Ice pellets fly at my windshield. My wipers can’t keep up. Fog makes it impossible to see the next traffic light until I’m on top of it. Yellow turning red. I can make it, but that’s a cop on the side opposite, and I have to stop or I’ll get pulled over. I slam on the brakes, and Kellan hits his too, missing my bumper by a hair. The cop is a good thing, because now Kellan can’t try to run up to my car. He has to stay put; no shenanigans will be attempted by the son of Detective Joe MacDougall.
My phone rings next to me. Kellan. Whoops, can’t answer it, the car won’t let me, safety feature. I meet Kellan’s eyes in the mirror and shrug. His eyes narrow, and he mouths something that is most certainly not romantic. When the light changes, I pull out slowly past the cop, then start to speed again as he shrinks in my mirror.
How couldn’t I have known this before?
Donald’s purpose. Shane’s purpose. What would it take for Deborah to leave Liv alone? Her words haunt me.
I know exactly what I’m doing with Shane.
I take the sharp corner before Liv’s street too fast. I am in flight, in this car, super-safe, they say this car is, but that telephone pole is right in front of me; it’s taking up my whole windshield.
The crash is harder and louder than I imagined a car hitting a pole could be. The airbag explodes into my wrists and arms, and I choke on white dust and fumes. The pole is inside my car, about four inches from my face, the smell of outside in.
What would Alice do? Pray, probably. How to pray, again?
A click-click-click at the door, Kellan yanking the handle. Muffled screams, his.
This goes on forever, or minutes. The sleet runs fast down my windshield and puddles, resting on the wiper blades until they lift and drag the slurry away. It is mesmerizing.
“Shut the car off!” Kellen screams through the glass.
Time moves thick and slow. Too slow. I have somewhere to be.
Sirens. Faint, now loud.
“The ignition! Push the ignition or the door won’t unlock!” Kellan’s voice, drowned out at the tail end of a siren whine.
The car is still running. I try to press the starter button, but my right wrist feels loose, unattached and unusable. I reach over the deflated airbag with my left hand and shut off the car, and for a second there is only the patter on my roof. Kellan rips open the door and drags me out, but already the EMTs are here, and they are scolding Kellan for moving me.
“I have to go,” I whisper, sinking to the ground, the sleet striking my head and shoulders like rubber bullets.
A paramedic kneels in front of me. He is tan and dark-eyed, slender with high cheekbones, wet beads where the rain hit them, more like an actor playing a paramedic than a paramedic. He puts his arm under my back and guides me gently to the ground. “My name is Charlie. What’s your name?”
“Julia!” Kellan says.
Charlie the paramedic shoots him a dirty look. “She’s supposed to say it. Julia, do you know what day it is?”
“It’s late,” I whimper. “I have to go.”
“Julia, do you know who our president is?”
“You’re not hearing me. I have to go!” I beg.
“Do you have any pain or weakness, Julia?” Without waiting for the answer, he opens my jacket and reaches underneath my sweater, palpating.
“Julia, does this hurt?”
I should look toward Kellan, wonder what he is thinking, with this hot guy’s hand up my shirt. But instead I flash on Liv, old Liv, imagining her wisecracks, imagining what she would say about the Model Medic pushing on my chest and stomach.
“Does this hurt?”
Old Liv is standing behind him, mouthing Oh my God, trying to make me laugh. Only you, Julia, she would say. Only you would get action from an EMT who looks like he stepped out of a telenovela. How funny would it be if you started moaning right now? Imagine the look on his face!
“How about this, does this hurt?” he asks.
Liv. What are you doing to yourself? When was the last time we laughed at something together, hard? What’s going to happen to you? What will it take for Deborah to leave you alone?
“Does this hurt?” he repeats.
I let out a howl.
The medic’s perfect features draw together, deadly serious. Kellan tears his hands through his wet hair. Two other medics loom close, blinking rain from their eyes.
“Get her on the spine board,” Charlie says over his shoulder.
“I don’t need to be immobilized, I have a hurt wrist!” I’ve been here before, and being strapped to a backboard means they’re not letting me go any time soon.
“We’re going to move you onto a backboard and splint your neck, as a precaution. You have to start answering my questions, Julia. When did you last eat?”
“No backboard!” I writhe, and they are on me like ants, and Charlie has his hands on both sides of my head, and he is counting, one, two, three, and I am rolled to my hip before being lifted onto a backboard the length of my body. Straps tighten across my hips, legs, forehead, and chin. They slide my arms under the strap across my pelvis. I whimper as my wrist moves, tiny bones shifting and shaking in jelly.