I can’t believe I didn’t think about this.
To get to our neighborhood, we have to take a pedestrian bridge over a four-lane-highway. It’s the main artery between the burbs and the city — a big, hideous thing flanked on both sides by sound barriers.
For now, the barriers block our view, but once we get to the top of the bridge, we’ll see everything.
“Evie? What’s making that noise? Is someone hurt?” Darcy asks.
“I think someone must have fallen over in their back yard,” I lie, frantically trying to think of another route home.
But there isn’t one. Not unless we want to scoot for hours.
I can’t let Darcy see this…
“Darcy, Truth or Dare?” I ask.
“Umm…. Dare.”
Perfect.
I try to sound normal, “I dare you, to go the rest of the way home, both blind and deaf.”
“Easy peasy,” he says.
I tie my scarf around his head so he can’t see, and put my headphones over his ears. “What do you want to listen to, dare devil?”
“In a town, where I was born,” he sings.
Most kids are brought up on the Wiggles and Yo Gabba Gabba; but Darcy was brought up on The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. He calls it Dad’s ‘old fashioned’ music, which Dad doesn’t appreciate.
I cue up Yellow Submarine and push Darcy up the ramp on the scooter.
The local council really tried to make a statement with this bridge. I wish they hadn’t. The giant plastic orange spirals are hideous, and the kids in the ‘street art’ mural look borderline demonic — especially now. Their spray-painted smiles glare at me accusingly as we scoot past.
I arrive at the top of the ramp and stop to catch my breath. In another step, I’ll be able to see the highway.
“Why have we stopped? Keep going Evie! We all live in a …”
Okay, here goes.
I crouch down behind the scooter and start shuffling, concentrating hard on my feet. I’m not going to look up. I’m not going to look up. I’m not going to look up.
Half way….
Three quarters…
“HEY YOU, HELP!”
Instinctively, I look up. I wish I hadn’t.
It’s pandemonium.
Of all the car-crashes I’ve seen in all the disaster movies I’ve watched, nothing compares to this. I feel sick.
The road is completely blocked: a dozen cars are piled, twisted, stacked, and thrown across the highway. A disheveled arm hangs out of the window of a red sports car. A pool of blood drips from a silver soccer-mom SUV. A motorbike lies on its side in a drain — the rider nowhere to be seen.
“Help! I’m over here!”
A boy about Darcy’s age is stuck in the back of a green sedan.
Only the sedan is perched upside-down on top of a delivery truck, at the edge of the pile up. Gas pours from its fuel tank onto the road below.
My stomach churns again. The accident today at school was bad enough… this is insane.
“Help, please, help!”
I can’t leave the kid here, it could have been Darcy.
“Evie, what’s going on?” Darcy asks, making a grab for his blindfold. “Why have we stopped?”
“It’s nothing!” I say, and start pushing again.
I run across the bridge and almost roll the scooter as I turn onto the exit ramp. Darcy giggles as we pick up speed. We reach the bottom and skid to a halt.
I hit pause on the iPod and remove Darcy’s blindfold. “Darc, I need to go and get something from in there,” I say, pointing toward the highway. “I… I… I dropped my sweater when we were on the bridge.”
“But Evie, won’t you get run over?”
“There aren’t any cars today. It’s really quiet. I’ll be back in five minutes.”
“Can I come?”
“No, I need someone I can trust to guard our new scooter from strangers, okay?”
Darcy perks up at this, he likes being treated like a grown up. “You got it,” he says, smiling.
I run along the sound barrier and reach a service gate. It’s padlocked shut, but there’s a fair amount of slack on the chain. I crouch down and squeeze through, out onto the grass bank of the highway.
The scene looks even worse from here: the pile up, the disheveled arm, the blood from the SUV — but I don’t dwell on it. It’s too horrifying. I put my head down and run toward the boy, concentrating hard on the acronym from health class.
Dr. A.B.C: Danger, Response, Airway, something and something.
Right. Danger comes first.
I force myself to look up again. The boys green sedan is reasonably stable on top of the delivery truck, even though its upside down. But the gas leaking from it is going to become a problem. It’s flowing toward the drain… Where the motorbike lies… on its’ side… battery sparking.
Great, so we’re very much in danger.
Response?
“Hey, are you okay?” I call ahead to the boy.
He completely freaks out. He cries and screams and bashes his fists against the cars back-window.
I guess that counts as a response… I don’t think I’ll bother with the rest of the acronym.
Finally, I reach the pile-up. The delivery truck looks taller now that I’m standing beside it. I take a deep breath and climb up the side the cabin, shimmy around onto the bonnet, and heave myself up to the roof.
I freeze.
To get to the boy, I’ll have to crawl past the fronts seats of the car. Where the drivers will be trapped inside. Probably dead.
Don’t look, don’t look.
But I have to…
A man and a woman hang upside-down from their seat-belts. Unlike all the other unconscious people I’ve seen today, their eyes are wide open. Blank. Staring.
They must have been his parents.
I turn away and crawl along the roof to the back of the car. The boy is quiet, shivering, eyes wide.
“Hello, my name is Evie,” I say through the small gap in the window. “I’m going to get you out of here. Can you move?”
No response.
“Hello, I’m Evie, what’s your name?” I put my hand up to the glass and he shies away.
Shit. I’ve got to get him out of there, and fast.
I pull off my shoe, reach back and smash it against the window. My hand bounces away, my shoe drops to the ground and the boy starts screaming again.
“Oh shitting, fucking, shit!” I curse, shaking my hand.
Okay, we’ll go with Plan B. But the boy will have to crawl past his parents.
“You need to go out that window,” I tell him, pointing to the front.
He backs away and looks at me like I’m mad, shaking his head frantically, arms crossed over his Sesame Street t-shirt.
It seems ridiculous in this situation but I’m desperate.
“Sunny day, sweepin’ the…” I start singing through the gap in the window.
The boy looks at me. And starts humming.
“….Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street,” we sing together.
“Jin,” he says.
“Hi Jin, I’m Evie. Are you hurt?”
He holds up his arm, there’s a long scratch from his elbow around to his wrist. It’s bleeding a lot, but it doesn’t look too deep.
“Can you move your fingers?”
He can. “It makes it bleed more,” he says, and starts sobbing again.
“Jin, you need to crawl out and come with me. Quickly,” I say.
He points to the front, “Mom. Dad,” he stammers.
“Someone else will be along to get your Mom and Dad soon,” I lie. “I’m in charge of helping kids. My little brother is waiting for us. He’s your age. Come on.”
Jin crawls slowly into the front of the car, skirts around his mom, and squeezes through the window on to the van next to me, his arm now completely covered in blood.
I look over to the side of the highway. The pool of gas is only a few meters away from the motorbike battery.
I grab Jin and together we slide down the windshield of the truck. I put him on my back and run like hell.
In true Mission Impossible fashion, the highway explodes just as we crawl through the gate.
-
But unlike Tom Cruise, I have a panic attack when we get to safety, and vomit (again) in the bushes.