The Year that Everything Changed

by Georgia Bockoven

  “Yes?” she prompted.

  “It’s not anything I’m stuck on, just something I’ve been mulling over since you said you wanted to quit your job.”

  “And?” she prompted again.

  “I don’t know—maybe I should think about it some more before I say anything.”

  “You’re doing this on purpose.”

  He gave her hand a second squeeze. “What do you think about having another baby?”

  She would have been less surprised if he’d asked her to live on the space station. They’d agreed that two was a good number when she’d insisted it had to be more than one. She knew what it was to grow up an only child. When they’d had a girl and then a boy, it seemed a logical place to stop. “I don’t know,” she admitted.

  “No pressure. I was just remembering what it was like to have a baby around and how perfect the two we have are.” He leaned over to give her a quick kiss.

  Rachel moved to meet him and saw something out of the corner of her eye. A cow—standing in the middle of the road. She screamed, but it was too late. Jeff must have seen the cow at the same time because he jerked the steering wheel and veered to the right before Rachel’s scream cleared her throat. The Land Rover’s right wheel caught the soft shoulder and pulled the SUV forward, jerking it toward the cliff.

  The SUV hesitated at the cliff’s edge, giving Rachel a second to see everything—the terrified cow, the dry grass, the jagged rock, the ocean. But it was Jeff’s image that fixed in her mind, his look of horror and fateful understanding, the desperate search for escape, the frantic silent message he sent to her in a glance, telling her that he loved her.

  The SUV tilted slowly and gently slid over the edge. For an achingly long second it seemed they would ease down the cliff, escaping the jagged rocks and wind-twisted shrubs. But then they picked up speed. A tire caught and the SUV whipped to the side, slamming nose-first into a boulder. Airbags exploded, filling the cab, crushing Rachel against the seat. As fast as they’d opened they deflated. Now she was flung against the door, the seat, the dashboard, Jeff.

  She screamed, or at least she thought she did. It could have been the sound of the car scraping the rocks as it rolled and turned and bounced on its descent to the small sandy cove at the bottom of the cliff.

  After what seemed an eternity and yet only a blink, it was over. They had landed right side up, the only sound a hissing and creaking from the engine and the roaring thunder of waves hitting the rocks beside the cove.

  “Are you okay?” Jeff asked in a choked whisper.

  Her head hurt. She put her hand to her temple and felt a slick, sticky wetness. She was bleeding. A lot. “I think so.”

  “I’m sorry.” He reached for his seat belt. “I should have—” He gasped in pain.

  “What is it?” she demanded. “What’s wrong?”

  “Jesus—my leg. It hurts.” He leaned forward and reached down with his right hand. “I can’t move it.”

  Rachel fumbled for her seat belt, struggling with the release. Twisting in the seat made it hard to breathe. She felt like knives were being shoved between her ribs. Finally the release caught and the buckle came apart. “Let me see.”

  “You can’t. It’s pinned between the door and the seat.”

  “Are you sure?” She tried to picture his leg in that position and couldn’t. There wasn’t room and his leg couldn’t twist that way. He had to be mistaken.

  “It’s there. I can feel it.”

  “Can you open the door?”

  “No, it’s jammed into the rock. And my arm’s caught under the seat.” He put his head back and closed his eyes, his face contorted in pain. “The phone . . . ?”

  Jeff kept his cell phone in a cubby hole by the radio. “It must have fallen out.”

  “Get yours. Call 911.”

  His voice faded; she could barely hear him over the sounds of the waves. Frantic, she pushed the deflated airbags aside and searched the cab. “It isn’t here.”

  “Try again.”

  She shoved her hand between the jumbled luggage and bags of silly souvenirs they’d bought for the kids. “It’s not here. It must have fallen out.”

  He reached for her hand. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” she insisted. He couldn’t see the blood.

  “Then you have to go . . . get help.”

  The sun was gone. The horizon was a fading crimson. Soon, within minutes, there would be no light and no moon to show the way back up the hill. “I’m not leaving you.”

  “We won’t make it if you don’t.”

  “I can’t.” The thought of leaving him alone terrified her. “Someone will find us. They’ll see the skid marks.” She reached for the switch to turn on the headlights. “They’ll see our lights.”

  “The tide, Rachel.”

  At first she didn’t understand. And then, her heart in her throat, his fear became hers. He was trapped. If they waited, if the tide was coming in, this cove, like half of the coves on the coast, would disappear. Jeff would drown.

  She pressed her face into his hand. “Promise me you’ll be okay.” The words were ripped from her soul. “Jeff?” She touched his face. “Jeff? Goddamn it, Jeff—don’t you dare die on me.”

  He squeezed her hand. Blood trickled from his ear and nose. “Go. . . .”

  He was going to die. She knew it the same way she knew she’d never been destined for true happiness. She was tainted, one of life’s misfits, not deserving, unworthy. There was a dark corner of her mind that reminded her of these things, a voice that warned her and kept her from being surprised when something bad happened. She was the dog raised alone on a chain in a backyard with a clear view of the dog next door, the one that had never known a boot in the ribs or a night in the rain.

  “All right. I’m going.” She reached for the handle; the door was jammed. She climbed through the window and dropped to the sand. She caught her breath as pain shot through her body. Everything hurt, her head, her lungs, her knees, even her breast where the seat belt had lain across her chest.

  Rolling to her side, she put her hand down and pushed into a sitting position. Seconds later water washed over her fingers. A new, terrifying reality gripped her. The water was only a few feet from the car. Was Jeff right? Was the tide coming in—or was it going out? Frantic, she tried to remember what the ocean had looked like that morning, at lunch, at dinner. Nothing.

  She rose to her feet and took a final look inside the car. A hundred things came to mind to tell Jeff, how lonely she’d been before he came into her life, how happy he’d made her, how much she loved him. She reached inside to touch his hand. “I love you,” she said softly. Determined that he should hear her, she shouted, “I love you.”

  Tears mixed with the blood smearing her cheeks and neck as she dropped his hand and stepped away from the car. Steadying herself on the crumpled rear fender, she stopped to study the hill, seeking the easiest climb while looking for her purse or the car phone and finding neither. A rock wall blocked her to the right; on the left was a cliff so sheer the top extended out over the bottom. The only way up was the way they’d come down, a steep slope covered with rocks, dry grass, and twisted shrubs.

  The slick soles of her Prada loafers slipped on the tall grass. She took them off and tucked them in her waistband. If she had to walk when she reached the road, she’d make better time in shoes. She searched for hand- and footholds, grasping the tough grass, praying it would stay rooted while she hung on and swung from one toehold to the next. Fingernails tore as she clung to rocks; the skin on her arms and legs shredded on the rough bark of shrubs.

  Inch by inch, she made her way up what had taken only seconds to descend. She talked to God, saying the same prayer over and over again, begging Him to give her and Jeff more time, begging Jeff not to leave her. By the time she reached the road her hands were raw, the stumps of her fingernails bleeding, her feet numb. She reached for her s
hoes, but they were gone. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but getting help.

  The highway was deserted. How could that be? This was the only coast road, the path to every ocean tourist destination north of San Francisco. On summer weekends, the traffic was bumper to bumper. She stood next to the tracks the SUV’s tires had dug into the soft soil, a trail that led over the cliff, and waited, ready to do whatever was necessary to get the first car that came by to stop. None came.

  She followed the tracks back to the edge of the cliff, wanting, needing contact with Jeff even at a distance. Confused by what she saw, she wiped her eyes and blinked. Something was different. The sand was gone . . . there was water under the car. The tide was coming in.

  Sick with fear and frantic with the need to do something, she stumbled into the middle of the narrow, twisting two-lane highway and headed toward the only lights she could see—miles away, on the side of a hill.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Rachel

  Rachel sat on the edge of her bed at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital and stared out the window at a city still asleep. She was alone in the two-bed room, the only sound the voices of the nurses exchanging patient information and gossip as they made their rounds and the low drone of a television coming from another room, tuned into a late-night infomercial.

  She was freezing. The thin hospital gown hung open in the back, and she couldn’t reach around to close it. She listened for footsteps, her heart dancing in fear and anticipation when she convinced herself they were headed her way.

  The ambulance that brought her to the hospital arrived an hour and a half after the helicopter that brought Jeff. They’d taken him into surgery immediately, and now, five hours later, she still hadn’t heard anything other than that he was “doing fine” from a nurse she’d begged to call the operating room and ask.

  Rachel didn’t believe her. Jeff wasn’t fine. He couldn’t be. She’d seen him after the local fire department pulled him up the hill in a wire basket, stood at his side while the highway patrol closed the road to let the Search helicopter land. She’d looked into the faces of his rescuers—the policemen, the firefighters, the ambulance attendants, the medical people on the helicopter—seeking something, anything to give her hope. There was nothing, not even a flickering smile.

  A moment’s inattention, a kiss, and a goddamned cow. Jeff’s life couldn’t be over because of a cow. It wasn’t possible. They’d been on the coast road a half-dozen times since moving to California. She remembered seeing warning signs about free-range cattle and remembered going over the cattle guards, but not once had she actually seen a cow—until last night.

  Rachel took a tissue from the nightstand and blew her nose. She was crying again. She’d acquired an inexhaustible supply of tears and had no control over when they began or ended. Her stomach was a hard knot of fear that radiated into her chest, squeezed her throat, and made her feel as if she were choking. She tried but couldn’t swallow the pain medication the nurse had given her, so she’d been given a shot instead.

  New footsteps. Not the soft swish of nurses’ shoes but a hard click, moving fast. Rachel looked at the window, her gaze fixed on the door’s reflection. Instead of the hoped-for doctor in scrubs, a woman appeared.

  “Rachel?”

  Ginger. Rachel tried to stand but was too stiff to get up. “What are you doing here? Where are the kids?”

  “Christina has them. I didn’t think you’d want them at the hospital yet.”

  “Christina? How did she—”

  “I called her. She drove up to take care of them so I could be here with you.” Ginger came around the bed and stopped dead, as if she’d run into a Plexiglas wall. “My God,” she gasped. “You look like sh— . . . like you were in a really bad accident.”

  “I’m not as bad as I look.” She had to be better than the horror she saw on Ginger’s face.

  “What happened to your head?”

  Rachel gingerly touched the bandage covering the four-inch-long cut on the side of her head. The nurse had apologized when he cut her hair, saying he would only take as much as necessary. Still, she had a bald spot that would be impossible to hide. “I’m not sure. I think I might have hit a rock. I had my window open.”

  “You’re going to have a couple of black eyes, too.”

  “The worst is the cracked ribs. Three of them. They hurt all the time. Especially when I try to lie down.”

  “That’s it? You go over a cliff and end up with three cracked ribs and a cut?” Ginger moved in to get a closer look. “What’s that on your arm?”

  Rachel frowned and held up her arm. The scratches looked like someone had come at her with coarse sandpaper. “I must have scraped them when I was climbing out.” She looked at her legs. They were worse than her arms.

  “Have they told you anything about Jeff yet?”

  Rachel shook her head, wincing at the movement. “Nothing beyond he’s doing fine.”

  “All this time and no one has told you anything? You must be going out of your mind.”

  Rachel’s jaw quivered as she struggled unsuccessfully against a new wave of tears. “I keep asking, and they’re nice enough about it, but no one does anything. It’s like they’re all just patting me on the head.”

  “Do you want me to see what I can do?”

  “I don’t know. I’m so scared,” Rachel whispered, as if it were a dangerous secret. “At least this way I still have hope.”

  “How long has it been?”

  Rachel glanced at the wall clock mounted next to the television. “Almost six hours.”

  “I finally managed to get through to Jeff’s brother. He was at the firehouse. He said as soon as he could get someone to cover for him he’d be down. I don’t know if he’s flying or driving.”

  Rachel had called Ginger from the ambulance. She’d asked her to call Logan and let him decide whether to try to reach his parents, who were on a South Pacific cruise celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary.

  “He’s really good with the kids,” Rachel told her. “He can take over for you and Christina when he gets here.”

  “Like that’s going to happen. He’s going to have to wrestle the kids away from Christina.” Ginger smiled. “As for me, I’m due a vacation. Hell, I just may quit. It’s not like I love this job and I have enough savings left to last me another six months at least.”

  Rachel didn’t know what else to say, so she simply said, “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “Everything. For being my friend—for being my sister.”

  “Being your friend is easy. The sister thing was Jessie’s doing.”

  Rachel saw a reflected movement in the window—a man dressed in green. She should have known she wouldn’t hear the cushioned footsteps that brought the surgeon to her room.

  “Mrs. Nolan?”

  Ginger jumped at the male voice. “She’s here.” She moved to the end of the bed. “Come in—please.” Ginger held out her hand. “I’m Ginger Reynolds, Mrs. Nolan’s sister.”

  He shook Ginger’s hand. “Joseph Kenton.”

  Rachel slowly stood, holding on to the mattress with one hand, the windowsill with the other. “How is he?”

  “He’s still in recovery, but you should be able to see him in about an hour. We were able to save enough of the leg to—”

  “What does that mean—save enough of the leg?”

  He swore softly as he swept the green surgical cap off his head and crumpled it in his fist. “No one told you?”

  “No—no one has told me anything.”

  “The femoral artery was crushed in the accident, cutting blood flow to the lower leg. Without blood, there is no oxygen and the tissues become ischemic and acidosis develops. When that happens, there isn’t anything we can do except remove the limb.”

  “You cut off his leg?” she repeated, sure she couldn’t be hearing him correctly. People didn’t have legs cut off anymore, they had them reattached. There were newspaper stor
ies about it all the time. Jeff still had his. Why couldn’t it be saved?

  “Progressive acidosis of a large area of the body can cause shock and death,” he said. And then, with a sigh, he added, “Even though his arm was more damaged, the blood supply was never diminished and we were able to save it.”

  Ginger moved closer to Rachel in a protective gesture. “Otherwise he’s okay?” she asked.

  “His spleen ruptured and had to be removed. He has five broken ribs, which will heal on their own. The broken pelvis will take a couple of weeks, the bones in his arm considerably longer. Those we had to plate and pin and will have to go back in to remove.” He paused, plainly exhausted. “With your husband’s body compromised from his other injuries and the majority of the cells in his leg already dead or dying, there wasn’t any other option. Frankly, Mrs. Nolan, he’s lucky he got here when he did.”

  “How much of his leg did you have to take?” Rachel asked.

  “Mid-thigh. I went high enough to assure good tissue coverage for the stump. He won’t have any trouble being fitted for his prosthesis.”

  “If I could have gotten help sooner would it have made a difference?” Rachel asked.

  He shook his head. “From where the accident happened, even if the fire department had been on the opposite side of the road, the helicopter couldn’t have gotten him here in time.” He stuffed his cap into his back pocket, crossed his arms, and leaned a shoulder into the wall. “I know how difficult this is, but it isn’t all bad news. Barring complications, your husband is going to make a full recovery. He’ll need a couple of months of physical therapy and time to heal before he can be fitted for his prosthesis, but he’s young and in good shape, and there really isn’t anything to keep him from doing whatever he wants to do.”

  “Does he know?”

  “Not yet. We’ll tell him as soon as he’s fully awake.” He straightened and prepared to leave. “You’re going to have questions when you’ve had time to absorb this. If they’re something the staff can’t answer or if you’d rather talk to me personally, you can reach me at my office. Leave a message and a phone number and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”