Lying with Strangers

Part I

WINTER

1

PEYTON SHIELDS COULD FEEL IT COMING. NO ONE HAD TIPPED HER off. No neon lights were blinking. But her sixth sense was in high gear.

Peyton was in her first year of residency in pediatric medicine at Children’s Hospital, Boston, one of an elite thirty-seven interns chosen from premier medical schools around the world. She’d vaulted to the top through relentless drive, stellar academic credentials, and a mountain of debt to Harvard Medical School. Good instincts, too, were part of the successful package, and at the moment they were telling her that something strange lay ahead.

She parked her car in the space marked PHYSICIAN outside the North Shore clinic, about thirty miles north of Boston in the city of Haverhill. Peyton was at that stage of her professional training where pediatric residents spent three or four days each month at an outlying clinic to broaden their experience. Haverhill was somewhat of a plum as far as clinical assignments went, situated in the affluent Merrimack Valley. Driving out in any direction, you were virtually guaranteed to run smack into a quaint, three-hundred-year-old town whose 98 percent white population earned more than double the state’s median annual income. Though not the most charming in the valley, the city was an interesting mix of one of the finest Queen Anne–style streetscapes in America and blue-collar housing that had grown from the once-prominent shoe industry. With roughly 10 percent of its population living below the poverty level, the routine medical needs of its Medicaid children were served primarily by the clinic. Today, that meant primarily by Peyton.

What are you two doing outside? asked Peyton as she stepped out of the car.

It was a fair question. Even though it was a sunny fifty-six degrees—a heat wave for late February—it was highly irregular for Felicia and Leticia Browning to be caught chitchatting outside the front door at nine-thirty in the morning. The clinic’s two full-time nurses were identical twins with polar-opposite personalities. Felicia was the more serious sister and a frequent pain in the neck.

Power’s out, said Leticia, giggling as usual.

That’s weird. All the traffic lights were working on my way over here.

Cuz you was coming from the south, said Felicia. Power’s out from here north.

What happened?

Earthquake, said Leticia. More giggles.

Very funny.

No joke, said Felicia. We’re on the southern edge of what they call the active zone, thirty miles north of Boston and on up to Clinton. Two dozen quakes in the last twenty-one years. Usually little bitty ones, like this.

How do you know all that?

We’ll always know more than you, said Felicia, only half-kidding. We’re nurses.

Leticia pulled a battery-powered radio from her sister’s coat pocket. They just interviewed a Boston College seismologist on the air.

Shut up, fool, said Felicia.

Ah, said Peyton, seeing they really weren’t yanking her chain.

I take it there’s no backup generator for this place.

Leticia just laughed. Her sister said, Dr. Simons canceled his morning appointments and went home over an hour ago.

Good ol’ Doc Simons. He ran the clinic, but hands-on he was not. To him, carpe diem meant "seize the day off."

The three women looked at each other in silence, as if soliciting ideas on how to keep busy. Peyton was about to walk inside when a car sped into the parking lot and screeched to a halt. The driver’s-side door flew open and a teenage girl jumped out with a baby in her arms.

Somebody—help my son! She looked barely old enough to drive and sounded even younger. Peyton ran to her and gathered the baby in her arms.

How old is he?

Twenty-one months, she said in a panicky voice. His name’s TJ. He got stuck with a needle.

Are you his mother?

Yeah. My name’s Grace.

Take him to Room A, said Felicia. It’s got plenty of sunlight.

Peyton hurried inside, stepping carefully through the dimly lit hall. The baby’s cry was weak, as if he’d wailed to the point of exhaustion. They slid the examination table closer to the window to take advantage of the streaming sunlight, then laid the boy on it.

Needle went in right there, said Grace, pointing at his leg.

Felicia aimed a flashlight. Peyton noticed a minor puncture wound inside the thigh. What kind of needle was it?

Sewing needle. About an inch long.

Did you bring it with you?

It’s still in his leg.

Peyton looked closely but still didn’t see it. You sure?

The very tip was sticking out at first. I tried to work it out, you know, like a sliver. But it disappeared inside him.

Leticia slipped a small blood-pressure cuff onto the boy’s right arm and pumped it. You’re sure it was a sewing needle, child?

What else would it be?

Felicia grabbed the girl’s wrists and rolled up her sleeves.

Show me your arms.

Grace resisted, but Felicia was much stronger. I’m no druggy. Leave me alone.

The arms were trackless, but Felicia wasn’t finished. You shoot between your toes, girl? Or is it your boyfriend who does the drugs and leaves his needles laying around?

Nobody is on drugs, so just go to hell!

Peyton was about to side with the girl, but then she noticed the marks on the backs of her legs just below the hemline of her skirt. Is that blood behind your knees?

Grace backed away. The nurse grabbed her and hiked up her skirt. The backs of her thighs were pockmarked with bloody needle holes.

What is going on here, child? said Felicia.

My boyfriend did it.

Did what? asked Peyton.

We got in a fight. He started jabbing me with this stick of his, so I grabbed TJ and ran out the door. He got TJ in the leg, and the needle broke off when I jerked away.

What kind of stick has a sewing needle on it?

He made it himself. A broomstick with a needle on the end of it. He uses it when I jog.

Excuse me?

She lowered her eyes, as if embarrassed. I got fat when I was pregnant and couldn’t lose it after TJ was born. So he makes me jog. He uses the stick to keep me going.

You mean like a cattle prod? asked Leticia.

Who the hell is your boyfriend? said Peyton. I want to meet this chump.

Believe me. You don’t want to meet him.

The baby started crying. Peyton sterilized her hands and gently palpated the leg, starting at the entry wound and inching her way up. Does it hurt here, little fella?

What are you doing? Grace asked.

Trying to locate the needle. It seems to have traveled beneath the skin away from the point of entry. It if doesn’t exit on its own, it might work its way into the bloodstream.

Gross, said Grace, grimacing. It’ll rip up his little veins.

She was still too much of a kid to grasp the gravity of it. Peyton said, My real concern is that it could travel to his heart.

Then you gotta get it out.

Leticia said, We can’t X-ray without electricity. He has to go to the hospital.

No way, said Grace. It could hit his little heart by the time I get him there.

Hold on, said Peyton. I think I got it. Gently, she pressed two fingers against his inner thigh. TJ cried as it poked from beneath. Peyton could feel the blunt end of the needle just below the skin.

Get me a little lidocaine, please.

You’re not going to cut him open, said Felicia.

With his mother’s consent, I will. Just a teeny incision, and it will pop right out.

Do it, said Grace.

Don’t you dare, said Felicia. You’re an intern in pediatric medicine. Even surgical residents can’t do surgery without a supervisory physician.

This isn’t surgery. You’re being silly.

Silly is a know-it-all doctor who oversteps her authority and puts this clinic at risk of losing its malpractice coverage.

Peyton simply injected the local anesthetic and said, Scalpel, please.

This is your neck, said Felicia. You know this is against the rules.

Leticia held the flashlight. Peyton made a minuscule opening, more of a poke than a slice. It barely bled. With the slightest encouragement, the needle’s eye emerged.

Tweezers, said Peyton. She grabbed the end and pulled it straight out, then placed it on the table in front of Felicia. There you go. I think I’m ready to move on to kidney transplants now, don’t you?

Go for it, said Felicia. I’ll add it to my incident report. She left the room in a huff.

Peyton shook her head and finished the job. The baby’s crying was plentiful, but the bleeding was minimal. A Band-Aid might have been sufficient, but to be safe, Peyton closed the small incision with liquid stitches. It took only a minute. Leticia dressed it with sterile gauze.

Grace hugged her. Thank you. You saved TJ’s life.

Well, I wouldn’t exactly say that.

The young mother held her son tightly. His crying soon turned to coos.

Their contentment ended with a skidding sound from the gravel parking lot outside, followed by the slamming of a car door. Grace ran to the window.

It’s Jake!

Grace! he shouted as he started across the parking lot.

Hide me. He’s crazy!

Peyton glanced outside. A young, muscular man was charging toward the door, armed with that infamous pointy stick. In the closet, said Peyton. She pushed the mother and her baby inside and shut the door.

I know you’re in here, Grace! He was in the reception area.

Leticia grabbed Peyton’s cell phone. I’m calling nine-one-one.

Grace shouted from inside the closet, We’ll all be dead by the time they get here!

Peyton feared she was right. She knew Doc Simons had faced situations like this before, and she knew where he kept his gun. She hesitated for an instant, then ran to his office and unlocked the drawer. There was barely enough light, but she found the Smith & Wesson. She checked, and it was loaded.

What are you doing? asked Felicia, her eyes wide with panic.

We can’t stand by and watch a teenage mother get beat to death with a stick.

You’re crazy to get in the middle of this.

Grace screamed in the next room. Peyton wasn’t a big fan of guns, but there was no time to wait for the police. Maybe I am, she said, almost to herself.

She ran as fast as she could only to find Jake—all six foot six of him—yanking Grace from the closet, poised to slam her head against the wall.

Stop right there! Peyton held the gun with both hands, aiming at his chest.

He released his grip. Grace grabbed her crying baby and rushed to Peyton’s side. Jake took a half-step forward, challenging them.

Not another move! said Peyton.

As if you know how to use that thing, Jake said, smirking.

The jar! she shouted, and with one quick move she fired a shot that shattered the jar of cotton balls resting on the shelf behind his ear.

His eyes turned the size of silver dollars.

My daddy was a cop, jerk. Now get down on the floor, face-first.

He quickly complied. How much do you weigh? Peyton demanded.

Huh?

Just answer the question.

Two-seventy.

Leticia!

What? came the muffled reply. She was hiding under a desk.

Get me the secobarbital sodium. Full adult dosage plus five milliliters.

In thirty seconds, Leticia had the syringe in hand. Stick him, said Peyton.

The nurse glanced at Grace and her needle-pricked baby. With pleasure, she said, then gave him a good jolt to the right buttock.

He flinched and muttered a few obscenities, and then his body slowly relaxed. The room fell silent. It seemed to take a long time, but in ninety seconds he was out.

Thank you, said Grace.

Peyton began to shake, finally hit by the full impact of what she’d just done. Where the hell are the cops?

I’ll call nine-one-one again, said Leticia. Must be lots of calls with the power outage.

A groan suddenly emerged from Dr. Simons’s office down the hall, followed by intense cursing. Peyton hurried out, opened the unlocked door, and froze. Felicia was hunched over the examination table, feet on the floor. Her pants were pulled halfway down her large buttocks, and she was applying gauze to the left side. Across the room, Peyton noticed the waist-high bullet hole in the wallpaper. The warning shot she’d fired at the jar of cotton balls had passed through two interior walls. It couldn’t have been traveling very fast by the time it reached Dr. Simons’s office on the other side of the clinic, but evidently it had been going fast enough.

You shot me in the ass, said Felicia, groaning.

Let me help you.

Stay away. It barely nicked me. Lucky for you.

She didn’t feel lucky. Just the fact that it could have been serious made her queasy. It was…an accident, she said, her voice cracking. I didn’t want to hurt anybody. He was coming at me. If I hadn’t fired a warning shot, he might have grabbed the gun from me.

You should have thought of that before you went running for the gun in the first place.

Felicia, I am so sorry.

Don’t give me sorry.

Peyton stepped into the hall, as if driven back by Felicia’s glare. Outside were police sirens, finally. Peyton held her breath, dreading what Felicia might tell them.

Oh, boy, she said quietly, dying inside.

2

GANGWAY!

A nurse rushed by with a girl in a wheelchair. Peyton quickly dodged out of the way with a nifty little two-step. It was a familiar dance in these busy halls. Emergency was no place for lead feet.

Children’s Hospital was one of the largest emergency/trauma centers in New England, each year treating more than 12,000 injured children and recording more than 50,000 patient visits in its emergency department. Peyton felt like 49,000 of them had been recorded in the last week, though this morning was relatively quiet. A teenager in Exam 1 was vomiting nonstop, partly into a big green bucket, mostly onto an intern. The little girl in Exam 2 was crying with a broken arm. The infant in triage was screaming inconsolably, her concerned mother rocking her in her arms. Experience had taught Peyton to enjoy the occasional morning lull, the one time of day when staffing was relatively high and the caseload might actually approach some level of sanity. Like it or not, the emergency department was one of thirteen required rotations for interns over the course of the year. Peyton was just one week into it with three more to go. Her only break so far had been the one-day trip to Haverhill and Nurse Felicia. Some break.

It had been four days since the shooting at the clinic. Felicia’s butt was fine, but she was after Peyton’s in a big way. Nothing like being on the wrong end of a million-dollar civil lawsuit to launch a young doctor’s career. The fight was now in the hands of lawyers. She’d be reassigned to a new clinic, for sure. She just prayed to God she wouldn’t get fired.

She reached for a patient chart, but a senior resident beat her to it.

I got it, he said. Dr. Landau is looking for you.

Her heart sank. Landau was the residency program director.

What for?

I don’t know. I just ran into him in the lounge. He was grumbling to Dr. Sheffield about some meeting you missed. Not in a good mood.

Sheffield was the chief resident. This wasn’t looking good.

If you hurry you might catch them.

Butterflies churned in her belly. This is it. I’m getting canned.

She crossed the main lobby, passing the huge saltwater aquarium and the life-size ceramic giraffe that was perched behind the reception desk. The giraffe usually made her smile, but too much was on her mind as she opened the door and entered the pavilion lounge.

Surprise!

Peyton started, then smiled at the group of nurses and doctors that had squeezed into the small lounge to surprise her. Inflated latex gloves dangled from the ceiling as makeshift balloons. A computer-printed banner from the billing department read HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PEYTON! She recognized almost everyone, a few from the ER but most of them from prior rotations.

My birthday was last week, said Peyton.

But then you wouldn’t have been surprised, said one of the interns.

Good point. She smiled, then subtly rolled her eyes. Sort of.

A nurse poured her a glass of sparkling grape juice, the on-duty version of champagne. The door swung open, and in marched a clown to a round of applause. Clowns were a common sight at Children’s, where laughter was a proven therapy for ailing children. This one was a mime dressed in a black tuxedo with a matching bow tie and cummerbund of red-and-white polka dots. The hair was slicked back. His face was painted white with stars on both cheeks.

He set his boom box on the floor and, without a word, pointed to Peyton from across the lounge. With encouragement from her friends, she stepped forward. The mime switched on the music—the tango.

Peyton shrank with embarrassment at the thought of tangoing with, literally, a clown. But he was suddenly Valentino, circling her, giving her the eye. From inside his jacket he snatched a single red rose. Down on one knee, he presented it to Peyton.

Go for it, girl! a nurse shouted.

As if on cue, she assumed the classic tango pose, the rose clenched between her teeth. Her friends roared as, cheek to cheek, the dancers darted from one end of the room to the other in surprisingly smooth tango steps. He laid her back over his arm for the final pretend kiss.

The crowd hooted. The chief resident smiled and said, "Peyton, please, this is a children’s hospital."

The mime snatched the rose and, like magic, handed her a cupcake with a burning candle. The impressed crowd ooohed and broke into an impromptu rendition of Happy Birthday in various keys. Peyton blew out the candle to more applause.

Thank you, all of you.

The door swung open once more, this time for one of the trauma nurses who’d stayed behind in the ER. The expression on her face said it all. Auto accident. Looks pretty bad. Four kids, one adult. Paramedics are bringing them inside.

The fizz was suddenly gone from their sparkling grape juice. Peyton’s trauma-team leader said, Fun while it lasted. Let’s go.

The others stayed put as the ER folks quickly dispersed. Peyton rushed for the door with the rest of them. Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of the mime, his bemused expression evident even through the thick clown makeup and painted-on stars.

Thanks, said Peyton.

He just looked at her, ever silent. The lack of response made her slightly uncomfortable, but she kept moving forward. On her way out, she glanced back. He was still watching her.

She sprinted across the main lobby to the ER. The adrenaline kicked in immediately, sparked by the paramedic’s announcement of the first victim’s arrival: Eleven-year-old white male. Head trauma, numerous lacerations, broken right fibula.

Shields, with me! Trauma One.

Nearly at full speed, Peyton followed a team of paramedics wheeling the gurney down the wide hall. Behind her, a cold winter wind poured in from the open emergency entrance, where another ambulance was pulling up. Ahead, the team leader shouted out commands and led the way to the trauma center. In her mind Peyton was already envisioning the patient, the injuries, the treatment. Just before her team made the final turn around the corner, however, she spotted him again.

Her birthday mime was standing outside the hospital’s main entrance, peering into the ER through the curved wall of plate-glass windows that lined the separate ER waiting room. She kept moving, trying to focus on the crisis at hand, somewhat unsettled by all that staring. Perhaps he was just intrigued by the general chaos, though he seemed fixated on her, the way she could almost feel his gaze.

Shields!

She started at the sound of her team leader’s voice, then ducked into the trauma room, no more distractions, no more looking back.

3

NO ONE DIED TONIGHT, AT LEAST NOT ON HER WATCH. THAT MADE the second half of her twenty-hour day a success, Peyton supposed. The first half was another story. They’d lost an eleven-year-old boy. A wonderful euphemism, lost. As if he were a misplaced mitten or a hapless tourist. He wasn’t somehow going to find his way back and miraculously reappear. There was no way to wordsmith around the permanence of such events. She knew that. She had called the code herself.

Time of death, 10:37 A.M.

Long before she’d set foot in the hospital, even before she’d entered Harvard Medical School, Peyton knew that she wanted to practice pediatric medicine. She’d chosen Children’s Hospital for her residency because it was the best. As her proud father boasted daily to the world, they’d chosen Peyton for the exact same reason. Even the best, however, occasionally lost a patient.

There it was again, that fudge word. He’s dead, Peyton. Two days before his twelfth birthday. Seat belts couldn’t save everyone. Neither could she.

The wiper blades squeaked across the windshield, pushing the slushy mess aside. Big wet flakes were falling in the darkness, perfect white crystals that splattered on the glass like nature’s little kamikazes. It was the first substantial snowfall of the year, and Peyton was one of the first to feel its icy grip on the streets. She was the lone motorist, a little unusual even for three A.M. Two hours of steadily falling snow and the threat of up to twelve inches more in the next twenty-four hours had left the streets more deserted than she’d ever seen them. Peyton wouldn’t have ventured outdoors either, if her parents hadn’t lived right there in Brookline. With her husband out of town on business, she decided to ride out the storm at her folks’ house. Talking to her dad would do her some good after an exhausting shift that had included her first…fatality.

There, she’d said it. In her mind at least. Long ago she had come to terms with the fact that a career in pediatrics wasn’t all smiles and lollipops. She knew there would be dead children, some patients of her own. This one, however, had affected her deeply, and not just because it was her first. Medically speaking, she and her supervisory physician had done all they could for the boy. No mistakes. There was nothing they wished they had done differently. Dealing with the kid’s parents, however, was another story.

She wished she hadn’t told them their son would be all right.

She stopped at the traffic light, entranced by the wump-wump rhythm of the snow-laden wipers. There was little cross traffic on Avenue Pasteur. Drivers were clearly heeding the winter-storm advisory. Still, she had to stop at a red light that some idiot had programmed to turn red for no reason at all. It must have been a traffic engineer who’d conceived managed care.

The unexpected stop was a chance to dial in for messages on her cell phone. She tried once and got no service. The storm, she figured. She tried again and reached her voice mail. The first three messages were unimportant. The fourth was from her husband, a quick reminder that he would be in Providence until the following afternoon, so she didn’t have to worry about him traveling home in the bad weather. The guilt set in. Yesterday morning, the last thing they’d talked about was how they used to make a real effort to spend time together before he went out of town on business. Now it was a bonus if she was even home to kiss him goodbye as he headed off to the airport.

And tonight he’d gone to bed in some lonely hotel room without her even returning his phone call to say good night.

She was debating whether it would be spontaneous or obnoxious to wake him at 3:00 A.M. to say I love you, but the next message killed the moment, hitting her like ice water. It was Felicia from the Haverhill clinic.

I just thought it would be fair to give you a heads-up. I’ve decided to file criminal charges against you. Reckless endangerment. If you have any questions, have your lawyer call mine.

The smugness galled her. Felicia obviously had herself one clever lawyer, someone who wouldn’t think twice about trampling a young doctor’s career to extort a larger settlement from the hospital Peyton worked for. She wished now that she had spoken to Dr. Simons. He was a man of reason. Perhaps he could have nipped this in the bud before Felicia had picked up the phone and dialed 1-800-LAWSUIT. Maybe it wasn’t too late. She would drive out to the clinic and talk to him personally, first thing in the morning. But that didn’t seem soon enough. Patience was not one of Peyton’s virtues. She needed to do something right now to atone for not having done enough earlier. About all she could think of was a call to Dr. Simons’s answering service to let him know she would be there when the clinic opened.

The traffic light changed as the call went through. She accelerated slowly as she turned through the snowy intersection, holding the phone in one hand, steering with the other.

Hello, this is Dr. Peyton Shields.

The clinic is closed now.

Yes, I know. Could you connect me with Dr. Simons’s voice mail, please?

One moment, she said, then switched Peyton over.

This is Dr. Hugh Simons…

As Peyton listened to the recorded greeting, a large vehicle zipped past her at weather-defying speed, spewing a wave of road slush that covered her entire car. It had nearly sideswiped her. Just as the greeting ended and the tone sounded, she muttered, Asshole.

She froze, realizing it was on tape.

Peyton, you idiot!

She debated whether to start over, but whenever she felt herself getting in too deep, she remembered what her father referred to as the first rule of holes: stop digging. She switched off the phone, tossed it on the passenger seat, and gripped the wheel with both hands.

She was driving south on Jamaicaway, a winding two-lane road that hugged the eastern perimeter of Olmsted Park. The area was one of old wealth with parks created by the likes of Frederick Law Olmsted, famed designer of New York’s Central Park. Peyton’s parents lived just beyond the Country Club—literally, the country club, forerunner of hundreds of such establishments across the nation. This was not the neighborhood Peyton had grown up in, not with a cop for a father. But her mother was a savvy real estate agent who had traded up all her life. By the time Peyton was seventeen, the family had finally arrived, dragged by her mother. Peyton would have just as soon moved back to the South End, where neighbors weren’t afflicted with acute Ima-itis, as in I’m a Clayborn or I’m a Walpole. As if she cared.

The street only darkened as she continued along the park’s tree-lined border. Jamaica Pond was somewhere beyond the blinding snowfall. Traffic was nonexistent, but ahead in the distance she noticed a pair of glowing fuzzy dots that soon revealed themselves as taillights. Perhaps the snow was playing tricks on her, but they seemed to be approaching at a high rate of speed in reverse—a dangerous move under any weather conditions on winding Jamaicaway, utter madness tonight. Peyton slowed her own car, though not too suddenly, fearing that she might send herself into a tail-spin. The wet snow fell even harder against the windshield. The wind was kicking up. She adjusted the wiper speed, and just as she did, the vehicle was gone. Strange. She hadn’t noticed it back into a driveway or a side street. She flipped her lights to high beam and spotted him just a hundred yards ahead, coming even faster. Her heart leapt to her throat. The headlamps were off.

Peyton flashed her lights, fearing he was drunk. No response, but the car kept coming. Just a half block away, she flashed her lights again. A return of the high beams nearly blinded her. She averted her eyes, but it was impossible to escape. The lights hit her squarely in the face. Squarely.

He’s in my lane!

She laid on the horn as the car bore down at even greater speed, seemingly determined to strike her head-on. In a panic she hit the accelerator and swerved to the right, which instantly sent her car spinning in circles on the icy road, completely out of control. The car sped past her, steady on its course, seeming to retrace her tire tracks in the snow. Peyton’s car bounced off a guardrail. The air bag exploded in her face, then collapsed in her lap, but her car kept sliding to the opposite side of the street. It was as if she were peering out from the center of a spiraling tornado—spinning, swirling, the headlights cutting across the black night and blinding snow. The front end slammed into a concrete abutment, but momentum carried the whole car right over the top. It tipped and nearly rolled over, righted itself, then skidded down the snow-covered embankment.

Peyton’s arms flailed, her whole body jerked, her head slammed forward and back against the headrest. Glass shattered all around her—the side windows, the windshield, an explosion of sharp pellets. Her face was suddenly tingling, wet and warm. She could see nothing, hear nothing, not even her own screams. The rolling and skidding stopped with an ominous thud, but the impact seemed cushioned, as if the battered vehicle had landed in a snowbank. Peyton couldn’t tell if she was right side up, wasn’t even sure she was conscious. It was as if she were drifting, still moving in slow motion. Her feet felt cold, then her ankles and shins too. It was that wet feeling again. Not the hot, wet feeling that had enveloped her face. This was cold, icy cold. Her car had landed in no snow bank. She was indeed floating. Water was everywhere.

The pond!

She splashed her face to clear away the blood and was suddenly wide awake. The frigid flood was already knee-deep, and still more was seeping in through the doors and floor. The water had a distinct reddish tint that she realized was her own blood. In a moment of panic she tried the door, but it wouldn’t budge. She released the seat belt but couldn’t move. Her leg was pinned beneath the wreckage somewhere below the steering wheel. She pulled hard, harder still. The dashboard lights flickered on and off, then out for good. Blood continued to seep into her eyes, effectively blinding her, but with the car lights dead it was too dark to see anyway. The water was rising, the car was sinking. Though her limbs were going numb she kept pulling, fighting with every ounce of strength to loosen her trapped foot. The water inched upward to the top of her thighs, the hips. She screamed for help, Somebody, please! But it was hardly a scream. With little strength left, she was shivering, minutes away from shock. She tried another cry for help, but her voice only cracked. She felt herself slipping away, then she rebounded once more as that cold, wet sensation rose to her waist. It chilled her belly, the slightly protruding tummy, unleashing tears and one final plea in a