Page 5 of Small Town Hero
“It’s a white compact, a rental with Arizona plates—parked on the side of the road.” The words tumbled out of Susannah’s mouth; the boy was moaning now, writhing in pain. “Tell them to hurry! Please!”
“Try to stay calm, ma’am,” the dispatcher urged easily. He—or she—Susannah couldn’t quite tell which—was clearly used to calls like this one. And it was part of their job to keep it together in any kind of crisis.
“Want me to stay on the line with you?”
Susannah shook her head before realizing she had to respond verbally, since she and the dispatcher weren’t on FaceTime. “I think we’ll be all right here until the ambulance arrives. If there’s a problem in the meantime, I’ll call you back.”
“Excellent,” the dispatcher replied, and the call ended.
Susannah laid her phone on the ground and spoke as evenly and quietly as she could. “What’s your name?” she asked. “I’ll call your folks and let them know you’ve been hurt.”
“Tim,” the boy answered, between groans. “Tim Boyd. My—mom and—dad—are working—”
“You must know their numbers.”
Tim tried to shake his head and stopped, with a wince. “I just press—these buttons—”
“Where’s your phone?” Susannah asked, sounding much more with-it than she felt. Inside, she was churning with anxiety.
Tim tried to laugh but that, like the attempt to shake his head, was a bust. “Under me,” he said, after a struggle.
She didn’t dare move him, even to retrieve his phone. The paramedics, or the hospital admissions people, would have to notify the parents.
Minutes passed.
Susannah made a quick scramble up to the road, to get a box of tissues from the car.
Damn! If she’d been driving her own SUV, there would have been an emergency blanket and a first-aid kit.
Plus, her suitcases were back at the hotel, so she couldn’t grab a T-shirt or a beach towel to help stanch the bleeding.
There was one good thing, anyway: The horse had returned.
It stood, reins dragging, head down, maybe twenty yards from the rental car.
Susannah felt a pang of sympathy for the animal. Was it hurt?
She didn’t have time to find out, since Tim was still lying where he’d fallen.
She went back to the boy, found the tissues insufficient against the bleeding, and was considering hauling her T-shirt off over her head and using it as a compress when she heard the piercing, not-too-distant sound of a siren.
Susannah sat back on the heels of her sneakers, closed her eyes and thanked God.
Tim was pale, and his eyes were unfocused, so he was probably about to lose consciousness.
“Stay with me, Tim,” she pleaded.
“My—horse—” he groaned.
“Your horse came back.” A pause. “He looks okay.”
Another siren intertwined itself with the first.
Tears of sheer relief stung Susannah’s eyes. “Hear that? That’s the ambulance. Help will be here any minute now.”
Tim closed his eyes and seemed to sink into himself, and Susannah gripped his wrist, feeling for a pulse. He was still alive, but his heartbeat was weak.
She knew that from the first aid classes she’d taken back in college.
Bending low to whisper in the boy’s ear, Susannah nearly choked on the metallic scent of the blood he was shedding at a frightening rate. When applying pressure didn’t work, she was forced to change course.
“I’ll be right back,” she promised.
Then she made another rushed and arduous journey up to the road.
Spotting the ambulance in the near distance, she waved both arms, just in case the medics didn’t see her.
Which was silly, of course, but she was barely able to control her panic.
Tim’s horse, meanwhile, spooked by the shrill noise of the sirens, and probably the flashing lights as well, was prancing and snorting and tossing his head.
Knowing less than nothing about horses, Susannah nevertheless approached the terrified animal and caught hold of its bridle strap with one hand.
“Hush!” she commanded the frantic creature.
Miraculously, the horse began to settle down a little.
Susannah held on. Watched and waited as first the ambulance lurched to a stop nearby, then the police car.
A man and a woman climbed down from their seats in the cab of the emergency vehicle and hurried around to open the doors at the back of the ambulance.
They were both in uniform, carrying the stretcher they’d yanked out of the rig. Blessedly, they’d turned off the sirens by then, though the red and blue lights were still splashing around and around, dizzyingly bright.
“Where’s the kid?” asked the police officer, a man in his mid-fifties, with graying hair and sharp eyes. His name tag read, “Sgt. Jim Wallis. Copper Ridge Police Department.”
Susannah pointed toward the trees, still holding on the horse’s bridle, lest the animal run away again. Her arm and shoulder ached from the effort.
The paramedics were already hustling down into the brush, toward Tim.
Calmly, the policeman took the horse’s reins from Susannah and tied them loosely to the door handle on the driver’s side of his cruiser. “I know the people who own this fella. I’ll give them a call, and they’ll be here with a trailer in no time.”
“I guess that’s the benefit of living in a small community like Copper Ridge,” Susannah said, and then felt stupid. “I mean, everybody knows everybody, right?”
The officer smiled patiently, and that eased Susannah’s tension a bit.
“Boy’s name is Tim Boyd?” he asked.
“Yes. I was going to call his parents, but he said he didn’t remember their numbers and his phone was under him and I didn’t want to move him so—”
“It’s all right, Ms.—”
“Holiday. Susannah Holiday. I’m Becky Bennet’s sister.”
TMI? Susannah didn’t know, and didn’t care.
Jim Wallis gave a brisk nod. “I was real sorry to hear about Becky’s troubles.” He sounded sincere, and took a small notebook from the shirt pocket of his uniform, along with a pen. “Now, can you tell me exactly what happened here, Ms. Holiday?”
Trembling now, as the worst of the shock began to subside, Susannah related the story.
Just as she was finishing, a pickup pulling a horse trailer rounded a bend and drew up behind Susannah’s rental.
A hefty older man wearing overalls and a billed cap stepped down from the driver’s seat and approached.
“Hello, Knute,” Officer Wallis said cordially. “Your horse isn’t hurt, far as I can tell.”
Knute nodded a hello at Susannah and approached the fitful horse.
Skillfully, he bent and ran work-callused hands over the animal’s limbs, and when he straightened, he was smiling.
Susannah let out a long breath, relieved.
“Thanks for the call, Jim,” the old man said, untying the animal and leading it toward the truck and trailer. “I placed this rascal with the Boyds a month or so ago,” he continued, speaking over one shoulder. “For their son Tim, you know. I reckon that boy’s gone and gotten hurt?”
The policeman nodded. “Got himself thrown,” he said. “Ian and Marva are down there now, scraping him up off the ground.”
Susannah winced inwardly at the picture this statement brought to mind.
Oddly, though, her attention snagged on a name.
Ian. The paramedic.
Susannah had gotten a good look at him, but for the briefest moment, as he passed her with one end of the stretcher under his arm, their eyes had met.
His were a dark, denim blue, full of gentle intelligence and confidence in his ability to handle whatever had to be handled.
Now, she realized she liked the man, though technically they hadn’t met.
How could that have happened?
The man called Knute was loading Tim Boyd’s horse into the trailer. Presently, he closed the trailer’s doors and got back into his pickup truck.
With a toot of his horn, he drove away.
After another fifteen minutes, the paramedics reappeared, carrying the stretcher, with the young boy loosely but expertly strapped to it.
Tim’s head was bandaged; he’d been hooked up to an IV, and his broken leg was in a temporary splint.
He looked as though he was unconscious; he’d turned a shade of bluish gray, and Susannah was horrified all over again.
“Is he dead?” she croaked, before pressing one hand to her mouth. Her lunch, purchased at a drive-through just outside Flagstaff, immediately after she’d left the airport, was suddenly roiling in her stomach, threatening to come back up, then and there.
Officer Wallis was on his phone, most likely explaining the situation to one of Tim’s parents.
The female paramedic, Marva, was a sturdy, muscular type, with a kind face. She shook her head sympathetically, but said nothing.
There were several ways to interpret the gesture, and Susannah turned her anxious gaze to the man, Ian.
He smiled at her, and for a moment, it was as if half a dozen different dimensions had collided, woven themselves into strands and finally become one.
Something intangible passed between them, something Susannah couldn’t begin to define or describe, and she wavered on her feet, dizzy. So dizzy that she thought she might actually faint.
“He’s going to be all right,” Ian said, watching her closely. “We’re taking him to Community, just up the road, and he’ll probably be there a while. If you want, you can call in later, so someone can fill you in.”
Susannah was still trying to collect herself.
It had all been too much—flying down from Chicago in what amounted to a rush, driving to Copper Ridge with a squalling cat scratching angrily at the opening to his carrier in the back seat, checking into the hotel, then, after dropping off both her bags and a much calmer Nico, doubling back almost halfway to Flagstaff to see Becky, and finding her in a nearly comatose condition. All that, and Tim’s accident, too.
Ian and his coworker were busy loading patient and stretcher into the back of the ambulance. After that, Ian climbed into the back with Tim, while Marva made her way to the driver’s seat.
Officer Wallis was on his radio, calling in the details of the accident.
Still feeling slightly out of sync with herself, Susannah walked back to her car.
Officer Wallis waved a farewell.
As the ambulance went into a wide U-turn, the siren came back on.
Susannah sat behind the wheel of the rental, sipping lukewarm water from a bottle she’d pulled from her purse, trying to get it together enough to drive safely back to Copper Ridge and all the problems waiting to be solved.