Until It Fades

by K. A. Tucker

  “Idiot,” I mutter. That driver is easily doing double the speed limit, and on a foggy night like tonight, where the thick white plumes hang over the cracked pavement, and on a road like this, with its sudden, sharp curves and uneven dips, it’s especially dangerous. Probably another city guy heading to his chalet for the weekend, reveling in the mild spring weather. We have plenty of them around, with the Poconos so close.

  I glance at the clock on the dashboard again as I try not to speed along the dark, winding road, hoping I can make it home by ten so I don’t have to stop at the bank for more cash to pay Victoria. Tonight has already cost me too much, given that Lou forced me to take the night off work, promising me that I’d be thanking her when I stroll in tomorrow morning for my shift.

  I’m not sure how I’m going to maneuver around that awkward conversation. Lou has been trying to set me up with Gord for years. And for years I have declined the offer, afraid of this exact situation. Lou’s the type of person who might consider my rejection of her nephew a personal affront upon her.

  I guess my loneliness had finally weakened my resolve when I agreed.

  I’ve practically been revirginized, having not slept with a man since the night Brenna was conceived. The last man I kissed was Lance, the truck driver who broke the final straw of my faith in men. Lance was a handsome regular who came through Diamonds twice a week—on Mondays, on his way to the West Coast, and on Thursday mornings, on his way home. He flirted with me for almost a year before I finally agreed to sit with him over my break. It quickly escalated to a break in his truck’s cab, where we snuck off for a hot and heavy make-out session.

  That’s where I discovered the picture of his wife and son tucked into the driver’s seat sun visor. It took months to shake my guilt, afraid that I’d now be labeled a “home wrecker” on top of everything else. After that, I put a hundred percent of my focus back on Brenna and ignored my own needs.

  Which is what I’ll be doing from now on, instead of accepting blind dates with car salesmen.

  With a groan, I slow around a bend in the road, thankful that after so many years taking this quiet route to Diamonds for work, I’ve memorized each bumpy dip and dangerous turn like the back of my hand.

  That’s why, when I spot the dim, flickering red lights ahead, my brow furrows with worry.

  Because I know that the road curves to the left at an almost ninety­-degree angle right there.

  I hit my brakes and throw my high beams on as I ease my car closer. The fog eats up most of the light cast, forcing me to pull up close, until the other car’s license plate disappears from sight beneath my hood. Turning on my hazards, I check my rearview mirror for headlights—so few people take this road that it’s unlikely someone will come upon me—and then I grab my safety flashlight and step out onto the road.

  And my stomach tightens.

  I don’t need to see the front of the red sports car to know what happened. The thick old oak that meets its hood already tells a bleak story.

  And that car was going too fast for the story to end well.

  “Hello?” The word breaks in my throat as I rush toward the front of the car—a Corvette, I think—on shaky legs, dialing 911 on my phone. The engine’s hiss is the only response I get.

  “I’m on Old Cannery Road,” I tell the dispatcher who answers the call, my voice quivering. My toe hits a piece of metal debris from the car, sending it skittering away along the narrow gravel shoulder.

  The dispatcher asks how many people are involved. My gasp answers him as I round the driver’s side and the beam of light lands on a body, partially ejected through the windshield. By the haircut and size, it’s a man. And he’s not moving.

  Is there a passenger? The dispatcher asks. I don’t know, I tell him, because I can’t see the other side. Because this side doesn’t really exist anymore. It’s just a heap of rumpled, smoking metal wrapped around a body now.

  I’m operating on pure adrenaline, circling the back of my car to get to the other side, my two-inch heels sinking into the mud, remnants of last year’s bulrushes brushing against my sleeve.

  Yes. I think I see a shadow behind the spiderweb of cracked glass.

  “Emergency services will be there in approximately four minutes. Get back in your car, ma’am, where it’s safe,” the dispatcher directs me.

  “Four minutes,” I repeat to myself, disconnecting the call. My gut tells me that it won’t mean anything to the driver. But what about the passenger? It looks like the driver’s side took the brunt of the impact with the tree after it left the road. Still, this side isn’t without damage—the door no longer fits its frame.

  Slipping the flashlight’s rope over my wrist to free my hands, I take a deep breath and yank on the handle. Miraculously, the door creaks opens without too much protest.

  A man sits inside, his head hanging forward, unmoving. I turn my flashlight inside to assess the situation. His forehead is coated in blood, so much blood, and it’s running down the side of his face into his short, scruffy beard. He must have collided with the dashboard. That’s the issue with these fancy old cars: no air bags. His seat belt still stretches across his chest. At least he was smart enough to wear it.

  I reach forward now to press my hand against his chest, my fingers trembling. It rises and falls with shallow breaths.

  He’s still alive.

  “Hello?” I whisper, as if afraid to startle him. “Can you hear me?”

  No answer.

  I inhale deeply through my nose. Something smells like it’s burning. Hopefully it’s just an oil drip. But what if it’s not? God only knows what kind of fluid is leaking over that hot engine. If it ignites, this car will go up in flames within minutes. If there’s anything I’ve learned while listening to chatter in a truck stop, it’s how fast a car can burn once a spark catches.

  “Hey! Can you hear me?” I call out, louder this time, my panic creeping in where there was only shock a moment ago.

  The slightest groan escapes his lips but otherwise he doesn’t stir. He’s still unconscious.

  I waffle with indecision for five heartbeats. “I’m just going to unfasten your belt.” I carefully reach over his body to press the seat belt release button, afraid to bump him and cause more injury.

  Has it been four minutes yet? I pause to listen, my ears perking for a hint of a siren. None.

  But my ears do catch something else.

  That distinctive whoosh of flammable liquid when it ignites.

  This car is on fire.

  And if this man doesn’t wake up and get out of here, he’s going to burn alive.

  Full panic sets in. “Wake up! You need to wake up, now!” I yell, giving his broad shoulder a squeeze. He’s a big guy, all the more so in this crumpled car.

  The flames are now visible, curling around and licking the hood, beginning to radiate an intense heat. A putrid odor curls my nostrils, and my stomach spasms with the realization that it’s likely the driver’s flesh against those flames that I smell.

  A voice inside my head screams at me to run, to get back home safe and sound to Brenna. That I’ve done all that I can do and now it’s time to save myself.

  I reach in to grasp the far side of his waist. “Wake up! I need you to wake up!” I cry, tugging on his massive body, earning his grunt but nothing more. I’m probably hurting him, I could be causing serious damage, but I don’t have a choice. It’s nothing compared to what the flames will do.

  But it’s futile. He’s easily double my weight; there’s no way I can lift him.

  Giving up on that angle, I yank on his right leg, pulling it free to hit the gravel. “The car is on fire! Wake up!” I’m a broken record of screams as I reach in to tug on his left leg, the heat from the flames flushing my skin, growing warmer by the second as thick, choking smoke begins to form. But his left foot seems to be pinned beneath something I can’t see, and I can’t free it no matter how hard I yank.

  Tears of frustration slip out as the heat beco
mes almost unbearable. He still hasn’t woken up and I’ve run out of time. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this!”

  He’s not waking up, and I have to leave him, one leg hanging out of the car.

  One step toward safety. It’s not enough.

  “I’m sorry,” I sob, cringing against the fire’s heat as I take a step back. I have a child I have to get home to. There’s nothing I can do here. And I can’t die for this man.

  I take another step back, feeling the bulrushes brush against my back.

  He coughs and lifts his head to rest against the back of the seat.

  “Hey! Hey!” I scream with renewed hope, diving forward once again, my fists grabbing hold of the lapel on his jacket. “The car is on fire! You need to wake up!”

  His eyes are still closed but he’s wincing. From the intense heat or pain, I can’t say.

  “I need you to pull your foot free, right now! Please! Please! If you don’t, you are going to die!”

  Something must finally trigger inside his head. He begins shifting his trapped leg this way and that, a grimace twisting his lips as he tries to free it. I reach down and grab the top of his boot to help, distinctly aware of the smell of burning rubber.

  Finally, it pops free.

  Grabbing his muscular thigh with both hands, I yank on it until it slides out to settle next to his other. “Stand up!” I reach in again, disregarding the blood and broken glass and any worries for injuring him more as I rope my arms around his waist.

  “Get out of the car!” With all my strength, I pull.

  Suddenly I’m falling backward.

  Into the bulrushes, rolling through the ditch, this man’s bulky weight on me both crushing and exhilarating as we tumble in a messy heap to land in an inch of swamp water, the cold temperature a pleasant contrast to the intense heat from the fire.

  I look over my shoulder in time to see the flames rolling into the car through the dash and gaping windshield, the roar not quite loud enough to drown out the sound of sirens approaching.

  Keith hands me a white cloth. I accept it with a nod, my eyes on the smoldering heap of metal ahead. It looks like the fire department finally has the fire under control. They used everything they had—water, foam, and an entire truck’s worth of men. They moved fast, but not fast enough to save the looming oak tree ahead.

  Or my car, parked too close behind.

  “Where did they take him?” The paramedics came running when they saw me waving my arms from the ditch. We were still too close to the fire, and they were afraid that the flames would spread to the brush, so they worked fast to get the injured man on a stretcher and out of harm’s way.

  “Belmont for now but they’ll probably airlift him to Philly.”

  Airlift. How bad are his injuries? And how much worse did our tumble into the ditch make them?

  Beside me, Keith’s police radio chirps with a series of codes. He answers the dispatcher with a few quick words of his own before turning his attention back to me. I’m so glad he was on shift tonight. “Your parents have Brenna?”

  “She’s with a babysitter. I was supposed to be home . . .” How long ago now? It feels like it’s been hours. My gaze drifts to my burned-out car. The only thing salvageable from it was my purse, sitting in the backseat. Even if it were drivable, I can’t fathom how I’d get behind the wheel right now. “I need to get home.” I look at Keith. I’ll never get used to seeing the gangly neighborhood kid who I made out with behind the school gym when I was twelve and then proceeded to ignore for the better part of my teenage years because he wasn’t “cool,” who’s now my best friend, carrying a gun and a badge.

  He’s still on the lean side, and at twenty-five he barely passes for twenty-one out of uniform. Facial hair isn’t even an option for the poor guy; it grows in in blond patches.

  He reaches down to settle a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Text the sitter and let her know you’ll be home in a half hour, tops. I’ll give you a ride as soon as backup comes. They’re on their way. Just a few more minutes.”

  I manage a soft “thank you,” as I focus on the cloth in my hands, now splotched with blood, most of it not mine. I can’t imagine what the rest of me looks like.

  Keith leans his back against the cruiser, his gaze drifting over the wreckage. We don’t see this sort of thing very often in our small community. “Damn, Cath. That was crazy, what you did tonight. Brave . . . but fucking crazy.”

  “I couldn’t just let him die.”

  “Yeah . . .” He sighs. “It could easily have gone another way, though.”

  “He would have burned alive,” I whisper hoarsely. It’s the only answer I can give, because I can’t let myself think of what could have happened. My throat tightens every time the thought of Brenna waking up without a mother tomorrow edges into my thoughts. And I know it’s only the beginning. No matter what happens to that guy—whether he lives or not—I will be playing a horrific game of what-if for months to come.

  Keith shakes his head to himself, his eyes on my Grand Prix. “I definitely can’t fix that.”

  I groan.

  Three more cruisers roll up behind us then, their lights flashing but no sirens. No doubt the town’s CB radio junkies will have heard about the accident by now. They’ll be jumping in their cars and trying to get close to the scene soon enough. I’m surprised someone from the Tribune isn’t here yet.

  “All right, give me a quick minute and then I’ll take you home. Unless you’ve changed your mind about the hospital?”

  I test my right wrist. Agonizing pain shoots through my forearm, but at least I can move it. “It’s just a sprain. I’ll be fine,” I promise through gritted teeth. It must have happened when we tumbled into the ditch, though I didn’t feel a thing. It’s swollen to almost twice its normal size, and the paramedic who cleaned the scrapes on my legs wanted to take me in, but I refused. I’ve never wanted to go home more than I do right now, to shower the blood and ditch water off my body and curl up with Brenna’s small warm body, and not worry about how the hell I’m going to get to work without a car or serve platters of food without the use of my right hand.

  Keith opens his mouth, no doubt to argue with me.

  “Please, Keith.”

  He sighs. “Yeah, give me a minute.” He marches toward the approaching officers, while I climb into his cruiser, yanking the door shut to trap the heat in, my single shoe resting on my lap, the heel snapped off. The other one is lying somewhere out there, lost in the tumble.

  I wrap the soft gray blanket Keith gave me around my body, and watch and listen quietly from the passenger seat as the firefighters mill about, their bright yellow suits an oddly comforting sight. A middle-­aged man with gray wing-like stripes at his temples, in black pants and a jacket that reads CORONER on the back, arrives. I can’t imagine the gruesome sight left on the hood of the car. I close my eyes at the very thought and instead listen to the car radio, alive with chatter, most of it code that I can’t understand. I doubt it’s seen this much action in decades.

  A few minutes later, Keith slides into the driver’s side. The car’s still running, the heat pumping out to warm my wet body. “So, we haven’t released your name to the media yet—”

  “Don’t! Please. I don’t want to give this town any reason to talk about me.” It’s guaranteed to dredge up the past, and that’s something I’m hoping Brenna never hears about, until I decide to tell her. Many years from now.

  “I know. That’s what I told everyone.”

  I reach up to pull my seat belt across and hiss with pain as I bump my injured wrist.

  He watches me quietly for a moment. “What are you going to do about work?”

  “I’ll figure something out. I always do.” As much as it makes me cringe, I do have some savings that I can use to keep us afloat. That took me forever to accumulate.

  “Maybe your parents can help?”

  I spear him with a look. There’s no way I’m asking my parents for money. I’m sure they
’re up to their eyeballs in debt anyway, putting Emma through four years at Columbia. At least my little brother, Jack, earned a scholarship to Minnesota.

  He heaves a sigh. “But you’re going to tell them about this at least, right?”

  When I don’t answer, he groans. I make Keith sigh and groan. A lot.

  “Are you really that surprised?” Keith, who still lives with his parents and has what I consider an abnormally close relationship with them, just doesn’t understand why things are the way they are between us. He’s constantly offering his advice on ways to “fix our problems,” no matter how many times I tell him that some things will always be broken beyond repair.

  “Come on, Cath! What do you really think she’s gonna say?”

  “That I can’t help but make poor life choices?” My mother’s reedy voice is already filling my head. “How could you put a stranger before your daughter!”

  I push away the guilt edging in with that thought, because I’m asking myself the same question.

  “I don’t think she’ll do that this time.”

  “I do.”

  “Well, that doesn’t mean you’re right.”

  “Don’t you dare, Keith.” Keith lives three blocks away from my parents and he has no problem sticking his nose in other people’s business.

  With a heavy sigh, he agrees. “Whatever you want, Cath. But them finding out about this through someone else isn’t gonna help things between you guys.”

  “They’re not going to find out because I’m not telling anyone. And you’re not releasing my name.”

  “Right.” He pulls a three-point turn and edges past the other cruisers on the shoulder.

  “Besides, Emma and Jack are in the middle of final exams. I don’t want this to distract them. God knows she’d blame me if they didn’t both get straight A’s.”

  “She wouldn’t blame you.”

  “She needs to assign blame in every situation. It’s her MO.” For most of my childhood, that blame fell on me. Jack tripped and fell? I wasn’t watching him carefully enough. Emma lost her glasses? They were obviously buried somewhere in the sty that was my half of our shared room.