This much is vivid and clear: my hands cradling Humphrey’s head. I’m trying to make him comfortable, to cushion him from the unforgiving asphalt. He isn’t crying or anything; he’s very still, but I can feel him breathing.
The larger scene is more of a blur. Police. Neighbors. Ambulances. Fire trucks. A blanket to keep Humphrey warm—this is all before the flashing lights. Mrs. McGillicudy brings it out from her house. I want to tell her that Humphrey isn’t cold; it’s warm out and we’ve been running around, but I don’t say anything. After tucking the blanket around Humphrey’s legs, she squats beside me in the street. She says nothing; neither do I. At one point, she puts her arm around me.
The Stashowers are next on the scene, I believe.
“Oh my God. Oh my God,” Mrs. Stashower cries.
“Who is it?” Mr. Stashower asks.
“It’s Humphrey,” I say. “Humphrey T. Danker.”
“It’s the little Danker boy,” Mrs. McGillicudy says, and I realize that I didn’t actually answer the question out loud.
“Oh my God,” Mrs. Stashower repeats.
“Has anyone called 911?” her husband asks.
“Before I came out,” Mrs. McGillicudy says.
“Stay there,” Mr. Stashower yells. Stay there? Where else would I go? But he has his back to me. He isn’t telling me to stay there. People must be gathered on the side of the street. “You kids stay there. Stay out of the street.”
I hear car horns honking. We’re holding up traffic. “Should we—move Humphrey?” I ask Mrs. McGillicudy. This time words do come out of my mouth.
“No, no,” she says. “Whoever’s honking doesn’t know what’s going on. They’ll just have to wait.”
Next, Mrs. Raskin appears. “Where are Tom and Clarice?” she asks.
“I’m babysitting,” I say in a whisper. “They’re out.” Mrs. McGillicudy transmits this to Mrs. Raskin.
“Where are they?” Mrs. Raskin says.
They went to a movie. An early movie and late dinner, or early dinner and late movie, I’m not sure what the order of this Friday evening was. I have their cell phone numbers programmed into my phone, which somehow makes its way from my back pocket to Mrs. Raskin. Or to Mr. Stashower. To someone.
Then the rescue-squad people come. I look next to me and Mrs. McGillicudy is no longer there.
“What do I do—?” I ask the uniformed woman who’s taken Mrs. McGillicudy’s place.
“You’ve done a great job,” she says. “I’m going to place my hands under yours. When I say ‘okay,’ that means I’ve got him and you can remove your hands.”
“I don’t know if I feel him breathing anymore,” I say.
“That can be hard to detect,” she says. “But we’re going to take good care of him.”
She relieves me of my place on the asphalt. Now it’s her turn to be Humphrey’s cushion.
Another rescue-squad person, a guy, sits on my other side. He looks into my eyes, checks my pulse, does a few other things you see on television shows where people get into car accidents or are found dazed at the scene of a crime. “How’re you doing?” he asks. He is, I notice when he holds my hands to wash them with some stuff out of a bottle, unusually good-looking. He can’t be more than six or seven years older than me. Maybe eight or nine years. My sense of being on the set of a television drama grows.
“Fine,” I say, stupidly. “I mean, I’m not hurt. I didn’t get hit by a car.”
“No?” he says. “You’re sure?”
Am I sure? Can you be unsure of such a thing?
A third rescue person, a woman, materializes. “We’re taking you to the ER so you can get checked out,” she says. “Even if you feel fine, you need to be seen by a doctor.”
“What about Humphrey?” Panic rises in my throat. “Shouldn’t you be taking care of Humphrey?”
“He’s got his own team. See?” says the woman. Four people hover over Humphrey, and a stretcher has been pulled alongside him. “We’re taking care of you.”
Two other paramedics wheel a stretcher over to me. “On three …,” one of them says, holding me under my elbows. I want to object, to point out that I walked here on my own two feet to the middle of the street and crouched down next to Humphrey, I wasn’t bulldozed here by a car, I didn’t even fall down, and if they want me on a stretcher, I can very simply stand up and put myself on a stretcher.
But I find, when I try to raise myself on my own two feet, that it isn’t as simple as that. My knees buckle.
As the paramedics ease me onto the stretcher, I hear Mrs. Raskin talking—her voice loud and raspy as usual, matching her name—to Mrs. Stashower.
“They don’t answer,” she’s saying. “They’re not answering their cell phones. Who doesn’t answer their cell phones when they leave their child with a babysitter? Isn’t that the whole point of cell phones—so you can be reached in an emergency?”
“Oh my God,” Mrs. Stashower says.
Mrs. McGillicudy appears again as I lie on the stretcher waiting to be lifted into the ambulance. No one answered the door or the phone at my house, she tells me. Were my parents reachable?
“Oh—my cell phone,” I remember. “Mrs. Raskin.”
While Mrs. McGillicudy goes to find Mrs. Raskin and my phone, my team of rescue workers lifts my stretcher into the ambulance.
“But she’s got my phone,” I object.
Either I don’t say this out loud or I do and no one cares. The hunky guy and the woman climb in the back with me. Before the doors to the ambulance close, I notice, for the first time, the teal blue minivan at the head of the line of cars snaking backward on Quarry Road. It’s the car closest to Humphrey, and its position in the lane is sort of skewed. From what I can see in the deepening dusk, the car hasn’t suffered a bit of damage.
Humphrey, however, is still lying in the road. I see him vividly and clearly, despite the gathering darkness.