1
If my kids had been with me, it wouldn’t have happened. I would have stayed in the minivan, doors locked, windows rolled up. Just like the 911 operator instructed.
But my husband, Sam, had the flu. He had picked up Audrey hours before, and Leo was studying at a friend’s house, so I was alone in the van.
Driving in full dark, I felt like I was alone in the world. Clouds thick with unshed rain drifted across a half-moon, drizzle seeping from them even as they threatened to split open completely. During commute, the two-lane road carried a steady stream of parents on their way to the elementary school up the road and nine-to-fivers headed to west Santa Rosa. Several hours post-commute, though, it was nearly deserted, owing equally to the time and the weather. I finally surrendered and switched on my wipers.
Only a couple of miles from home, my phone buzzed in my purse. A name popped onto the minivan’s in-dash display: Sam. With the Bluetooth, it would’ve been easy enough to connect the call. Instead, I ignored it. After ending a twelve-hour shift fishing several dollars in coins out of a Labrador’s stomach, I was too exhausted for another argument. Lately, all of our conversations seemed to start with the same four words: I love you, but . . .
Sam gave me only three rings to answer before ending the call.
In the sudden silence, my stomach grumbled. It was the third time that week I had missed dinner, and it was only Wednesday. Probably the reason Sam had called.
I love you, but your patients see you more than me and our kids.
That was a popular one.
I popped open the energy drink that had been sitting in the cup holder for days and took a sip. I grimaced. How did Leo drink this stuff? I was pretty sure a can of cat urine would’ve tasted better. I drained half of it anyway. Caffeine was caffeine.
On the north side of the road, from among the oaks and evergreens, the old hospital slipped into view. Paulin Creek bordered the campus on the south, open space and a flood control reservoir beyond that. Vacant for years, no one had reason to stop at the hospital. Still, I thought I saw movement between the buildings. A chill pricked the back of my neck. I wrote it off as the surge of caffeine.
Distracted, I almost missed the shape that streaked across the road.
I jumped in my seat. A deer? No, it ran on two legs. A person.
When I reached to return the energy drink to the cup holder, my hand shook, so the can caught the lip of the console. It bounced onto the passenger seat, liquid pooling around my purse.
The string of expletives I let loose would’ve gotten my teen son grounded.
I pulled onto the shoulder, threw the car into park, and peeled off my cardigan to sop up the puddle. As I used a wet wipe from the glove box to blot my sticky hands, I squinted at a spot near the hospital’s entrance.
I strained to see what lay at the edge of my low beams. A sliver of moon softened the night, the headlights of my minivan slicing through the branches to the trail beyond.
It’s probably a jogger.
In the rain.
In the dark without reflective gear.
The primitive part of my brain scoffed.
Raindrops pinged off my windshield. I switched on my brights and could see better now. I identified a second shape next to the first. Just off the road, they were about the size of the topper on a wedding cake.
I put the van in gear and pulled off the shoulder, driving slowly, trying to understand what I was seeing. With Halloween the next night, at first I thought it might be a couple of teenagers. What better place to stage a prank than a hospital that sat abandoned on a semiwooded hillside? But as I drew close, my focus sharpened. A man and a woman stood in the spotlight of my high beams. They were arguing. No, fighting. Sam and I argued, but this was not that. This was balled fists, shoving, rage, and because of that, the dark-haired woman in the yoga pants didn’t stand a chance.
The woman curled in on herself, dropping her chin and tucking behind her crossed arms. Making herself smaller, even as the man, bald and more than a foot taller, did the opposite.
I stopped the car, but left the engine running. My fingers were clumsy on the keypad as I dialed 911. The woman glanced in my direction. But the man in the jeans and white T-shirt never turned my way. Less than twenty feet away, and he didn’t so much as twitch.
“What’s your emergency?” the dispatcher asked.
I startled at the voice, unable to answer. I trembled, double-checking that the doors were locked. I gave my location and then described the couple.
“They’re fighting,” I said.
“Is he armed?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What’s he doing now?”
Before I could answer, the man picked up the woman and tossed her down the embankment toward the creek below. He showed no more strain than a Siamese tossing a lizard, and for a moment the woman was pinned to the sky by my headlights.
Then she fell, disappearing beyond the tangled brush at the trail’s edge.
A sudden weight pressed against my chest. The dispatcher’s voice, so loud a moment before, grew distant, warped. My lungs seized, and my vision darkened at the corners. An urge to hide overwhelmed me. I wanted to crawl into the gathering void and disappear. It felt like a memory, though it couldn’t have been. I had no memory like this. Suddenly, I felt as vulnerable in my locked car as the woman on that trail.
Was I having a stroke? Panic attack? My mouth was dry, my tongue a useless lump. I wasn’t certain the dispatcher understood me.
What the hell is happening?
The man pulled something from his pocket. A cell phone? Something else? Then he was gone, maybe over the trail’s edge.
Seeing him disappear was enough to snap me free of whatever had rendered me speechless.
“He has something,” I said.
“What’s he doing?” The dispatcher’s voice remained neutral, but I was freaking the hell out.
“I don’t know. They’re not there.”
“They’ve left the scene?”
“No. I just can’t see them.”
My hand dropped to the door handle, though I had no intention of leaving the van.
As if sensing the gesture, the dispatcher instructed, “Stay in the vehicle.”
I formed a fist around the handle. Before the dispatcher could ask any additional questions, I slipped my phone in my pocket and opened the door.
I’m not entirely sure why I got out of the van. It might have been because of that other girl. When I was finishing up my undergrad degree, there was this brunette in my microbiology class. I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t remember her name. I remembered his name, though—Dirk. I remembered because it was one letter away from being entirely fitting. A certain kind of guy loved Dirk and, if I’m being honest, a certain kind of girl too. The kind who thought jealous rages and the bruises they left behind were romantic.
At an off-campus party celebrating the second-place finish of some sporting team, Dirk had openly berated for over an hour the girl whose name I didn’t remember. He wasn’t her boyfriend but wanted to be, and until that night, maybe she had wanted the same thing. Then he had started grabbing her. And pushing her. When finally, he had slapped her, only one guy grabbed Dirk’s arm. But even that guy hadn’t held on to Dirk’s arm when he had followed the girl from the room.
Minutes later, she went over the balcony railing. She broke an arm and a couple of ribs and would have broken her skull if not for the hedge she bounced off before hitting the concrete. No one actually saw Dirk push her.