the emergency entrance of Bakersfield and the EMT’s climb out.
I give him one last look, noticing the tears in his eyes. “Do better, Troy.”
Troy doesn’t say anything; he just sets his jaw and nods once before letting his head fall back against the gurney.
The doors open and the medics pull Angela out of the other ambulance first, then Troy.
When I get out, I’m surprised to see Cal waiting on the bench at the front doors.
“Scottie said you’d need a ride back to your truck.”
I look at where Scottie is wheeling in Troy. She winks.
I clap Cal on the shoulder. “She’s a keeper,” I tell him.
“Don’t I fuckin know it.” He chuckles back. I take a deep breath.
“So, uh, that was Vi’s ex. You want to explain what just happened out there?” he asks as we walk through the parking lot.
I suck in a deep breath and shake my head, running a hand through my hair.
“Not a fucking chance.”
I get into Cal’s pickup and lean my head back against the seat. This has officially been one of the longest days I think I’ve ever lived through. I watch the hospital disappear as we pull onto the road and head back outside of town for my truck.
“I gotta be honest, I’m surprised you didn’t go inside and tell Little T you’re home,” Cal says, nodding in the direction of the hospital.
“Thought about it but she’s working and, after eleven days without seeing her or talking to her, I don’t want to share that reunion with anyone but Violette.”