Page 7 of Jake and Conner
It wasn't like I wanted a child right now. But someday. Maybe?
I tapped on my phone to text back.
Congratulations! Your little girl is too cute for words. When would be a good time for me to swing by and say hi to her?
Laurence's reply came about twenty minutes later, as I was getting ready to brush my teeth and go to sleep in preparation for another busy day.
Thank you! Nathan and Raphael are coming over on Saturday. We'd love it if you could come too.
The message made me smile. I hadn't seen Nathan and Raphael in a while. It would be good to get together again. My fingers hovered over the phone's screen, though. Something made me hesitate.
Was Jake going to be there too?
Moreover, did it matter?
It wasn't like I wasavoidingmy ex. And Jake had every right to visit his neighbors if he wanted to. So, no, I wasn't going to ask Laurence if Jake was coming too, and I wasn't going to let his presence--or lack thereof--influence my decision in any way.
I'll be there,I texted back. And then I stubbornly marked the day on my calendar and circled it.
3
Jake
My Monday night shift started out innocently enough. Everything was quiet in town. It was a nice change from my previous shift. My partner, Warren, and I joked that if either one of us started dying of boredom, at least the other one would have something to do.
When we finally received a call, we weren't exactly relieved, but we were glad to be moving for sure. After all, one of the reasons I'd picked this job was that I didn't want to be sitting on my ass all day.
We'd been called out to help with a car accident on the road leading out of the town. Apparently, a car had veered off the road and crashed into a utility pole that had become dislodged and fallen onto the car.
It sounded bad even when I first got the information from my partner.
But still, I had noideathe kind of nightmare I was in for.
We weren't the first to arrive at the scene, of course. The police were already there, securing the perimeter so there weren't going to be any subsequent accidents.
We parked as close to the crash scene as we could, and then we jumped out of the ambulance. If there was still someone alive in that car, there was no time to lose.
"Hello?" Someone called out to me. "Are you the paramedic?"
"Yes, I am, sir," I responded quickly, even though I hadn't expected that the victim would be in talking condition. Talking condition was good, though.
At least I thought so until I took in the scene before me and realized there was really only one reason the man in the car was lucid.
He’d gone driver’s side into the pole and if he hadn’t slumped sideways before the steering wheel caught him, he would have been dead. Now he was trapped between his seat and the pole laying over his lower abdomen, pinning him to the car.
Conventional wisdom said that trapped victims should be released as quickly as possible, but in this case, I was glad that no one had followed that advice—if only because the weight would be tough to lift.
His pelvis had likely been crushed, his femurs broken. The massive blood loss alone should have led to shock. The man was white as a sheet, but he was awake. His features were contorted in pain, but he was responsive—and the fact that there was a huge weight bearing on his injuries was the reason for that. Right now, the pole that crushed him was the only thing that helped him maintain blood pressure.
"Are you going to help?" he asked.
I had been gaping at him and not doing anything.
Get a grip, Jake, I told myself, still analyzing the situation in my head. "Of course I will help."
But I wasn't yet surehow.
I’d never seen anything like this. There was a sinking feeling in my chest, though, that once the weight was removed from the man’s abdomen, it would open up all sorts of space for the blood to flow into, we'd lose blood pressure and he would die.
