Danielle Steel - Accident

“…wife of Senator John Hutchinson …” the voice droned on “…in La Jolla earlier today, in a head-on collision …killed a family of four, one of her own children seriously injured in the accident, although the child, a girl of twelve, is listed in stable condition …Mrs. Hutchinson was arrested at the scene for felony vehicular manslaughter. Tests showed that she was driving while intoxicated. The Senator was not reached for comment …Early this evening, a spokesman for the family said that although the early evidence indicates that Mrs. Hutchinson was in fact at fault, it is more than likely that she wasn't …However,” he looked straight into the camera as though he could see Page's heart beating out of her chest as she listened, “Mrs. Hutchinson was involved in a similar accident earlier this year, in San Francisco, in April. A seventeen-year-old boy was killed, and two fifteen-year-old girls were severely injured, in a head-on collision on the Golden Gate Bridge. No blame was assigned in that accident, which occurred only eleven weeks ago. Investigations into this current accident are under way in La Jolla.” He went on to a riot in Los Angeles then, as the threesome continued to stand and stare at the television set. Laura Hutchinson had killed a family of four, and been arrested for drunk driving.

“Oh my God,” Page said as she fell into a chair and started crying, “she was drunk then …she was drunk …she must have been, and she almost killed all of you …” She couldn't stop crying, and Chloe was too, as Trygve turned off the TV, and sat down with them. The Applegates called them only moments later, and Page wished she had the courage to call the Chapmans. But she knew they'd hear about it very quickly. Trygve had been right in his suspicions.

He turned the TV on again, and flipped the dial, and they saw a similar report on another channel. The news was worse this time. She had killed a twenty-eight-year-old woman, and her thirty-two-year-old husband, their two-year-old little girl, and five-year-old boy, and the woman was eight months pregnant. Five people, not four. And her own daughter had broken an arm, had fifteen stitches in her left cheek, and had a mild concussion. There was film of ambulances, fire trucks, other cars that had been forced off the road. Six or seven other cars had been involved in lesser ways, but no one else had been seriously injured. It made Page feel sick as she listened.

“My God.” She didn't know what else to say, but it vindicated Phillip Chapman. She wondered how his parents would feel when they heard it. “Will she go to jail?” She looked at Trygve.

“Probably. I don't think the Senator is going to be able to get her out of this one.” He was well known, but controversial, kind of a movie star senator in a way, and having a wife with a serious drinking problem wouldn't have helped him. They had apparently kept it very quiet. But they hadn't kept her out from behind the wheel. And they should have. “She's just killed five people, that's a lot to overlook. I don't think they will. She'll have to stand trial for this.” The charge was four counts of felony vehicular manslaughter, since they couldn't bring charges for the murder of the fetus. Efforts had been made to save it with an emergency cesarean, but the baby had died anyway from the impact, and its mother's sudden death. It had been too late to save it.

“She's killed six people,” Page said quietly, counting Phillip. Seven if Allie died, and she still could. But Page couldn't bear to think it. “How could she come to Phillip's funeral? How could she do that?”

“It was a smart thing to do. It made her look sympathetic,” Trygve explained wisely.

“What a terrible thing to do,” Page said, looking shaken. And she lay in bed and cried in his arms that night, it was as though they finally knew who had killed, or almost killed, their children. It didn't change anything, but it made it all so much more real. You knew who was to blame, and what she had done. There was no question in their minds that Laura Hutchinson had been drunk that night on the Golden Gate Bridge when she and Phillip Chapman had collided.

Trygve carefully checked the newspapers the next day, and he turned the news on over breakfast. Page watched somberly with him as the Senator made a statement to the press about how terrible he felt, and how devastated his wife was. They were paying for the funerals, of course, and a full investigation, and full disclosure would be made. He had some serious questions about his wife's car. He believed that the steering column and the brakes had been defective. Page wanted to scream as she listened. They showed him then with his injured child. She looked glazed and nervous as she clutched his hand and tried to smile. Laura Hutchinson herself was nowhere to be seen. They said she was in shock and under sedation. Page said she probably had the DT's and was drying out somewhere.

And when they opened the door to go to the hospital, they ran straight into the arms of a cameraman and four reporters. They wanted a photograph of Chloe in her wheelchair, or on her crutches, and they wanted to know how Trygve felt about Laura Hutchinson's accident in La Jolla.

“Terrible, of course. It's a shocking thing,” he said somberly, trying to avoid them. He had refused to let them photograph Chloe. But as he and Page slid into his car, she suddenly realized there would probably be reporters at the hospital too. And she ran to the ICU as soon as she got there. She didn't want anyone photographing Allie the way she was, or turning her into a ghoulish spectacle, or an object of pity. This was not the Allyson Clarke that anyone had ever known, and they had no right to use her to arouse public outrage. No matter how guilty Laura Hutchinson was, Page was not going to let them use Allie as an object to torment her.

Half a dozen reporters and photographers were clustered in the hall outside the ICU and they tried to stop her when they realized who she was, and ask her endless questions.

“How do you feel now that you know Laura Hutchinson was probably responsible for your daughter's accident, Mrs. Clarke? …how is she now? …Will she ever come out of the coma?” They had tried to talk to the doctor too, but of course he wouldn't talk to them, nor would the nurses in the ICU, despite all their pleas and cajoling. They had even tried to bribe one of them to let them in for a quick photograph, but unfortunately for them, the person they had chosen to bribe was Frances. She had threatened to have them thrown out of the hospital, and get a court order against them. And she came out to rescue Page now, while Trygve tried to get them to leave her alone. Page insisted that she had no comment.

“But aren't you angry, Mrs. Clarke? Doesn't it make you furious that she did this to your daughter?” They tried to provoke her.

“It makes me very sad,” Page said in a dignified voice as she walked past them, “for all of us, all those who have lost loved ones, or suffered the agony of this accident. And my heart goes out to the relatives of the family in La Jolla.” She said not another word, and walked into the ICU with Trygve, feeling as though they just climbed through a tornado. The nurses closed the doors to the ICU that day, and drew the shades, so no one could get photographs of Page or Allie.

Trygve called his investigative reporter friend later that day, and was amazed by what he told him. Laura Hutchinson had had four stays recently in a well known dry-out clinic in L.A., all in the past three years, and apparently none of her stays had been successful. She had gone there under another name, but a source at the clinic itself confirmed that she had been there. In addition the DMV records showed that she had been involved in at least half a dozen small accidents, and one larger one in Martha's Vineyard, where she spent the summers. There had been no fatalities in any of them, except the one on the Golden Gate Bridge, but there had been minor injuries, and in one of them Mrs. Hutchinson herself sustained a concussion. They had all been carefully hushed up, of course, and wherever possible, the records had been sealed. But somehow, Trygve's friend had gotten around that. He said there might have been bribes to close the records on her, and some political favors called. But her husband's lawyers and PR people had done a brilliant job at hiding Laura Hutchinson's record.