“There are fractures. Pelvis, arm. They’re worried about his brain.”
Caleb looked toward the door. “Did they say how worried?”
“No.”
“That’s probably because they don’t know yet.”
“I need them to know.”
“I know.”
A television mounted in the waiting room showed footage of the accident.
I saw the van before I understood what I was seeing.
Its rear wheels hung above a ravine, caught against broken guardrail posts. The front half was crushed beneath a tangle of bent steel pipe. Firefighters in red helmets moved around it. A helicopter stood on the closed road.
The news banner called it a miraculous rescue.
Caleb stepped in front of the screen.
“Turn that off,” he snapped at the receptionist.
She reached for the remote.
I could not stop looking at the place where the driver’s side should have been.
“Noah was in there,” I said.
Caleb crouched in front of me. “Don’t.”
“He was inside that.”
“He got out.”
“They cut him out.”
“And they got him to the hospital.”
I had kissed him that morning.
I could feel the shape of his mouth if I concentrated.
I had watched him drive into the rain and thought about insurance paperwork, inventory, the vessel scheduled for haul-out on Thursday.
I had not followed him.
I had not called sooner.
“You couldn’t have stopped it,” Caleb said.
I hadn’t realized I was speaking aloud.
“I sent him that way.”
“You sent him away from the flood.”
“If I’d let him take the highway—”
