Karma Brown - In This Moment

“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 inside the Volvo and the other talking into the walkie-talkie attached to his shoulder, but both ignoring her. I wonder how the hell she didn’t see Jack, and it’s then she glances up and our eyes meet.

Maybe it’s my own guilt rising up through the wall of shock, but it’s as though she knows I was driving the other car. That I was the one who deemed it a safe crossing for this innocent and clearly vulnerable teenager, now lying in the road with an injury that will forever change his life. Maybe even—I realize with a sickening lurch in my stomach—end it.

How did you not see me coming? I can almost hear her saying. How could you let him cross the street?

Why were you driving so fast in the school zone? I would shout back, not understanding how she wouldn’t know better and feeling defensive for my part in this accident.

But she wouldn’t answer my question, would only say one thing in this dreamlike conversation I have with her. We did this, Meg, is what she would say if she weren’t catatonic on the curb.

My eyes drop back to Jack, now surrounded by paramedics moving quickly and quietly, like they’ve rehearsed this exact scenario a hundred times. The half-naked man, shivering under the ill-fitting trench coat, takes his phone gently from my hand, and Emma wraps her arms around Charlotte, who has tears running down her face, and when I look back up, Sarah isn’t sitting on the curb anymore.

We did this.

I’m suddenly slammed with a memory from when I was sixteen; from a terrible night where another teenager lay bleeding and broken on a road in front of me. I have worked hard not to think about that night anymore, because I can’t breathe around my guilt when I do. But just like that, it’s back, and I’m left sucking in air around the heaviness of the memory, a fish out of water.

And like the part I played in that night when I was sixteen, I am the reason Jack Beckett crossed the road when he did. It’s my fault, I think, as the ambulance pulls out, sirens blaring. With a simple, careless wave of my hand, I did this.

5

The police have taped off the area and asked me to stay put until they can take statements, which they’re currently doing with Emma and the man who has now replaced the bloodied trench coat with a sweatshirt that fits much better. I’m sitting in my SUV, restless and still trembling even with my coat on, trying to bring life back into my fingers while also trying to reach Ryan for the tenth time, when Audrey tells me Sam and his dad are here. Before I can respond she opens the car door and jumps out, running toward them.

A shiver runs through me when I look at Sam, so much like Jack in every way it’s disconcerting—for a moment my shock-weary mind tries to believe he is Jack, just fine and home from school as though nothing has happened. That this afternoon’s accident was merely a fever-fueled nightmare brought on by whatever virus has infiltrated my body.

I see Andrew, tall and lean-limbed like his boys, some thickness around his middle only visible because the wind today is strong, molding his shirt to his stomach. He’s standing slightly behind Sam, who is hugging Audrey so tight she looks as though she might disappear into his body, and staring at the road where Jack was lying only minutes before. His eyes are trained on the pool of blood, now littered with medical supplies the paramedics left in their hasty departure. He stumbles back slightly, a hand going to his open mouth. Audrey and Sam are lost together, not noticing Andrew’s stumble, and I step closer to him, concerned.

“Andrew,” I say, putting my hand on his arm. We’ve been friendly with one another since I sold them their house, more so now that our kids are dating, and have had our fair share of backyard barbecue conversations over the last few years. But even still, Ryan and I don’t count the Becketts as close friends. I suddenly wish there was someone else here, someone he knows better than me—the last thing you want is to get this kind of news from the person who knows how you like your hamburger cooked and what your home-buying budget is, but not much beyond that.

He looks at my hand on his arm, my SUV that I just got out of, and finally at my face. “Did you hit him?” he asks, the words tumbling from his lips desperate, quiet, laced with anguish.

“No,” I say, shaking my head a bit wildly. Then, with more conviction I add, “No. It wasn’t me. We were on the other side of the road.” I say nothing about waving Jack across the street. “They just took him, in the ambulance. To Children’s.” I’m about to offer to drive him to the hospital and then remember I can’t leave the scene. “The police have asked me to stay. Can you drive yourself to the hospital? Andrew?” Watching him, I know that’s not a good idea. “Or maybe the police can take you?”

He’s no longer looking at me, or the road. I follow his gaze and see Sarah in the back of a police cruiser parked a few feet away, her head down and long, dark curls framing her face. “Is that who hit my son?” he asks, so quietly I lean closer to hear him better. But he doesn’t say anything else, so I simply nod. “Yes,” I reply. “It’s Sarah Dunn.”