The Devil's Grip: The Curse of Stone Falls

by Steven Swaks

  The young girl watched the face of the paramedic pushing her to the ambulance. With all those red lights and the mounting clouds in the sky, she could not even see the stars. The oxygen mask on her face didn’t feel bad. It was almost nice to breathe. She wasn’t cold either, because somebody had thrown a blanket on her. Was she in pain? She was. Her head hurt, but it was almost as bad as the plastic board she was on. She was young, but she understood what the idea was. She wasn’t supposed to move to protect her back and her neck. What about her sister? She hadn’t talked to her since the accident. That’s right, she was in an accident. She did not know what had happened. They were turning left, and boom. After, she didn’t remember much. Her grandparents? What had happened to them? She did not know either.

  The white ambulance ceiling lights shone above her head as she was loaded in.

  “Hi, sweetie. With all that ruckus, I didn’t even tell you my name. I’m Alex. I’m going to take care of you, ok?”

  “Ok…” she said with a tired voice.

  “Alex!” Ben called through the small window between the driver compartment and the back cabin.

  “What?”

  “The clouds are too low. The chopper can’t make it in. We have to drive her to Hoover Memorial.”

  “Let’s go then.”

  Ben discreetly beckoned Alex with his hand.

  “What?” Alex asked as if he was whispering in a Catholic church.

  “How is she?”

  “Aside from the good laceration on her forehead, she looks fine. The vitals are holding. I’m concerned about a head injury or some internal bleeding, but so far, there’s nothing showing.”

  Medic 61 lurched north, down Hoover Highway in the calm of the night. The siren stayed quiet. There was no need for it. The red lights and white strobes flashed in rhythm, reflecting on an occasional road sign. The countryside was silent, only populated with a few farms and the mountains a few miles to the east.

  Ben was quiet. He had given his radio report to the hospital. He glanced once in a while at the rear view mirror to see any activity. There was nothing going on.

  Alex was on the bench next to the little girl, his feet on the folded gurney legs. He was filling out the run form. Once in a while, Alex updated the vital signs and talked to her to make sure she was all right.

  While keeping a cautious eye on the road, Ben’s thoughts meandered through the last hour: the three bodies, their patient, the other kid. He didn’t even know how she was doing. The cop, he had no idea who the cop was. He hoped he wasn’t somebody he knew well.

  What about the kids’ parents? The cop’s family? They would receive a call soon, or perhaps it was already done. Handling the family was often harder than the patients. Alex didn’t want to think about it, but he hoped he wouldn’t meet them. Not only did they have their daughters on the way to the hospital, but one of the two had just lost a father and a mother.

  He brushed the dreadful thought off and gazed at his GPS, another 12 miles to go.

  Medic 61 pulled underneath the emergency room bay Porte-cochère a few minutes later. Two nurses were already outside waiting for them.

  The paramedics pulled the little girl out of the ambulance and wheeled her inside a small hallway and a white corridor with white tile flooring.

  “How is she?” Ben asked.

  “The same.”

  “Is she the head laceration?” A young technician in blue scrubs asked.

  “Yep, she is,” Ben said.

  “You guys are in Trauma One, right around the corner.”

  The two medics entered a rectangular room with white walls. Two beds surrounded by red crash carts, ventilators, IV poles, and other medical equipment, stood side by side. An emergency room physician, a few nurses, ER technicians, and radiologists surrounded the bed on the right, like a pit crew around a race car.

  “Talk to us,” The ER doc hollered.

  “Eight-year-old female, involved in a TC with two fatalities in the front. It looked like a medium-sized sedan with severe damage on the driver and front passenger side,” Alex said.

  “Bilateral?” The doctor asked.

  “It almost looked like the car had been t-boned on both sides, but there was only one other vehicle involved, a police car with one of those rams bolted on the bumper.”

  “On three,” Ben glanced at the nurses, “one, two, three,” Ben and two nurses transferred the backboard from the ambulance gurney onto the hospital bed while Alex was talking.

  “Was she restrained?”

  “She was.”

  “Loss of consciousness?”

  “Unknown, but she was times four the entire time with us. Vitals are 112 for the pulse, resp is 28, and bp is 130 over 90. There’s a 6 inch laceration on the forehead. We didn’t find anything else upon secondary assessment. She does complain of head pain.”

  “Obviously… any allergies?” The older doctor asked.

  “Unknown. Medical history unknown as well.”

  “Thank you, boys. She’s ours now. I need a CT scan of the head, stat!”

  Alex and Ben walked out of the crammed room.

  A voice came from around the corner. “Trauma Two!”

  Medic 63’s crew passed by the two paramedics with the younger sister strapped on a yellow ambulance gurney. She was fully immobilized with an oxygen mask on her face. A large IV fluid bag hung on a small pole with a thin see-through tubing snaked under her white blanket into her frail arm.

  Officer Jameson was behind them. He stopped short of entering the trauma room. He looked at the two paramedics standing by their blood-stained gurney. “How is she doing?”

  “She’s banged up. But it looks like she’s going to be ok,” Ben said.

  Alex did not speak for a short moment. His gazed shifted to Jameson. “Who was the cop?”

  “Boyle, the poor kid had been on the force for eight months.”

  “What happened?” Ben muttered.

  “From what we got from the scene and a couple of witnesses, it looks like Boyle was flying down White Cove.”

  “Was he going on a call?”

  “No, we had nothing going on at the time.”

  “Was he trying to catch up and pull over somebody?” Alex asked.

  “We don’t think so. At least he didn’t say anything on the radio.”

  “How did he smack the other car like that?” Ben asked.

  “They were turning left onto West Tree Street. Boyle t-boned them at full speed.” Jameson shook his head. “He didn’t even slow down. We didn’t find any brake marks on the road. It looks like he smashed the car onto a telephone pole.”

  “Their car looked like somebody had squeezed a lemon,” Alex said.

  “It’s going to take them a while before they can take the grand-parents out,” Jameson said.

  Alex came closer. “Do you know where the parents are?”

  “I don’t think they’re here yet. The front desk’s keeping an eye on them. As soon as they arrive, they’re going to take them to a separate room.”

  “A crying room,” Ben commented.

  Jameson frowned, “I never heard it called that way, but yeah.”

  “What do they know?” Alex asked.

  “The minimum. We told them about the TC without details. The last thing we need is somebody else crashing because they’re tripping out. The hospital will update them about the girls. I’m the lucky winner who is going to tell them about the parents. They were the mother’s parents.”

  Alex took a deep breath. “Who’s going to talk to Boyle’s family?”

  “Chief Burns will. It won’t be fun. The poor kid just got married.”

  “We got to go, Ben. There’s only one unit covering the town.”

  They said goodbye and walked out to clean up and recondition the ambulance.

  They stayed silent for a while on the drive back to Stone Falls.

  “I can still smell the smoke on my shirt,” Ben finally said.

  Alex looked a
t him with a grave stare, “Three fatalities? That’s got to be a first. This kind of thing doesn’t happen here. This town is a safe haven.”

  “Well, not anymore my friend.”

  Night Watch

  Alex parked the ambulance behind the station. They hadn’t talked since they had left Hoover Memorial. How could they? The stench of death and burnt flesh was soaked on their shirts. The images kept coming back in their minds, Boyle’s burnt body lying on the road, the kids in the back seat, and the grandparents crushed in the front of the car. It would take them a few days to dampen down the visions, but they both knew they would never truly forget.

  They walked out of the ambulance without talking and buzzed the station’s back door.

  Jennifer, the dispatcher, knew better than to play with them. She also knew that the news would be all over town by tomorrow morning.

  They entered dispatch.

  “How was it?” Jennifer asked.

  “Bad,” Alex said.

  Ben sat on one of the spare office chairs and gave the details. The who and why, it was almost therapeutic to talk about it. They had seen serious accidents before, but never with an EMS or police involved. They all reacted differently to tough calls. Some quit after the first bad experience. Others brushed it off right away and moved on. Three days was the magic number for Ben. The accident scene relentlessly came back for three days before starting to fade away.

  Alex didn’t like to talk about it. Once the incident was over, it was history. It belonged to the past locked in a box and buried in a deep corner of his mind.

  “I’m going to the room,” Alex said.

  “I’m beat, I’m going with you.”

  “Have a good night, hopefully you will get some rest,” Jennifer said, unable to truly find comforting words.

  “Thanks…” Alex mumbled on his way out.

  Their quarters were one of two bedrooms and a small recreation room at the end of a corridor beyond a large carpeted classroom on the opposite side of the administration and dispatch. The windowless bedrooms were very basic with two twin-sized beds, two small nightstands with a phone line connected to the dispatcher, and rudimentary shelving with a hangar bar on the bottom half. A small television room was next door with four recliners.

  Ben sat on his bed, looking down at the carpet in an empty stare. His knees knocked each other back and forth.

  “Are you ok?” Alex asked.

  “That was some crazy stuff tonight, huh?”

  “That was your first fatal burn?”

  “Yep. You?”

  “Same.”

  Ben sighed. “The smell got to me. It was not really the sight. It was the smell.”

  “I know. It’s going to take some time, but we’ll get over it. Like any other first.”

  “You’re right.”

  “We should get some sleep.”

  Ben turned the lights off.

  “What’s going on?” Ben woke up, startled.

  Alex emerged out of his sleep. “Is that the vacuum cleaner?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. Jennifer is vacuuming at… what time is it?” He consulted his watch, “3:10, what the hell is she doing?”

  “I don’t know… I just want to sleep…” Alex rolled back under the blankets.

  “I’m going to have a chat with her.” Ben stood up, bare feet, with his dark blue pants and t-shirt on. He stormed out of the bedroom and barged to the large L-shaped classroom. The lights were on. A red upright vacuum cleaner was roaring by itself in a corner of the room. “Jennifer! What the hell are you doing?” He paced to the cleaner and turned it off. He looked around him to find her. She was playing with him. She was probably there, somewhere, hiding in the room to observe his reaction. “Jennifer?” The classroom stayed silent.

  Ben went to dispatch and knocked on the door, perhaps harder than he should have.

  Jennifer glanced at the screen monitor and buzzed him in.

  “Can you do me a favor?” Ben asked.

  “What do–”

  He cut her off, “We’ve already had a crappy evening, so don’t mess with us.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Ok, play stupid.”

  Jennifer’s face was stern. “Ben, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I understand that you guys had a rough evening. If you want to vacuum the station in the middle of the night, knock yourself out, but don’t come in here and start pointing fingers at me. I don’t even know why you’re so pissed off.”

  Ben stood back. “You didn’t turn on the vacuum?”

  She shook her head. “No. I told you, I can’t even leave dispatch without one of you two taking over. You know that.”

  “Then, who did?”

  She shrugged, “I don’t know. Do you think Alex is messing with you?”

  “That’s not like him,” he thought an instant, “and he wouldn’t have had time to come back to the room after the vacuum started.”

  Jennifer looked at her security screens.

  Ben looked with her. “Then, somebody else is in here.”

  “No way. I would have had to buzz them into the station, and I would have seen them on three or four different screens.”

  “Who has the key to the outside door?”

  “The owner, the station manager, ops manager… but I would have seen them on the screen,” she insisted.

  Alex appeared on one of the monitors, heading to dispatch.

  “See? I can’t miss anything. I have all quadrants outside, and all the doors and corridors.”

  “You don’t have the classroom.”

  “No, but I don’t need it.”

  Jennifer buzzed in Alex before he had time to knock.

  He opened the door, “What are you doing? You can’t–”

  “That wasn’t her,” Ben said, both of them gazing at him.

  “Then who?” A question mark distorted his face.

  “We don’t know.”

  Todd

  “Here’s my favorite Eskimo!” Amanda Walker said flipping her notepad open to take their order.

  “Favorite? Do you know any other one?” Christine asked.

  “Not really, I was trying to be nice!” She winked at her.

  Christine and her husband George smiled.

  “What are you two gonna have this morning?”

  They placed their orders. French toast for him, scrambled eggs, hash browns, English muffin for her.

  “Isn’t that terrible?” Amanda looked at a half-folded newspaper on the table. A large segment of the local paper’s front page was dedicated to the tragedy on the road. A black and white picture showed the damaged police car with the other sedan in the background. “That was such a sad week, first young Gina and her mother, now this.”

  “I was thinking that Stone Falls was a quiet town,” Christine said.

  “Well, it is. Bad accidents are very rare. And a murder?” her face sobered, “we haven’t had one in decades. It doesn’t happen here.” She stayed silent for longer than she was used to. “Ah! Let’s not talk about those things! Are you gonna get some coffee with this?”

  They both nodded with the fervor of children wanting lollipops. Amanda walked back to the counter and picked up the steaming coffee pot to make her rounds from table to table.

  There was an older couple who had come every single morning, seven days a week, for the last fifteen years, a group of older ladies belonging to the local bridge club, and a lone salesman eating breakfast before a day on the road. She served a new cup to the sweet Eskimo girl and her husband.

  Todd, the young construction worker, was in the next booth over, school manuals scattered throughout the table. The young man was writing a chemistry equation on a stack of white sheets.

  Amanda hunched over to take a closer look. She grimaced, “Chemistry?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Yuck… You’re not working today?”

  “It’s my day off.”

  “Wait, aren
’t you working full time?”

  “I am.”

  “And you’re taking classes?”

  “I’m taking three classes at night.”

  “That’s impressive. What are you studying?”

  “Biochemistry for pre-med.”

  “Medical school?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I know. It’s still going to take me a while before I can even apply, but I’m working hard for it.”

  “Wow. When do you find the time for your homework?”

  “If I’m working, I study on the construction site during breaks or at lunch, but most of the time I study at night after the classes.”

  “Do you ever sleep?”

  Todd shrugged, “I can always sleep after medical school.”

  “Well, good for you! Maybe one day I’ll be your patient!”

  “Maybe.”

  The front door opened. Jessica Miller walked in with a blue dress.

  Todd’s gaze shifted beyond Amanda’s shoulder. His stomach immediately churned.

  Amanda looked in the same direction. She knew that look.

  A surge of blood filled his cheeks.

  “She is a very sweet girl. Didn’t you talk to her last time?”

  “I… uh… I mumbled to her. That was stupid.”

  “Jessica would be the last one to judge you.”

  “You think?”

  “Oh, I know.”

  “Does she come here often?”

  “Almost every day. If it’s not a pie for the church, it’s donuts for her school, or pastries for the folks at the convalescent home.”

  “Why don’t you go talk to her?” Her eyes swung in the direction of the counter where she was.

  “What am I going to tell her?”

  “You’ll find something.”

  His buttocks stayed firmly planted in the booth.

  “Let’s go, young man!”

  He stood, as if she had cast a magic spell upon him. She gently nudged him in her direction, before attending other customers to leave them alone.

  Todd walked like a robot to the cash register.

  Jessica finally saw him. She smiled.

  “I need more coffee,” Todd told her, trying to justify his presence.

  Jessica glanced at Amanda with the coffee pot in her hand.