I Wish You Happy: A Novel Read online

  If the storm holds off, I have just enough time before work to lay Oscar to rest. I’ve picked out the perfect grave for Oscar. It’s away from the road, shaded by a tree. Tom Childers, 1950–1956, May He Rest in Peace. I figure Tom and Oscar can be company for each other.

  In the back of my car, ready for the expedition, are my tools: a hand trowel, a watering can, and a pot of daisies. No need to bring extra fertilizer. The thought of Oscar as worm food twists my insides one more time. I pat his box again, this time to reassure myself.

  A young couple saunters into the crosswalk, hand in hand, without even checking for traffic. I slam my foot onto the brakes. The car skids to a stop, momentum thrusting me forward against my shoulder belt. Oscar’s box careens forward, slick as a toboggan on a sliding hill.

  It tips onto its side. The lid comes off.

  Oscar, stiff as a stone, rolls clear of his towel bed and out onto the floor.

  I twist free of my shoulder belt and bend down and over to reach for him, but a horn blaring behind me jolts me upright. A man in a shiny sedan waves his hands, signaling for me to get on already. Glaring at Mr. Impatient in my rearview, I accelerate through the crosswalk, now clear, and on down Main Street.

  Colville is a small town, and usually there’s very little traffic, but today it seems the entire population has come out at once. Keeping one hand on the steering wheel, peering over the dash, I try to corral Oscar and get him back into his box, but I can’t quite stretch my arm far enough while keeping an eye on traffic.

  Approaching Third Avenue, I think I’ve caught a break. The light is red. I’ve got a right-hand turn. Just enough time to scoop up Oscar, and I’m off. But then a bicycle pulls up to the light beside me, and with it a whole new dilemma.

  The woman on the bike, a sleek red machine nothing like the secondhand object chained to my small porch, turns her head and makes direct eye contact. She’s wearing a helmet, one of those trendy torpedo-shaped things, black and streamlined. Black spandex shorts and a midriff tank top expose a soft expanse of belly, burnt pink by the sun. Her face is flushed, strands of dark hair plastered to her cheeks with sweat.

  Her eyes, for some reason, are hostile. They burn a hole through me, as though I’m an affront to her existence. Maybe I didn’t see her and cut her off, maybe she’s an environmentalist and objects to my rig, maybe she’s just hot. Me, I’ve had about enough. If my being here offends her, she can get the hell out of the way. Holding her gaze, returning her glare, I miss it when the light finally changes.

  Mr. Impatient, still behind me, leans into his horn. Clearly, he’s not from here. On another day, maybe I’d ignore him. Who cares if I hold up traffic for a minute? So what if we all miss a light? Today I’m rattled and off-kilter. The sun glare is rubbing on my very last nerve. I throw up my hands in a gesture of exaggerated frustration, then wave for the biker to go. I want to turn right. If I turn and she goes, we have a problem.

  She just sits there. Still staring at me.

  The horn behind me blares again.

  I poke my head out the window and shout, waving my arm in an exaggerated sweeping gesture. “I’m turning right. Go already.” When she doesn’t, I throw my hands up in the air again, hit the gas, and accelerate into my turn.

  The bike turns, too, keeping pace with me, as if we’re a car-bicycle tandem unit.

  I accelerate, wanting to rid my world of her.

  The bike keeps pace, the rider bent forward over the handlebars, her legs pumping.

  If she had superpowers I’d be on fire by now, the intensity of her gaze incinerating me from the inside out. My heart is beating way too fast, accelerating into warp drive. Everything else slows down. The houses, the pavement, the road ahead look flat as a painted canvas, stationary and unreal. All that matters is me, the biker, and Oscar, rolling gently to and fro on the floor.

  The biker puts on a burst of speed, gaining on me. Her handlebars pass out of the frame of the passenger window, advancing on my front bumper. I ease off on the gas. The invisible band that ties us together stretches as she speeds up and I slow down.

  Whatever that encounter meant, to her or to me, it’s over. I draw a breath and let it go, checking my rearview for traffic.

  Mr. Impatient is still right on my bumper.

  I glance down at Oscar.

  A dull thud, a jolt, a sound of metal on metal, snaps my eyes back to the windshield. The car lurches as the tires roll over something large before I fishtail into a skidding stop.

  The street ahead is empty. All is quiet, peaceful. I can’t see the bike.

  A woman steps out of the apartment complex on the right, shading her eyes with her hand, staring in my direction. Her mouth opens and the screaming begins, high and sharp. Car doors slam behind me, voices shout.

  I sit there, my foot frozen to the brakes, my hands welded to the steering wheel. If I uncurl one finger or move my foot a fraction of an inch, I’m certain the car will race away out of control and hurt somebody.

  Kill somebody.

  My insides quiver at the memory of the tires running over—something.

  My door opens and Mr. Impatient’s head pokes in. “My God. Are you all right?”

  I should tell him I’m fine, but my tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth, and I can’t remember how to shape the word. “I’ve called 911,” he says. “Sit tight. I don’t see blood—are you hurt anywhere?” He sounds calm and in control, and that helps me take a breath. But then his face crumples. “My God. That poor woman.” His hands start shaking. His head withdraws from my door, and a half a breath later I hear retching and a splatter of liquid on the pavement.

  This is what shakes me loose from my inertia.

  His shock. His reaction.

  I don’t need to ask what woman. He’s talking about my road-rage biker.

  My training kicks in. I shift the car into park and ease my foot off the brake. It takes three tries to get my seat belt unbuckled, but finally I scramble out into the heat and glare. Thunder rumbles in the distance, but the light is still overly bright. The red bicycle is crumpled and entangled hopelessly with my front bumper. I don’t see the woman at first, but then my searching eyes find the crowd of bystanders.

  Behind my car.

  Behind my car. That bump I felt. That thing I ran over. My stomach contracts, and I almost join Mr. Impatient in a two-person vomiting brigade. Instead, I run toward the group with the sensation of running in a dream. It takes forever. I both want to be there and not to be there with equal intensity.

  The crowd parts to let me through.

  She’s lying on her back, one knee bent, her head turned at an awkward angle. There’s wetness on the pavement between her splayed legs. Urine, not blood, I tell myself. There is blood, though, beside her, behind her. A smear of it, like an abstract finger painting. Her chest rises and falls. She’s breathing.

  Irrational hope rises.

  Maybe she’ll be fine. It could happen. Knocked out, sure. A little road rash. A few scars. Someday she’ll talk about them in a bar, tell the winning story of the time she survived getting hit by a car.

  The tire track across her chest says otherwise.

  I work with the elderly in extended care, not ER, but still my brain supplies me with what I don’t want to know. Injuries will be internal, lacerations of liver or spleen. Ruptured bowel. Bladder trauma. Fractured pelvis. Not to mention her spine or her neck, for God’s sake. She’s probably bleeding out inside.

  The woman makes a whimpering sound that brings me to my knees beside her. Her eyes are brown, wide open but blank and unfocused. A purple swelling disfigures her cheek. Blood smears her lips, and I don’t know if it’s because she’s bitten her tongue or because of internal bleeding. I want to shift her onto her side so fluids can clear her throat and not choke her, but I’m afraid her back is broken.

  “ABC,” I remind myself. “Airway, breathing, cardiac.”

  She’s breathing, or at least gasping, but her chest looks wrong
. Part of it on the right side is doing its own thing.

  Panic kicks in, my own heart trying to beat its way out of my chest.

  I was driving distracted, and I ran over her. And now I have a chance to save her, but I don’t know what to do. Looking up, scanning the crowd and hoping there’s a doctor or an EMT just standing around, waiting for an invitation, my eyes meet those of people as terrified and incompetent as I am and then latch onto one familiar face. Mr. Impatient.

  “You called 911, right?”

  He nods, wipes his mouth with the back of one hand.

  “Call them back. Ask ETA.”

  It can’t be long. We’re right here. Right in the middle of town. Any second the sirens will sound.

  I go on with my assessment, as if I know what I’m doing.

  Airway, clear. Breathing, for the moment. Don’t think about if she stops, or if she starts to vomit or drown in her own blood.

  Cardiac. Her heart is beating. Her pulse is rapid and fluttery but there.

  I feel my way systematically down her body, checking for more broken bones. When I get to her hand, she grabs on and squeezes.

  Her palm is scraped raw, blood smeared halfway to her elbow.

  She’s awake now, conscious.

  “Hurts,” she manages, between difficult breaths.

  “The ambulance is coming. Hold on.”

  Her eyes, wide with pain and panic, encompass my whole world. Lashes thick and dark. Irises the clear liquid brown of a woodland stream, flecked with green. Eyebrows carefully shaped into the perfect arch. My own eyes burn and blur, but if I so much as blink I’m afraid she’ll slip away from me. I stay with her, matching my own breathing to hers, holding her hand.

  Her lips move, but the words are lost in the sound of a siren, loud and clear. A few seconds later booted feet and blue uniform pants enter my field of vision. Still, I don’t take my eyes from my biker.

  “How bad is it?”

  The voice is male, young, not what I’d hope for from an EMT. He squats down across from me, face creased in worry. It’s a cop, not a medic. Officer Mendez. His dad is a resident at Valley View, where I work.

  “Ambulance is on its way,” Mendez says. “They were out on another call. Probably fifteen minutes ETA.”

  I’m not sure we have fifteen minutes.

  My biker’s face is already paler. Her hand feels cold in mine. Her eyelashes flutter, the life lock between us wavering.

  My fingers tighten around hers, and I touch her cheek with my free hand. “Stay with me.”

  Her eyes open again, but they are unfocused and blurred, and I’m not sure she still sees me.

  “She’s in shock,” I tell Mendez, as if I know what I’m talking about. “We need to cover her, elevate her feet.”

  He’s immediately on it. The crowd contributes useful items of clothing, blankets from their car trunks. Somebody hands me a first aid kit, the kind you can buy at the pharmacy for five bucks, filled with Band-Aids and a tube of antibiotic ointment.

  “What’s your name?” I ask, unfastening the biker’s helmet, hoping that will ease her breathing.

  “Kat,” she whispers. Her eyes never leave my face, her hand locked so tight around mine my fingers ache with the pressure.

  “Okay, Kat. Good. Officer Mendez is going to put a blanket under your feet, okay? Easy . . .”

  The sound she makes when he lifts her feet tears through me. Her eyes close, her hand goes loose, and for a horrifying minute I think we’ve killed her. She’s still breathing, though, her heart still beating.

  I run my hands down her back, checking every vertebra in her spine, as if I’d know what a broken back feels like. When I get to her pelvis it creaks under my touch.

  Kat whimpers. She’s awake again, her eyes searching for mine, locking on, holding.

  “Can’t breathe,” she says. Her lips are tinged with blue, maybe a trick of the light since the clouds have rolled over now. A fat raindrop hits my face, and then another.

  “Yes, you can,” I say, because she has to breathe. “Does this help?” I press my hand against her rib cage, stabilizing the fractured ribs.

  “A little.”

  Rain is falling harder now. Somebody fetches an umbrella and holds it over Kat’s head. Her breathing sounds wet, like she’s filling up with water from the inside. Her eyelids flicker, then close.

  “No, you don’t.” I squeeze her shoulders. “Kat. Come back here.”

  Her eyes open again, unfocused. Her hand fumbles blindly for mine, and again we’re linked. Everybody else fades into the background, Mendez, Mr. Impatient, all of the bystanders.

  “It hurts too much,” she whispers.

  “If you die, then I’ll have killed you.” It sounds selfish and brutal, given the amount of pain she’s in, but it’s the truth.

  “No,” she objects. “I . . .” She coughs, wet and ugly, fresh blood coloring her lips.

  “Shhhh, don’t talk. You’re going to be fine. See all of these people? They all want you to hold on. Officer Mendez over there is going to be devastated if we lose you. Paperwork and guilt, probably forever, and he’s got a wife and new baby to take care of.”

  Improbably, the corner of her lip moves in what might be the ghost of a smile, and I go on.

  “That’s Mr. Impatient, holding the umbrella. He was on his way to somewhere very important, but look at him, hanging around here to make sure you make it. Because you are more important than anywhere else he needed to be. So you can’t make him waste his time. You see?”

  This time I’m so engaged I don’t even hear the sirens. There’s a hand on my shoulder and then a uniformed body beside me, edging me out of the way. Kat won’t let go of my hand, and they work around me. IVs and EKG leads. A backboard. When they lift her up onto the stretcher and into the ambulance I lose her.

  Rain washes over me, drenching my hair, soaking me to the skin, but it doesn’t cleanse away the blood from the pavement or the dirt ground into my knees. There’s still a bicycle twisted under my car; there’s still a dead rat in need of a burial.

  All I can think of is that I can’t drive anywhere until I move the bike. I grab the bent handlebars and give a tug, but it’s trapped beneath the bumper.

  “Hey, don’t touch that.”

  It’s Mendez, his hand on my arm like a band of iron. The teamwork we shared during the crisis is past. His face is set in hard lines I don’t understand. Crisis aftermath, I tell myself. Like Bernie and the rat.

  I try to twist out of his grasp, reaching for the bike. “I’m late for work.”

  “I called in for you. Your car’s not going anywhere until we’ve done a scene reconstruction.”

  There’s a slight hesitation before the word scene, and my heart takes an elevator trip down into my toes as the missing word shapes itself in my mind.

  Crime.

  Crime belongs with scene like toast belongs with peanut butter and ham belongs with eggs, but it has nothing to do with me. I’ve never even had a parking ticket.

  I stare up at Mendez, trying to connect the dots. “Are you going to arrest me?”

  “Should I?”

  That hideous moment of impact, the wheels passing over something large and soft. I shudder, wrapping my arms around my chest.

  “Hey.” The voice belongs to Mr. Impatient, who moves his umbrella over my head, even though it’s way too late to save me from the rain. “This woman is a hero. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “My job. Do you have a lawyer, Rae?”

  My whole body is shaking now, with chills, or reaction, or both. Of course I don’t have a lawyer. I’m going to have to call my parents.

  Mr. Impatient unbuttons his coat and drapes it over my shoulders. “I saw what happened,” he says, holding the umbrella over both of us. “The bicycle swerved right in front of her. There was no way she could have stopped. Nothing she could have done. Did you ask any of the other drivers before leaping to your grand conclusion?”

&n
bsp; I clutch at his words the way Kat clutched at my hand. Are they true? I play through the crash in my head again. The bike beside me. The rearview mirror. The glance at Oscar. That was the moment it all went wrong. I took my eyes off the road. Whether Kat crashed into me, or I crashed into Kat, it happened when I wasn’t looking.

  Mendez shoots Mr. Impatient a dirty look. “Thank you. If you would care to make a statement to Officer Jenkins over there, that would be immensely helpful.”

  “Fine. If you would care to hold this umbrella and maybe get this woman some medical attention, that would also be helpful.” My protector hands over the umbrella and stalks off to a police car angled behind mine, lights flashing.

  “Come on,” Mendez says. “Let’s get you out of the rain.”

  I follow him to a second squad car and climb into the back when he opens the door for me. At least I haven’t been cuffed or read my rights. Jail seems a small punishment for having killed somebody.

  If she dies.

  Please don’t die. Please.

  “So?” Mendez says, sliding into the front seat and turning to look at me. “How did it happen?”

  “I don’t know. She was riding on the side of the road, just in front of me. I glanced down and . . . crashed . . .”

  It’s warm in his car, but I can’t stop shaking. My stomach won’t stay still, and I’m afraid I’m going to puke. I press the back of my hand against my mouth and try to breathe.

  Mendez sighs. “Is there somewhere I can take you?”

  “We’re not going to jail?”

  “No. Not today, anyway. There were four witnesses, including your bodyguard with the umbrella, and they all tell the same story. Nothing you could have done. The crime scene guys will have to do their thing, though, so your car stays here.”

  “Please take me home.”

  “Are you sure? Is there a friend you could call? Family?” He looks more like the friendly guy I’ve always known, now that he’s done playing hard-ass, but it’s too late for him to offer me comfort, and he knows it.