She bent, took a closer look, and was hit with a cold chill. “Child, age approximately three. No child seat. No seat belt. And …” she pulled open the car door and kneeled inside “… he’s conscious.”
“Stay with the child, Miss Lambert. Do you hear me? Stay with the child. I’m a minute away.”
Not that she would have left this little boy. “Hello,” she said, crawling all the way in. Instinctively, she reached over the front seat, took the driver’s pulse. Found nothing. “My name is Deanna,” she said to the toddler. He was curled up in a ball on the floor, looking at her with huge blue eyes that registered shock and terror and total confusion. “Can you tell me your name?”
Crawling across the seat until she was above the little boy, she leaned forward until she could get a good positioning on the female passenger’s neck and, again, felt no pulse. “Can you tell me where you hurt?” Were his parents both dead? Admittedly, she wasn’t in the best position to make assessments on the couple, so she wasn’t making any assumptions.
“No pulses detected,” she said to the vague voice on the phone. “Nothing affirmative, though. I’m not at a good angle to tell.”
“But you’re in the car?” he asked.
“Yes, with the child.”
“Is the car safe? No fuel leaking, nothing that looks like it’s going to ignite? Not close to the edge of the road?”
“Front end’s a mangled mess, but I’m safe.” She was pleased he actually sounded concerned.
“No chances, Miss Lambert. You keep yourself safe. Do you hear me?”
Yes, she heard him. “I have every intention of doing just that, Doctor,” she replied. To get Emily’s baby safely into the world, she would take no risks.
“Is the child injured? Can you tell if he’s hurt?”
“Can’t tell yet. I’m trying to check, but it’s cramped in here.” Cramped, even without her baby bump. She wondered how, in months to come, she was going to maneuver with a baby bump. “We’ll just have to wait and see how that works out,” she said to Emily’s baby.
“Yes, I suppose we will have to see how it works out. In the meantime, I’m coming up behind you, so hold tight.”
Startled that she’d been caught talking to Emily’s baby, she glanced over her shoulder to see exactly where he might be behind her and there he was, larger than life … a cowboy riding her way. Actually, galloping. On a horse. OK, so maybe not a real cowboy in the Western movie sense but he was certainly a doctor on a horse who gave her an unexpected chill. And he was also a big, imposing figure of a man. Jeans, T-shirt, boots. Sexy. “Other casualties?” he shouted, as he slid off the horse and ran straight towards her.
Deanna shook herself out of her observation, out of the pure fascination that was overrunning her, displacing the fugitive fantasy with the reality. “Um … don’t know. We’ve got a car over the side, about two hundred yards back …” She pointed to the black skid marks snaking across the road for a hundred yard stretch. “And a truck. Don’t know anything about the driver. Haven’t had a chance to go over there to see him yet.”
The doctor, Beau, crowded into the back seat of the car right behind her and nudged her forward most of the way to the opposite door then twisted around and proceeded to wedge himself between the back seat and the front. Doing his own assessments, as Deanna attempted to make herself more accessible to the boy, who’d curled even tighter into a ball.
After mere seconds he sucked in a sharp breath, which Deanna heard, and understood.
“How about we get the child out of here?” Beau asked. “There’s nothing here he needs to see.”
Even though she had been prepared to hear the words, the implication hit her hard. “Both of them?” she asked.
“Both of them.” He began to back out of the car, pulling his massive form out of the too-small space. “How about you? Are you OK in there?”
“Don’t have a choice,” she said, as she began the struggle to lift the boy from the floor and at the same time assess him for injuries she might not have seen right off. The truth was, nothing about this was OK. But it wasn’t about her feelings or memories. Or any inherent fears she might have for what this child was about to face.
“Then I’m going round to the truck. Janice Parsons, standing over at the minivan, said she’ll look after the boy if we need her to, so shout if you need anything else, OK?”
If she needed anything else? She needed everything, including a way out of this. Her parents, Emily … it was all closing in around her. Smothering her. “Oh, and the dispatcher said she’d get the volunteer fire department out. But I don’t know how long that’s going to take.”
“Too long,” Beau shouted, his voice diminishing even before his words were all out. “Damn problem with all of this. It always takes too long!”
Deanna rose up and took a quick glance out the window, just enough to see him run behind the truck, and while she knew she wasn’t alone here, that’s how she felt. Amazing how twenty seconds crammed together in a car with him had bolstered her self-confidence.
“So, is your name Tommy?” she asked the child, as she gently moved in to take his pulse. Strong, a little too fast. But he was scared. “Or Billy?” She wiggled her hand from his and brushed long, curly blond locks from his forehead, then took a look into his eyes as best she could. Pupils equal and reactive. “Or Porcupine?” Counted his respirations—normal.
“Not Porcupine,” he finally said.
She was so relieved to hear his voice. “If it’s not Porcupine, is it … Bulldog?”
“Not Bulldog,” he said, tears welling up in his eyes.
She began a gentle prodding of his limbs, no heightened pain sensitivity noted. Then his belly. Not rigid, no distension. “Kangaroo?” she asked, trying to move him slightly to his side to make sure nothing was sticking into him in any way, like shards of glass from the shattered windshield or objects that might have flown around the car. But he was clear of everything, and she was beginning to wonder if he’d been curled up on the floor of the car when this had happened. Maybe asleep?
He whimpered something Deanna didn’t understand but which she took to be him asking for his mommy. Glancing over the seat to the lifeless form, she drew in a ragged breath. “Mommy needs to rest right now. So does Daddy. So I’m going to open this car then we’ll get out very quietly so we won’t disturb them. Will you help me do that, Kangaroo?”
“Not Kangaroo.”
“Is it Hippopotamus?” she asked, as she pushed on the car door then climbed out. “Or Walrus?”
Leaning back in, she scooped the boy into her arms and lifted him away from the wreckage, taking great care to make sure his face was buried in her shoulder. What an awful thing, seeing your parents that way and having that memory linger as your last memory of them. Her parents had died this way, in a car wreck. But she hadn’t been in the car, and her very last recollection of them was the hugs and kisses they had given her when they’d dropped her off at her aunt and uncle’s house. Hugs, kisses, and I love yous shouted from the car window as they’d pulled away from the curb … “I personally like Cheetah, or Chimpanzee.”
“It’s Lucas,” the child said, but so quietly it was more a muffled sob than a word.
Did he know? Did he have some innate feeling that he’d just become an orphan? She hadn’t when it had happened to her. In fact, it had taken months to sink in, months in which she’d spent every minute she could with her face pressed to the window, watching for them to come back.
Deanna didn’t know about Lucas, though. Didn’t know if he had an innate feeling,