I Was the Unwanted Fifth in Their Life and Death Pact novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Man in the Rain

Abigail gives her statement and her surgeon admits he is the one who held her leg together. A gas station camera shows a white SUV. Her own call log shows the first alert lasted forty-one seconds: someone answered.

The officer sat in the visitor chair and asked me to start at the beginning.

I told him the way I would have taken it down at work.

Tuesday, 11:36 p.m., westbound, Dunmore. Green light. A vehicle ran its red from the cross street and hit my driver's side.

"Did you see the car?" he asked.

"Big. Light colored. I was looking at the airbag by then."

He wrote that down.

"Did you see the driver?"

"No."

"Did you call anyone before the ambulance came?"

My mouth went dry.

"I pressed an emergency app four times," I said. "Nobody came."

He glanced at the soup stain on my sheet and didn't ask.

There was a knock, and Dr. Kerrigan came in, still in his scrubs.

"Officer. I'll be quick, I have a patient in four."

"Sir, you're the witness who called it in?"

"Yes."

I looked at him.

He looked at the wall clock.

"You," I said.

"Yes."

"You were the voice on the road."

I remembered it now, in pieces.

Someone kneeling in the rain at my window with a flashlight in his teeth.

Two hands pressing on my thigh so hard it hurt more than the crash.

A man saying, over and over, "Stay with me, keep talking, tell me where you are."

I had given him the cross street first.

I had given him my age, my injuries and my breathing rate, in the order I give it to callers.

"You told me to say it to you like a dispatch," he said. "So I could repeat it to 911 exactly."

"That was me?"

"You said, and I quote, 'Don't say it's bad, say what it is.'"

The officer gave a small cough.

Dr. Kerrigan almost smiled.

"I was driving back from a consult across town," he said. "I saw your taillights down in the ditch. Nobody else on the road. The creek had flooded two blocks up, so the ambulance took until twelve forty."

"You held my leg together for twenty minutes."

"Closer to twenty-five."

"Why didn't you tell me when I woke up?"

"You woke up to a lot," he said. "I thought you should have your first day without me in it."

I didn't know what to do with that.

So I said the only thing that made sense to me.

"Thank you for staying."

"I don't leave," he said, simply.

He said it as a fact he had settled about himself a long time ago.

The officer cleared his throat again and pulled his phone out.

"We got footage from the gas station across the street. It's not great."

He turned the screen toward us.

It was a still frame from a security camera, gray with rain.

A big white SUV in the middle of the intersection, one headlight flaring.

The plate was a smear, but the first two characters were readable.

7K.

"We're running it," the officer said. "A lot of white SUVs in this county. But we'll find it."

My pulse jumped anyway.

I looked at the still for a long time.

I couldn't have said why.

White SUVs were everywhere. I passed forty of them a week.

"The driver got out," the officer added. "Briefly. Looked at your car. Then got back in and left."

My throat went tight.

"Looked at me," I said. "And left."

"Yes, ma'am."

Dr. Kerrigan took one step toward the bed and stopped himself.

The officer left a card on the tray table.

Dr. Kerrigan said he'd be back to check the incision at six and went out after him, and the room went quiet.

I picked up my phone to call work and tell them I would miss the whole month.

The screen was still cracked in the middle.

My call log was open from where I had pressed the Lifeline button.

I had never looked at it closely.

Four outgoing calls, Tuesday night, 11:41, 11:52, 12:03 and 12:14.

I read the durations the way I read call records every day at work.

12:14. 0:00.

12:03. 0:00.

11:52. 0:00.

I stopped on the first one.

11:41. 0:41.

A call that never connected has no length at all.

Somebody had picked up.

Somebody had listened to me breathe, and then hung up.

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