He’s only ten feet or so behind my SUV, on the other side of the road, splayed out like he’s mid-jumping jack. I’m the third person there, joining the trench-coated woman I now recognize as Emma, who must have just started walking home with Charlotte when the accident happened. A man is crouched beside her, talking, I think, to the 911 operator on his phone. I recognize his voice as the barking, take-charge one, but now that I’m closer I can hear how the slight, nervous shake of his body is making his words tremble, as well.
“Yes, he’s breathing. Not conscious...There’s a lot of blood...His head...Okay, okay.” He turns to Emma, who is amazingly in control of herself, despite what’s in front of us. She used to be an emergency room nurse before leaving to stay home with her two children, and I often sought her advice when Audrey had a fever or a cough that wouldn’t leave her little lungs. “We have to try and stop the bleeding.” The man then notices me standing there and hands me his phone. I put it to my ear, not yet seeing the streak of red on it that has now transferred to my hand, my ear, and he stands to take off his sweater. Now that he has moved slightly away from Jack, I can see how much blood there is, and that the knees of the man’s khakis are soaked dark crimson. I unwrap the pashmina from around my neck and hand it to the man. “To help with the bleeding,” I say, my voice quivering with the adrenaline coursing through me. I notice Jack’s ball cap is gone, but the headphones are still around his neck—backward now, so it sort of looks as though he’s wearing a plastic dog collar.
“Hello?” the operator says. “Are you still with me? Don’t hang up, okay?”
“Yes, sorry. I’m here,” I respond, trying to stop my arms from shaking while I hold the phone tight to my ear and listen to her instructions. “She says to apply pressure on the head wound, with whatever we have. But to be careful not to move his neck.” With a nod the man passes his sweater to Emma, who gently places it around Jack’s head, before folding my scarf into neat squares to firmly press against Jack’s skull. Emma takes over, her confident and nimble hands holding the scarf to Jack’s head as she talks softly to him about help being on the way and that he shouldn’t worry, they are going to take good care of him. Her coat is still tightly belted, though now there are splotches of blood mingling with the tan, black and red plaid squares. I have no idea where Charlotte is. Then I realize I have no idea where Audrey is, either.
There are now two lines of cars, one behind my SUV and another behind the white Volvo wagon that hit Jack, curious heads poking out of rolled-down windows, wondering what the holdup is about, the odd honk to get things moving. A crowd has gathered around us, including Jack’s buddies who were waiting for him to cross the road and whose faces betray the horror—a horror I know all too well, the kind you can never erase—of what they just witnessed. They all hold phones to their ears, their panicked voices mingling, so I can’t hear distinct words.
But the onlookers, including Jack’s friends, stay along the periphery of the accident scene. Outside the worst of it, some sharing prayers for this poor young man. I wish to be with them instead of standing in this inner circle, where we are removing clothing as quickly as Jack’s blood is flowing, trying to do something, anything to help. Things feel wildly out of control, a sensation I loathe. The man is now shirtless, his nipples hard with the cool fall breeze, a little pooch of white belly hanging over his belted pants. My own fingers have gone numb with the chill, and I squeeze them tighter around the phone, hoping I don’t drop it.
“Meg,” Emma says, repeating my name when I don’t immediately answer. “Can you untie my coat?” I nod and come behind her, which seems the easiest way to do what she’s asked without getting in the way, and with quaking fingers, I wrestle the knot at her waist, still keeping the phone tight to my ear with the pressure of my shoulder. Emma shrugs off her trench coat with my help—being careful to leave one hand on the clothes on Jack’s head—and tells the man to put it on. He does, without seeming to notice it’s too small. Even though Emma is tall, the black-piped cuffs rise above the man’s wrists by a few inches, and in any other setting I might have laughed at how ridiculous he looks.
A woman from the peripheral circle hands the man in Emma’s coat a thick wad of gauze, a large pressure dressing from a first aid kit in someone else’s car, she says. He hands me my blood-soaked pashmina and his shirt, and he and Emma apply the dressing against Jack’s skull. I don’t realize how hard I’m pressing my scarf and the shirt against my stomach until I try to take a deep breath and feel resistance. I look down and my dove-gray wrap dress is now marked red and brown, damp with Jack Beckett’s blood and the spilled coffee.
Then I hear someone say, “Oh, my God, his leg,” and I pull my eyes down from Jack’s head, and for the first time I look at Jack’s left leg. His shorts have shifted up, so there’s nothing obscuring the injury. But despite the clear view I can’t make sense of what I’m seeing.
Because nothing is where it should be. Most noticeable is Jack’s foot, pointing in the wrong direction—facing inward the way Audrey used to draw the shoes on her stick figures when she was in preschool. The leg also seems crooked where there isn’t a joint, a few inches above his ankle, and I feel bile rise in my throat when I realize what the thing sticking out of his shin is: a jagged piece of bone. “I think I can see his bone,” I whisper to the operator, my voice catching. “It’s...it’s coming out of his leg.” The man looks at me, pale, clearly unsure what to do, while Emma murmurs, “Compound fracture to the tibia.”
“Should we do anything with his leg?” the man asks quietly, looking from me to Emma, hands still levitating above Jack’s mangled leg.
“She said to leave the leg,” I tell the man, who nods—a look of relief passing across his face. “The ambulance is almost here.” Moments later we hear the sirens, and it’s as though the three of us take a collective deep breath. Help is almost here, and soon it won’t be up to us to hold the pieces of this poor young man together.
Someone comes up beside me, brushing against my arm. Audrey. “I called Sam,” she says, her voice quiet and close to my ear—the one without the phone. “He and his dad will be here soon.” My heart lurches at the thought of getting that phone call. Of the crushing panic of hearing a car has hit your child.
“I want to help,” she whispers. “What can I do?” Her tear-streaked face is still a concerning shade of gray, but there’s a firm set to her mouth I know well. It’s the face she gets when she’s determined to have her way, and is similar to the face Ryan made this morning when we argued. I want to tell her to go back to the car, to not look too closely at Jack, but I know there’s no point now.
I shift the mouthpiece of the phone away and whisper back to her. “Talk to him, honey. Can you do that? Just don’t touch him, okay? We need to keep him still.” With a nod she kneels on the ground beside Jack’s head, beside Emma. Watching her, I vow to put up the gel clings the moment we get home and to bury the bird under the hydrangeas.
“I can see the ambulance,” I tell the operator, who in her fluid, calming voice, tells me we’ve done a great job, the paramedics are almost here, but don’t hang up yet. Just then a police officer approaches and starts pressing the crowd back, repeating in a loud and authoritative voice, “Give us some room, folks,” to make space for the incoming ambulance.
I scan the faces nearby, looking to see if Andrew Beckett has arrived. It’s then that I see her—the woman who drove her car right into Jack—sitting on the curb beside the white Volvo wagon with a massive dent in its hood, a blood-spattered air bag hanging out its open driver’s side window, the windshield smashed in a spiderweb-like circle, like a basketball—or someone’s head—hit it.
A shiver moves through me when I realize I know this woman. It’s Sarah Dunn, Audrey’s history teacher. She’s staring straight ahead, at Jack’s skateboard—which is upside down and trapped under her front wheel—her face slack and mouth hanging open. She’s bleeding from her forehead, with two red rivers streaming out of her nose, but she seems unaware of her injuries. There are two more officers standing beside her, one peering