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Time to be a saver.
Exiting the patrol car, we make our way toward the three pedestrians that are standing near the guardrail, one woman tending to a gnarly gash along her temple.
I make the rounds to check injuries and am taking statements when Kip says, “Bailey, there’s a child over here.”
I turn to the red sedan with the right end smashed up against the concrete barrier. The engine smokes as pungent fumes travel over to me, and I zone in on a little blond head whipping around in the back window. A girl.
My feet start moving.
Kip is already ripping open the back door as I glance into the driver’s seat and discover an elderly woman slumped over the steering wheel, unconscious and unmoving, while her tiny lone passenger cries in the back seat, strapped to a booster. The girl is on the passenger’s side, partially entrapped by the crumpled metal.
Pulling open the driver’s side door, I dip inside to check the woman’s vitals while the little girl wails in terror from the back seat. “Hey, hey. You’re okay.” I look back, taking in her tearstained face and bloody lip that looks like she bit right through it. “What’s your name, little princess?”
The woman has a faint pulse. I breathe out a sigh of relief while we wait for the ambulance to pull up. We’re trained not to move anyone who’s been injured in an automobile accident, so we need to wait for the medics to arrive. All we can do is keep the little girl calm and distracted.
“How about that name?” She must be only three or four. Her golden ringlets remind me of June at that age. “My name is Theo. This is Officer Kip.”
Kip has the back door open, one hand resting atop the hood, his head poking inside as he smiles at the preschooler.
She sniffles, her eyes wide and glistening with blue fear. “Anna.”
“You’re okay, Anna,” I tell her, giving her a look of reassurance through the crack in the seats. “We’re both here to help you. You’re going to be just fine.”
“Gamma fell ’seep.”
The elderly woman in the driver’s seat hasn’t moved. I force a half smile onto my face, nodding at her grandmother. “She’s just taking a little nap. Do you like naps?”
Kip adds, “I love naps.”
Anna shakes her head, tears tinged with blood. “No.”
“You will when you get to be old like us.”
I swear I see a little grin stretch onto her face. It takes me back. It takes me way back to the days of imaginary fairy tales, tree-house sleepovers, and whimsical adventures in the backyard with Brant and June beneath cloudy skies and giant mulberry trees.
Innocence.
For a minute, I can see it. I can envision June’s rose-stained cheeks and dark-blond curls as she ran as fast as her stubby little legs would allow, with me and Brant purposely trailing behind her. We’d let her think we couldn’t catch her—that she was fast and clever, mightier than us both. We’d always catch her, though. Brant would tackle her to the ground and blow raspberries onto her belly, while I’d pretend to fight off the invisible goblins and warlocks until the sun began to set behind a crimson-orange horizon.
Then we’d pass out beneath the tree house in sleeping bags and ratty old quilts, sunburned and sapped, but happier than we’d ever been before.
I miss that.
Swallowing, I shake away the memories as an ambulance sounds in the distance. Anna stares at me from her half-tipped booster, her eyes big, filled with worry. “Do you have a big brother or sister, Anna?”
“Yes. A bwuva.”
Kip’s smile is laced into his voice. “Wow, a brother, huh? I bet he takes good care of you.”
She nods.
“I’m a big brother, too. We both are. I bet he really misses you right now.”
She nods again. “He call me Anna Banana.”
I share a charmed glance with Kip, then reply, “I call my little sister Peach, so that’s—”
And then I hear it.
