Less than six feet in front of her, the ground fell away. We’d emerged from the forest on a cliff that plunged a hundred feet straight down. And the car was balanced right on the edge.
27
Amy
WE SHUFFLED slowly towards the cliff edge, Corrigan’s hand grasping mine. As we got closer, we dropped to our hands and knees. The snow had drifted up into a bank that hung out over the edge in places and if we didn’t feel our way, we might fall through into nothingness.
The car was resting with its front wheels over the edge. As we drew level with the driver’s door, my shadow fell across the woman inside and she moaned and turned towards me—
And the car slid.
We hadn’t realized, but the ground beneath the snow sloped down a little towards the edge. Between the weight of the engine dragging it forward and the slick, icy ground, any tiny motion would send the car sliding right off the cliff.
“Jesus!” Corrigan threw open the door, lunged inside, grabbed Sophie’s shoulder, and tried to pull her out. But she jerked to a sudden stop and screamed in pain. Her leg was caught.
Corrigan looked at me helplessly. The car slid soundlessly past us, inch after inch….
And stopped. The front doors were now level with the edge. I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.
“We’ve got to secure the car,” said Corrigan, his face pale. “I’ll try to find something. Stay with her.”
I nodded, as shaken as him. “Try not to move,” I told Sophie, but she didn’t respond: she was only semi-conscious. She had long, chestnut hair and it had fallen forward over her face. Very carefully, I reached in and brushed it back so that I could see her. She couldn’t have been more than 18 or 19 and she was pretty, with delicate features that matched her slender, elegant figure. But the cold had turned her skin, bone white and her breathing was shaky: maybe hypothermia, maybe something worse.
I tentatively reached in again and held her wrist, feeling for her pulse. She was shockingly cold: she couldn’t last much longer.
“Beckett!” I turned and saw Corrigan watching me, horrified. “Get your hand out of there!”
“I’m just checking her pulse. I can pull it back.” But I knew what he was afraid of because I was thinking the same thing. If she grabbed me in panic and held on as the car went over... or if the door closed on my arm…. I tried not to look at the town spread out below, the houses like toys.
Corrigan was cursing himself. “Why didn’t I bring a fucking rope?”
I shook my head. I hadn’t thought of it either. We were doctors, not rescue workers. Then I finally found her pulse: weak and getting weaker. “I think she’s bleeding from somewhere,” I told Corrigan. “We have to stop it or we’ll lose her.”
He was looking around frantically for something to use. “As soon as we make sure the car’s safe!”
Sophie gave a low groan. I could feel the life draining out of her. Corrigan was right, it was way too dangerous. But….
I’d never understood why ER doctors took the chances they did. By the time patients reached me, those choices had already been made, for better or worse. I never knew how easy I had it. Because now, kneeling right next to this woman, watching her die….
What would he do?
I grabbed the surgical kit, ran around to the other side of the car, and quietly opened the door. By the time Corrigan looked round, I was sliding into the passenger seat, lowering my ass into it as if it was upholstered with eggshells. “Beckett, no!” he yelled.
I touched down, holding my breath… the car didn’t move.
I tried to do everything in slow motion, to make every movement smooth and steady, even though I was a bag of nerves. I pressed my back as hard into the seat as I could, trying to get my weight as far back as possible. Shining a flashlight down into the foot well, I saw I’d been right: Sophie was bleeding steadily from her calf. I could see where her ankle was pinned by metal that had bent inward.
Corrigan arrived, frantic and out of breath. “Get out of there!” The Irish in his voice was stronger, when he was stressed.
He put out his hand to grab me, but I shook my head: even that, I had to do gingerly. “I can do this,” I told him. “If I don’t, she’s dead.”
We stared at each other. I saw his hand twitch. He wanted so badly to pull me out… but at last he nodded.
Getting an IV needle into her vein took five tries. My hands were numb and stiff with cold, the tips deathly white, and I could see each panicked breath I took as a dense little cloud. I finally got it in and hung a bag of blood from a coat hook: that was a start, but it wouldn’t do any good unless I could stop the bleeding.
Very, very carefully, I rolled forward and down until I was lying across Sophie’s lap, my head, and shoulders in the footwell. I tried not to think about the fact that there was nothing underneath me but a hundred foot drop. Holding the flashlight between my teeth, I tried to imagine I was back in the nice, safe OR, with Bach on the speakers and Krista cracking jokes and Lina keeping an eye on the anesthetic and Adele passing me sponges and—
It all seemed really, really far away.
But I could see the bleeder, I could see it, it was right there, and if I could just rotate the leg a little—
As I clamped the bleeder, Sophie cried out and arched in pain under me. My stomach dropped through the floor. “Sophie! Please don’t move!”
She groaned and thrashed.
And the car started to slide.
I tried to back out, but there was no quick way to do it: I had to twist myself back up into my seat. As my eyes came above the dashboard, I saw the nose of the car tilt down, more of the town lurching into view. I lunged towards the door, but it was too late to climb out: the door was already over the edge.
28
Dominic
WHEN RACHEL was about a year old, Chrissy bought this fancy backpack. It was a complicated web of straps that looped around me and around the baby and basically let her ride on my back. I thought it was stupid, but Rachel loved it: as soon as I had her in it, she was chortling and clapping, happy at suddenly being six feet off the ground.
And then... there was this noise. A hissing, nylon slithering. I felt the straps go loose across my chest. Either the thing was defective or I hadn’t done it up right, but she was falling. And I did what you’d do, on instinct, which is to turn around, but of course that didn’t help because she went with me. And I could hear her laughter turn into a wail and feel the straps coming loose but no matter which one I grabbed, it didn’t seem to help, and I knew she was falling but I couldn’t stop it—
Rachel wound up dangling from one leg and escaped with nothing more than a bump and some tears. But that feeling of something happening and being completely unable to stop it... that’s exactly what it felt like when I saw the car sliding off the cliff. All I wanted to do was run to it and grab the bumper, but I had just enough sense left in my head to know that would do no good. My eyes searched the same ground I’d been searching for the last five minutes and suddenly, out of desperation or pure dumb luck, I saw what I needed: a rock the size of a watermelon. I grabbed it and sprinted.
The lack of noise as the car slid was eerie, just a creak and crunch of snow beneath the body. Moving slowly but picking up speed.
I’ve never run so fast in my life. If I slipped, even once, I’d be too late.
The car tilted down, scraped... and I dived to the ground and shoved the rock in front of the rear wheel like a footballer player scoring a touchdown. The car jerked, rocked..., and stopped.
The driver’s door was hanging open over space. Beckett was clinging to the seat, terrified, looking down at the drop: there was no way she could climb out on her own. I leaned right out, straining, and managed to grab her hand. I wasn’t waiting around for any of that count to three bullshit, I just pulled her out of there and turned, flinging her round in an arc to land on the soft snow behind me.
I nearly lost her. I stalked over
to her. “You fucking stupid—What were you thinking?” I roared.
She just stared up at me, still sprawled on her back in the snow.
I nearly lost her. “You—” My throat closed up. I couldn’t speak.
She stared up at me, white-faced and mute.
I nearly lost her. It pounded through me with every heartbeat. I grabbed her by the wrist and hauled her to her feet. I was shaking with fear and anger and—
I felt it rise inside me, soaring and swelling, taking my breath.
I didn’t just like her, or care for her, or any of those weak little words. They didn’t cover it, not anymore.
I felt myself lift...and then those chains from my past pulled tight and wrenched me back down. I was the worst bastard in the world, for feeling that way. What about Chrissy? And Rachel?
I froze, torn between past and future. All I could do was stare down into her eyes. God, she was so painfully, heartbreakingly beautiful. Neither of us had noticed, with all the panic, but it had started to snow again and tiny flakes were dusting her cheeks and gleaming in her copper hair. She was looking up at me with big, frightened eyes.
All I wanted to do was kiss her. But I didn’t deserve her. I knew what I deserved.
“I clamped the bleeder,” said Beckett in a small voice.
“You clamped the bleeder,” I repeated. I closed my eyes for a second and felt the world sway around me. I felt sick when I thought of how close I’d come to losing her. “Of course you did,” I leaned down and touched my forehead to hers. “Damn you, Beckett,” I whispered.
Does she know? Can she not know?
I turned away and marched back towards the car.
29
Amy
TO TAKE A LOOK at Sophie’s trapped leg, Corrigan had to stretch out with his legs on the cliff, his arms and head in the car and his midsection suspended over space. I knelt on his legs to help pin him in place and tried not to look at the town a hundred feet below. Even with the danger, I couldn’t stop thinking about what just happened. He’d looked at me as if he—Oh God! It kept replaying in my head and every time, I went heady. But there was still something holding him back, something he couldn’t break free of, and I had no idea what it was.
He squirmed backwards onto the cliff and then motioned me over to the trees, out of earshot of Sophie. The sun was down, now, and the light was draining from the forest rapidly, leaving impenetrable shadows that made it easy to trip. The snow was getting heavier, the flakes slow and silent, and the size of dimes.
“We can’t free that ankle,” said Corrigan. “The car’s all twisted and bent. If we were on a freeway and we could get to the fender, maybe we could pry it apart. But it’s hanging over space.”
I wanted to scream. All we needed was a tow truck to pull the car back onto the cliff, or a jaws-of-life from a fire truck, or a cutting torch. The blizzard had set us back a hundred years. “Then what do we do? She’s freezing, she can’t wait.”
“I know.” He looked at the car, then back to me, and there was pity in his eyes. “You’re going to have to take the leg.”
I just blinked at him. It was so far outside what I’d even consider, I just didn’t understand. Only when I saw how sad he looked did I get it. “What?! No! I can’t—” I looked at the car and lowered my voice. “I’m not amputating her leg!”
“Beckett, if you don’t she’s going to die. We have to get her out and get her warm now. There’s a saw in the medical kit. I’ll get it. You….” He nodded awkwardly towards the car.
You tell her. I felt like the cliff had fallen out from under my feet. This was worse than going back a hundred years, this was medieval! But however much I shook my head, he was right. I’d felt how cold she was. She would die if we didn’t get her out.
I walked back to Sophie, heart hammering, and knelt down right on the cliff edge. Even then, with the front of the car hanging out over the edge, I was still too far away to touch her. I had to raise my voice just to talk to her. “H—Hey.” I began. “How are you doing?”
It was getting dark fast and I could barely see her in the shadows inside the car. “Better,” she said. The blood transfusion must have lifted her pulse and woken her up a little. “Cold.”
“I know. Listen, Sophie….” My throat was clamping down, trying to snatch each word away. “We need to get you out. There’s a snow plow coming, we can get you to the hospital, but—” Oh God, how do I do this? I’m the world’s worst person at talking to people, especially about something like this. Why is he making me do this? He’d be so much better at it.
But it was my responsibility. If he’d offered, I wouldn’t have let him and I think he knew that.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. “Sophie, to get you out, I’m going to have to remove your left leg below the knee.”
She gave a strangled gasp and then said No just as I started to speak again. No as I told her we could knock her out with pain meds so that it wouldn’t hurt, No as I told her it was the only way. No. No, no, no!
“I’m a dancer!” she sobbed as I finally stopped speaking. “I have a place this fall at Fenbrook Academy! You can’t take my leg. This is my life!”
Tears had filled my eyes and were tracing hot lines down my frozen cheeks. “I—”
“Please!” she begged. “Please don’t!”
I stood up and went over to Corrigan. “She’s a dancer,” I told him. “A ballet dancer.”
I didn’t think he’d understand. I knew he was jaded, knew he’d made the call on a hundred cases like this in the ER, not to mention Africa and other warzones.
But I saw him mouth a curse as he looked towards the car. It was fully dark, now. He weighed the bone saw in his hand and I stared at its vicious teeth as they gleamed in the moonlight.
“I never asked you for anything before,” I said. “But I’m asking you for this. Find another way.”
Corrigan drew in a deep breath. Another. Then he tossed the saw back into the medical bag. “I’ll have to try to pry the metal apart from the outside, to free her leg,” he said. There was a strange finality in his voice, a kind of relief, as if all roads had been leading to this.
“How? We can’t get to the front of the car.”
He looked towards the cliff edge. “I’ll have to climb down, underneath it.”
30
Dominic
THERE WASN’T a good place to climb down on the driver’s side of the car. I’d have to climb down on the passenger side and climb all the way across underneath. With no rope.
As I lowered myself over the edge, I was almost glad it was so dark. I had to feel for footholds but at least I couldn’t see how far away the ground was. The wind was a clue, though, whipping across the ground below me and gusting vertically up the cliff face to tug at my coat. I realized my feet were numb. I couldn’t really tell if I was putting them on firm rock or packed snow that would crumble when I put my weight on it. But it was too late now.
I climbed sideways, underneath the car. It acted like a roof above me, blocking the falling snow, but also blocking the moonlight. I couldn’t see a damn thing. I had to take it slow, feeling my way, and that left too much time for thinking. When I’d realized my full feelings for Beckett, everything from my past had risen up to claim me. The guilt.
Chrissy.
Rachel.
Rachel was why I was down there. She’d wanted to be a ballet dancer, too. But there was another reason.
I looked down at the blackness beneath me. Would it be such a bad way to go? A freezing rush of air, the ground invisible as it came up to meet you—
Suicide is a mortal sin. But if I slipped or my grip gave out or the car fell on top of me….
People think you’re a hero for doing dangerous things. They don’t realize you might have your own, selfish reasons.
I reached the driver’s side of the car and held on to the cliff one-handed while I took out my flashlight. It would have been a hell of a lot easier to hang onto the car
, but if I did that I’d pull the damn thing over the edge. I got the flashlight switched on and pointed it up at—
It slipped through my numb fingers and fell, the beam twisting and slashing through the night like a lightsaber, revealing the drop below me. I watched it, heart hammering. It was a long time before it dropped out of sight.
I took out a pry bar and, by feel alone, worked it into the dented mass of metal and started trying to loosen it. There was nothing to brace against so I had to use raw muscle, straining and grunting. I started to wonder how the hell I was going to climb back across with no strength left in my arms.
That doesn’t matter, a dark little voice in my head told me. Just get Sophie out. Make sure Beckett is safe. The rest doesn’t matter.
I gritted my teeth and heaved on the pry bar, the metal creaking, and groaning.
“That’s it!” yelled Beckett from the darkness. She was in the back of the car, ready to pull Sophie into the rear seat and then out through the rear door. “I can feel her leg coming loose!”
I heaved again, using both hands. The bar slipped and suddenly I was balancing on just my feet, toppling backwards into space. I had to grab something. My hand found one of the wheels. I jerked to a stop, but the car started to slide. Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck!
“It’s moving!” screamed Beckett. “I can’t stop it!”
I got the pry bar in again and tried to force the metal apart, but Sophie’s leg was still trapped. In desperation, I started pounding my fist on the crumpled metal, bending it inwards and upwards. I managed to get my hand up inside the footwell and bent aside the metal that had caught on her shoe—
“She’s free!” I heard grunting and then a limp body being dragged out of the car. “She’s out!”
I let out a breath. The car was still sliding forward. Slowly, but it didn’t have far to go before gravity would take over and carry it the rest of the way. I pulled my hand back—
Mount Mercy Page 12
