Owen was not at a screenwriting conference and Hannah was not shoe-shopping in Montreal. Owen knew that Alex was smart enough to connect the dots and draw the picture. “Sir, lift your head.”They placed a mask over his mouth. All their attention, the quick movements and taut faces, made it clear how helplessly injured she was. He looked again at Hannah and the two paramedics who were working on her. Even if he'd never seen the difference between hope and naïveté. He knew Alex was working all weekend, but in that moment all he had was hope. He pictured his brother's face, how bereaved and betrayed it would look when he saw his wife and brother come into his hospital, strapped to stretchers from the same accident. His lover, the woman his brother had failed, the woman he loved: that was how he preferred to think of her. Now that title sounded so incestuous and wrong. Owen looked at Hannah: his brother's wife, his sister-in-law. Especially for your partner's sake.”He nodded towards her. My job is to take you to Dartmouth General Hospital, and it is in your best interest to let me do my job. “Then can we make it the other one in Dartmouth instead. He didn't want to seem desperate, and didn't want to have to explain why. Just take it easy now, and lie back down.” He was fiddling with an IV bag and didn't even look at Owen. Sheet Harbour is, at present, not equipped for this â¦for ⦠surgery. Say they never had their hospital cards or any other kind of ID on them. He wanted to be taken to a hospital anywhere but Dartmouth, maybe check in under bogus names. Owen grabbed a man's forearm, panicked.“We are heading to the hospital in Sheet Harbour, right? It's the closest, right?” His eyes, not on the road, had been wandering across the curves of her body in the rearview mirror: the lines of her ribcage beneath her tight shirt.Īs the paramedics loaded the stretchers into the ambulance, Hannah's left arm fell over the side of the spine board, limp because she was unconscious, and swung back and forth like a pendulum. He was watching Hannah, so peaceful in her sleep, when the car lifted from the highway and spun into the ditch. The glare of oncoming headlights trickled down his windshield like stars caught in a waterfall. The wipers couldn't keep up with the rain, and a thick glaze of water, rippled by the wind, coated the windshield and hazed his vision. He was thinking about those few moments before he hydroplaned. Lying there on the spine board, his eyes shut tight to avoid the rain beating down on his face, Owen had an eerie feeling that he should have died in the crash. Rocks rolled under the paramedics' feet, threatening to snap their ankles. Tree branches and shrubs got in the way, scraping against the bright yellow spine boards. Just take it easy until we get back to the ambulance and take a look at you both. They'd almost screamed it in his ear, yelling through the walls of rain, We're gonna need a third set of hands on each board! Watch your backs! They treated him and Hannah like cargo, lifting them over rocks, passing them around trees, ignoring Owen's questions. As they turned to head back to the ambulance, Owen heard them sigh and curse the rugged terrain between the car and their ambulance down on the highway. The paramedics pried their bodies from the car and loaded them onto long yellow spine boards. Their urgency was more startling than their presence was calming. Even the snapping of twigs beneath their boots was deafening. Then he saw frantic zips of flashlights along the ground like helicopter spotlights, and noise rushed at him as fast and loud as warfare: the shouting of urgent instructions, the suck of mud at their feet. When Owen first heard the paramedics coming, their voices sounded so distant and calm. She was lying there peacefully, as if asleep in her own bed. Hannah was unconscious by the time the emergency response team found the car.
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