AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Okay, I need you to listen to me, Izzy. Are you listening?”
“Yes. But speak up because it’s hard to hear past the roaring in my head.”
“We’re going to make it out of here just fine. You and the baby are both good. Did you hit your head or anything when we hit the guardrail?”
“No. Why didn’t the airbag go off?”
“Good question. The station knows what happened. We were on-air. They’ve called in help by now.”
“Okay.” I lick my lips. “That makes me feel a little better. And I hear sirens. You’ve been doing this for a long time. Has this happened before?”
“I wouldn’t still be doing this if it had happened before.”
“Great.”
“You did great at cutting off the camera when it all happened.”
“I didn’t want Keegan to see it. That’s what flashed through my head; that if I died today, I didn’t want that in his head for the rest of his life.”
“We’re not dying today. Tomorrow is my wife’s forty-fifth birthday, and I have reservations at her favorite place. We’re finally empty nesters after having kids in the house for more than twenty years. I’m going to enjoy the next forty years with my wife. And you’re going to have that baby and live another eighty years yourself.”
“Right.” I take a deep breath. “Sure. Tell her I said happy birthday, by the way.”
The van slips, just a few inches, but it feels like feet. I scream.
“Okay, this isn’t fun,” Phil says.
A fire truck pulls in behind us. I see two more in my peripheral vision.
“People are here. Thank God.”
It feels like forever before I hear someone on a loudspeaker say, “Open your window.”
I do as he asks, by just barely moving my arm to press on the button. I don’t want to move too much in case it causes us to fall.
“I want you to know that you’re not going to fall. You’re hung up on the guardrail. But we have to figure out how we’re going to tow you back onto the road in this ice. It might be a while before we get you out of there. Your doors are too far over the edge. The tires are off the pavement. But I repeat, you’re not in danger of falling.”
“Thank Christ,” Phil mutters.
I reach my arm out the window and give the man a thumbs-up, then roll the window back up because it’s damn cold outside.
“All I’ve ever wanted is to do on-scene reporting for the weather. And look where that got me—hanging over the side of an overpass.”
“It doesn’t usually happen like this, you know.”
“But why is it my luck that it happened this time?”
Phil shrugs. “If it happens to us once in our careers, you got it over with in the beginning. It’ll be boring from here on out.”
“I hope you’re right because I don’t want to do this again.”
We hear and feel the team working behind us as they hitch something to the back of the van—at least that’s what I assume they’re doing. But when the fire truck starts to pull us back, the tires only spin out on the ice.
“They have to use some ice melt under their tires,” Phil mutters.
“I think I see them grabbing buckets of something,” I reply, watching in the side mirror. “I wish I could call Keegan and tell him what’s happening, but my phone is in my bag in the back. Do you have your phone?”
“It’s in the back, too,” Phil says. “We only had a half a mile to go before we planned to pull over again.”
“Yeah.” I sigh and watch in the mirror as they try again to pull us back. This time, the truck gets traction, and the metal of the van screeches as we scrape along the broken guardrail.
When we’re back on the road, I break down into tears.
Our doors are yanked open simultaneously as firefighters help us from the van.
“Are you hurt?” a woman asks, looking me over. “The airbags didn’t go off.”
“No, but I’m okay, I think. I didn’t hit my head. I’m pregnant, though. About ten weeks along.”
“We have to go to the hospital,” Phil says. “It’s company policy to go get checked out if something like this happens.”
“The ambulance is over here,” my firefighter says.
“I need my phone.”
“We’ll get it out of the van and bring it to you,” she assures me. “The ambulance is waiting.”
I’m rushed into the back of the ambulance, and I’m frustrated. I want to call Keegan. I know he must be worried out of his mind.
When we’re on the road, I look at the EMT. “Can I borrow your phone to call my boyfriend so he knows I’m okay? We were on live TV.”
“Sure. What’s the number?”
I stop and stare at him. “Uh, can you Google it? He’s at the pub. O’Callaghan’s Pub.”
He taps on his screen and then turns it to me. “This one?”
