Pearl

Chapter One: The Girl in the Sedan

"Now just how did y'all get here so quickly?" he asked, striding over to the back of the ambulance where the paramedics were preparing to hoist up the stretcher. The officer reached out and rested a hand on the cool metal edge of the ambulance's back door as they lifted. He winced when the stretcher jostled and the woman's body moved in that unsettlingly fluid way unconscious bodies do – as if she were a gelatin mold and not a person.

"By chance," the tall paramedic said, grunting as he managed the final push to get the stretcher inside. He grabbed the lip of his hat and tugged it down further before jumping up to help his partner secure the patient. "Shift's over. We were headed back to tha' station when we found this pretty picture on tha' way. Damn good thing we did, too. Just a lil' longer and this one'd be dead for sure."

The officer's eyes flicked to the woman's body, to the red stains spreading across the sheet beneath her.

"Damn good thing indeed," he admitted, looking away. He shifted his weight from foot to foot. "Which hospital?" he asked to fill the hole he felt growing in his throat.

"Forrester. Just down tha' way."

The officer furrowed his brow. He knew that hospital. They usually didn't contract with out-of-zone privatized emergency response, but this team certainly wasn't from the company assigned to this area. 

As the stockier paramedic began to run vitals the tall one jumped back down to the road, reaching over the officer to try to close the back doors. The officer stiffened and his grip held firm.

"Hey now. What about him?" he said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder to the slumped truck driver.

The paramedic barely even looked in the other victim's direction. 

"Nah, since we weren't on tha' call we'll let tha' next crew deal with 'im," the tall paramedic said. 

Their met eyes briefly, the officer unable to read anything in the masked face.

"Listen," the paramedic said, the slight tightening of his eyes behind the glasses the only visible tell of his annoyance, "we gotta get moving. She's got a small survival window, so we can't wait for tha' on-call crew to get here." 

As if to punctuate his point, a heart rate monitor shuttered to a start, publicizing the irregular beats of the woman's life. The weak, staccato rhythm seemed to protest the speed with which everything was moving.

The officer let his hand go limp and the doors slammed shut.

"Rest assured I'll follow up once we get everything else sorted," he called after the retreating back of the taller man. The paramedic gave him an impatient wave, like swatting a fly, before swinging himself up and into the driver's seat. 

The engine roared and the ambulance moved away, taking some small fraction of the light with it. The police officer stared at the sedan with a pit in his stomach before turning his attention to the abandoned truck driver, who had fallen into that suspicious sort of quiet that spoke of shock.

In the ambulance, the driver watched the rearview mirror until the blue-red glow of the police car had faded into the blurred nighttime horizon. He flicked the sirens off and leaned back, resting his arm across the back of the empty passenger seat.

"So? We got one?" He asked over his shoulder, not letting his eyes off the road. There was a reason they called this stretch of the highway the Kill Switch, with its tight switchback corners, 65 mph speed limit, and head-on traffic. It was great fishing, but terrible driving.