Between Midnight and New Years(William Cline) Between Midnight and New Years

The phone rang; Brian Taylor picked it up. “This is Brian,” he said, and listened for a moment, looking away from the accident report on his desk. “Yes, sir, I was the medic on the call.” He twirled the pen between two fingers as the person on the other end of the line spoke. “No sir, she was DOA.” He listened, rubbing his eyes. “The decision was based on the extent of trauma, mechanism of injury and time to extricate.” Again, silence as Brian listened. “Yes, sir, that will be in my report. Okay, thanks,” he said, then hung up.

“Coroner?” Dave looked up from his own report form, his eyes ringed dark, half closed from being awake most of the early morning.

“Yeah.” Brian picked up his pen and found the empty space on his report form. “He was wondering why we did not start CPR.” He was tired, drained, still a little jangled from adrenaline. In that empty space on the form he printed carefully. “Cause of death was exsanguination.”

Dave Johnson sighed, looked back down at the lengthy narrative he’d already written about the accident. “Like we didn’t know that.” He closed his eyes, reached up and rubbed the center of his forehead. “What time is it?”

“I don’t know. Sometime between midnight and new years.” He put his pen down, stood up. “I’ll finish this in the morning.”

“Going to bed?” Dave said.

“I think I’m going to call my wife.” He walked out of the office.


Earlier

The hard cold of the end of the year gave the night air a crystalline quality making the red bars of the medic unit’s overheads cut through that air like lasers. The siren sounded the same, unaffected by the temperature of the air. There was some chatter on the radio, but it was either very early in the morning, or very late at night, so there should not have been much radio traffic.

Dave tried to ignore the red beams as they spun like helicopter blades. He had to pay close attention to the road conditions. Snow had fallen just after Christmas, and it had been cold enough since then to keep the roads slick with frost and treacherous with narrow tracks of rock-hard frozen slush.

“What time is it?” Dave asked, when Brian put the map book away.

“Don’t know. Maybe eleven or so.”

They had been dispatched to a motor vehicle accident. Dave had been asleep, curled up in one of the seven beds in the fire station’s dorm. Brian had been in the TV room watching the Time Square New Years Eve celebration. They met in the hallway that ran between those rooms, pulling on uniform shirts, heading for the apparatus bay doors. Brian hit the door opener, and the apparatus bay door in front of the medic unit began its noisy ascent. Cold air blew past them as they pulled on their bunker gear.

The roads were empty; everyone having the common sense to stay inside on this ridiculously cold New Years Eve.

Easing the medic unit around the corner onto Highway 99, Dave scanned the roadway looking for icy patches. Just over a rise in the road both he and Brian saw the blue lights of a county sheriff’s vehicle punctuating the cold darkness. The white Crown Victoria was angled in the outside lane of the five-lane road, acting as a block to oncoming traffic. Dave twisted the knob on the radio control head, silencing the siren. Slowly he guided the medic unit past the sheriff’s vehicle then turned off the road and parked at an angle, making the wrecked vehicle more accessible. Before he left the cab he set the brakes and flipped on the toggle switch that powered the two scene lights mounted at the rear of the unit.

The older model sedan looked surreal, at an angle to the road, its front end pushed in where it had impacted a telephone pole, revealing a steam-shrouded engine block. Above this, the windshield was shattered where the frame bent upward.

Brian began making his scene assessment as they approached. As they pulled on their turnout coats, both Brian and Dave stared at the wreck, at the steam rising from awkwardly bent metal, at the fluids that melted into the thin layer of frozen slush beneath the engine. The driver’s side door intruded into the passenger space at least a foot, if not two. Brian met the officer at the rear of the wrecked vehicle, asked: “How many in the car?” He looked into the vehicle through broken glass and bent metal.

“All I saw is the one,” the officer said. He shivered in the cold. His breath was jetting from his mouth energetically. “In the front seat. I’m pretty sure it’s a female. It looks like she was thrown sideways in the accident; half of her is covered by the dash. She may be on top of someone. It’s hard to tell; not a lot of room in there.”

Dave walked around the wreck, surveying, making sure it was safe for them to approach and work. The bitter cold did nothing to subdue the familiar smells of an accident scene: oil, transmission fluid, even a hint of antifreeze. But, he could smell no gasoline. “Did you see the accident?” He asked.

Brian moved up to the driver’s side window. Inside there was a twisted form in what looked like a blue dress. Dark hair was matted against one shoulder, and her legs were caught beneath the collapse of the dashboard. One arm was twisted up behind her head, through her matted hair, the pale hand curling into a claw.

“No,” the officer said. “But I heard it. I had a car pulled over, just up the road. She drove by, and a few seconds later I heard a crash, then another crash.”

Brian leaned into the wreck. The roof of the vehicle had bent down when the front end was shoved back, so he had only a little room to work.

“Looks like she was probably hit head on,” Dave said as he continued assessing the damage. “Probably more to this side.” He pointed at the driver’s side of the car. “She then spun around and hit the pole still going pretty fast.” Dave looked over at the officer. “How fast would you say she was going when she drove past you?”

“Hard to tell; faster than she should have in these conditions, like she was late getting somewhere.”

“Where’s the other car?” Dave asked.

“Took off, I’m pretty sure.” The officer stepped past Dave, watched Brian struggle to get further into the car. From inside the car, Brian yelled. “We need to pop the other door to get to her; probably going to have to pull the steering column, too.”

“She alive?” the officer asked.

“Hard to tell,” Brian said as he pushed himself out of the car. “I couldn’t get anywhere near an artery. She’s caught up between the dash and the seat; hard to get to anyplace on her with a pulse, or even tell if she’s breathing.”

Dave went to the back of the medic unit, opened the back diamond-plate doors revealing a shelf with a portable power plant and a large tool with expandable arms; what was referred to as the Jaws. “Could you give me a hand?” he asked. The officer grabbed the power plant; Dave pulled the jaws out and grabbed a large gray toolbox that rested next to it.

“This is heavy,” the officer said.

“Yeah, I know. Set it there, not too far away.”

Two hydraulic lines, one red, one green, snaked away from the power plant and plugged into the rear of the Jaws. Dave held the Jaws by two looped handles, one hand near a thick toggle that allowed him to control the opening and closing of the hydraulic arms. Behind him, Brian brought the power plant to life. Dave dropped the face shield on his helmet, held the jaws at his waist, tested the expansion of the arms, closed them, then jammed the tapered end into the line between the passenger door and the body of the car.

The Jaws twisted in his hands as the metal of the door, locked in place by the folded metal of the frame, resisted being forced open. Dave closed the Jaws, adjusted the location of the tip, driving it into the car a little further.

He knew the amount of energy that must have been absorbed by this car to distort the frame to the extent it had. He also knew that the energy was still there, trapped in the folded, twisted metal; the metal he was trying to pry apart. At any moment that door could fly open, or it could simply crumple at the sit of the Jaws, splitting a little seam into its own structure, never opening until a force was applied that was equal to the force it took to close it like this.

Brian watched the process, looking back occasionally at the noisy power plant. The officer stood at the back of his cruiser, rubbing his hands, trying to generate some warmth.

Again the Jaws twisted in Dave’s hands, nearly wrenching itself free. He was about to pull back and try the driver’s door when, without warning, the passenger door popped open, releasing the twist on the Jaws and scattering shattered glass across the icy blacktop at Dave’s feet.

Brian pulled his gloves on, grabbed the misshapen door and pulled it open further. The hinge fought the effort, metal crying in protest, but the door opened far enough for them to see inside the dark interior of the car.

There were popcorn size bits of shattered glass caught in the mat of her dark hair. She was face down on the split bench seat, her left arm beneath her, and, from behind her seat her right arm came upright, twisting unnaturally at the shoulder. Her legs were caught between the dashboard and the seat. Brian reached in and swept the glass to the floorboard, then pulled his glove off and checked the pale, thin arm for a pulse.

“Okay, we need to get her out. We can’t do anything in here.” he said.

“How bad is she caught beneath the dash?” Dave asked, leaning behind Brian, making a quick assessment of the inside of the car.

“I think we’re going to have to pull the steering column.”

Dave backed away. “That’s going to take some time; does she have it?”

“Won’t know that until we get her out, but seems to be our only option.” Brian looked back at his partner, though for a moment, said: “Let’s try pulling her. Maybe she isn’t caught that bad.” He turned back to the inside of the car, pulled his glove back on. “Where the hell is the ambulance?”

“Coming from the other side of the county,” the officer answered.

Dave took his helmet off and set it on the roof of the car. He then moved in beside Brian, looked at the mat of dark hair, the pale twisted arm, the blue dress that disappeared beneath the collapsed dashboard, and wondered if it was a good idea to try to pull her out.

“Grab her there, where her arm comes up,” Brian said.

Dave put his hand where Brian indicated, felt coolness between the fabric of her dress and her body beneath. The shape of her shoulder was wrong, but that was to be expected; the same force that had brought the front of the car in on top of her had thrown her back against the seat, tearing her shoulder apart in the process.

“We need to pull as if we were lifting her up onto the seat,” Brian said. “Ready?”

“Yeah, let’s do it,” Dave said, hoping they would not do more damage in the process. It was the medic’s call, though.

Brian reached in and grabbed beneath her left shoulder and put his other arm across her back, hugging her to him. As they pulled, her upper body moved, but did not come free of the collapsed dashboard.

Dave let her go. “Damn, I was afraid of that.”

“What now?” Brian still had his arm across her back. “We need to get her out.”

Dave thought for a second, and then felt under the seat. When he found the lever, he pulled it, and the passenger section of the bench seat moved back.

“Not far enough,” Brian said.

“Okay, let me go pop the other door so I can get at the mechanism on the other side. Maybe if we can get the other side to move back it will be enough.” Dave grabbed his helmet from the roof of the car, picked up the Jaws and carried it around to the driver’s side. That door was less willing to open, as the damage to that side of the car was more extensive. Finally it came free with a loud bang, flying open and nearly knocking Dave to the ground. He set the Jaws down, grabbed the flashlight from his turnout coat pocket, leaned into the smaller opening into the car and reached under the seat.

There, caught under the seat, was one of her feet, the blue high-healed shoe twisted half off, exposing a small foot; pale, bloodless in the light from his flashlight. As he looked for the lever that would allow the seat to go back, Dave also saw her leg, twisted and broken above her ankle. In one place the bone was pressing against the skin; in another, a little further up her leg, a fracture of bone stuck through the skin. There was no blood.

He pointed the flashlight at the lever, reached over and pulled. The driver’s side of the bench seat moved back. Her leg, freed from the seat, slipped forward, leaving the shoe behind.

“I think that was enough,” Brian yelled from the other side of the car. By the time Dave made it over to help, Brian had her pulled half out. Her twisted right arm now lay across her back.

Her body came out of the car limp. Brian supported her head as it cleared the seat. Her legs slid along the front of the seat until they cleared the edge of the car, then fell awkwardly to the road. Brian and Dave turned the body over as they set her down, then they both stood up.

The mat of dark brown hair fell away from a narrow face. Illuminated by scene lights on the back of the medic unit, her face appeared white with a smear of darkness across one side.

“She’s got lividity,” Brian said. “A little on her face, but nothing on her arm, where you would expect blood to pool.”

The officer walked up behind them, shone his flashlight across the body then into the car. “Damn, she’s so young.”

Behind them they could hear another siren.

“That must be the ambulance,” Dave said. “Are we going to start on her?”
Brian said nothing, but knelt down beside her body. “No point,” he finally said.

Even in the cold air the smell of her perfume rose up from her body. Mingled with it was the smell of oil and anti-freeze, transmission fluid, and from further up the road, the acrid fumes from the flairs the officer set for traffic control.

As the three stood above her, and the ambulance came slowly into the scene, steam began to rise from her legs, from the opening in the skin where her shattered bones had forced their way through.

Brian understood; that is where all the blood was.

At the first impact with the other car, her entire body had been thrown forward, her legs twisted beneath the dash. As the dash came down on her, most of the bones in her legs had been fractured, cutting veins and arteries. With the impact into the telephone pole the car was thrown sideways, and she went with it, forced up against the seat with so much energy that the arm she extended out of reflex was twisted straight up, shattering her shoulder. She lay there on the front seat, her blood pooling in the muscles of her legs, until she bled to death.

There was a short time, Brian was sure, that she was still conscious; hopefully a very short time. Long enough, he had a sickening thought, to watch the car that hit her drive away.

A member of the ambulance crew stepped beside Dave, looked at the body, said: “Somewhere there is somebody who is wondering where his girlfriend is. He’s not going to have anyone to kiss.”

Brian turned and walked over to the ambulance medic to give his report. Dave and the officer could only sigh, shiver from the cold, and know that this would stay with them for a long time.

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