Accident (6 page)

“What have we got?” The highway patrolman glanced in first, and shook his head when he looked at Phillip.

“He's gone,” the doctor was quick to explain, and the first of the paramedics confirmed it. Over. One life. Finished in a single moment. No matter how young he had been, or how bright, or how kind, or how much his parents loved him. He was dead, with no reason, no plan, no purpose. Phillip Chapman was dead at seventeen, on a balmy Saturday night in April.

“We can't get any of the doors open,” the doctor explained, “the girl in the backseat is trapped, I think she's got some pretty severe injuries to her lower extremities. He's okay.” He motioned to Jamie still staring at them in confusion. “He's in shock, and we need to get him to the hospital right away to check him out. But I think he's probably going to be all right. Maybe a concussion.”

The paramedics had reached in to touch A1lyson by then, as the firemen ran to call for the Jaws of Life and a five-man team to free them. “What about the girl in the front seat, Doc?”

“She doesn't look like she's going to make it.” He had continued to check her pulse, she was still alive, but she was losing ground rapidly, and until the heavy equipment came, there was nothing they could do to free her. The paramedics were moving quickly to start an IV on her anyway, and one of them gently strapped a small sandbag under her head to keep her from damaging it further. “She's got an obvious head injury,” the doctor exclaimed, “and God knows what else in there.” She was totally engulfed by the mass of steel, most of her body was inaccessible to them, and all of it looked as though it might be broken. More than ever, it seemed unlikely that she would make it.

Chloe began screaming more alarmingly just then, and it was difficult to know if she had listened to what they said about her friends, or was simply in more pain. It was impossible to reason with her. Most of the time, she seemed completely oblivious to where she was, she just kept screaming about her legs, and she said her back hurt. As awful as it was, the medical team thought it was encouraging that she still had feeling. Too many of the accidents they saw involved people who seemed to experience almost no pain, mostly because their spinal cords had been severed.

“Okay, sweetheart, we're gonna get you out of here in a minute. You just hang on. We're gonna get you home in just a little minute.” The fireman almost crooned to her, as the highway patrol managed to pry Phillip's door open with a crowbar, while carefully opening the broken window with a blanket. They pulled his body gently from the car, and one of the firemen assisted in putting his body on a gurney. They covered him immediately with a drape, and rolled his body slowly toward the ambulance. Shocked motorists looked on, and some people cried as they realized he had been killed in the car crash. Shocked tears of grief for a total stranger.

The open door allowed the doctor to slip in next to Allyson, and get a better fix on her condition, but it wasn't good. She was breathing even more irregularly by then, and the paramedics quickly put an airway through her mouth, and then attached a bag to it with an oxygen tube extending from it. The doctor knew they were “bagging,” as it was called, to help her breathe, and he knew, as they did, that the IV and the oxygen could only help her. Her arms were too lacerated to even allow them to get a blood pressure cuff on her, but the doctor didn't need it. He could see what was happening to her. She was dying in their hands, and if they didn't free her soon, she would be gone just like Phillip. She might not make it anyway, but even covered with blood, it was easy to see how young she was, and he wanted her to make it.

“Come on, little girl …come on …don't you quit on me now …” It almost sounded like praying, as he turned and snapped at the paramedic. “Come on, more oxygen.” They all watched tensely as the paramedics gave it to her and a moment later they added something to her IV. But they were clutching at straws, and they all knew it. If they didn't get her to the hospital soon, she just wasn't going to make it.

And then, finally, the Jaws of Life rumbled up, and the five-man crew leapt out and came running. They assessed the situation within milliseconds, had a brief consultation with the people on the scene, and then moved swiftly into action.

Chloe was starting to lose consciousness by then, and one of the firemen was giving her oxygen through the open window. It was Allyson who had to be freed first, Allyson who was almost dead, who had no hope at all unless they could pry her from the car in minutes, maybe seconds. No matter how great Chloe's distress, she had to wait. She was not in as great danger. And they couldn't move her anyway until the front seat was removed, and Allyson with it.

While one man stabilized the vehicle with wedges and chocks so that nothing more would move, a second man on the team deflated the tires, and two others moved with lightning speed to remove the remaining glass from all the windows. The fifth conferred with the patrolmen and paramedics on the scene, and then rapidly joined his partner, to help remove the rear window. The young people within had all gently been covered by tarps, so that no random piece of falling glass would hurt them. The windshield took two of them to remove, with one man using a flathead ax around the edges. Eventually, the windshield came away, and they actually folded it almost like a blanket. They slid it swiftly under the car with practiced hands, moving like a highly practiced ballet team. Two others removed the rear window. Only slightly more than a minute had passed since they'd arrived on the scene, and the doctor watched them, thinking that if Allyson survived at all it would be thanks to them and their speedy, almost surgical reactions.

With a tarp still covering Allyson, one of the rescuers moved inside, removed the keys and cut the seat belts. And then, as one group, they began flapping the roof, using a hydraulic cutter, and hand hacksaws. The noise was terrifying, and Jamie whimpered piteously, as Chloe began to scream again. But Allyson never stirred, and the paramedics continued pumping oxygen into her through the air tube.

Within moments, they pulled the roof off the car, drilled a hole in the door, and inserted the Jaws of Life in the door to force it open. The machine itself weighed close to a hundred pounds and took two men to hold, and made a sound as loud as a jackhammer. Jamie was crying openly by now, and the noise of the spreader was so intense that it even drowned out Chloe's screaming. Only Allyson was oblivious to all they were going through, and one of the paramedics was lying next to her on the driver's side, keeping track of the IV and her air tube, and making sure she was still breathing. She was, but barely.

They removed the door entirely, and then moved swiftly to work pulling away the dashboard and the steering. They used nine-foot chains and a giant hook to pull it away, and before it was even fully freed, the paramedics had slipped a backboard under Allyson to immobilize her further. But as they did, the entire car was open to the night air, the front end gone, the roof open, the doors off, and Allyson could finally be moved now. And they could see, as the paramedics bent over her, how acute her wounds were. She looked as though she'd received blows at the front of her head, and the side as well. Her head must have bounced around like a marble when the car hit her. And her seat belt had been so loose, it was almost as though she hadn't worn one.

But all their manpower was concentrated now on moving her, ever so gently, to the gurney. Speed was of the essence, and yet every movement had to be infinitely delicate and carefully planned, or they might do her further cervical or spinal damage. She was barely clinging to life as the head of the paramedic team shouted “Go!” and they ran as smoothly as they could to the waiting ambulance with the gurney. Two more ambulances had arrived on the scene by then, and the newly arrived paramedics turned their attention to Chloe and Jamie. It was exactly midnight as the ambulance sped off the bridge with Phillip's body, Allyson, and the young doctor. One of the highway patrolmen had said he'd bring his car to Marin General to him. The doctor didn't feel comfortable letting her go to the hospital with only the paramedics, although he felt that what he could do for her was minimal. She needed a neurosurgeon immediately, but he wanted to be there in the meantime. He still didn't think she'd live. But she might. And if there was any chance at all, he wanted to help her.

More patrol cars had arrived by then, a fourth ambulance and two more fire trucks. The traffic was still moving single file into Marin, and the bridge was still closed from Marin County into San Francisco, and the traffic looked as though it was backed up to forever.

“How is she?” one of the firemen asked, referring to Chloe, as the paramedics waited for the rescue team to free her. She was bleeding profusely from both legs and hysterical. They had an IV going on her by then and she had fainted several times when they tried to move her.

“She's in and out of consciousness,” one of the paramedics explained. “We'll have her out in a minute.” They had to rip away the seat in order to get her, and it was blocked in from every angle. The machines they used literally tore it to shreds, and disposed of it on the pavement, and ten minutes later, Chloe's legs were exposed, crushed, broken, she had compound fractures of both legs, with the bones protruding. And as they lifted her from the car as carefully as they could, on a backboard, she finally lost consciousness completely.

The second ambulance sped off with its sirens screaming in the night, just as the firemen helped Jamie from the car. He was free now, and as they pulled him out of it, he sobbed and clung to the firemen like a small child in total panic.

“It's all right, son …it's all right …” He had seen a lot, and he was still confused and dazed. He still couldn't understand what had happened. They put him gently in the last ambulance, and he was taken to Marin General like the others, just as the news truck arrived. They were late getting to the scene this time, but the bridge had been blocked solid.

“Christ, I hate nights like this,” one fireman said to another. “Makes you never want to let your kids out of the house again, doesn't it?” They both shook their heads, as the extraction team continued to attempt to untangle the mass of steel sufficiently so that both cars could be towed off the bridge, as the TV cameraman filmed it.

They were all amazed that the Mercedes had been so completely destroyed. But it was old and it must have collided with the Lincoln at an odd angle. If it hadn't been a Mercedes, of whatever age, they would probably all have been dead, and not just Phillip.

The other driver was still sitting dazed by the roadside by then, leaning on a stranger. She was wearing a black dress and white coat. And she looked disheveled, but there were no bloodstains on her. Even the white coat was still clean, which seemed incredible, given the condition of the young people in the Mercedes.

“Isn't she going to the hospital?” one of the firemen asked a highway patrolman.

“She says she's okay. There are no apparent injuries. She was damn lucky. But she's pretty shook up. She feels terrible about the boy. We're going to run her home in a minute.”

The fireman nodded, glancing at her. She was an attractive, expensively dressed woman in her early forties. Two women were still standing next to her, and someone had brought her some bottled water. She was crying softly into a handkerchief and shaking her head, unable to believe what had happened.

“Any idea what did happen?” a reporter asked a fireman, but he only shrugged in answer. He had no fondness for the media, or their ghoulish interest in other people's disasters. It was clear enough what had happened here. A life had been lost, maybe two by then, if Allyson hadn't made it. What did they want to know? Why? How? What did it really matter? The results were unalterable, no matter whose fault the accident had been.

“We're still not sure,” the fireman said non-committally, and then a few minutes later to one of his colleagues, “It looks like they both may have drifted over the center line just enough to create a disaster.” One of the highway patrolmen had just explained it to him. “You look away for a minute …She was further over the line than they were in the end, but she says she wasn't. And there's no reason to disbelieve her. She's Laura Hutchinson,” he said, sounding impressed, as the second fireman raised his eyebrows.

“As in Senator John Hutchinson?”

“You got it.”

“Shit. Imagine if she'd been killed.” But it was no better that one or two kids were. “You think the kids were drunk or on drugs?”

“Who knows? They'll check it out at the hospital. Could be. Or it could just be one of those flukes where you never figure out who did what to who. It's not real clear-cut from the position of the cars, and there isn't a hell of a lot left.” What there was, was being hacked into pieces so it could be removed. And they were starting to hose down the oil and debris, and the blood that had spattered on the pavement.

It would be another hour or two before bridge traffic could resume, and even then there would be only one lane open in each direction until the early morning, when the last of the wreckage was towed away to be examined.

The camera crews were getting ready to leave by then. There was nothing left to see, and the Senator's wife had refused to comment on the other driver's death. The highway patrol had protected her from them very discreetly.

It was twelve-thirty when they finally took her home to her house on Clay Street in San Francisco. Her husband was in Washington, D.C., and she had gone to a party in Belvedere. Her children were asleep in bed, and the housekeeper opened the door to them and began to cry when she saw Mrs. Hutchinson's disheveled state and heard the story.

Laura Hutchinson thanked them profusely, insisted that she didn't need to go to the hospital, and would see her own doctor the next morning, if there was any need for it. And she made them promise that they would call her to tell her of the other young people's condition.

She already knew that the young driver was dead, but they hadn't yet told her that Allyson would probably not survive until morning. The highway patrolmen felt sorry for her, she was so distraught, so frightened, so desperately upset by what had happened. She had cried terribly when she saw Phillip's body covered with the drape and removed. She had three children of her own, and the thought of these young people dying in an accident was almost more than she could bear to think of.