Page 22 of Clara Knows Best

She frowned at his bewilderment. “Dr. Pike is a pediatrician. You didn’t know that? Like forty percent of our patients are kids. When they turn eighteen, they start seeing my mom instead.”

“Neat,” he said grimly.

“Good business,” she said again.

They drove in silence for a few minutes. They were on a two-lane highway, one lane in each direction with a dotted line in the middle to allow passing in the oncoming lane. The speed limit climbed from sixty-five to eighty as they got farther out of Romeo, which just went to show that it was truly the middle of nowhere.

“What is that?” he muttered, and she felt him braking as she tried to make out the nature of the debris on the road ahead. They must’ve realized at the same time that chunks of a motorcycle were spread across both lanes of traffic, because she reached for her phone as he steered onto the shoulder. “Call 9-1-1,” he ordered. “It must have just happened. We need an ambulance. Mile marker 905.”

Clara hit the hazard lights as she spotted the figure lying motionless several yards away from the biggest piece of mangled bike. Her hands trembled as she swiped the emergency icon on her phone.

Jesse was climbing out of the truck, but just before his door closed she remembered something important.

“Wait! There’s a medical kit under your seat.”

“Oh, good,” he said with perfect calm, found the kit, and jogged away to help the biker.

As she relayed his message to the 9-1-1 dispatcher she realized the danger of cars approaching the scene from east and west at above 80 miles per hour, and she scrambled to find the road flares her father kept in his glove box.

“I gotta go,” she told the dispatcher, hurrying back in the direction from which they had come and breaking open the first flare. She left it in the middle of the lane where it could be seen from two miles away, and called her mom as she went to do the same thing on the other side of the accident.

“I’ll call the hospital and let them know about Jesse,” her mother said, with that same unruffled calm. An annoying doctor trait, Clara realized. “Do you know anything about the patient’s condition?”

“No, I didn’t want to look,” Clara admitted. “I’m putting flares in the road.”

“Good girl. You’re just like your father. Put me on speaker now, I want to talk to Jesse.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Clara said automatically, and did so. She approached Jesse and his patient with some trepidation; obviously, she wished the poor guy all the best, but she had never seen a bloody accident before and was afraid she would faint or scream or throw up. The front of Jesse’s white shirt was dark red and so were his hands and arms up to the elbows. The injured biker was not making any noise, but after the fastest, sweepingest glance possible, Clara could not bring herself to look at him. “Dr. Wilder for you. On speaker.”

Jesse looked up, not comprehending, and then saw the phone. “Oh. Dr. Wilder, can you hear me?”

“Yes. What are we looking at, Jesse?” came her mother’s brisk voice.

“Patient’s an Hispanic male, late forties, presents with severe head trauma, partial amputation of the—”

Clara wished she had the power to turn off her hearing. She squeezed her eyes shut tight and continued to hold the phone while Jesse listed the patient’s injuries, reported on his vital signs, described what he had done and was doing, and then the two doctors discussed a course of action.

The police arrived before the ambulance, and one cop went to assist Jesse while the other began to manage the traffic that was beginning to accumulate.

At last the ambulance arrived, and the precarious process of moving the injured biker began. Clara stayed well out of the way now, holding her phone tight enough to leave marks on her hand. Her mother asked her how she was holding up, Clara made some brave and selfless reply, and her mother assured her the Colonel was on his way to her and hung up to put in the call to the emergency room in Alpine.

When the ambulance left with Jesse in it, headed for the faraway regional hospital, Clara climbed back into the truck to stay warm and realized that the keys were still in the ignition. She was glad to be able to run the heater, but did not trust herself to drive—her hands were shaking violently, so she shoved them in her pockets.

The Colonel took some time to reach her because of the traffic due to the road closure, but eventually he was there opening her door and she jumped gratefully into his arms for a hug.

“Did good, kid,” he said in his quiet way, and the coldness inside her began to warm up.

“I forgot to call Aunt Liesl,” she realized, and wondered why she should start to cry over such an insignificant detail.

“She knows,” he assured her. “Let’s get you home. We can pick up the truck later.”

“Okay,” she sobbed. “I used up all your flares.”

“I have more,” he said, removing the keys from the truck and locking it up. Then he took her hand and led her back to where he’d left her mother’s car.

“Why is everyone but me so calm?” she wailed.

“Clara, you just saw a man with his leg torn off. You shouldn’t be calm.”

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