Missing Without A Trace (10 page)

I open my eyes. What? What am I seeing?

I am scared. I look up at the passenger side of the car and I see a man’s face. I don’t know who he is. I am startled, scared. Why is he asking me so many questions? He is saying something but I cannot make sense of it. What is he talking about?

“It’s a car accident,” he says. “Oh, my God, it’s her!
”

Is he real? Or is my mind playing games with me again? Who is he? I do not think I know him. Where did he come from? Maybe he can help me
.

I see that he’s a police officer. He pulls open the passenger door
.

Other people are with him. They are smiling and seem happy that they found me. I think I am happy, too
.

“She’s still alive,” someone says
.

“It’s been—what? Eight days?” I hear another voice
.

“She’s still alive! We have to move fast and get her out of here. Oh, my God, I can’t believe she’s still alive!
”

“Can you help me?” I asked
.

I look at the man and his jaw drops. He seems stunned. He scrambles around
.

“Do you have any water?” I ask. Then, they ask me questions and
I answer them, and I try to be friendly. I make them laugh. They work to get me out of my car, but I’m stuck. My car is smashed around me and they can’t get me out. The fire department uses the Jaws of Life to cut apart my SUV. My beautiful, wonderful car
.

“I can’t feel my legs,” I tell the medics. I am so tired I don’t even want to breathe anymore. I close my eyes
.

“I can’t get a pulse,” I hear somebody say. “She coded!
”

Tom couldn’t stand it. “
And?
” he repeated. He had a flurry of questions: Where had they found her car? Had it been stolen? Did it provide any clues to her whereabouts?

“We found her car,” the detective repeated. Then, he added, “In a ravine.”

Tom didn’t understand. He just looked at the detective.

“Are you familiar with 196th and Jones Road?”

Tom was very familiar with it, as he’d traveled that section of road many times.
Just come out with it!
he thought.

“She’s still trapped inside.”

Frantic, Tom’s mind raced. It didn’t make sense.
Why was the detective being so vague? What about Tanya? Is she alive?

Tom held the wall to steady himself. “Is she alright?” he asked with a lump in his throat. He held his breath and studied the detective’s face.
For God’s sake, just tell me!
he thought.

“We don’t know,” he finally offered. “They’re still trying to reach her.”

Tom wondered what could have happened for them to be missing that information. His adrenaline and basic instincts threatened to overwhelm him with impatience, rage and fear, and he struggled to hold himself in check. He wanted a simple answer: Was Tanya dead or alive?

“Where are they taking her?” he stammered. “Which hospital?”

“Valley General,” said the detective. “Do you want a ride?”

“No,” Tom said, picturing himself in the back of a patrol car. “I’ll get there on my own.” Tom didn’t want to surrender to the situation. He wanted to feel that he had at least a little bit of control so he definitely wanted to drive himself. He pushed past the three officers and ran down the hallway and out through the sky bridge to the parking garage. Disoriented, it took him a few minutes to find his truck. Finally, he jumped in, turned the key and merged into a nonstop line of cars in the midst of the lunch rush. While they went about the routine of their daily lives, he felt isolated in his own world of life-or-death panic.

He crept through the gridlock toward the freeway and entered Highway 167, northbound, heading for Valley General Hospital. His personal cell phone rang and Tom answered. A friend from work, Adam, told him that he was being detoured around the 196
^th
and Jones Road area. “Something big is going on over here,” Adam said.

“They found her!” Tom said. “They found her, but no one’s telling me anything. The cop took forever to give me the little info he had.”

“Did they find her on 169?” Adam asked.

“Yeah.”

“I’m being detoured around her at Jones Road!”

“Can you see anything?”

“No,” Adam said. “They’re turning everyone toward Issaquah.”

Tom’s work phone rang. He answered the second phone and a reporter wanted to know if he had any comment on the fact that they were airlifting Tanya. His mind reeled. Valley General didn’t have a heliport. That hospital didn’t take airlifts.

“They don’t airlift to Valley,” he said to the reporter.

“No,” she said. “Airlifts go to Harborview, I think.”

“Can you see anything from where you are?”

“It looks like her car is face down in the water.”

“
What?
” he asked in a panic. “She’s in the
river?
” Clutching the phone, his fist squeezed around it until he heard something snap inside the
phone.

“No, no,” the reporter said. “She’s on the other side of the road, in some sort of storm runoff ditch.”

Tom had already passed the exit to Valley General so he said goodbye to the reporter and scrambled to change highways, finding himself in heavy traffic again. The cars eased forward as Tom searched the skies for any sign of the airlift chopper. Then he realized that he didn’t know how to get to Harborview Hospital. He dialed 411, got the hospital’s phone number, and asked the operator to connect him. In a panic, he talked himself through the directions. Finally, he found the hospital’s neighborhood. He rounded the corner and saw a crowd of news vans parked in the bus and ambulance parking areas.

Tom circled down through the garage, searching for a parking spot. Five levels underground, he found a space. He shoved the cell phones in separate pockets, rushed to the elevator and punched the button. In a frenzy, he couldn’t wait. He took the stairs two at a time. His work phone rang as he emerged at ground level. Adam asked if he needed anything but, just then, the reporters and camera crews raced toward him, blurting out questions.

“Adam,” he said, “I’m low on smokes. And I’m being trampled by news crews. I’ll talk to you later.” Hanging up, he turned to the reporters. “I don’t know,” he offered. “I’m going to try to see my wife.”

Tom found his way to the Emergency Room admissions clerk and asked about his wife. “Her name is Tanya Rider,” he said, as calmly as he could. “She was brought in by helicopter from Maple Valley.”

“I have no patient by that name,” the nurse said.

“She’s being airlifted,” he explained. “This is where she would come, right?” Without waiting for an answer, he thought out loud, “Why isn’t she here?”

Someone tapped him on the shoulder. Tom turned and looked at a woman, without really seeing her.

“My name’s Susan,” she said. “I’m the patient media rep.”

Tom finally understood. Susan explained that she would help him to face the media. She was very calm, which unnerved Tom at first but, in time, her measured responses eased his stress.

“She’s not here yet,” Tom said, frantically. “How is it that she’s not here yet?” Had he actually
beaten
the helicopter to the hospital? Though he had rushed through traffic, he figured that the helicopter should have landed before he got there. From what he could gather, Tanya had been transported to the local golf course for the airlift.

Tom paced a while before a nurse took him to a family waiting room, then he went outside to smoke the last cigarette he had on him. He was desperate for answers and his head was still spinning, but he realized that Tanya must have been alive—or clinging to life—if they were airlifting her. He returned to the family waiting room and Adam called again.

“I can see the chopper coming in!” he said.

Tom could hear the thumping blades of the chopper approaching the hospital. His heartbeat quickened. He would see his wife again!

“Thanks, man!” Tom said. Relieved, he tried to bolt through the door.

Susan intercepted him. “You can’t go that way” she said in her characteristically calm voice. “And you won’t be able to see her until after she goes through triage.”

Adam arrived and Tom started to relax. He and Adam walked back to the waiting room but it took another smoke plus ten minutes before the staff gave him permission to see Tanya briefly. Arriving at the triage area, Tom and Nancy, Tanya’s mother, found the floor littered with wrappers from the medical materials. He could tell that the emergency crew had done a lot in a short time, but it was evident that they had much more to do.

When Tanya’s eyes found Tom, they softened and tears welled up in them. As the medical team wheeled Tanya past them, Tom saw the
gash on her forehead, where a flap of skin was bunched up and scabbed in place. The medical team took his wife and disappeared around the corner. Tom looked at the x-ray hanging on the lighted board and saw a clean break of her collarbone.

Tom and Adam walked into a busy hive of news people who came from all directions with about six cameras and a dozen microphones pointed at him. Spilling out of their news vans, the cameramen stumbled over each other to keep up with the reporters.

“Mr. Rider!” they called. “Mr. Rider, do you have a comment?”

“My wife is alive,” he said. “But barely.”

Rushing to stabilize Tanya, doctors in the Harborview Emergency Room completed blood tests, x-rays and CAT scans. Since she was dehydrated, they intensively infused fluid near her heart. Her body temperature had dropped from the normal 98.6 to only 87.6 degrees, so they aggressively rewarmed her body. Her blood work revealed that she had too much sodium and acid in her blood. Further, her muscles had begun breaking down, releasing muscle fiber contents into the blood, which contributed to kidney damage. She was in acute kidney failure. Her lungs had leaked and she had air behind the abdominal cavity lining, in the middle of her chest, and in her right armpit. Her left shoulder was dislocated and she had fractures of her ribs, left clavicle and a spinal vertebra. A deep laceration on the left side of her forehead cut through her eyebrow, exposing the connective tissue sheath that covers the bone. From her seat belt, she had pressure ulcers on her pelvis, legs and abdomen, and deep patches of dead skin dotted her chest, abdomen, left elbow, both hips and both legs. And neither of her legs had a pulse.

Not only had Tanya been trapped in her vehicle, but her body was crushed. Her bones were broken and her lungs were leaking while she wasted away without food or water for eight days.

The Emergency Room transferred Tanya directly to the Intensive Care Unit, so Tom went up to the ICU waiting area. He was in a good
spot to see Tanya as they wheeled her past him. She looked peaceful and beautiful, though she had an oxygen bag over her face and wasn’t breathing on her own. Allowing the medical personnel room to work, Tom stayed back, but it pained him to be so close to her and, yet, unable to touch her. Desperate to help, he couldn’t.

Finally, the doctor gathered Tom and Nancy, Tanya’s mother, into a private conference room, where he talked about Tanya’s condition in general and her left leg in particular. The muscles, nerves and blood vessels in Tanya’s leg had been compressed for so long that the leg had developed ‘compartment syndrome.’

The doctor said they had two options—removing the leg or trying to save it by performing a fasciotomy. This surgery had only a twenty percent success rate. If it did not succeed, Tanya—who ate only health foods and exercised faithfully every day—would lose her leg. While the doctor was trying to finish his explanation, Tanya’s mother jumped up. “Take it!” Nancy screamed. Several times, Tom had to ask Nancy to quiet down so he could get all the information from the doctor, so that he could make an informed decision. Tom knew that Tanya would want to save her leg so that she could exercise, and the doctor said that it would not risk Tanya’s life to try to save it. For Tom, this was the determining factor. He knew that, if there was even the smallest chance of success, Tanya’s love of working out would win in the end and she would make it work. He made the call to save Tanya’s leg. The medical staff rushed Tanya to the Operating Room for the emergency surgery, in which doctors relieved the pressure by cutting away the connective tissue covering her muscles.

In the waiting area, Tom’s two phones rang nonstop. The missed calls and messages piled up. Late in the evening, Susan told Tom that the media were requesting an interview and she offered to set up meetings with the press, which Tom agreed to do so he could get it over with. Susan would need a few hours to set it all up.

To reduce the amount of shock on Tanya’s body, the doctors put her into a medically induced coma. When Tom saw her after the operation, she was on a respirator. Longing to hear her voice, Tom watched her sleep. Her pulse was steady but she looked so frail, so thin. Her face was drawn and taut. Above her left eye, her forehead was bandaged, but he still thought she looked beautiful. Someone had braided her long blonde hair and coiled it into a bun to keep it out of the way, but dirt and blood still infused the matted mass and Tom found himself picking bits of glass from Tanya’s hair. Her fingertips and knuckles were scabbed black. She had large bandages covering her torso, right thigh and her left leg, from her hip to her ankle. Tom sat silently watching her chest rise and fall to the rhythm of the machine that forced oxygen into her airways.

The nurses came back to check on Tanya and change her wound dressings. As the nurses moved Tanya, her moans tore at Tom’s heart. To get out of the way, he left the room and wandered away for a while. When he returned, he sat and watched her for about an hour. Except for his prayers, his mind was empty.

At about three in the morning, it was time for Tom to face the news crews that had set up individual areas as their sets. The lobby was a mess of wires, lights, cameras and clamoring reporters, all wanting to break the story and all asking the same question: “What happened?” But only Tanya could answer that question. Susan directed Tom to sets for
Good Morning America
,
TODAY
and then others—the next and the next. Finally, he gave a press conference to answer questions from all of the local news crews. In each interview, Tom complained about the red tape but praised the Sheriff’s office.