Beyond Sedona

by Lucia Ashta

  They didn’t.

  The passing driver’s intervention worked. She kept sounding the horn, and the drivers of the trucks, concealed behind tinted windows, hesitated.

  Thirty long seconds passed in which the trucks could still barrel at Lena and Paolo. They could still kill them.

  Lena’s breathing was labored and raspy in her unconscious state. Her breaths were too shallow, insufficiently nourishing. The human brain can’t survive long without enough oxygen.

  Paolo lay unmoving. His head, while repaired, was fragile. Even a slight impact would be sufficient to knock the angel’s repair loose.

  But the other car’s horn was loud and persistent. It was bound to draw onlookers eventually.

  Finally, after long, drawn-out seconds of deliberation that held the lives of at least two people in their balance, the drivers of the two trucks retreated. They reversed with screeching tires and made some quick, hasty maneuvers to free themselves of the roundabout. Once they both faced in the same direction, they ran over the curves of the roundabout, and sped off down Highway 179 heading toward the intersection with Highway 89A.

  The sounds of the trucks faded quickly. Then their headlights went out, and the vehicles disappeared into the darkness of night.

  Silence descended upon the scene like a cozy blanket, as if it could easily erase the ugliness of the scene.

  Even with the angels’ help, that wouldn’t be so easy.

  Chapter 2

  The driver of the passing car continued to blare her horn until police arrived. She’d called 911 soon after the trucks initiated their attack on Lena and Paolo. Honking her horn hadn’t been as much to call help to them but to interrupt the attack.

  When two squad cars showed up, red and blue swirling lights and sirens pierced the night. The moment the two officers stepped out of their cars, the woman— at first glance, no more than a happenstance bystander—gave abrupt orders.

  “Call dispatch right now and have them send ambulances immediately. The car has two passengers, and both are gravely injured.”

  The two officers stared. They were used to being the ones to give the orders.

  “Do it. Now. They’ll die otherwise.”

  One of the officers, a big, burly man, raised an eyebrow at her. But the other sandy-haired one clicked a radio on and spoke into it. “We have a car crash at the intersection of Chapel and 179. Requesting immediate paramedic response. Two seriously injured.”

  “Copy that,” came a woman’s crackling voice over the radio.

  “Now ask them to mobilize a medevac crew. They’ll need to be cut out of the car and transported to Phoenix for immediate surgery.”

  The officer clicked his radio back on. “Medevac crew needed. The two passengers will need to be flown out of here.”

  The burly officer, legs spread apart, hands on hips, glared at the woman. Then he moved to his squad car, removed a heavy standard-issue flashlight, and started walking over to the remains of the sports car.

  The blond officer’s radio crackled to life. “Ambulances on their way. Medevac crew alerted.” He nodded at the bystander.

  “Thank you. Two oversized, dark-colored four-wheel drive vehicles attacked the car from front and back. I showed up after they’d already rammed the sports car once. They fled the scene when I started honking my horn. They headed that way.” She pointed.

  “I don’t suppose you got their plate numbers?”

  “Unfortunately, I didn’t.” She left her car where it was, idling in the middle of the road, and went to join Officer Burly, who was shining his flashlight inside the car.

  Officer Blond spoke into his radio again. “APB on two oversized, dark-colored vehicles, heading north on 179, nearing Tlaquepaque when last seen. Attack, hit and run. Cars should show damage on their front bumpers.”

  “APB on two oversized vehicles involved in a hit and run. Copy that.”

  The bystander was within steps of the sports car when she faltered. There was too much blood, broken metal and glass, and floppy limbs.

  Officer Burly was feeling for Lena’s pulse. The blond officer was circling the car, giving it a wide berth to avoid crunching over broken glass, to do the same to Paolo.

  Shewww, Officer Burly whistled. “She’s lucky, man. I didn’t think she’d be alive. But she has a pulse. It’s weak and erratic, but it’s there.”

  “He’s alive too,” Officer Blond said. “Barely.”

  This conversation was between the two officers, the ones who’d seen plenty of things they wished they hadn’t, even in a small town like Sedona.

  “It’s an ugly crash,” Officer Burly said. “I’m surprised they made it.”

  “So far.”

  “Yeah, so far. If those ambulances don’t get here soon, she might not make it. She’s having trouble breathing.”

  “This guy looks like he has serious head trauma.” Officer Blond spoke into his radio again. “Update on those ambulances?”

  Static, then, “ETA is two minutes. They’re close.”

  “I can’t believe they’ve survived this,” Officer Blond was saying. “There’s barely even room for a driver and passenger in here.”

  Lena and Paolo looked like gruesome, overgrown fetuses, scrunched up and curled in on themselves in a space that was too small for them.

  Nobody said anything else until the ambulances arrived. Even Officer Burly’s face grew grave.

  The threat of death and the fragility of life hung heavy in the still air of the night. Like a cloying bad odor that leaves its mark, violence clung to the otherwise peaceful landscape, a seeming incongruity against the beauty of the moonlit mountains that surrounded them.

  The bystander paced, fidgeting nervously. Even without reaching in to touch Lena or Paolo’s unconscious forms, it was clear that they hung onto their lives by a thin thread. Minutes counted. Even seconds did.

  The tension in her shoulders didn’t abate in the least prior to the steady sound of approaching sirens. The sirens blared in her ears until the paramedics shut them off when they reached the scene. The lights of the ambulances merged with the flashing lights of the cruisers, casting a bizarre strobe-light tint over the morbid scene. It was like a disco with its bright, colored lights, only there was none of the lightheartedness.

  The paramedics didn’t have to look inside the sports car to know its passengers were in peril. They jumped out of the ambulances, hitting the ground at a jog, and didn’t stop moving until they loaded the bodies onto the medevac chopper.

  Right away, two of them set about cutting the car open like a tin can to get Lena and Paolo out without causing them further damage. The other two paramedics tended to their patients as best they could, debating whether it was possible to intubate Lena before they removed her from the car. Her lungs were collapsing, they said in clipped, urgent tones. They needed to brace Paolo’s neck before they could pull him out of the wreckage, they said.

  The conversation was just for the paramedics, and they spoke in abbreviated language only they could understand fully. They worked fast, aware that every second that ticked by was one that could bring the passing of either of the passengers.

  It was a delicate process, but they managed to cut the car open and extricate Lena and Paolo. The four paramedics ran back and forth from the ambulance until they had both of them strapped onto transport gurneys, with neck braces, and IVs. They managed to intubate Lena, and a paramedic trailed her wherever they moved her, manually inflating her lungs with a squeeze of a pump.

  While the paramedics were busy, and the two first-responding officers attempted to assist them where they could, several more squad cars arrived, rerouting the minimal traffic that drove down Sedona’s roads after dark.

  Colored lights twirled everywhere. It was impossible to miss the fact that something terrible had happened here.

  The medevac chopper arrived and set down in the middle of the road. A paramedic in kaki green hopped out and ran toward the gurneys. The emergency crews ex
changed words no one else could hear over the sound of the whirring blades above them. A paramedic in navy blue handed over papers from a clipboard. The one in kaki tucked them under her arm.

  She joined three ground-team paramedics. They each took one end of a gurney and moved toward the chopper. The paramedic artificially pumping oxygen through Lena’s lungs paced them, hopping into the chopper to continue until the medevac team could take over.

  When he jumped out of the chopper, it took off immediately after, giving the man in blue just enough time to get out of the way. The helicopter lifted higher into the sky and pointed toward Phoenix, where the medical facilities were more sophisticated than in a small town like Sedona. Where doctors would do what they could to save Lena and Paolo’s lives, unaware that a team of angels had already done things far greater than any they could do.

  The bystander watched until the helicopter lights faded to specks in the sky. Then she got in her car and wove her way through the roadblock. When a policeman stopped her, she told him she’d already given all the necessary information to the first officers to arrive. In the chaos and confusion of the remains of the wreckage, he waved her on through.

  She, too, disappeared into the night. And no one had even gotten her name.

  You can continue the story in Beyond Prophecy. Thanks for reading!