Swerve

by Vicki Pettersson

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  To Kristine Perchetti,

  who allowed me to borrow her name,

  her likeness, and her strength in equal measure.

  You’re my hero in so many ways.

  If I keep this oath faithfully, may I enjoy my life and practice my art, respected by all humanity and in all times; but if I swerve from it or violate it, may the reverse be my life.

  —Hippocratic Oath

  Ghosts in front of us, ghosts behind.

  It’s not exactly an ominous building, not from the highway. As rest stops go, it could even be called a welcome sight. Sturdy and wide, it’s squat like a sumo wrestler, with brickface sprayed glossy brown in order to blend with the rest of the arid desert terrain. Its location on Interstate 15 means it should be well kept too. This is the busiest thoroughfare in the West, after all; the unassuming straight shot that links the artificial glitter of the Las Vegas valley to the natural gold of California’s rolling hills. So, given all that, how could I know that in a mere ten minutes I’d be fleeing that crouching, dust-blown building?

  That I’d be covered in blood, screaming as I run.

  It’s July 3, so the sun is a heat lamp with no off switch, the blacktop road a cast-iron griddle, and any living thing caught between the two is just meat set to singe on high. I tried to tell Daniel this. I know this swath of high desert as well as I know his profile. The Mojave’s cracked surface is as familiar to me as the dark mole tucked to the side of his right eyebrow—his only imperfection, and one I love.

  Unfortunately, a 4:00 p.m. race through the desert is the only way to both complete my twelve-hour shift at the hospital and still reach his childhood estate at Lake Arrowhead before dinner. Cocktails and hors d’oeuvres are to be served on the east patio, precisely at seven o’clock.

  I know, right?

  At least there’s still light to see by inside the rest stop’s stifling concrete shell. It’ll filter in through the open brick doorframe and allow for a mercifully quick change of clothes. I’ve made a mess of things in the car, though it could be worse.

  It will be worse.

  “Sorry,” I’d told Daniel five minutes earlier. We were speeding past a stranded Toyota emptied of occupants, its windows rolled down like it was panting in the heat. It was the third such vehicle we’d seen since escaping Vegas, and we were already clocking ’em, taking bets on how many we’d encounter before we reached the mountains. Daniel was an eternal optimist, which meant I was winning. One deserted car barely disappeared into the rearview mirror before another surfaced in the heat haze, ever shimmering, just ahead.

  Ghosts in front of us, ghosts behind.

  In contrast, Daniel’s pristine Beemer set the pace for the moving traffic, advancing with smooth and silent precision. He kept it oiled underneath, polished on top, and free of debris inside. Everything he owned and touched received the same consideration, though he wasn’t ostentatious like some of the other surgeons. Too young for a midlife crisis, yet too old to fall prey to insecurities that might otherwise drive him to flash his status, he felt no need to prove his worth. In truth, I’d never met anyone more comfortable in his own skin.

  No, Daniel simply believed in investing in quality items the first time around, both in terms of performance and aesthetics, and then he took care of those things forever. Since he’d proposed to me at the beginning of the summer, I was now implicitly included in this unspoken personal philosophy. Which made the iced coffee I’d just spilled across the luxury package leather console all the more galling.

  “You should be sorry,” Daniel finally said, and I jerked my head up fast to search his face. His eyes were on the road, but he was wearing his half-scrawled smile, the one that came out of nowhere to wallop me every time. “You are an incredible distraction.”

  He should talk, I think, smiling now too. If there was ever a man built for distraction, this was the one. That’s why, when he’d reached up to smooth back my hair, I’d removed my coffee from the center tray and held it, allowing me to lean in close. It was why, despite my tension over the long work week, the desert drive, and even what awaited me at the end of it, I’d closed my eyes and rested my head in his palm. It was why, when he’d dropped a soft kiss to my hairline, I’d slid my fingertips up the almost preternaturally soft skin of his inner arm and sighed in absolute contentment.

  He gasped right before he’d swerved.

  The car bucked, tires screeching in a fight to realign with the road, but Daniel overcorrected and the luxury machine flew into a pendulum whip. Smoke and burning rubber surged through the vents to fill the car’s cabin, turning my scream into a defensive cough. The flimsy cup lid popped in my grip, and coffee exploded over the seats, the dash, my scrubs, and I flailed for the door grip as the desert spun. An image of my Abby—lanky and freckled and gap-toothed at nine—flashed.

  Who would stroke her limbs during the nighttime growing pains?

  Who would put handwritten notes in her lunchbox?

  Who, I had just enough time to wonder, would be her mother?

  But by then, we’d come to a jolting halt on the roadside gravel bank, conveniently facing the California border. I whimpered, but finally managed to turn to Daniel. His breath rasped from his throat, louder than the air vents, and his eyes were as wide as quarters when they met mine. Still, not one dark hair on his head was out of place.

  “Shit.” He exhaled the word.

  “You all right?” I asked.

  “Yeah. You?”

  My nod came out in a betraying jerk. “Abby’s life just passed before my eyes.”

  “Not your own?”

  I wanted to tell him that it didn’t work that way. I was a mother. There was no life without Abby. I just blew out a hard breath and shook my head instead.

  Daniel reached back and plucked a box of tissues from the backseat. “Sorry. It’s all we have.”

  He tried for a smile as he handed them to me, but didn’t quite manage it. Not unflappable in the face of every emergency, then.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, which was an understatement. I was appalled. The way he felt about this car, the care he took with his things—he had not grown up the way I had, where nothing was cared for and everything was disposable. I was ever mindful of that . . . and Daniel knew it.

  “Hey,” he said, eyes going painfully soft. “I’ll have it cleaned, all right? No biggie.”

  “Let me at least change real quick,” I said, palms dripping as I reached for the door. “We’ll use my scrubs to clean all this up.”

  “No way. Not on the side of the road.” Daniel grabbed my arm. “Too dangerous.”

  His touch stilled me . . . and allowed me to finally catch my first full breath. I told myself all was well. Abby was safe back in Vegas with Maria, and we were safe again too . . . even if we still had to drive through this chaparral-studded litter box with a dash decorated in ice and an imminent detour in an already tight schedule.

  So I wiped my hands on my scrubs while Daniel waited for a break in traffic.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, accelerating and nodding at the feeder road up ahead. “We were going to have to stop before reaching Lake Arrowhead anyway.”

  Yes. One couldn’t simply mingle with the lake’s elite on the sloping Old World lawn of the Hawthorne family estate
in dirty scrubs, dahling.

  I kept this thought to myself as I plucked my wet shirt from my body and shivered in the blast of the AC. We overtook one more abandoned car, a white van tilted helplessly on the highway’s lilting shoulder, and then we were wheeling off the highway.

  “It’s closed,” I said, when an orange detour sign mushroomed into sight. The rest stop’s lot was being repaved, and the only other vehicle in sight was an orange utility truck, dust-coated and half-hidden behind a metal Dumpster bulging with debris.

  “I see that.” But this time Daniel whipped the steering wheel left and right with practiced ease. “Because I am the one who is so capably dodging these construction cones.”

  “Stud.”

  He smiled as he angled the Beemer on the diagonal over the first two parking spots, now stripped of their yellow lines. I gazed across the empty, searing lot at the ugly brown stain erected against the backdrop of struggling scrub and crusty earth. Sighing, I reached for my tote. “I’ll be fast.”

  “Hold up,” Daniel reached for his door too. “I’m coming with you.”

  “There’s no one—”

  “It’s creepy, Kris.” He gave me a look—please don’t argue—and I didn’t . . . but weren’t all open-air rest stops inherently creepy?

  Just then, a ringtone pealed through the car, pulling Daniel’s attention from me. Good. Because the very first gleeful note had my shoulders knotting up so that they almost touched my ears.

  “Green Acres.”

  Daniel thought the old TV theme song was funny, but I was willing to bet his mother would find the comparison to the aristocratic and entitled Eva Gabor less amusing if she heard it. Even if it was true.

  “Didn’t you tell her we’d call when we got close?” My voice was too sharp, and I regretted it instantly, but Daniel was busy frowning at the phone in his lap.

  “Weird,” he murmured.

  I recognized the singular focus of his gaze from our time spent together in the OR, so I gave his cheek a quick buss and pushed open the door. “I’ll be right back.”

  Sorry, he mouthed, but he was already taking the call. I didn’t answer, and I never looked back. After all, it wasn’t the last time in this long holiday weekend that Imogene Hawthorne would purposefully drag her son’s attention away from me.

  Not again.

  The heat lunges for me as soon as I slam the car door, and I fight the urge to retreat by hurrying forward instead. My footsteps scatter a rabble of cawing, inky crows, and I quickstep over the lot’s tarred potholes and cracks, black veins sprawling beneath my feet.

  However, my pace slows at the entrance to the women’s rest­room, and even with the full strength of the high desert sun bearing down on my head and shoulders, I pause to peer around the cinderblock wall before entering. The stench of the toilets smears the air in a fetid blur, and my palms begin to sweat, though that has nothing to do with the smell or the heat. Daniel thinks I overreact to dark, enclosed spaces, and he’s probably right. Then again, he’s never been trapped in one.

  I’m rarely this hesitant. A physician assistant can’t afford it. In fact, Daniel once commented that all I needed to save a life was a pocketknife and a plastic straw. This was right after we’d met, maybe my second or third assist in his OR, and though exhausted, hands still encased in crimson-hued, crusted gloves, I beamed. It was the best compliment of my life and—I can say this without conceit—it’s pretty well true.

  However, I also choose to live in a city with an electrical current so strong it can be seen from outer space. I’m twenty-seven years old and still sleep with a night-light. I can intubate a crashed airway in seconds, but can’t make it through your average horror movie. All that fumbling around in the dark, stumbling through a moonless forest, bunking down in some dilapidated cabin next to a murky lake. Are you kidding me?

  No. I am no fan of the dark.

  I hold my breath and enter the dusty tomb. At least there’s still enough light to see by, and a battered sink springs into focus when my eyes finally adjust. A single open-air vent has been cut into the wall above the sink, but the majority of light slips into the room through the doorway where I now stand, and the room elongates into a single line of four dull, steel stalls. The only noise comes from behind me; the cars speeding by on the distant highway, and the crows, who’ve resumed their raucous scuttling outside. Daniel must still be talking to his mother in the car. I am alone.

  My body temperature rockets another five degrees as I step fully inside. I move slowly, tapping open each thin door, making sure every stall is empty. Refusing to rush, I ignore the scent of human waste trapped in the air’s stifling hand. I do the same with the feeling that the walls are closing rank behind me, though less successfully, and after locking myself behind the final door, I sigh hard and pull open my bag. Then I just stare.

  A delicate white shell set sits folded atop belted linen shorts and flimsy ballerina flats. Daniel has surprised me with yet another gift. He’s also packed an outfit chosen less for the drive than for the arrival, and I sigh as I rub the creamy cashmere between my fingers. It’s beautiful, I’m grateful, but I’ll have to sit up straight for the next three hours just to keep the shorts from wrinkling.

  Rough drive, dear? I imagine Imogene saying, her face schooled into bland civility. All but her surgically pert nose, that is. That will wrinkle in delicate dismay. She always looks at me like I’m something Daniel found stuck to the bottom of his shoe.

  I push the thought of Imogene behind me, same as when Daniel’s phone rang, though this time I imagine balling up her image and tossing it into a basket for three points. I shoot and score, and by the time I pull my coffee-soaked scrubs over my head, I’m almost smiling. Then I pick up the cashmere, realize the sweater alone likely cost more than anything I’d ever buy for myself, and that brings my mother’s voice to life.

  Well, well, Miss Fancy-pants. Puttin’ on airs, wearing expensive thangs. Betcha think you’re too good for the likes of us now, don’t cha dear?

  “Good enough to know I don’t deserve bad,” I say aloud, because mere mental three-pointers won’t chase that old voice away. I toe off my sneakers and slide down my scrub pants. After another moment, I relax into the responding silence.

  That’s when a footstep scrapes across the concrete floor.

  Wearing only bra and panties, I stare at the closed stall door like I have X-ray vision. I remain deerlike in the lengthening silence for so long that I begin to think I imagined the sound.

  “Daniel?” My ears are pricked for noise. I almost forget to breathe.

  Nothing. I glance up, but no face leers at me from over the blunt wall that divides my stall from the next. Though mine is double the length of the others, I can see little of the floor leading back to the entrance. So I kick my soiled scrubs aside and reach for my shorts, hands trembling slightly as I work to fasten them. The near-accident on the road has spooked me more than I’d thought.

  “Stupid,” I mutter, and jam my feet into the silly leopard flats.

  The second footstep falls like a hammer.

  My gaze rockets back to the locked stall door, and my heels graze the rough wall behind me. Did another car approach? I didn’t hear one, but then I hadn’t been listening.

  I’m listening now.

  “Hello?”

  Another footfall scrapes against the concrete, this time followed by a steady second, and my mouth goes dry. The heels fracturing the airless room are too heavy to be a woman’s, but Daniel always wears soft-soled shoes like me.

  The next step punches the room’s middle, and my heart thuds with it. I’m still half-exposed, the flimsy sweater set clutched to my chest as if cashmere were chain mail, and I press my back against the wall, my body so erect that my toes carry my weight. They’re just footsteps, I tell myself, yet each one is precision sharp, like guns being cocked, and instinct
—experience—tells me these are footsteps with a purpose.

  I slide into the corner, ignoring the way the rough concrete scratches my back. I want to call out for Daniel, but my throat feels suddenly hollow, like the sound’s been scooped from it, and besides . . . what if he does come running? My fiancé is a brilliant surgeon, a kind man, and a thoughtful lover—but let’s face it, he’s no fighter.

  The militant march continues, and I jolt with every sharp step. I can’t unclench my jaw, though it aches. I can’t even move. All I do is cower in that dirty corner and think, Not again.

  The stall door next to mine opens with a long, slow squeal that saws down my spine and ends in a shudder. A second later a single brown work boot slides in front of my stall. It points my way like a compass, and I bend, just slightly, to see that it’s attached to navy cotton pants. Then a second boot squares up to face me.

  Not Daniel.

  My eyes burn from staring, and something rises in my throat, but before it can bloom, a new sound slivers the air. It starts slow, a gliding screech of metal upon metal that rakes from the top edge of my stall door down to the very bottom. I jump when a knife blade arrows through the door’s slat, jammed in at least six inches, all the way to the hilt. It clatters back and forth, rattling against the flimsy lock, the door shaking on its hinges, and the thing in my throat finally pushes free.

  The scream rises from me with such piercing terror that it seems to push back the encroaching walls with its force. Even the knife hesitates in its wake.

  I do not.

  Lunging, I shove my fist into one of my empty tennis shoes, then pivot to swat the blade from the side. The move lacks even an ounce of finesse, but it earns a surprised grunt from the other side of that door. The blade falls with a clatter, exactly halfway between me and those brown boots.

  Not again.

  I catch the knife beneath one expensive flat and am sliding my foot back under the door when the thick boot hammers my toes. The pain that flies through those tiny bones steals my responding cry, and my eyes water as I stumble back. Gaze blurred, I watch a black-gloved hand appear to pick up the knife.