5
At the epicentre of the accident, pandemonium reigned. First responders included police, fire, medical personnel, but not in the numbers needed to cope with such a large incident. Motorists were bloodied, some screaming, some sitting on the grassy bank by the side of the road. Others wandering aimlessly away, causing more problems for those trying to help them. Still more casualties lay injured in their cars.
For some, the pain had already gone.
In one car an elderly couple were trapped and in a very bad way. As the man lost his fight for life, his wife, Ivy Kerr, wept, her summer dress drenched in his blood. It was getting light now. The scene out of the window was nothing like the road she knew. It was more akin to a breaker’s yard she’d seen on American TV. The car closest to her, a green Peugeot 205, looked like it had been in a crusher; its driver slumped over the steering wheel, dead as a post. A woman’s slender arm was lolling out of the rear side window. Blood trickled down her ring finger and dropped on to the wet road, zigzagging across the uneven surface and pooling in a shallow pothole, turning rainwater red.
Ivy shivered. In her head, she could still hear the screeching of brakes, the shattering of glass, the sound of metal crunching on metal, the screams of trapped motorists – the whoosh of a fire close by.
And now she could smell petrol.
Fear ripped through her.
Was she going to die too?
Ivy closed her eyes and then opened them again as a hand reached out to her. Not her husband’s, rough and hard from tending his garden, but smoother, much younger skin altogether. The familiarity of a soft Geordie accent cut through the sound of panic going on around her – the voice of the person who’d come to help her.
Ivy’s relief was overwhelming.
‘Don’t worry about me. Help him,’ she pleaded, unaware of the mantra going through the heads of the rescue personnel flooding into the area as fast as they were able.
Faced with such a chaotic situation, certain decisions had to be made and made quickly. The dead were beyond help. And silent casualties caused fewer problems than those screaming for assistance, even though they were most probably more seriously injured. Prioritizing medical attention was the key to saving lives. And Ivy could be saved if they could get her to hospital quick enough.
If they could extricate her from the car . . .
If the car didn’t burst into flames . . .
If was a very big word.
‘What’s your name, love?’
Ivy said her name in a voice that sounded like someone else’s.
‘Well, don’t worry, Ivy. The ambulance will be here soon. You’re going to be fine.’
Ivy wept again. ‘I . . . I told him it was madness.’
‘Here, let me try and make you a bit more comfortable. Told who, love?’
Ivy’s eyes shifted to her husband, his glasses skewed on his face like they always did when he fell asleep reading in bed, a frequent occurrence in the last few years. Maybe he wasn’t dead after all, just knocked out having banged his head.
‘Husband, boyfriend or fancy man?’ The soft Geordie voice again.
‘Husband . . .’ Ivy managed a little grin. Feeling too calm for the circumstances, she looked down at legs she couldn’t feel, feet she couldn’t see. ‘It’s our Diamond Anniversary in August.’
‘Wow! Congratulations! You in any pain at all?’
Ivy nodded.
‘Whereabouts?’
Moving her hands to her pelvis was an effort for Ivy.
‘OK, let’s have a look shall we?’
Ivy thought she might vomit as efforts were made to free her. Once more, her eyes drifted towards her husband. He was in a bad way. But at least he couldn’t see the mayhem surrounding them. Or the blood. He’d been squeamish all his life. He’d turn his eyes away or make an excuse to leave the room rather than sit through a gory scene on TV. In all the time they’d been married, Ivy had never let on that she’d noticed. Instead, she allowed him to maintain the pretence of being the stronger partner when he was really nothing of the sort.
‘Try not to worry, pet. He’s just unconscious, take my word for it. He looks to me like a tough old bugger. You’ll have come through a lot worse than this together, I bet.’
Tears welled up in Ivy’s eyes. Her husband was indeed a survivor. They’d known each other since primary school, lived in the same street in Byker in the East End of Newcastle as kids. They’d started seeing each other when they were fifteen years old, nearly seventy years ago. He’d worked in the Tyneside shipyards where his father worked before him and was also in the Territorial Army. One of the first to be called up when war broke out. His departure in May 1941 from Newcastle – along with hundreds of other Northumberland Fusiliers – had been heartbreaking for Ivy. She feared she’d never see him again.
She couldn’t lose him now.