Wishing for Wonderful (Serendipity #3)(45)

Cupid

The Crash





The black car hit the curb with such force that it went airborne, flew by Eleanor whacking her in the back, flipped over and hit the Toyota then flipped again and crashed through the plate glass window. When the car finally came to a stop, there were five people lying on the ground: an elderly couple, a young girl, Eleanor and Lindsay. Eleanor was face down on top of the shopping bag full of broken glass that, moments earlier, had been her additional place settings. Lindsay was lying on her back with her right leg twisted beneath her. Neither of them was moving. Inside the store a clerk pinned behind the car’s right fender frantically screamed for someone to pull her free. A teenage boy stumbled around calling for his dad. The boy’s left arm was dangling from his shoulder, and the large gash above his right eyebrow was oozing blood. The driver of the car was slumped over the wheel with a shaft of window glass going in one side of his neck and out the other.

The street was littered with broken glass and remnants of people, a purse, a mangled shopping bag, a shoe, a trampled cell phone, a red muffler hanging from a parking meter. Those who were standing and had escaped injury scrambled to flee the spot, even though the disaster had come to a standstill. Although no one stepped forward to claim credit for it, a caller dialed 9-1-1 and reported the accident.

A burly father and son stepped through the broken window and tried to push the mangled car sideways to free the trapped clerk. Before they could make it happen, the wail of sirens filled the air.

“The cops are here now,” the father told the trapped clerk. “Stay calm. They’ll have you out in no time.”

The frightened clerk ceased screaming.

“Please,” she begged, “stay with me until they get here.”

The first ambulance pulled up seconds after the police car.

Kneeling beside Eleanor was a woman who’d been half a block back but saw everything. She held Eleanor’s limp hand in hers.

“You’ll be okay,” she murmured. “You’ll be okay.”

Eleanor gave no response.

When the paramedics scrambled out of the truck, the older one hurried to the girl who’d been walking just steps in front of Lindsay. She’d been the one the car hit after the first flip, and she’d taken the brunt of the impact. The girl had been propelled across the sidewalk, slammed into the side of the building and brought down hard on her head. The paramedic bent over the girl, listened for sounds of breath and felt for a pulse. After less than a minute he stood and shook his head sorrowfully.

The officer first on the scene leaned over Eleanor who appeared to be bleeding from a number of places.

“Do you know her?” he asked the woman holding Eleanor’s hand.

“No,” the woman answered. “But when I saw her get hit, I came to see if I could help.”

“Can you tell me what happened?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “It was so quick. That car came from out of nowhere…” She hesitated for a moment and tried to remember. “I think the black car hit something; then it went up in the air, and when it came down it hit this woman in the back and then it hit the young girl. Then everybody started screaming and glass started breaking…”

The woman suddenly raised her hand and covered her eyes, as if she had seen something terrible.

“Oh my God!” she said with a gasp. “The car wasn’t going to hit this woman. It was going to hit that blond girl.”

She pointed to Lindsay, who now had a paramedic kneeling beside her. “The car hit this woman because she pushed the girl out of the way!”

“They were together?” the officer asked.

“Yes, I’m sure they were.” The woman nodded. “Before the accident I saw them talking. I think that girl is her daughter.”

“I thought you said you didn’t know her—”

“I don’t,” the woman said sadly, “but I know only a mother would do what she did.”

The elderly couple was dazed but relatively unharmed. The woman had cuts on her leg and the man on his hands, but that seemed to be the extent of their injuries.

“We were lucky,” he told the officer. “We could’ve been killed.”

He didn’t say so, but he was feeling guilty about how he’d rushed his wife to hurry up. If he’d allowed her to spend another few minutes shopping they’d still be in Macy’s petite department and would have avoided the incident altogether.





People were still milling around and craning their necks to catch the gore of what happened when the first ambulance pulled out with Eleanor. The lights flashed and the siren screeched its warning, but Eleanor heard none of it.

The second ambulance left minutes later with Lindsay in the back, and by then she had regained consciousness. Certain a gorilla was stomping on her leg, she tried to lift her head and pull at the mask covering her nose and mouth.

“You’ve got to keep that on,” the paramedic said, easing her back down.

“What…?” Lindsay only knew pain; she remembered nothing.

“There was an accident,” he said. “A car…”

His voice faded in and out. She caught some of the words but not others. The car… Slowly Lindsay began to recall Eleanor pushing her… Tumbling backward… Her shoe caught on the sidewalk… Her leg, the sharp pain… The snap and crunch of landing and that last vision of a car coming toward…