LITMIR.BIZ

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Even from her mountaintop perch she saw the beginning of it, two cars climbing up the modestly steep highway leading into town, one in the front, one bringing up the rear at a safe distance.

      Nothing out of the ordinary except the deer that darted out in front of the first car then paused in the middle of the road to stare at its would-be attacker, and run safely off to the other side. All this while the first car swerved to avoid it then jammed on its brakes, sending it into a fishtail that caused it to cut in and out, from lane to lane, over the center line, then whip back to the other side. Correcting and over-correcting to right itself.

      That’s when the full realization of what she was witnessing grabbed hold and propelled her off the swing and right up to the rail of the porch for a better look. And as that horrible realization sank in deeper, and the second car jammed on its brakes to avoid the veering of the first car, her hand crept to her pocket and her fingers wrapped around her cellphone as the second car braked too hard and skidded … and skidded … and skidded …

      A sickening crunch of metal permeated the mountain air, one so hideous it caused a roost of black birds in a far-off tree to flee their sanctuary with great protest and screeching. Holding her breath, Deanna didn’t divert her eyes from the road below as her fingers slid over the phone’s smooth face. She glanced down just long enough to see the numbers to push, and pushed.

      Then, as she looked back down the side of the mountain, the second car was flipping, side over side, repeatedly hitting the pavement. Its course to the edge of the road clear, the clutching in her heart turning to a stabbing pain. “Dear God,” she murmured, as the emergency dispatcher came on.

      “This is 911, what’s your emergency?”

      “No,” Deanna cried in a strangled scream, hoping God or somebody would hear her and stop the second car’s inevitable plummet over the side of the mountain.

      “What’s your emergency?” the dispatcher asked again, followed by, “Miss Lambert, are you all right? Please, can you hear me?”

      Hearing her name snapped her back into the moment. “Yes, I’m here, and I’m watching a wreck in progress. Two cars …” She glanced left, to the semi heading down the mountain, its driver not yet able to see what was ahead. “And maybe a semi, if it doesn’t get stopped in …” Her voice trailed off as she watched the second act unfold.

      “Where, Miss Lambert?”

      Again, hearing her name from the dispatcher jolted her. “It’s a road I can see from my porch, but I don’t know its name. I’m in my cabin …”

      “Above the Clouds,” the dispatcher supplied, then asked, “South porch?”

      “Yes.”

      “Can you tell me, exactly, what kind of damage or injuries we might be looking at?”

      Massive, devastating injuries, she thought. “Yes. One of the cars has just gone through the guardrail and over the edge. And the other …” She swallowed hard. “It hit the guardrail a few times and it’s still trying to correct itself on the road … I think the truck coming from the other direction’s going to hit it.”

      Whether or not the driver of the semi saw the impending disaster ahead, or simply assumed the car careening head first at him in his lane would move over, Deanna had no idea, but the excruciating squeal of the semi’s brakes and the low wail of the truck’s horn was what snapped her totally out of the surreal watching mode and into action.

      “I know exactly where it is,” the dispatcher said, “and I’ve sent out an alarm to the volunteer fire department. They’ll be there as fast as they can.”

      How long would that be? In a study concerning rural emergency response times Deanna had conducted last year, she’d discovered that those waiting times could be fatally long—sometimes thirty minutes, up to an hour. And from what she’d just witnessed, there were people down below who needed help before that. “What about the local doctor?” she asked. “Can we call him?”

      “He’s out mending fences right now, but I’ll give his grandpa a call and see what we can do to get him there. Kelli Dawson’s my daughter, by the way. And I know this is probably not the best time to say this, but welcome to Sugar Creek, Miss Lambert.”

      She heard the cordial greeting, but it wasn’t registering because … “Oh, my … No!” The semi didn’t hit the oncoming car, as she’d thought it might, but in its attempt to do a hard brake, it jackknifed and turned over, sliding on its side along the road.

      And the car swerved right into it, hit the back end of its trailer with full-on force, bringing both the truck and the car to a stop. “More casualties,” she informed Kelli’s mother. “Two cars and one semi now. Can’t see how many people …” Wasn’t sure she wanted to see how many people.

      But after she’d clicked off from the dispatcher, curiosity got the better of her and she grabbed her binoculars, took a look. Nobody was moving. No one was trying to climb out of the carnage. No one was trying to climb up the side of the mountain from where they’d toppled off.

      And there was no one there to help. That’s what scared her the most. People down there needed help and she prayed they weren’t past the point where help mattered.

      Without a thought for anything else, Deanna grabbed her medical kit, one she carried out of habit more than necessity, and sprinted for her car. She backed it out and headed down the steep road, making sure not to speed lest she ended up like one of the cars below. At the turn-off to the highway, she slowed to let a minivan by, made a left-hand turn and headed for the crash site, hoping help would be there when she arrived.

      But the minivan was the only car present, and the woman driving it was standing outside her vehicle, torn between running to look for victims and trying to subdue three small children in the rear of the van. Her cellphone was in her hand and she was physically standing in front of the van’s door. Was she trying to block the view from her children? Deanna wondered about that as she pulled alongside the van, waved to the woman, then continued to drive into the heart of the scene.

      It’s what she would do, she realized. She would protect Emily’s baby from seeing what she herself was about to confront. She absolutely understood that mothering priority. She wasn’t sure she’d respond that way in a crisis out of a natural tendency but, looking at it from a purely practical point of view, there was no denying the minivan mom was doing what she had to do. Something Deanna hoped she would learn when she became a mom.

      As Deanna brought her car to a stop, several hundred yards short of the crash site, her cellphone jingled before she had a chance to step out. “You’re a nurse?” the deep voice practically shouted. He sounded winded.

      “I am. And who are you?”

      “Local doctor. Beau …”

      She wasn’t even going to ask how he knew who she was, that she was a nurse, her cellphone number … “Your ETA?”

      “Five minutes, tops. But without supplies. You’re on the site already?”

      How did he know that? “Just got here. Don’t know how many victims yet.”

      “OK, you go see what we’ve got and I’ll keep the line open, Miss Lambert. And please start the assessments, establish the priority if you can, figure out what I need to do first, and I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

      He knew her name, too. And trusted her to prioritize the scene? She hadn’t done that in a while. Hadn’t been in active practice for years. Maybe if she’d told him that, he wouldn’t be so trusting of her.

      Those were the thoughts that stayed with her for the next seconds as she grabbed her medical bag, switched her phone to her earpiece, and headed straight for the first car. “I’m not sure we’re cut out for small-town life,” she whispered to Emily’s baby as she went straight to the driver’s-side window of the car that had hit the semi, and looked in.

      “In case you’re listening, Doctor, I have

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