With Austen in my arms, I stumble out of the car and fall to my knees. Hailey and Alison are both screaming now, and Alison’s mother comes rushing out their front door. She scoops Austen up as I sit and lean back againstthe car, still dizzy, my arms covered with blood. Is any of it mine? I don’t think so. But Austen is so tiny. Could all that blood be his?
It’s total chaos—girls crying, Jane barking, Alison’s mother flashing orders (“Get her water! Call 911!”) as she carries Austen into the house. To calm myself, I try some of the pranayama deep-breathing techniques I learned in yoga, but that makes me even dizzier.
Soon Alison’s mother is back. I want to ask her how Austen is doing, but I don’t have the strength.
“I’m Lynne,” she says, kneeling down beside me with a glass of water. We’ve seen each other but never spoken before. Does this count as a Hollywood “meet-cute”?
“Are you in any pain?” she asks.
I try to speak but no sound comes out. Just breath. I mouth the wordno.
“Don’t talk,” she says. “Later, you can tell us what happened.”
What happened? Good question. I’m trying to remember. At some point, the black car crashed into me. Amber’s car spun around and slammed front-first into the guardrail. Then the driver sped away.
I must have blacked out for a moment. When I came to, I was dizzy and seeing double. Jane was barking like crazy in the back seat, but where was Austen? I turned around to look for him. When we hit the rail, he must have been tossed like a projectile, because the little guy was lying on the floor behind me, silent, bleeding.
I began to sob then. At some point I must have gottenout of the car to gather him up in my arms. I’d put Alison’s address into the GPS before I left the house, and it wasn’t far away, so, still wobbly, still dizzy, I started the car. The engine sputtered but worked. Slowly, I pulled away from the rail, back into the service lane, hoping I was lucid enough to drive and that the car would hold up until we got to Alison’s house.
I’d made it. Sort of.
CHAPTER 67
ALISON’S MOTHER, LYNNE, is still kneeling in front of me. “You’ve had a trauma,” she says. “You might be in shock. Are you cold?” Actually, I am.
Lynne sends Alison into the house for a blanket, and when she comes back with it and they throw it around my shoulders, I realize I’m shivering. Suddenly, I feel like I’m going to faint. I lean over and put my head down and take deep breaths. That’s when Jane bounds over and licks my face. I laugh. (Interesting factoid I can share here: Dog spit cures nausea. Who knew?)
An ambulance pulls up. Three EMT people surround me as they check my pulse and blood pressure. I think I pass their tests, but they slide me onto a gurney anyway.Then one, wearing a badge that saysFRED, says he’s going to examine me to see if I have any broken bones or internal injuries.Uh-oh.
Gently, Fred presses down on the foam rubber over my stomach. It bounces back. He looks at me as if to say,Huh?But he says nothing. Then he presses on my hips, my chest, my back. More pokes. More bounces. I’m waiting for him to ask why I’m wrapped in layers of padding, but he doesn’t.
I guess when you’re an EMT in New York, you’ve seen it all.
Another EMT, a woman, is examining my arms. “Where’d the blood come from?” she wants to know.
“Austen,” I say. She looks confused.
“Texas?” she asks.
“Dog,” I say. I’m still having a little trouble forming words, so it comes out “Duh.”
The woman shines a light in my eyes, holds up fingers and asks how many I see, but I’m not focusing on her. Lynne is walking toward me with Austen in her arms. She’s wrapped a towel around his little head like a turban. He looks adorable, like he just washed his hair.
“It was a cut on his scalp,” she says. “Pretty deep, but the bleeding has stopped.” When Austen sees me he begins to wag his tail. I reach out and hug him. I am so relieved to see he’s okay, I almost forget the big picture: Someone tried to kill me.
Fred the EMT guy says my vital signs look good but he thinks I should go to the hospital. I say no. He shrugs andsays that for the next twenty-four hours, I should rest, drink plenty of fluids, eat lightly, get some sleep, and not operate any heavy machinery.
Lynne, my new best friend, helps me up and walks me around Amber’s car so I can see the damage. The front fender is dangling, practically touching the driveway. The back is dented and cracked, and both taillights are smashed. Amber’s Lexus will need extensive, expensive bodywork. Ben will not be happy. Well, what else is new?
Lynne brings me into her house so I can rest on her Biedermeier couch. I’m still a little dizzy, but it’s much better.
She asks if she can get me anything or call anyone for me. I say no.
She wants Hailey and me to stay for dinner, sleep at her house tonight.
I thank her and say that Hailey can stay but I’d be more comfortable in my own bed. She absolutely insists on driving me home, and I agree. I’m not in any condition to drive, and neither is the car. We both need towing.
In an unexpectedly decent gesture, Hailey announces, “I’ll go home with you too.” I am really touched by this. Even when she adds, “I want to keep an eye on Austen.”
