MOMMA MIA
by ardavenport
- - - Part 7
It was well after five. Heavy traffic. Roy knew all the back streets to use to avoid the worst of it and he knew which main streets weren't so bad. He made a left turn onto a four-lane boulevard, but the light at the intersection a hundred feet down the street turned red before they got to it.
". . . . It used to be so nice, it used to be so good."
"So when you're near me, darling can't you hear me,
S. O. S.
The love you gave me, nothing else can save me,
S. O. S.
When you're gone,
How can I even try to go on?. . . ."
Even leaning over the steering wheel, Roy couldn't see past Johnny's head, but he knew where the music was coming from. Different tune, but it sounded like the same group.
"Hi!" It was the same woman's voice.
"Hi there! Funny how we keep meeting like this."
Roy didn't catch the answer to Johnny's comment. He just shook his head in disbelief. Three times? In a whole city full of cars, they were stopped in traffic next to the same one? Same blonde. Same convertible. Same music. Three times in one day? It was impossible.
Johnny glanced his way, flashing a smile and then turned back toward the woman.
". . . . So when you're near me, darling can't you hear me
S. O. S.
The love you gave me, nothing else can save me
S. O. S.
When you're gone . . . ."
The light turned green. The little red convertible accelerated out into the intersection.
Both Roy and Johnny leaned forward, mouths open. A light blue sedan didn't even slow down on the cross street. It hit the convertible on the passenger side, smashing it into the hood of a green station wagon. The blond woman was a flash of white and pink as she was thrown over and behind the blue sedan onto the pavement.
Roy clicked the red lights and the siren on. Johnny grabbed the mic.
"This is Squad Fifty-One. We have a traffic accident with injuries at the intersection of a hundred and eighty-second and South Morrison. Request police assistance and an ambulance."
"Ten-Four, Squad Fifty-One. Time out, Seventeen-twenty-one."
Roy moved the squad forward, cutting the siren, but leaving the lights on. They were right in the middle of the intersection. No police yet to stop the traffic. Johnny was first out and grabbed the road flares from a rear compartment of the squad. He started to run around the back end of the blue sedan, but skidded to a stop, his arms out for balance as a white car went by. Roy had to wait for two cars to go by before he could even open the driver's side door.
Some cars passed, honking as they went, but others slowed to look, blocking the ones behind them. More honking. A young man in a suit got out of a stopped car and Johnny yelled at him to stay where he was. Roy saw smoke from the flares, but he couldn't see anything else behind the body of the sedan. The driver's door opened, but the graying-haired man crumpled behind the wheel didn't move. Blood reddened the shatter-point on the wind shield where his head must have impacted; the seatbelt lay unused on the seat. Roy couldn't find a carotid and the head fell loose to the side. He wiped the blood off his fingers. Something light hit his angle and clattered on the asphalt. An empty beer can rolled away. He closed the door.
He heard children crying from the station wagon on the other side of what was left of the red convertible that blocked the driver side doors. He ran to it. A little girl in pig-tails opened the rear door.
"Oh, don't get out, honey. Just stay here." He eased her back onto the seat. She wore a bright red dress, her black hair in pig-tails tied with matching ribbons. Next to her was another crying little girl, exactly the same, in exactly the same outfit. Twins. And a younger little boy, maybe five years-old. They were wearing seatbelts.
"Are any of you hurt?"
"I don't think they're hurt, but I can't get my door open and my seatbelt is stuck." The frantic mother looked over the front seat at him. She wore big yellow-green earrings that matched her top. "But it's my son. He hit his head."
Roy saw the top some black hair in the front passenger seat. After making sure that the three in the back were okay, he left them to open the front door. Sirens approached.
The boy in the front looked like he was maybe twelve. He had a bleeding cut at the hairline.
"Son, son? Can you hear me?"
The boy blinked blearily at him, his eyes large and unfocused. "Huuuh?"
He took out his pen light and shined it in the boy's eyes. "Can you tell me your name, son?"
"Unnnnh."
Police cars arrived, lights flashing, sirens winding down. The boy's pupils were uneven and didn't respond well to the light. "Son? Can you tell me your name?"
"His name is Devon."
"Are you hurt, Ma'am?" Roy looked up at the worried mother.
"No, I don't think so, but I can't get out!" Her tone rose. All three children in the back started crying. Roy unbuckled the boy's seatbelt and examined him. He didn't seem to be hurt anywhere else. Another siren approached. "Oh, please, please, help him!"
"Ma'am, Ma'am, we're going to get you all out, but I need you to remain calm. - - "
"Roy?" Johnny was behind him. He had the biophone and the drug box. And policemen to help. A fire engine arrived. Engine Fifty-One. More help.
The rescue became routine after that. The sheriff's deputies helped with the scared and uninjured children in the back seat. They used a back board to take the boy out and Johnny cut the mother free with his packet knife. The engine crew hosed down the spilled gasoline from the crash. The ambulance arrived. Pedestrians, herded back by the police, collected on the sidewalks to watch, some pointing, putting hands to their mouths.
Roy glanced toward the street where the flares still smoked. And at the big square of yellow sheeting that Johnny had covered the body with.
Roy turned back to the injured boy. He would ride in the ambulance him, his mother up front. The sheriff's deputies would take the younger ones in and contact their father to meet them at the hospital. Johnny would drive in the squad.
- - - End Part 7