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After finishing our chili dinner and hunkering down for the evening, an accident call came in around three in the morning.
The guys and I loaded into the engine and wagon and we were the first emergency vehicles on-site.
A tractor trailer had lost its brakes, coming down the mountain. The driver couldn’t regain control and collided head-on with an Airstream carrying a family of five to Gatlinburg for vacation.
The driver of the tractor trailer was killed instantly.
The RV ended upturned on its side and slid down the embankment, getting lodged between a line of pine trees and a rocky cliff jutting out of the side of the mountain.
I tied a rope around my waist, and Jay and Mike lowered me down to where the wreckage had landed.
I was able to make it to the side entrance and pry the door open with a crowbar I was wearing on my belt.
Inside, I found three children scattered about the mobile home. One with a severed leg, one unconscious, and the youngest—a little girl—with a gash on her head. They were all battered and bleeding, and the mother was wedged in the front captain’s chair, screaming, with a jagged piece of twisted metal protruding from her abdomen.
I instantly went to work, assessing the children’s injuries and calling instructions back up to my crew.
Jay followed me down once the second responders arrived, carrying a stretcher, and we strapped the kids in, one by one, and had them lifted to the waiting EMTs.
The mother was trapped, and by the time we could get a saw lowered for us to use to free her, the screaming had stopped, and we lost her pulse.
I’d watched as she willfully clung to life until her last child was hauled to safety before she gave up and succumbed to her injuries.
The father, who had been driving the vehicle, was in critical condition and rushed to the same hospital as his family. The EMTs made the decision not to tell him of his wife’s status until they reached the facility.
It was a rough night.
Susanna comes bounding into the bathroom while I’m hunched over the sink before I can step into the spray.
“I have a surprise for you,” she sings.
I lift my eyes and meet hers in the mirror.
The smile falls from her lips, and her brow furrows.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
“It was a bad night. There was an accident on Interstate 81. Two lives were lost. Several with life-threatening injuries. Three of them were kids,” I explain.
She gasps and comes up on her tiptoes to kiss the back of my shoulder. “That sucks. Sorry you had to see that,” she says.
I nod. “Me too.”
“I bet I have something that will cheer you up,” she continues.
I turn to face her, and she stands before me in a pink silk robe. She slowly undoes the tie at her waist and lets the sides of the robe fall apart. Underneath, she is wearing a tiny pink lace nightie.
She grins. “You like?”
I reach out and run a hand down her side.
“You wanted me to buy something sexy and lacy,” she purrs.
I don’t say anything. I just look at her. She’s beautiful. Her long soft-brown hair is loose around her shoulders, and her lips are a matte pink. On her feet are a pair of stiletto marabou slippers with white feathers.
It’s obvious she put time into getting ready for me.
Any other night, and I would have had her hiked up on the sink before she could get the robe undone, but not tonight.
