Page 55 of The Strawberry Field
“I don’t want to get too close to him, but maybe I should try to go around and head him off?”
“That seems dangerous,” I say.
“Yeah,” he agrees. He starts to blow the horn then, pulling up closer behind the truck to get the driver’s attention.
Just then, there’s another bend in the road ahead. We’re far enough back that I can see the car coming, a small white sedan.
My stomach drops as I feel what is about to happen even as we are unable to stop it.
“Jake! Watch out!”
The truck veers sharply into the other driver’s lane. The car attempts to avoid it, but it’s too late, and the truck hits it head on.
There’s a loud boom announcing the impact of the truck with the car. Jake slams on the brakes, and we slide to a screeching halt.
This time, I have my arms wrapped around Hattie, holding her tight against me so that she doesn’t fly into the dashboard.
Jake pulls the truck over, and we both jump out, leaving Hattie inside. I dread what we’re about to see. I hang back a bit, fear washing over me in a tidal wave. Jake disappears around the back of the box truck, and I stand for a moment until the feeling of cowardice shames me into motion. I force myself to walk and then run. But what I see brings me to a halt. I gasp. The entire front left side of the sedan is under the enormous truck.
I instantly know the driver could not have survived this impact. I stand staring at the wreckage, frozen in both body and mind. Jake is at the back door of the car, peering inside.
His voice is ragged when he says, “There’s a little girl in the backseat.”
I make my feet move, but they won’t respond to the command from my brain.
“Sawyer,” Jake calls out again. This time, I literally hurl myself forward, running now to the back of the car and willing myself not to think about anything beyond what I can do to help. “Is she—”
“It looks like she’s unconscious,” Jake says. “Here, let’s get the door open. It’s locked.”
Jake looks around for something to break the back window. He grabs a rock from the nearby ditch. The child is on the other side of the back seat, and he taps the glass with the rock, then gives it a forcible crack. It breaks, and he reaches in to unlock the door, but it doesn’t open. Jake lifts and pulls on the latch until it gives.
The girl, five years old or so, in a booster seat, is still strapped into her seatbelt. Her head droops to one side, and blood trickles from her nose. I force myself to look at the front of the car, where the impact was so great, crushing the front of the vehicle into the driver’s space. There’s a woman in the seat, but she’s clearly not alive. Jake meets my stricken gaze, and I fight back a wave of nausea.
“Should we try to get the child out?” he asks, looking at me with an edge to his voice. “The car could catch on fire or—”
I struggle to think clearly. “Can you lift her out but keep her inside the car seat?”
“I’ll try,” he says. He slides across the backseat, unsnapping her seatbelt.
He tries to lift the car seat, but the top left edge is stuck under a piece of the car’s door molding.
Jake tugs and pulls until he is finally able to free the seat, lifting the child up onto his lap, and then sliding back from the car. He stands, still holding her inside the seat and tight against him, looking at me. “What should we do?”
“Let’s get her over on that bank of grass, off the road.”
Just then a small red pickup truck pulls up. A man in a Franklin County Eagles baseball cap and overalls jumps out and runs toward us.
“Oh, my gosh,” he says, looking horrified. “Is that Ava’s car?”
“I don’t know who it is,” I say. “We were behind the truck when it had a head-on with this vehicle.”
He glances at the child in Jake’s arms, and tears begin to slide down his face. “That’s Ava Miller. This is her granddaughter, Hannah. She takes her to preschool every morning. Where’s Ava?”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “The car was crushed—” I can’t finish the sentence, and I know he doesn’t need me to. His gaze now hangs on the vehicle wedged under the front of the box truck, and a look of profound sadness descends over him. I feel the depth of it, and I’m flung back to the hospital in New York and the patient faces imprinted on my memory.
Sadness engulfs me just as Jake says, “Sawyer, we have to help her. Come on.”
He sets the seat in the grass. I drop down onto my knees, pressing my fingers against her wrist pulse. I feel nothing.
