“9-1-1. Delilah Crawford, speaking. Please state the nature of your emergency?”
“My name is Caroline Everly.” Caroline hated the tremble in her voice. “I live at 687 Orchid Beach Drive. I need help--for myself and an injured man on the beach.”
“Please stay on the line while I dispatch someone to that address, Ms. Everly.”
Caroline’s hand barely held the receiver to her ear with her shaky left hand. The cottage’s seventy-two degree conditioned air was blasting away. It felt more like the inside of a deep freeze than the inside of a house. She expected her grandmother’s aqua-blue walls to start frosting over any moment.
Her wet dress moved and slithered across her chilled body with every breath she took, sending tremors all over her body. The trembling made the tendons in her broken wrist spasm, sending cramps clear up to her shoulder.
“Ms. Everly, the paramedics are on their way. Please stay on the line until they get there.”
“Thanks.”
“Can you describe both your injuries for me?”
“I was walking along the beach,” Caroline said, trying to keep her teeth from chattering. “In the edge of the water, a man lay washed up on the beach. That is how I fell. I tripped over him in the dark. He’s dying, I think.”
“Uh huh. Are you saying there is a body down on the beach, Caroline?” Delilah forgot all about protocol; or Caroline’s broken wrist at that point. “Or, was it an injured man?”
“No, Delilah. I didn’t say it was a body!” Caroline gritted through her own pain to try to answer’s Delilah’s question. “I said, I think he is dying. He seemed to be in a lot of pain.”
Caroline had known Delilah Crawford since she was a just a skinny black girl named Delilah Johnson in her 9th grade English class. “The man was alive when I left him. He about scared me to death when he grabbed my ankle and asked for help.”
“Where is the man now?”
“That’s why I’m calling for help. He’s still down on the beach. I couldn’t lift him.”
“Did the man appear to be intoxicated, Ms. Everly?” Delilah asked, suddenly remembering her protocol. It also sounded like she’d had her share of injured drunks.
“I don’t think he’s been drinking. I asked him that. I thought maybe he’d fell off his boat and swam or drifted in to shore. He’s wearing a life jacket. He said he’d been shot.”
“Are you saying the man has a gunshot wound, Ms. Everly?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know who shot him?”
“Certainly not.”
Caroline saw the reflection of red lights on the window curtains with relief. “They’re here,” she said to Delilah. “I’ve got to go unlock the door. Thanks, again,” she said and clunked the phone back into its cradle.
Two paramedics in black uniforms stood under Caroline’s yellow porch light when Caroline unlocked the door.
“Is this 687 Orchid Beach Drive?” The paramedics were armed to the teeth with every kind of medical equipment imaginable. Caroline knew them both. Orchid Beach was one of those small towns where the population stuck like barnacles for generations.
“Evening, Jimmy. Patty.” Caroline said and stood back for them to enter her grandmother’s home.
Jimmy Chambers motioned for her to sit in one of the chairs at a small table. They examined her soggy cast.
Jimmy smiled reassuringly at Caroline, spreading his already sparse blond mustache even thinner. His buzz cut needed trimming, she noticed.
“Not having much luck with that wrist are you?”
“I think I re-broke it when I fell.”
Jimmy didn’t have to ask her how she’d originally broken it. Everyone in Orchid Beach knew about Caroline’s car accident. It had been the worst accident in Orchid Beach’s history. Caroline was the only survivor.
He and Patty Dodger consulted in undertones for a moment, and then Patty checked Caroline’s vitals while Jimmy opened a sterile package with blue writing on the package. It gave off the odor of new plastic that burned her nose. He slipped the plastic sleeve the package contained, over her injured arm, cast and all, then released a valve that inflated it around her injured wrist.
“It may be a little uncomfortable,” Jimmy smiled again as he opened another package and produced a new blue sling. “But it will keep your wrist stable until we can get you to the hospital.” He adjusted the sling and slipped it over her shoulder and gently slipped her injured arm inside it.
There was a knock at the door, and Patty left her scribbling to go over and let in a second set of paramedics. Caroline didn’t know either of the new arrivals. The dispatcher must have called them over from the next town, Gonzales Beach, five miles north of Orchid Beach.
“Where’s the victim with the gunshot wound?” asked the first paramedic. He took control of the room without even trying. A true alpha male, he oozed testosterone and Drakkar Noir into the room in equal doses. Caroline folded inwards on herself, totally repulsed, and held her hand over her nose. The last thing on earth she wanted to smell was Drakkar Noir—ever again.
“Still down on the beach.” Patty, also unimpressed with Macho Man, pointed with her chin in the direction of the back door, and then went back to scribbling on her clipboard.
Jimmy, also ignoring Macho Man, talked in low tones into a microphone that dangled over his shoulder on a curly black wire. Patty finished her scribbling on the clipboard, and held it out for Caroline sign.
Caroline had to use her left hand. She didn’t recognize the signature she put on the page. She glanced away, remembering the last time she’d signed a clipboard with her left hand. A chill that had nothing to do with the cold slithered down her spine.
The second newly-arrived paramedic squatted down in front of Caroline and took her good hand in his own. He was much more down to earth with his sun-lightened brown hair, laughing hazel eyes and freckled nose. A surfer on his days off, Caroline guessed. His hand felt very warm around hers as if he still held some of the sunshine in his palm.
“I know you’ve been through a lot this evening, Ms. Everly,” he soothed. “But, do you think you would feel able to show us where you found the injured man?”
“I’ll try,” Caroline nodded, her teeth chattering.
“Where’s your granny, Caroline,” asked Patty, glancing up from her notes. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ears, and studied Caroline intently.
“Gone up to Crystal Creek. To see Grace’s new baby.”
“Where’s she keep her blankets,” Patty put down her clipboard and stood up. “I’ll get you one. You’re freezing. You want me to call her.”
“In that closet in the hallway,” Caroline answered shortly. “I’ll call her in the morning. She can’t get here tonight, anyways.” The plastic splint on Caroline’s arm was putting a lot of pressure against her broken wrist. The pain and the memories were making her nauseous. Caroline could hardly think straight. She hadn’t even thought about calling her grandmother until Patty mentioned it. She wished Gran was here with her.
Patty returned with a green wool army blanket and wrapped it around Caroline’s shoulders. Macho Man led the way out of the house, and the rest trooped after him.
The night air was warm and felt good against Caroline’s chilled skin, though the walk to the beach had never seemed longer. Each step jogged Caroline’s wrist. She wished Jimmy hadn’t put that darned splint on it. It had only made it worse.
With the aid of the four paramedics’ official-looking flashlights, they made it to the shoreline. Caroline found her discarded sandals. The tide had receded much further than when she had been on the beach earlier.
“I turned left right about here,” Caroline pointed down with her finger. All four flashlights focused a beam at her feet.
“I didn’t walk far before the man grabbed my ankle. The tide was still up, so my feet were covered by the surf. It was dark. I never saw him until then.”
The flashlights began a search grid both up and down the beach from where Caroline’s flip-flops sat on the sand, but there was no body anywhere. Caroline felt like an idiot. Had someone pulled a prank on her?
“Over here,” Jimmy called. There in the sand was the impression left by a body, and inside the indentation was blood-soaked sand.
Caroline gave a sigh of relief. At least she hadn’t imagined the whole thing. That was good. Right?
Peter Langdon, where are you? She wondered. How could he have just got up and walked off.
“Oh God,” she said aloud to no one in particular. “It’s all my fault. I should have done something more.”
“Jimmy,” Patty called, putting her arms around Caroline. “You better do something.”
“Coming, Patty.”
Caroline looked out towards the ocean. “He might be out there bleeding into the water. Or drowning.”
“Better call the sheriff and the coast guard,” Jimmy said to the others as he grabbed Caroline’s other side. “Come on, Caroline. You did what you could.”
“Wait,” called Macho Man, coming towards them. “We need her here.”
“No. We need to get Ms. Everly to the hospital.”
Jimmy and Patty steered a mumbling Caroline back up the beach and through the house to the waiting ambulance.
Macho man and Jimmy had their microphones welded to their cheeks, or so it looked to Caroline as Jimmy and Patty loaded her into the back of the ambulance. Jimmy deftly swabbed alcohol on her upper arm and she felt the pinprick of a needle going in.
“I don’t like being confined to a stretcher, Jimmy Chambers,” Caroline snapped and sucked air through her teeth. It recalled too vividly that other stretcher. Caroline closed her eyes, feeling the first hint of relief from the pain. The voices and the radios and the lights all dimmed, along with the pain. When she opened them again, she had been delivered to Orchid Beach Memorial Hospital.