by Susan Wiggs
But there was no one to rescue her now. She was drowning in unspeakable pain, screaming pain, and the Jeep simply wouldn’t stop rolling, kicking up a storm of caliche dust and tumbleweeds. Lila heard screaming and crying and oh God oh shit from the others—from Heath, from Kathy who was so scared and from Dig who thought all of life was such a joke. Someone flew out of the car—she couldn’t tell who—and bounced like a rubber ball and disappeared. A lifetime flashed by before the Jeep finally shuddered to a stop like a dying dinosaur. Pain and fear and prayers pulsed with the music from the stereo, which played on as though nothing had happened.
The song ended and the DJ gave a rundown of the weather at the top of the hour. Lila wondered what hour. Thoughts drifted past and swam away from her like little colorful fish in an aquarium. She heard crying unlike anything she’d ever heard before. A thin, keening wail, not quite human. The sound of a creature in unspeakable agony, begging to be released from its misery. Her eyes were full of dust and grit, crushed glass and blood.
A beer commercial burbled from the radio: Here’s to good friends…make it a Michelob moment… She smelled piss and shit and wondered if it was her and sort of hoped it was, because at least that would mean she was alive.
Lone Star Ford puts you in the driver’s seat…
Move. She had to move somehow. She realized then that she was upside-down, hanging, held in place by the seat belt cutting into her. She swiveled her head, and pain burned like wildfire. The milk-white moon threw streams of light through the spiderweb cracks of the passenger-side window. The glove box hung open, having disgorged its contents, and a small lightbulb glowed within.
Heath. She couldn’t see his face. It was turned from her, and his shoulder was jammed against the steering wheel. His silky blond hair looked like liquid gold. His hand hung limp and was flecked with dark spots. Blood.
Lila shut her eyes. Why was I mean to Scottie? Rude to Dad? Why didn’t I keep my room clean? Please God, I’ll do all those things, I’ll be perfect if you just make this not be happening.
“I’m scared…” The tiny whisper came from somewhere else in the car.
The engine was still running and Lila could smell gasoline and exhaust. A clatter rattled through her head—the chattering of her own teeth. She tipped back her chin, feeling excruciating pain as she tried to make out the others in the back seat. Slitting open her eyes, she caught a glimpse of Kathy, who stared straight ahead without seeing and kept whispering, “I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared.”
Someone else spoke. She wasn’t sure who, but it came out as a distant, monotonous chant. “Please God please God please God…” A truncated plea from someone whose skill at praying was rusty.
She heard a distinct dripping sound and twisted to look, defying the screaming agony in her shoulder. Bodies lay strewn outside the car, but some were still strapped in. The back seat was a tangle of arms, legs, crushed beer cans, rumpled clothing, patches of dark, slick wetness she couldn’t identify. She could see one face clearly. It was Dig, who’d given up his seat belt. His face shone like the moon, pale and round and distant and mysterious. His eyes were shut. A viscous black ribbon trickled from the corner of his mouth, another from his ear.
The clatter started up again inside Lila’s head, only faster, harder. And through the steady rattle of her teeth, she managed to make a noise, sending through her pain and terror the only word that made sense to her, the only thought she had:
“Mommy.”
CHAPTER 7
Even before she answered the phone, Luz knew. It was the phone call every mother fears with the special dread reserved for people whose entire world is made of love for others. The call that signals her life has changed while she was sleeping.
She came instantly awake, grabbing the phone in the middle of the second ring. Adrenaline flushed all the grogginess from her by the time she had the receiver in hand. She mentally flipped through the gallery of possible horrors. Ian’s plane had crashed. Mom had had a heart attack. Jessie… That had to be it. Simon was calling to grovel, and had no idea what time it was in the States. At least it was a school night, and the kids were safe in bed.
As she clicked on the phone, she glanced at the clock. The blood-red digits read 1:36 a.m.
“Hello?”
“Is this the parent of Lila Benning?”
Everything inside her turned to ice. “Yes,” she said in a deceptively clear, calm voice. “This is Lucinda Benning.” She almost never used her hated given name, but then again, she’d never had a phone call in the middle of the night.
“Ma’am, this is Peggy Moran. I’m a nurse at Hillcrest Hospital. Your daughter has been brought in…”
“Not my daughter. She’s asleep in her room.”
“…level two Trauma Center…”
Luz’s mind seized on the information even as she burst into motion, tucking the cordless receiver between her shoulder and chin, bounding out of bed, throwing on clothes. “I don’t understand. Lila’s in bed.”
“Ma’am, there was a motor vehicle accident involving a group of teenagers…”
“A group of…then there must be some mistake.” Dizzying relief flowed through her like a drug. “It’s a school night. She’s here at home.” Clutching the phone, she rushed into Lila’s room, just in case. In case the nurse was wrong. In case Lila was actually safe and sound in her bed and this was all a horrible nightmare. But no. The room was messy, but unoccupied.
“Ma’am, I’m afraid she’s here. We ID’ed her from the learner’s permit in her pocket.”
The relief dried up, blew away like a child’s lost balloon. Luz grabbed her purse from the doorknob as she passed. “Is she conscious? Can I talk to her?”
“She’s in the radiology suite now.”
“Is she—” Luz couldn’t draw the words from the well of horror inside her. “I’m on my way. You understand, I’m forty miles from you. Do you need some sort of permission for treatment or surgery or—” She paused, reeling against the stair rail. She couldn’t believe she was saying these things.
“It’s too early to say for certain, ma’am.” The nurse couldn’t give her any more information, so Luz hung up.
What to do? What to do? She needed to get on the road. Now.
For the first time in her life, Luz wished for a cellular phone. Ian had one for work, but Luz had never cared for them, electronic umbilical cords that made it impossible to hide, even when you wanted to. Now she would give anything for one. She wanted to be able to drive down the road and tell Ian what was going on as she hurtled through the night toward her daughter. Instead, helplessly pacing the floor, she had to call the Huntsville TraveLodge, where he stayed when one of his clients was down to the wire.
Other attorneys’ wives had warned her for years, Never call your husband in the middle of the night when he’s away on a case. Death-row lawyers typically had any number of eager interns at their beck and call, and the ones with Ian’s looks had plenty of becking and calling options. Interns tended to be young, earnest, idealistic, dedicated…and horny. All this flashed through her mind as a hotel operator took forever to pick up, then ring Ian’s room.
“Ma’am, there’s no answer. Would you like to leave a message?”
While she let the dog into the house, she spoke the unspeakable and left the name of the hospital. She rang off and alerted his pager. Then she tried his cell phone. He didn’t answer, so she left the same message on his voice mail. Damn you, Ian. Where the hell are you?
She refused to think about that—about anything—except getting to Lila. Upstairs, she paused outside the boys’ room, opening the door a crack to assure herself of what she already knew—they were fast asleep. The sound of their breathing, the smell of their sleeping bodies, filled her.
Jessie, she thought. Thank God she was here. She could look after the boys. Then Luz hesitated. Jessie didn’t have the first idea how to get a gang of boys off to school. She would have to take it on faith that her
sister could figure things out. The boys knew the routine.
Luz went outside, flung her giant purse into the car and started the engine. Leaving it idling, she made her way to Jessie’s cabin, nearly tripping several times in the dark. “Jessie,” she said, knocking at the door. “Jess, wake up.” She pushed the door open to find her sister emerging from the bedroom, blinking in sleepy confusion.
“I’m sorry to wake you but something’s happened,” said Luz.
The sleepiness sharpened to concern. “What?”
“There was a car wreck. Lila’s at the hospital. I need to get there right away.”
Jessie’s face turned pale. “Lila!”
“They just called. Hillcrest Hospital. I’ve already left word for Ian, and I’m on my way there now.”
“Jesus. I can’t believe this is happening.” Jessie’s voice shook, and she clutched at the door frame. “A car wreck? But that can’t be. She—”
“Look, Jess, the boys are still sound asleep in the house. I let Beaver in. Can you go over and stay with them?” Luz realized her mind was jumping around, out of control. She was having trouble focusing. “And if I’m not home soon, can you get them up around seven and give them some breakfast? The school bus picks up Owen and Wyatt at the top of the hill at seven forty-five. Would you—”
“Go, for heaven’s sake.” With uncharacteristic bossiness, Jessie took charge. “Call me the second you know something.” Jessie gave her a hug, then pushed her toward the door. “I’ll take care of things.”
Jessie’s words rang in Luz’s mind as she drove at a rampantly illegal speed, exerting a cold and perfect control over the car. She felt nothing during the endless drive. The mysterious yellow eyes of nocturnal creatures flashed now and then, and she knew she’d neither slow down nor swerve for the occasional deer or armadillo. It was as though she had given her mind a shot of novocaine, numbing herself to the soul-shredding terror that would seize her as soon as the body’s natural anesthetic wore off.
She parked crooked at the hospital in a space marked Visitor. What else would there be at a hospital—a permanent resident? Then she rushed toward the main entrance under a grand porte cochere that made the hospital look incongruously like a five-star hotel.
Except for the ambulance bay on one side. Luz didn’t permit herself to look, because if she did, she would be forced to imagine her daughter there, mummified in a cervical collar, backboard and fireproof blanket. Helpless, needing her mother.
The automatic doors swished open to a semicircular foyer swarming with people—highway patrolmen, EMS workers, hospital personnel in Easter-egg-colored scrubs. Women weeping in their husbands’ arms, older people patting the hands of younger women, bewildered kids milling around in pajamas, everyone half-dressed and unkempt. Bad news left no time for good grooming, even in Texas.
As she jostled through the crowd toward a horseshoe-shaped reception counter, Luz recognized Kathy’s parents and Heath Walker’s mother and stepfather. She couldn’t recall their names. When had she stopped knowing the parents of Lila’s friends? They used to be the women she would sit with by the lake while their kids played in the shallows; the families they would invite over for barbecue and volleyball on Sunday afternoons. Parents used to stand on the sidelines during swim meets and soccer games, cheering each other’s kids on. But as the kids got older, the parents drifted apart, needing each other less. Now they were simply people she nodded to politely at PTA meetings or church.
She leaned across the counter, which was littered with papers and charts, little containers of cheap plastic pens and paperclips. “Lila Jane Benning. I’m her mother.”
“Yes, ma’am.” A harried-looking receptionist clicked the keys of her computer. “Let’s see. She’s out of the Resuscitation Bay. They’ve moved her to exam room four. She’s stable. You can go see her. I’ll get an orderly to take you back, and—”
Luz didn’t wait for the orderly but simply took off, passing a room labeled Trauma. With a swift glance, she saw doctors, nurses and technicians clustered around a draped gurney, their gowns spattered like butchers’ aprons, the floor littered with bloody gauze and crumpled blue-and-white packaging. A branch off the main hall bore the ominous designation of Resuscitation Area. Hurrying past that, she found her way to a large oblong room surrounded by walls of wire mesh glass. Four beds were set up, all occupied and surrounded by a forest of rolling trays laden with instruments, IV poles hung with bags of some mysterious elixir, monitors punctuating all the activity with electrical blips. She spied her daughter immediately, an unmoving, supine figure shrouded in sheets, a limp curtain obscuring the upper half of her body. Only one slender hand showed, two of its fingers connected to some sort of monitor with clear clothespins and white Velcro. Luz knew that hand. Small and neat, like her own. Lila’s eyes were closed, her face pale but unmarked, an alien-looking oxygen mask covering her nose and mouth.
“Lila,” she said, rushing to the bedside. All of a sudden she was trembling, melting inside. The nurse said she’s stable, Luz reminded herself, then said, “Baby, I’m here.”
For a minute, it was just like when Lila was born, a tiny organism in an isolette, too fragile to touch. Luz remembered pressing her whole body over that clear cylinder, embracing it, praying, Live, please live for me….
She forced herself to stop shaking and held her daughter’s hand, studying its wholeness and perfection as she thought about that newborn trapped in a nest of tubes in the NICU. Her tiny hands had been so transparent that every vein showed through, and sometimes Luz imagined she could see the blood flowing along the delicate vessels. So strange and beautiful, the nails clear ovals.
This was some sort of punishment, Luz thought with a sick lurch of her gut. Perhaps this was the retribution she had awaited with secret dread since the day Lila was born.
She had taken her sister’s child. Never mind that it had been for all the right reasons and that Jessie had begged her to adopt the baby. Luz had always felt undeserving of such a gift and unequal to being the mother of someone so helpless and perfect and so close to death she was practically an angel already.
But Lila had survived. And thrived. Yet now Luz had almost lost her again.
She’s stable. Luz wasn’t sure what that meant. She caressed her daughter’s head in a soothing, instinctive gesture. She felt dirt and grit, and something stiff and sticky in Lila’s hair. She stank of vomit and blood and gasoline, offensive smells on this child, Luz’s fussy little girl, who insisted on making special trips to the drugstore for vanilla-scented deodorant and antiseptic shower gel.
“Lila, can you hear me?”
“Mommy.” The whisper was as thin and faint and sweet as birdsong.
Luz stiffened against a new wave of trembling, this one instigated by relief. “Baby, you’re going to be all right. I’m here now.”
Lila didn’t open her eyes. Though she lay motionless, she seemed to drift a little, to withdraw.
“Sweetie—”
“You must be Mrs. Benning.” A young man with a subtle accent and dusky skin greeted her. He wore a white lab coat over spotless scrubs, a tag hanging from his pocket identifying him as Roland Martinez. His manner was brisk and competent, his smile a flash of professionalism designed to reassure. “That red hair must be a family trait.”
As he flipped open a chart, Luz felt a beat of panic. Dear God. What if they’d done some sort of test that showed Lila was not her biological daughter? Now was not the time to have to explain things to Lila. “What happened?” she asked.
“Your daughter was in a multiple-victim car accident along with five other young people. Lila was extremely lucky. Extremely,” he repeated. “She was wearing her seat belt and suffered only minor injuries.”
Reading from the legal-sized aluminum-backed chart, he said, “Dr. Raman, the trauma resident, admitted her. She was evaluated in one of the trauma bays and sent to radiology for X rays and a CT scan. There was no evidence of internal injuries. Nothing wa
s broken.” He gestured at a set of films. Lila’s bones were fragile white ghosts backlit by the glowing box on the wall.
“She has a small laceration on one leg, a contusion on her shoulder from the seat belt, a few minor scratches from broken glass. You’ll want to follow up with a visit to your family doctor, but the conclusion here is that she’s your miracle girl, walking away from a wreck like that.”
“Is that blood in her hair?”
“From one of the other victims.” Dr. Martinez spoke very quietly, holding Luz’s gaze with his. She didn’t let herself ask about the other kids. Not yet.
“Why is she so out of it? Is she in shock?”
“Her blood alcohol level is 1.2, Mrs. Benning.”
Luz breathed fast, staving off a new wave of panic. Drunk. Lila had been out drinking. Dear God, why hadn’t she known? What sort of mother was she?
“Can you tell me how this happened?”
Dr. Martinez settled back on a wheeled stool and tucked the clipboard under his arm. “Mrs. Benning, do you know what hill-hopping is?”
“No.”
“It’s also called ramping and launching.”
Numb, she shook her head.
“It’s the latest craze in joyriding. The kids pile into a car or SUV and launch themselves at high speeds off the tops of hills. Like in the movies. Only what these kids don’t understand is that professional stunts are completely different from launching. According to the preliminary DPS report, the Jeep went eighty feet through the air, then rolled another forty yards on impact. Lila was in the front passenger seat, still strapped in when the EMS arrived.”
“I thought she was in bed, asleep.” Luz shut her eyes, but quickly opened them again, forcing herself to look at her daughter. “Why would you do that, Lila?” she asked in an agonized whisper. “Why would you do such a crazy thing?”