into the skid, Rick thought. He had a moment of jubilation when Martine appeared to be doing just that, but before he could draw another breath, the Impala’s tires bounced off the pavement so that the car slewed sideways into the median again. Miraculously, it straightened. Then it struck the metal barrier, sending up a plume of sparks.
For one heart-stopping, surreal moment, the Impala seemed frozen in midair, no longer a car but a graceful white wingless flying machine. Rick’s brain struggled to make sense of the scene as the car with his wife inside proceeded to land on its roof with a deafening crash, immediately bursting into flames.
Rick ran toward the twisted wreckage, heart thudding against his ribs. Other motorists stopped, and cars slowed on the highway as drivers craned their heads in curiosity. The blaze made it impossible to see anything but the outline of the car, and the heat drove him backward. Then he spotted a patch of pale green in his peripheral vision, Martine’s dress, and he changed direction, dreading what he would find when he reached her.
He knelt beside her, appalled by all the blood. Soon, sirens were keening all around as pulsing multicolored lights illuminated a nightmare scene of fire engines and police cars. Martine was unconscious, but she was alive. He let the paramedics push him aside, their brief, urgent words mere babble in his ears as they strapped Martine onto a stretcher and slid it into the ambulance.
He’d supervised a hundred emergency scenes in the course of his work, but all of them had been marked by his own detachment and his ability to function well under stress. As one of the paramedics slammed the ambulance door, he tried to bring that same sense of focus into this situation but failed. The horror of the images and the engagement of his own emotions made it impossible.
He was in his car, hitting his cell phone’s speed dial, before the ambulance pulled off the median with him following behind. The phone on the other end seemed to ring for an interminably long time, and he started muttering, “Pick up, pick up.” He imagined his sister-in-law in her condominium in Columbia, South Carolina. She’d have recently arrived home from work at WCIC, where she was coanchor of the evening news. Or maybe she was staying late at the station tonight, but he prayed that wasn’t the case. Due to her coolness under pressure, Martine’s identical twin was the person of choice to call in crisis situations.
“Hello?”
He’d planned to cushion the blow of his news, but when he heard Trista’s voice, he blurted it out.
“Tris, there’s been an accident. It’s Martine.”
A sharp intake of breath. Then, in a rush, “Is she all right?”
“She’s alive. We’re on the way to the hospital.”
“What happened?”
Keeping the ambulance in sight as he drove one-handed, he told her, his words tense and measured.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Trista said, and he imagined her heading for her closet, phone still pressed to her ear as she grabbed a duffel and started tossing clothes into it. He was approaching the hospital by this time, speeding into the curve leading to the emergency entrance, and he didn’t know what he said after that, only that they hung up.
He bolted from his car, stood jittery and on edge as the ambulance crew wheeled Martine into a curtained cubicle where he was not permitted to go. He paced the waiting room, thought about calling Trista again, but was reluctant because she’d be busy lining up airline reservations. Two officers from the department showed up and informed him that Padrón had died in the fiery crash, but Rick was too crazed with worry to derive any satisfaction from that.
The next few hours would be forever blurred in his memory. Long after Martine disappeared, a doctor summoned him to a small bare room. Rick swallowed, prepared to hear the worst.
“Your wife will recover,” said the doctor, someone Rick had never seen before. His name tag pegged him as Ethan D. Stillwater, M.D.
Rick’s knees went weak with relief, but the doctor didn’t notice. He consulted his clipboard. “She’s suffered three broken ribs, concussion, a fractured collarbone and assorted abrasions and contusions. She’ll soon be as good as new.”
Completely numb by this time, all Rick could do was try to pay attention as Dr. Stillwater rattled on about length of hospital stay and rehab. By now the issues Rick had with Martine before the accident seemed moot; he felt overwhelmingly guilty for what had happened to her. She’d never approved of his going into police work and had always resented the time he gave to his job. Maybe, in the long run, she’d been right.
“Sir, your wife has been placed in room 432,” said a nurse, briefly and comfortingly touching his arm.
“Thanks,” Rick said automatically. He took an interminable ride to the fourth floor on a jolting elevator whose mirrored walls revealed that his face was as white and pinched as those of his fellow passengers, all of whom must have urgent reasons for being there in the middle of the night just as he did.
He wouldn’t have recognized Martine if her name hadn’t been printed on a placard beside the door. A tightness gripped his heart when he first saw her, a heavy mantle of self-reproach pressing him down. Her face was bruised and swollen, her head bandaged so that only a few tendrils of hair escaped. She wore a hospital gown, its institutional print faded from many washings. When she first opened her eyes, she stared as if she wasn’t quite sure who he was, her eyes drifting closed almost immediately after registering recognition but no emotion at all.
Rick settled himself on the uncomfortable plastic-covered chair and caught a couple of hours’ sleep, waking when an aide delivered a breakfast tray. Martine was still asleep, so he forced down what he could from the tray—gummy oatmeal, a wedge of toast soaked with margarine.
After that he phoned a friend of his from the department and asked him to stop by the house. Charlie rang him back a couple of hours later and told him that Padrón had entered by disarming the security system and breaking a back window. “I’ll take care of it,” Charlie said, and Rick left it to him, knowing that he would.
Martine dozed most of the day, and Rick tried unsuccessfully to do the same. When the door swung open late in the afternoon, he glanced up sharply, expecting yet another nurse or an aide. Instead, Martine walked in, her eyes frantic. But no. His befogged brain cleared in a moment to realize that it was Trista.
Overwhelmingly relieved to see her, Rick stood immediately and pulled Trista into a hug, taking comfort from her warmth. Her bones felt fragile and her pale hair smelled of the almond-scented shampoo she’d favored for as long as he could remember. He released her reluctantly when she pulled away.
Trista turned immediately toward the figure in the bed. “I got here as soon as I could,” she said, noting the monitors and machines crowding the small space. “How is she?” She wore little makeup and a white T-shirt with jeans and a navy blazer. The back of her hair was crushed, as if she’d rested her head on the back of the airplane seat and forgotten to fluff it afterward.
Rick filled her in as best he could, though he had the feeling he was leaving a lot out. Trista nodded, looking worried and upset as she slung her shoulder bag on the nightstand and slipped out of her jacket. “I called Mom. She’s not well enough to come,” she said. A sense of calm radiated from her, and Rick drew sustenance from it. He was desperately in need of support, someone to care about him, and Trista was the closest member of their family. His parents, fulfilling a lifelong dream to teach English in China, were living in faraway Nanchung, and he seldom saw his brother, Hal, whose
