The Best of Times (13 page)

“He’s all right,” said the man, and he spoke so casually it was as if he was discussing the weather. “His mother’s not, though.”

He nodded in the direction of a large black car behind him; its windscreen was shattered and there was a woman lying on the road; she had clearly come through the windscreen.

“She just undid her belt, just for a second,” the man said, “to give the little fellow a drink. And she … she …”

He shook his head, turned away from them.

“I’m a doctor,” said Jonathan gently. “Would you like me to come and see her?” He knew it would be futile, but it needed to be done. The man nodded. “If you wouldn’t mind.” The man with the broken arm looked after them. “Poor bugger,” he said, “poor, poor bugger.”

• • •

Emma had just finished eating a rather dodgy BLT when the news came through: of a major crash on the M
4
, of a jackknifed lorry, a crushed minibus, road blocked in both directions, almost certain fatalities. And by some grisly coincidence, there was a second accident farther down the road, a continental truck with a blowout had slewed across the exit road of the next junction. Nobody was hurt there, but there was a mass of traffic behind it, and an obvious route for the emergency services to the crash, travelling the wrong way up the motorway, was temporarily, at least, out of the question.

She half ran into A&E and put in the trauma calls, the special unmistakable
bleep
, summoning people to A&E, removing them from their day-to-day work and rosters; she would need, she reckoned, an orthopaedist, a cardio thoracic surgeon, two general surgeons, two anaesthetists, a general surgical registrar, and ATL—hospital shorthand for advanced trauma and life support. Plus at least ten nurses.

They stood together in A&E. a group of people, some of whom knew one another only slightly, working as they did in totally different departments of the hospital, others who were in daily contact. There was a minute of formalities, of handshaking, name giving.

Alex Pritchard appeared; half an hour earlier he’d waved to her across reception, off on a clear weekend.

“Thought I’d better come back, see if I could be useful.”

Apart from the surgical registrar and Alex, there was just one other properly familiar face: Mark Collins, a young orthopaedic registrar she’d worked with a few months earlier on a ghastly multiple motorbike crash. He had been great then, calm and tireless.

“Hi, Emma. This sounds like a big one. Worse than the bikers, I fear. OK. Who’s going to be team leader?”

That had surprised Emma, on her first big incident. Somehow she’d thought everyone would just know what to do anyway. But it was essential, she had discovered, to establish a chain of control—for order and swift delegation, and to cut through the chaos and any panic; the first thing ambulance crews always asked on arrival was, “Who’s team leader?”

“You, Alex?” she said now to Pritchard.

“OK. All right with everyone? What news, Emma?”

“Well, it’s pretty bad. Jackknifed lorry, trailer on its side, driver trapped, several cars, minibus—three lanes blocked, in both directions, several fatalities. And someone just rang to say people are driving down the hard shoulder in the westward direction, so the road could be impassable pretty soon.”

“Is the driver of the truck alive?”

“So far. Amazingly, there’s a doctor right on the scene. He rang to report that the bloke was completely trapped, steering column embedded in his chest, just about conscious, pulse very weak, but definitely alive—Excuse me.” Her phone had rung—it was the first of the ambulances. “Hi. Yes. We have a full team ready. Good luck.”

• • •

Jonathan had turned his attention to the minibus; the driver’s door was jammed shut, but the one at the rear opened fairly easily. There were eight small boys inside, all miraculously unhurt, but the driver was dead, hideously so. He was about to climb in when he heard Abi’s voice: “Jonathan, what can I do?”

She was still white, but very calm; he felt a reluctant thud of admiration for her.

“Help me get these chaps out. Don’t look at the front.” She undid their seat belts, took their small hands, led them, talking encouragingly, shepherding them past the worst of it, trying to distract them from the girl in the Golf. They were dazed, obedient
with shock, all white faced and shaking, many of them weeping: but astonishingly unhurt.

There was another man in the van, neatly strapped into his seat, as the boys had all been; he was staring in front of him, also unhurt, but apparently reluctant to leave the van. Jonathan urged him out onto the grass verge, where he sat down obediently, then buried his head in his arms. Post-traumatic shock, Jonathan decided, and felt at once sympathy and a totally unreasonable irritability. He could have done with some help with these poor little buggers from someone who knew them.

• • •

“Tobes,” said Barney. “Tobes, are you OK?”

He felt odd, disoriented; his ears seemed to be blocked, sound muffled. He shook his head and looked sideways out of the window, the fog of shock clearing, and saw a surreal landscape of cars, many, like them, come to rest against fridges and washing machines, others at a right angle to the crash barrier, some facing completely the wrong way. At first, as he looked, the landscape was quite still; then, like some gradually speeded-up film, it came to life as people began to climb out of cars, peer into others, clearly fearful of what they might see, talked on their mobiles, approached one another, united as survivors, members of a blessedly elite club.

And then he realised that there had been no answer from Toby, not even a groan or a grunt, and turned very slowly to look at him, frightened beyond anything.

He was lying over the steering wheel, one arm holding it, his face turned to Barney, apart from a flow of blood down his face from a head wound, utterly still. And then Barney realised that there was a far worse injury to Toby than his head; the car below the steering wheel was crumpled, collapsed inwards, and Toby’s right leg below the knee appeared crushed by the interior of the car. There was a great deal of blood flowing from it.

Slow with terror, he reached for Toby’s wrist, pushed up the new
white cuff, felt for his pulse. And for an age he sat there, looking at him, just waiting for something to happen, for him to move, make a noise, groan even, for Christ’s sake. But … there was nothing.

“Oh, Tobes,” he said aloud, his thumb moving first gently, then desperately up and down Toby’s wrist. “Tobes, don’t, please … You can’t—shit, where is it—oh, God—”

And then he started to weep.

• • •

“There you are,” Jonathan said to the last little boy settling him on the grass verge. “You’re fine. What’s your name?”

“Shaun,” he said, and then, “I’m ever so thirsty.”

“I’ll get you …” said Jonathan, and then realised he couldn’t get him a drink; he and Abi between them had finished the one bottle of water he’d had in the car. And Christ, it was hot; he could have done with another litre of the stuff himself.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said, reflecting with a sort of detached surprise on the fact that here, on a three-lane motorway in the twenty-first century in one of the most highly developed countries in the world, a thirsty child in blistering heat could not have a drink, and probably would not be able to for some considerable time.

He could hear a phone ringing somewhere, and wondered where it was; by the time he’d realised it was his own it had stopped. He was obviously not functioning as well as he might be; he’d better be careful.

Abi had briefly disappeared; he looked round for her, saw her scrambling over the barrier. He called her name; she turned round, scowled at him, and continued down the bank, out of sight. Where was the silly bitch going; what was she doing?

He looked rather vaguely for the girl in the cab; there was no sign of her either. Maybe Abi had seen her; maybe that was where she was going …

He looked at the missed call register; it had been Laura. Again. She must be very worried, but he couldn’t ring her back yet; he didn’t
have the strength either to talk to her or even begin to think about what he might say. The extent of his own predicament was beginning to hit him: being on the wrong motorway, in very much the wrong company. How was he going to explain that, for Christ’s sake? But he was unable even to think about it yet …

His phone rang again. “Police,” said the voice. “We’re probably about half a mile from you. From your description, it sounds like the truck driver’ll need cutting free. Would you confirm that, sir?”

“Absolutely, yes,” said Jonathan.

“Thanks. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

• • •

Abi had reappeared.

“Where the fuck have you been?”

“I needed to pee,” she said. “And don’t talk to me like that. None of this is my fault.”

“I hope you’re not implying it’s mine.”

“Well, you were on the phone,” she said. “Police might not like that. If they knew.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” he said. But he suddenly felt extremely sick.

• • •

Mary bit her lip with the pain and saw Colin turning round, his face white, but apparently perfectly all right; and then she looked out of the window and saw a scene of unimaginable chaos, right across to the other side of the motorway: cars shunted into one another, people walking and even running about, and huge white objects all over the road. As she turned round with huge and painful difficulty, she saw a large red car, half-embedded in the back of them.

Colin opened the door and climbed out and walked round to it; she heard him say, “Jesus,” and then, “Jesus Christ,” and then, “You all right, mate?” and then saw him come to the front of the car and lean onto the bonnet, shaking his head, his eyes closed.

• • •

Emma turned back to the group. “Apparently the road on the westward side is completely blocked. Some moron on the hard shoulder has broken down way ahead, and the police cars can’t get through at all at the moment. Going to be tough. And our doctor says the lorry driver is in a bad way, that it’s a neuro job. He’s impaled on the steering column, pulse fairly steady, but really slow, about forty. Injuries mainly internal, no visible haemorrhage, severe bruising on the left temple, almost certainly concussed.”

“Poor bastard’ll need fluids, morphine,” said Alex, “and it’s going to take so bloody long. We should get HEMS on the case.”

HEMS—the Helicopter Emergency Service—was called out far more than Emma would have expected: not just to bad traffic accidents, but to people stranded climbing, sailing. She had a secret yearning to be able to join them one day.

The phone rang again and Alex answered it.

“The doctor says there’s a young girl in a GTI dead, plus one other woman—and so is the driver of the minibus. Apparently there’s a load of kids on board.”

“Any of them dead?”

“Nope.”

Emma fought down an absurd rush of sorrow for the girl in the GTI.

• • •

William Grainger had returned to the vantage point at the top of his field, having called the police. He couldn’t do anything else, really, couldn’t ignore what was going on down there, couldn’t get on with any of the things that had seemed so important an hour ago. There might be something he could do when the police and ambulances arrived—although at the moment there seemed little chance of that. On the great curve of road stretching away from him backwards towards London, the traffic was solid, all three lanes motionless;
and cars that had tried to escape via the hard shoulder were at a complete standstill as well.
And serves them right
, William thought. What kind of a selfish idiot would block that, the route so essential to the emergency services? Even as he watched, a procession came in sight, breakdown trucks preceded by police cars and followed by ambulances, coming towards him; they had obviously closed the road altogether from the next junction, reversed the normal flow of traffic.

His phone rang. “Mr. Grainger? Police here. Where are you now? As related to the accident.”

“Where I was when it happened.”

“How’s it looking from where you are?”

“Pretty … pretty bad …”

“Many people walking about?”

“Yeah, quite a lot now.”

“How would you feel about a helicopter landing in that field? An air ambulance?”

“Well, the cows wouldn’t like it. I’d have to get them moved. Otherwise, fine, of course. Just let me know.”

“OK. Could we ask you to move them anyway, as a precaution? Straightaway, if you’d be so kind. Might make a bit of a mess.”

“That’s perfectly all right,” said William. He switched off his phone, looked down at the chaos below him, increasing now, farther back in the road, perhaps two, three hundred metres or so away, as more and more people left their cars, some on mobiles, shouting into them, some with dogs on leads, barking furiously, others with small children, many of them crying, carrying them to the grass verge, all talking to one another.

Better get the cows shifted fast.

CHAPTER 11