by Rita Ames
The driver ran the lights with his blues all the way to the hospital and we were rushed straight into the A & E trauma unit. He was wheeled away and I reluctantly wandered back to the waiting area.
After an hour of testing and assessing they wheeled him away to theatre to get his arm and leg set, apparently the leg needed a plate put in. One of the team had found his wallet in a trouser pocket and we discovered his name was Carl Dawson. From the security pass he had on him, they deduced he worked in a local bank.
Unfortunately, his mobile phone had taken too much damage in the accident and was no longer working. There was no way to check for family or next of kin. We would have to wait until he woke up.
I pondered as to whether I should stay any longer or go home for some much needed sleep. I decided to stay just until I knew he was out of the woods. It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact he was cute I assured myself with a smile.
Carl
I knew I had been in a road accident, the pain in my leg was excruciating. It felt as though I had been hit by a truck, which is exactly what had happened. I tried to regain consciousness as I lay there on the road. I tried to remember where I was or even where I was headed before I was hit.
I could hear a soft voice amongst all the shouting. It was soothing and melodic. I tried to focus on it, the soft sound seeming to dull the excruciating pain I was suffering. I opened my eyes a little but there were so many shapes it was too confusing. I had a nagging feeling that I needed to get away from something; there was no hope of that with my leg obviously broken. I thought then that I may be dying, and part of me hoped that I was. I had been so frustrated with life lately that going to sleep for good seemed like a decent plan, at least the pain would fade.
The suffocating shadows all moved back as the lovely voice told them to stay away. I tried to speak to thank her but I appeared to have lost control of my lips.
At that moment everything seemed to light up as an ambulance reversed towards where I lay.
Everything was happening as though I was looking through a steamed up window. Sounds were muffled and the urge to sink into the blackness again was so tempting. I fought it, searching desperately for the owner of the angelic voice.
The fog in my head cleared for a moment and there she was, the most beautiful face I had ever seen. She had pale green eyes and her face was framed in a halo of burnished copper. I wanted to reach up and run my fingers through it.
The concern in her striking green eyes was for me, that much was evident, she was concerned for me! My heart swelled seeing her compassion. No-one had ever looked at me like that and my cold, ugly soul felt an unknown warmth seep into it.
No-one had ever cared about me, except my parents, and they were both dead now of old age, seeing as how I was a surprise late addition to the family. Even they had not known the real me, just the cardboard cut out that I showed the world.
Now, here was an angel protecting me and caring for me. I must be dying. If I wasn’t dying then I had to stay awake so that I could find out her name. I tried to speak and she seemed to be aware of my efforts. Leaning forward she whispered in my ear.
“It’s going to be all right. Don’t try to talk. We are taking you to the hospital and they will get you sorted in no time” she leaned back and smiled down at me. I lost the fight with the darkness and slid away.
Susie
I was asleep on my feet, literally. By the time they had brought Carl to one of the side rooms to recover from his operation it was 3am. I had now been awake for almost 20 hours straight.
Not sure whether to go home at this late stage, I visited my ward and arranged to take the next day off. I would be no good to anyone the state I was in and they agreed.
Entering the small room where Carl was sleeping a drug induced sleep, rigged up with drips and monitors, I slumped into the bedside chair and finally fell asleep.
*******
The next few days passed in a somewhat dreamlike state for me. I went back to work, feeling exhausted. It would take me a long time to catch up on the lost sleep, not to mention the effects of seeing and dealing with the accident.
My bosses had given me a lecture on the risks of practising on the side of the road, mostly about the possibility that someone could sue me. I nodded and left the room, scoffing at them in my head. I would never refuse to treat someone that was hurt if it was in my power to ease their suffering. Sod the lawyers.
I popped into Carl’s room a few times, usually in my break, to see how he was doing. He was being kept under sedation while his bones began to set. Apparently the breaks in his left leg were so severe that any movement at all could compromise his leg at the moment. He barely came through without having it amputated. He was a lucky guy.
The hospital had contacted the Bank where he worked and they had reported that there were no next of kin listed on the personnel records held for Carl. In fact, on further investigation, his colleagues did not even remember him mentioning a girlfriend. It seemed this poor unfortunate and broken man was something of a loner.
Looking at his face as he lay there helpless in the hospital bed, I felt compassion for this man. He looked a little lost and I wondered how someone could go through life without having anyone significant to care about them. Then I thought about my own lonely existence and it didn’t seem all that strange.
Giving myself a mental kick up the backside, I resolved that I must do something about my own situation before I tried to reason out someone else’s.
********
Another week went by and life settled back to normal, or some semblance of it. I had a letter from the Police asking me to call into the station and answer a few questions about the accident.
I arranged to call in late one afternoon and was met by a rather handsome Detective called Ben Guyer.
He was one of those men whose eyes are so piercing that you feel as though they can see right through into your brain, revealing all your innermost thoughts. As I looked at him I found my innermost thoughts straying in a rather inappropriate direction and I looked down quickly aware that I was blushing.
He shook my hand and I almost jumped back at the spark that passed between us. He looked a little shocked himself but recovered quickly, ever the professional.
I followed him down the corridor and we entered a small office, one wall had glass in the top which overlooked the corridor, but there was no outside window in the room at all. This made it feel oppressive, like I imagined a prison cell to be. It held only one desk, a file cabinet and two chairs. I felt sympathy for him that he had to spend his days in a room like a cell, when he was working so hard at putting the bad guys into one.
I also noticed that there were no personal photos on the desk. I am not sure why I was looking for them, maybe curiosity, maybe I was checking to see if he had a girlfriend. I laughed at myself as soon as I thought it. He was far too cute not to have a girl, and even if he was single, he wouldn’t look at an overworked, worn out nurse like me.
I found myself touching my hair in an effort to tidy up the messy bun that I had pulled it into that morning. Too late to do anything about it now, I looked a mess, and I knew it.
I sighed, resigned to the fact, and took a seat. He pulled some papers towards him and there was a moment of silence before he spoke.
“Can you confirm your name?” he said with a voice that reminded me of melted chocolate.
I shook myself out of my mental fog and answered him. He then proceeded to run through the events running up to and during the evening of the accident when Carl had been run over.
He asked if I had seen Carl run out into the road. I responded that I hadn’t. The first thing I knew was when I heard shouting, followed by the thud of what I now knew was the van hitting Carl. I shuddered at the re-telling of this part, imagining how much pain Carl must have felt at the moment of impact.
My thoughts went to him, lying in the hospital bed, bruised, broken and still sedated. I had begun to think of him a
s a person I knew, although we had only made eye contact for a few moments and he had not been able to speak.
Ben was curious as to why Carl had been running without pausing to stop and check the road before crossing. Apparently some witnesses had said that he seemed to be running from something and had been looking behind himself at the moment he was hit.
Ben seemed to be trying to piece something together and I had a feeling there was something he was not telling me. He continued to run over my answers a couple of times, and once he was happy they were consistent, he closed his file.
“Thank you for coming in today. Your help is appreciated” he said smiling.
I was gob-smacked at how much that little smile transformed his features. It was as if a spot light had just been trained directly onto his face. He appeared illuminated and for a few seconds I was blinded by it’s brilliance.
Shaking my head to clear it, I extended my hand, “Anytime” I replied.
Ben indicated the door and I stood to leave, passing through the door as he held it open. He walked with me back to the entrance. Shaking my hand again, producing another short, sharp, shock he said “Hopefully we won’t need you to come in again but, just in case anything new comes back to you, here is my card” he held out his card which I pocketed into my jacket.
I left and walked home, my mind filled with all sorts of new things, mainly a pair of piercing blue eyes and a voice like chocolate. I had a feeling I would be seeing Ben again, in my dreams, if nothing else.
Ben
Meeting Susie Brown had been an interesting experience. I had been thrown a little by the shock I felt when we shook hands, from her expression and sudden movement, I knew she had felt it too. Very interesting.
Her name was so normal, almost plain, and I am ashamed to admit that plain is what I was expecting to meet. Instead, she was delightfully sweet and natural. She had very obviously come to the station straight from work.
I noticed that she had no make-up on but her skin was smooth and soft looking. All during our interview she sub-consciously tried to tame the small tendrils of hair that had escaped her bun. It was so cute I had a hard time not smiling throughout the serious part of our conversation.
Her story matched the one that she gave to the attending officers on the night of the incident, and there didn’t appear to be anything new from going over it with her. I was a little disappointed. I had hoped that one of the witnesses from that evening might have seen something that I could use as a starting point for my real investigation.
I didn’t usually handle the checking of motor accident witness reports. I was a Homicide Detective and something else, much more disturbing, had happened on the night in question....
I had been out for a few drinks with some of the guys from the station after wrapping up a case. A pimp who had killed one of his girls had made the mistake of bragging about it in a bar and finally we had managed to track him down and make an arrest. Although these perps were easier to catch, often because their drug habits or inflated ego made them careless, it was still something to celebrate when we got one bang to rights.
I had fallen onto my bed, still in my clothes, and very much the worse for wear, when my cell phone had rung.
“Yeah” I mumbled, still a few parts to the wind.
On hearing my Superintendant on the other end I sat up quickly, trying to shake the feathers from my brain.
“Okay, I’ll be right there. You’ll have to front up for a cab though, I’ve been drinking. Are you sure you want me on this considering I’m a little half cut?” I needed to know I wouldn’t get into any trouble for being slightly inebriated on the job.
“We’ve kept it quiet, so the only people on the ground are the forensics team. I just need you to be there to ensure they get everything they can. You also need to ensure no unsuspecting member of the public stumbles across the scene and contaminates the evidence.” He barked down the phone.
“Not sure I want to meet anyone who loiters in the park at 3am in the morning” I muttered pulling on my trainers. I hung up and called a cab. So much for getting any sleep tonight, and the hangover was guaranteed to be a bitch.
********
Seeing the victim at the scene was the hardest part of my job. This was the one place where they had last been a living, breathing human being and that fact always hit me the hardest.
I looked down at the body of what had been a normal, cute young brunette whose main concerns were probably getting her college assignment finished in time to go and make-out with her boyfriend.
Now, she was just a bundle of bleeding flesh, soon to be buried and her life slowly forgotten. It affected me on a soul deep level. That’s what had driven me to become a Detective in the first place. A few years ago, a friend had been drugged and raped at a college party which ended in her death due to a reaction to the roofie she had been given.
No-one had seemed too eager to push for justice for her, even the police, who put it down to mis-adventure. Knowing my friend as I did, I knew this was not the case. It enraged me that whoever the bastard was had literally gotten away with murder.
When I graduated, I signed up for the force as soon as they would take me and the rest, as they say, is history.
After spending a few cold, damp hours trudging through the park, the body was finally bagged up and taken away.
Apart from a few signs of a struggle in the wet leaves, the only things of interest we found was a muddy, blood covered jacket. It had been rolled up and stashed beneath a bush, obviously in a hurry. This was bagged and taken as evidence. Hopefully it belonged to the killer and we would be able to get something from it in the way of forensics.
By the time I was able to head home I was feeling miserable. My head was pounding and my stomach was looking for any excuse to evacuate over the nearest pavement.
I called the Super on my cell and told him what I had so far from the scene. He agreed that I could take a few hours to sleep it off and we arranged for me to go into work later that afternoon.
We now had a new case to start work on and there was no way of knowing if this was a one off killing, which would mean it was personal, or one of many. The second option was what worried me. Somebody out there killing just for kicks was the most dangerous kind of adversary. Those were the ones who never played by the rules.
I knew sleep would be difficult, now that my brain had a whole new set of problems to solve, but I tried. I was going to need all the energy I could muster on this one, of that I had no doubt.
Susie
When I got into work the next morning, it was to find that they were transferring Carl to a rehab centre a few miles out of town. Due to the seriousness of his injuries they had decided not to wake him yet, and so I saw him off in the ambulance, without having had the chance to speak to him. I gave my telephone details to the transferring nurse as I was the only one that seemed bothered about the poor guy. She promised to call with updates.
Apparently, they would bring him round slowly, and then get to work on the job of helping him to walk again. There was also the possibility that there might be some brain damage from where his head had hit the road, and this in turn might bring more challenges with things like speech.
It was the best thing for him, I knew this. However, it didn’t stop me from missing being able to pop into his room during my break. Visiting him had become a daily habit. I would sit and chat away about anything and everything while I ate my lunch. I chuckled at myself. I really needed to get some real friends.
******
I didn’t get any new friends, but I did get a rescue cat, the irony of which did not escape me. I had begun my transition to mad cat lady at the tender age of 27.
When I called Mum to tell her I had some good news, she asked what his name was, all excited. I sighed and explained that SHE was a cat and that her name was Harriet (Hari for short). I could hear the disappointment coming at me thick and fast down the telephone line as I burst that particular ballo
on. After talking about inconsequential things for a few minutes more, we were both relieved to cut the call short.
When the call ended I went into a bit of an emotional slump about my non-existent social life. There were a couple of fellow nurses that I had lunch with occasionally, they were the type who went out clubbing and picking up guys on a regular basis. I had no idea how to do that. My upbringing had been a secluded one, raised in a small village with one pub, one shop and one Church. No clubs within 20 miles of home. The highlight of my social life when home from college was to join my Dad at the local Pub Quiz Night. Not a lot of patrons under 30 attended these. I was definitely in no danger of going off the rails after downing two pints of cider.
My Dad had sadly passed away last year and now my Mum was pinning all her hopes on me providing her with some grandchildren to dote on. It seemed she was as lonely as I. I was feeling more and more like a failure.
Sitting on my couch I tried to decide what I could do about it. I wondered if Internet Dating was worth a shot, then ruled it out. I had only had one serious boyfriend in college, lost my virginity in a very unforgettable moment, and nothing since. I worried that I was not worldly enough to sort out the perverts from the genuine profiles. That was too much of a risk.
An image of Ben, the handsome Detective came to mind, and I dug his card out of my jacket pocket. Sitting there staring at it, I wondered what he was doing at that moment.
I sighed. There was no way I could call him out of the blue, unless I had something more to add to my statement. If I called him for no reason he would think I was some kind of stalker.
I put the card away and made up my mind to drive over to visit Carl at the rehab centre. I had not heard anything for a few days so I reasoned it would not hurt to check in.
Decision made, I went to change into something more appropriate for visiting time.
Ben
The investigation had ground to a halt. There was no usable forensics taken from Tina’s body. That was the name of the girl that had been killed in the park. A hair had been taken from the jacket but the DNA testing had not come back yet.
