And then Becker was coming toward him again, this time in reverse, his slanted taillights like demon eyes hurtling straight for him. Bailey veered right again, but he had run out of road and his chair bumped and slid down the muddy incline into the irrigation ditch that ran parallel to the road. He wasn't going very fast, but that was irrelevant as the chair pitched and wobbled and then fell forward into the murky water that had collected in the bottom of the canal. Tyler was thrown from his arms, landing somewhere in the thick grass on the opposite side of the narrow embankment.
Bailey found himself face down in the water, his hands folded beneath his chest. His right pinky was pinned back and the pain surprised him, making him hyper-aware of the beating of his heart, a beat that was echoed by the throbbing in his finger. But Bailey knew a broken finger was the least of his problems. There was only a foot of water in the ditch. Only a foot, at the most. But it covered Bailey's head. He struggled, trying to push up with his hands. But he couldn't push himself up, and he couldn't roll over. He couldn't sit up or climb out.
He thought he heard Ty crying. The sound was distorted by the water, but Bailey's reaction was one of relief. If Ty was crying he was still alive. And then a door slammed and Ty's cries became distant and disappeared. The rumble of Becker's truck, the loud, souped-up roar that sounded a bit like the ocean in Bailey's ears, receded as well. Bailey's lungs screamed and his nose and mouth filled with mud as he tried to breathe. And the throbbing in his finger faded with the beating of his heart.
Two police cars and an ambulance raced by, sirens blaring, as Fern pedaled home around 12:00 that night. Her mind was on Ambrose, as usual, when the cacophony of emergency vehicles whooshed past.
“Dan Gable must be stuck in a tree again,” she said to herself. She giggled at the thought, although the ambulance for a cat might be a first, even in Hannah Lake. Last time it had been the fire truck. Bailey had seriously enjoyed every minute of it and had praised Dan Gable for days afterward. Maybe that was why Bailey never showed up at the store. Fern flew down 2nd East and turned onto Center, wondering where the excitement was. To her surprise, there were more police cars than Fern had ever seen at one time lining the road. Cops on foot were spread up and down the street with flashlights in hand. The lights swung back and forth in a purposeful swath, like the officers were canvassing the area in search of something. Or someone, she supposed, curiously.
As Fern headed down the road, a cry went up and officers began running toward the beckoning call.
“I've got him! I've got him!”
Fern slowed and got off her bike, not wanting to be anywhere near whoever “he” was if the police had just captured someone dangerous. The ambulance was frantically waved down and before it had even come to a complete stop, the back doors flung open and two EMTs scampered out and ran down the embankment beyond Fern's line of sight.
Fern waited, her eyes pinned to the spot where the ambulance workers had disappeared. Nobody came back up for several minutes. Then, when Fern had almost convinced herself to get back on her bike and permanently remove herself from the scene, an officer pushed something up out of the ditch. It was a wheelchair.
“That's weird,” Fern mused aloud, wrinkling her nose skeptically. “I thought they would use a gurney.”
But the wheelchair was empty, and it was coming up the embankment, not being brought down.
And then she knew. She knew that it was Bailey's chair. And she dropped her bike and ran, screaming his name, oblivious of the shocked reactions around her, to the officers who scrambled to assess the threat, to the arms that reached out to keep her from the scene.
“Bailey!” she screamed, fighting through a sea of uniformed arms to get to him.
“Miss! Stop! You need to stay back!”
“It's my cousin! It's Bailey, isn't it?” Fern looked frantically from face to face and stopped on Landon Knudsen. Landon was a squeaky new recruit to Hannah Lake's Sheriff's department. His pink cheeks and blond curls gave him a cherubic appearance, completely at odds with his stiff uniform and the holster around his hips.
“Landon! Is he okay? What happened? Can I please see him?” Fern didn't wait for him to respond to one question before she asked another, needing the answers but knowing that once he spoke she would wish she'd never asked.
And then the EMTs were pushing the gurney back up the hill, rushing to the open doors of the waiting ambulance. There were too many people around the gurney and Fern was still too far away to make out who occupied the stretcher. Her eyes met Landon's again. “Tell me!”
“We're not sure exactly what has happened. But, yeah, Fern. It's Bailey,” Landon said, his face lined with apology.