Michael Palmer - Oath of Office

Carolyn’s eyes remained locked forward, unblinking. She continued to flash her lights and beep her horn. “Move over!” she yelled. “Get over now!”

“Please slow down! Carolyn, slow down and pull over!”

Instead of responding, Carolyn steered the SUV into oncoming traffic, presumably to try to pass the car in front. But here the road turned, and Lou saw the dotted yellow dividing line become a solid one. In the next instant, he was blinded by a set of powerful headlight beams. He heard a deep-timbred horn-not a car’s beep, but something much larger. Lou’s stomach knotted. The horn had to be an eighteen-wheeler. A second later, he saw the rig emerge from the fog like a huge phantom. Carolyn, acting unfazed, continued on a straight course, unable to pass the car to their right. She sped forward as though playing a game against the forty-ton machine.

“Look, Lou,” she called out, still surprisingly calm though her voice had an anxious edge. “The car three ahead of us. Its left taillight is out. Someone’s going to get killed unless we warn them. There’s been enough death today.”

“Carolyn, let it be! Slow down. Please, slow down!”

The car boxing them in accelerated. Lou reached across his seat and took hold of the wheel, pulling it clockwise, aware that the move might well cause Carolyn to lose control.

“Lou, don’t do that! I have to warn him!”

The tires slipped several feet, then gained purchase, pulling them into the right-hand lane. Lou released the wheel. The car shuddered and rose on two tires. There was a ferocious crack as the rig sheared off the left-side mirror. The rush of wind as it flew past was probably all that kept them from flipping over.

“Okay, now, Carolyn,” Lou said with as much insistence as urgency. “Pull over there and let me drive.”

Again she leaned on the accelerator and the horn. “In this fog, somebody is going to ram into the back of them.”

“Carolyn, don’t!”

She turned the wheel right this time, attempting to pass the intervening car via a narrow, muddy soft shoulder. Lou sat pressed against his seat back, unwilling to grab at the wheel again. The speedometer moved upward.

Forty.

Fifty.

Fifty-five.

Carolyn Meacham looked purposefully ahead, beyond reason.

“Carolyn, stop!” Lou screamed. “You’re going to kill us both because a guy’s taillight is out!”

They raced even with the car to their left. The driver leaned on his horn and refused to slow down.

Lou could feel the high center of gravity in the SUV threaten to flip them. Every jolt on the uneven ground seemed magnified.

“They’re just two cars ahead.”

Patches of fog flew past like ghosts. Then, Lou froze. Through one of the patches, directly in front of them, a speed limit sign had appeared.

“Carolyn!” he shouted. “Get back into your lane! Do it now!”

Instinctively, Lou clenched his teeth and readied himself for impact. They were going sixty.

Lou couldn’t hold back. He leaned as far to the left as his seat belt would allow, grabbed the wheel, and pushed it counterclockwise. The Volvo skidded into a left turn and fell behind the car Carolyn had been trying to pass. Perhaps instinctively, she slammed on the brakes. The front two tires dragged along the grassy shoulder, kicking up dirt and rocks. The sign slammed into the hood and sheared off, vanishing upward into the mist. Then, in a full spin, the car left the road. Lou saw a tree materialize from the fog. He shut his eyes tightly and raised his arms to his face for protection. The impact wasn’t as violent as he had expected.

Lou’s head snapped against the window beside him as the Volvo spun viciously. Splintered glass exploded into his face and cut his neck. The rear of the Volvo was still in the center of the road. Then, without warning, the coaster ride was over.

“Carolyn, are you all right?” he said, wiping at his forehead and seeing blood on his hand.

“Did you see that?” she asked him, her breathing not far from normal. “Did you?”

“You mean the taillight?”

“Yes, the taillight. Drivers never fix them until the vehicle-inspection people tell them they have to. That guy could have caused an accident.”

Throughout most of the bizarre chase to overtake the driver with one working taillight, Lou remained in what he called “emergency calm”-a state of heightened awareness and preparedness, cloaked in an external composure. It was a reaction to crisis shared by those caregivers whose business often revolved around sudden changes for the worse in their patients-intensivists, anesthesiologists, surgeons, physician assistants, nurses in the ER and various units, EMTs, and paramedics.

Now, with the immediate danger over, it was as if whatever had been blocking the surge of adrenaline through his body had been removed. His pulse had doubled-or tripled, he was breathing heavily, if not hyperventilating, and when he opened the dashboard compartment looking for tissues, his hand was shaking.

The cut to his brow did not look like much, and pressure with a wad of Kleenex quickly stopped the bleeding.

“Carolyn, can you get us out of the road?” he asked, his voice louder than he had intended.

John Meacham’s widow nodded weakly and drove the Volvo farther onto the roadside’s muddy shoulder. She appeared dazed, though to Lou’s relief, uninjured. Still, he checked her head, neck, and extremities and palpated her chest and abdomen for areas of tenderness. His blood pressure cuff and other instruments for emergencies were in a large medical bag, which he kept in the trunk of his car, but he assured himself that her cardiac rhythm was under a hundred and regular, and her radial and carotid pulses were strong.

Finally, using a flashlight from the dash, he did a crude neurologic exam, including eye movements and pupillary response.

“What did I do?” Carolyn muttered. “What the hell did I just do?”

There were several cars stopped behind them. Lou gave the thumbs-up sign through Carolyn’s window, and the drivers slowly pulled out and drove away. Two of them paused long enough to say they had called 911.

“Lou … that taillight … I was so worried the missing light would cause an accident.…”

Her voice trailed away. She continued staring blankly out the windshield at the rain. Her hands, right at two o’clock, left at eleven, gripped the wheel tightly as though she were still driving. Lou took an umbrella from the rear floor and climbed out of the car. His left knee was stiff, and had probably taken a hit, but it was not nearly sore enough to keep him from tomorrow’s sparring session at the Stick and Move Gym. He took in several sharp breaths of chilly night air and tested the rest of his limbs. Nothing. Next, he made a quick circle around the Volvo. The damage appeared minimal. He waved to a driver who had slowed down, signaling that everything was okay. Then he climbed back into the car.

Whatever had possessed Carolyn seemed to be resolving. Her eyes were no longer glazed. Her hands had relaxed.

“Carolyn, the car should be okay to drive, but this time if it’s alright with you, I’ll do the driving.”

“That would be fine,” she said, still somewhat vaguely.

Lou patted her on the shoulder. “Everything is going to be okay.”

“Lou, what did I do?”

“Look, you experienced a major trauma back in the hospital. You weren’t thinking clearly. That’s all. It happens in extreme stress situations. A person just does something … something irrational. We see it in the ER all the time.”

He felt a flash of embarrassment at what might be construed as a reference to Carolyn’s husband.

“I was so worried about those taillights,” she said again as Lou gently separated her hands from the steering wheel. “What’s going to happen to me now?”