Today, for once, he had broken his routine and strayed beyond the peaceful haven of the park, out into the teeming throng of cold-eyed strangers. Gray faces, office suits, a crying toddler dragged along by a pink-faced young woman with tired eyes.
He half turned, back toward the comforting sea of green that beckoned through the park gates. But something made him hesitate, some intangible inner force. Where was the girl in the crimson suit now? She was the reason he had strayed from his normal routine, and still he didn’t know why. He wasn’t one for picking up strange women in parks—or women at all, for that matter—but with her it had seemed inevitable somehow. Something about her had pulled at him—the unexpected vulnerability in her wide gray eyes, those crazy shoes, that vivid crimson suit. Even now he smiled to himself as he imagined her running across the carpet of autumn leaves, high-heeled red sandals sliding, face glowing with something he couldn’t quite place—a kind of joy, he supposed.
He scoured the pavement, frantically searching for a flash of red, and suddenly there she was, face averted from him and long dark hair blowing in the breeze as she waited on the edge of the pavement. A gap appeared in the traffic. She stepped off the curb, and Ben froze in his tracks as she hesitated, looking back. Her eyes, inevitably, met his.
For an endless moment the impatient sounds of the city disappeared into the background. A second, merely one second—that was all it was. One second that lasted a lifetime and changed his world forever.
The big black car appeared from nowhere, driving too fast around the corner, racing the lights. He yelled at her, gesturing madly, struggling to run with wooden legs. And then she saw it, too, her eyes wide with horror, her arms flailing helplessly as she tried to get away…too late.
Her eyes met his again in the moment before the vehicle struck. Before she was tossed aside like a discarded doll onto the cold wet street. And deep inside himself, Ben felt something snap, something irreparable.
Her scream cut through the hum of traffic, shattering the air, and for an endless moment the whole street froze. Horrified faces. Eyes wide with fear and confusion. A deathly hush as the young woman’s slight, crimson-clad body crumpled before the onslaught of the shiny black BMW.
The sickening thud of its impact against her soft, sweet flesh drew a heartrending gasp from a hundred helpless, shocked observers. They watched her limp form hurtle sideways to bounce helplessly into the path of an old white minibus. Its ashen-faced driver stood on his brakes, but the cumbersome vehicle just squealed in protest as it slid relentlessly on. The driver spun the wheel in desperation and the bus slewed to one side, almost, but not quite, missing her fragile body as it slithered to a halt, while the black BMW accelerated down the street into anonymity, leaving its victim broken and bleeding on the ground.
Ben was the first to breach the awesome stillness. He ran on instinct, with no conscious thought other than to get through the gathering crowd to where she lay. A dozen drawn faces glanced around uneasily, wanting to act but unsure of their actions. When he reached her, Ben fell to his knees on the pavement, eyes riveted to her lovely, ashen face. Her eyes were closed as if in sleep, and a trickle of crimson, garishly matching her suit, ran down her cheek from her forehead, like a tear of blood.
Was she alive? Please let her be alive. His fingers fumbled for a pulse, then shook with relief as he felt a feather-like ripple. When it died suddenly, panic flooded his brain and he glanced around desperately. Surely there must be someone better qualified to help her. He met a sea of blank faces, all confident in his ability and relieved to be left as observers.
“Ambulance is on its way,” remarked a small, anxious-eyed woman. She held her arms securely across her ample stomach, withdrawing instantly from his pleading gaze. His trembling fingers moved once again to feel for that tiny flicker of life, but still there was nothing. He put his ear close against the girl’s fragile face, listening, willing her to breathe, a sob rising in his throat as he remembered the vibrancy that had drawn him to her in the park a lifetime ago.
He had to do something, had to help her hang on. His mind whirled, searching for the knowledge that was once at his disposal. Airways, breathing, circulation. A vague recollection of a first-aid course he had attended years ago swam into his mind. Clear the airways—that was it. Breathing. Check the pulse. Administer CPR.
Gently he rolled her onto her back, easing her slight form without moving her spine, wincing at the open wound that ran across her forehead. He carefully lifted her head and made sure that her throat was clear. Then, drawing on the information that clung to the fog inside his brain, he knelt above her with a prayer on his lips and felt for the inverted vee at the center of her rib cage.
One…two…three…How many compressions to breaths was it? Three to two? Or was it five to two? The two was important; he remembered that. Releasing his fists, he placed his fingers below her jaw and tilted back her lovely face. Desperation overtook his soul as he placed his lips over hers and breathed, willing his own life into her lungs.
Time was a vacuum that sucked at his resources as he worked to help her cling to life. One, two, three, against her rib cage, and two gulps of precious air into her lungs, again and again and again, until he felt the sweat begin to drench his face and his muscles ache. In the distance he heard a siren, and as the ambulance’s blue light flashed in his eyes, at last he felt the faintest heartbeat.
“She’s still alive,” he yelled at the green-clad figure with the calm, confident face.
“Well done, mate. We’ll take it from here.”
Firm hands assisted him to his feet. He stood drained and powerless as the ambulance crew moved with quiet efficiency. Cautiously lifting her broken body onto a stretcher. Inserting tubes and needles. Checking monitors. And all the time she stayed the same, pale-faced and silent as if already dead.
For Ben, it seemed like a dream. He had known the vibrant laughing girl for less than a half hour, but now she felt a part of his life, a part he didn’t want to lose. When they carried the stretcher, he walked close beside it, unwilling to leave her. They laid the stretcher carefully into the waiting ambulance and he noticed a blue-uniformed police constable heading toward him, notepad at the ready and eyebrows drawn into a frown of concentration as he paused to talk to the lady with the ample build and the anxious eyes who nodded in Ben’s direction. He turned away for one more glance at the motionless figure in the ambulance. They were closing the doors and he didn’t even know the young woman’s name.
“You coming, mate?”
There was an urgency in the paramedic’s kind brown eyes as he motioned toward the half-closed door, and Ben acted on impulse, jumping up the step into the bright, antiseptic atmosphere. He saw the policeman start to hurry toward him as the door thudded shut, then the engine roared into life and the vehicle edged out into the street.
He sat motionless beside her, staring at her lifeless form, holding her limp fingers as the paramedics fought to sustain the fragile life that he had given her.
The older of the two men, the kind-eyed one, placed a hand sympathetically on his shoulder.
“You did good, mate,” he murmured. “She has chance now, thanks to you.” His partner, a dark-haired man in his early thirties, spoke without looking around.
“Your wife, is she?”
Ben shook his head.
“No, just a friend.”
Was that all she was—just a friend? Was she even that?
The eerie wail of the siren filled the morning air, and as the flashing blue light sped by, people stopped to watch and wonder, relieved that the crisis had nothing to do with them or theirs. Ben settled back to keep vigil over the girl in the crimson suit, willing her to hold on.
At the hospital, the distinctive smell hit him in the solar plexus. After all the hours and endless weeks he had spent in such places, he should be used to it, or maybe that was why the very atmosphere made him shake. But that was all in the distant past, and this wasn’t about him. This was about saving the life of the first girl to attract his interest