J.D. still grips the handle of the steering wheel, staring forward for a moment at the scattered vehicles on the bridge, exhaling and then looking at Teri.
“That was close,” he says.
They both turn to make sure Lily is okay. Her seat belt was on and she sits in the back on a car seat, a look of surprise on her face, her bear clutched in her arms.
He sees something else in the rear window.
A car. Not stopping. Headlights approaching.
Before he can say or do anything, a shrill noise splits the air.
His body tightens.
Metal on metal, mashing and moving the car. They’re suddenly in the air, until another booming thud thrusts, then yanks them.
Then J.D. can feel it and he knows.
They’re no longer entirely on the bridge.
The car has torn through one of the guardrails, and it’s now starting to dangle.
Just like all of their lives.
The semi slows down and the driver points toward the bridge in the distance. Carlos can see the flames lighting up the carnage.
“Stop the truck,” he yells at the driver.
“What?”
“Stop the truck!”
He rips open the door and doesn’t wait for the truck to stop. Carlos had seen an overturned car, another vehicle hanging over the side on a broken guardrail, another one in flames. Figures moving around like the walking dead.
There’s no sort of epiphany inside of him to act. No sort of this-is-your-moment-Carlos sort of thing. No triumphant music and no second-guessing. He begins sprinting toward the bridge and is halfway there when he realizes this is the High Bridge over the river. The same one he’d found himself going to. The same one he’d been hanging over.
The same place he’d met the angel named Lacey.
Even though J.D. is still as a rock, his body still in shock over being pulled and then slammed against the side of the bridge, he can feel the car moving. The air bag has exploded and he can’t see forward. Yet he can feel them swaying forward, the back side tilting up like some kind of teeter-totter.
His arm reaches over to Teri to make sure she is okay. She coughs, the air bag in front of her as well.
“Are you hurt?”
She gasps a no through her coughing. Then the crying begins in the backseat. He turns and sees Lily still there, hair wild now and eyes swollen. She calls out for her mommy.
“It’s okay, sweetheart.”
J.D. is calm and speaks slowly. He knows this is a bad place to get emotional. They have to get out of the vehicle, starting with the girl. A searing pain races through his right leg. He knows that’s not a good thing, but he’s not going to say a word about it.
“Listen to me,” J.D. says, glancing back at her. “Can you open your door and climb out? Carefully.”
Lily tries but can’t move the door.
“It’s stuck!” she screams.
Lily unbuckles her seat belt and then scrambles toward the front of the car with them. The car starts swaying forward more.
“No, Lily, stay back there,” Teri orders, holding her back with her hand. “Try not to move, okay?”
J.D. can see now in front of them. The dark night and the reflection of the water below them.
Far below.
He glances over at Teri, who gives him the same grave look.
They don’t have much time left. But they can’t move—not anymore.
Maggie’s head rests on Grace’s lap in the backseat of the damaged Prius. The girl is still breathing heavily and crying, her face grimacing in pain. Outside the opened door, Matthew kneels, trying to help, but looking unsure.
Grace can see Maggie writhing in pain but she can’t stop it.
“Matt, there’s too much blood,” she chokes out. “She’s hemorrhaging.”
“I know, I know.”
His voice is as helpless as their situation. The smell of gas and smoke wraps around them. People around them are crying and screaming and hurling out names.
Maggie’s knees buckle and she cries out as Grace helps move her dress up. This isn’t a time for modesty. They have to do something. Anything.
“We have to get to the hospital,” Grace says.
“We’re out of time. There’s just—the baby’s coming—I can see her head.”
“I can’t do this,” the young girl howls out.
Grace grabs her hand and grips it as hard as she can.
“You have to, Maggie,” she orders with her lips talking against the girl’s ear. “Your little girl wants to see her mommy.”
Maggie keeps crying between the gasps of air and the deep exhales. Grace looks at her husband, who appears both ready and helpless at the same time.
The gas and the smoke seem to be getting worse.
God help us, please, God.
“Help me please help me help me!”
An endless burst of terror from some unseen voice shouting on the bridge. Carlos runs toward it until he reaches the fire. The flames seem to encircle the car.
“Get away, it’s gonna blow,” someone shouts at him while they pass running the other way.
The seconds flick out like a set of rounds lighting up the night sky.
Carlos bends over and can see through the orange and red blaze. A head. Someone inside the car trapped. Glass broken next to them. They’re still crying out for help.
He doesn’t hesitate.
He’s spent enough time of his life hesitating. Enough moments regretting that hesitation. And he’s not going to wait for anything anymore.
Leaving the fear behind, Carlos darts and jumps through the flames while he heads toward the car, opening the door to free the man trapped inside.
The car skids to a stop right at the base of the bridge. Bobby hadn’t been called here. He’d been trying to figure out what to say when he got home and had been driving slowly and carefully only to arrive at this carnage and mayhem. Everything suddenly sped up, and the medic in him rushed to action, peeling out of the car and then sprinting up the bridge.
He scans the scene and sees a black guy kneeling in the middle of the road, trying to move, but holding his side, obviously wounded somehow.
A car is halfway off the bridge, just hanging there somehow, stuck, but not for long. Another car is overturned. There are flames around a vehicle. Then he sees the silver BMW.
Andrea. The lawyer.
He runs even faster now, heading to the flames, trying to go to the most dangerous area to try to help. To try to save lives and get people out of here.
“Teri, listen to me.”
J.D.’s voice is almost as quiet as a whisper. It’s as if he fears speaking louder will cause the car to move again.
“We need to get Lily out of the car. Now. And I can’t move. My seat belt’s stuck.”
Teri nods. They’re both trying to stay calm, especially for the girl who hasn’t stopped crying but is not keeping still.
“Go. It’s okay. Slowly.”
Teri moves between the seats as carefully as she can. The movement sends the car forward again.
She stops and waits.
Bobby sees the dazed, bloodied face staring right at him but not seeing a thing. It’s the lawyer, the one who looked so polished and so pompous back at the courthouse. Now she looked like a disheveled and wounded animal.
Someone from behind is rushing toward them, screaming to stay back. Andrea doesn’t seem to hear or see or even notice.
“Andrea,” Bobby calls out to try to get her attention, to try to get her to move.
He keeps running toward her, then reaches her and wraps his body around her, grabbing her and pulling her over to a nearby SUV. A fireball blasts out of the car and shakes the ground.
Bobby is shielding Andrea now, looking around him and trying to figure out a plan of what to do next.
The scared, messy face stares up at him. The woman is still in shock.
“Are you okay?” Bobby asks her.
Andrea can only nod. That’s enough for him. He bolts up and then heads toward the swaying car that seems to be moving again, sliding farther down.
J.D. can feel it. He knows what’s going to happen as he braces one hand on the steering wheel. With the other hand, he takes Teri’s hand. He looks at her with a glance that tells her it’s okay and that he loves her.
The car begins to dip even farther, slipping down more, slowly, but not stopping.
Lily cries and calls out for her mother and Teri is gasping.
Then the thud on the back of the car stops the motion.
J.D. looks and can see someone on the trunk of the Hyundai, his arms and chest hanging over it, then his whole body starting to climb it. J.D. sees the head for a brief moment, the skinhead that makes him think of the military. Then the figure is hanging over the back window.
The motion has stopped. For a second or two. Then the car shudders and keeps slipping forward.
Bobby is almost there when he sees the tall, lean figure in the leather coat jump onto the back of the tilting car like some kind of superhero. Yet this isn’t Batman or Superman, but rather his brother-in-law.
What in the—
“Hang on, Carlos!” he shouts, not trying to make sense of the situation, only thinking about the heads he can see inside the car.
He hurls his body and slams into the backside of the Hyundai next to Carlos. Bobby is now standing on the trunk, moving his whole body and trying to force the car back onto the bridge.
The sound of screaming comes from inside the car. It’s a little girl in the backseat.
Bobby tries to jump up and then smack the car down again. But the two of them still aren’t doing much good.
Another figure suddenly appears next to him. Another is behind him, another man launching himself against the side of the trunk.
There’re more. They’re helping.
With the car now being held down by maybe half a dozen people, Bobby hears his brother-in-law tell them to look out. Then he begins to kick the back window, trying to shatter the glass.
More screams as the glass finally gives way.
Bobby looks up and can only see Carlos staring down at the half-collapsed windshield.
“It’s okay,” Carlos tells the screaming voice in the back. “Give me your hand.”
There are grunts and voices around them. The car is still pinned but continues to move a bit.
“I’m scared. I don’t want to.”
A voice in the front seat says something that Bobby can’t hear. Then a small hand reaches out from the backseat. Carlos pulls her up and then passes her on to Bobby. He doesn’t move off the back of the car but gently gives her over to another man waiting to take her.
Carlos kneels and looks into the car.
“You’re next,” he tells the woman in the front seat.
Teri looks at J.D. and shakes her head. “No, I can’t. I’m not leaving you, J.D. I won’t.”
J.D. still holds her hand and he grips it. Hard.
“I’m not asking you to,” he tells his wife. “Now you get on. I’ll be right behind you.”
Fear is keeping her stuck in this front seat alongside him. Teri is shaking her head, tears in her eyes, a lifetime of regret and despair in this car, unable to climb out.
She doesn’t believe him. She’s never believed him, and that’s been part of the problem.
She’s never believed me because I haven’t believed myself.
Calm, controlled, all there with her, J.D. simply says, “Darling, in thirty-six years, have I ever lied to you?”
Teri keeps looking, still so uncertain, still afraid to make one single move.
The car lurches forward again.
“We can’t hold her, she’s slipping,” a voice from the back calls out.
The man standing in the backseat, the one who pulled Lily out, yells at them.
“If this is gonna happen it’s gotta be now!”
J.D. is desperate. “Please, Teri.”
He kisses her.
She sighs, still crying, still in terror.
“I love you, old man,” Teri says.
They both know it’s probably the last words that will ever be spoken between them.
Teri is pulled up and then lifted out of the Hyundai. The guy helping her now leans over through the seats so he can see J.D.
“You’re finished here, son,” J.D. tells the stranger with the short crew cut. “My seat belt’s stuck. And my leg’s broken.”
The man reaches over J.D. and tries to get the seat belt loose. He pulls it and yanks it but it doesn’t budge.
“He’s stuck,” the man shouts out to the back of the vehicle. “The belt’s jammed.”
Still adding weight to the back of the car, Bobby hears Carlos give them the verdict on the driver. He quickly scans the area, looking at the people around him.
“We need a knife. Has anybody got a knife?”
Nobody comes forward, so he gets on a knee and then climbs in the back of the car. A shard of glass skins his leg but he ignores it as he keeps going.
He reaches over the seat and tries to unjam the belt buckle with Carlos. Neither of them can get it loose.
Motion.
The car . . .
“The two of you need to get out of here. Now.”
The man behind the wheel is an older guy, probably in his late sixties or early seventies. Bobby is impressed that he’s so calm in the midst of this storm.
He has another idea. Bobby slides behind the driver’s seat and then squeezes against the crushed door.
“One trick left,” he grunts out. “If I can make it work. C’mon, baby—”
Where’s the lever? Where is it?
He finds it and pulls, the lever reclining the driver seat back. The older man cries out in pain as the seat straightens out. Bobby climbs over toward the backseat and looks over the man, who is sweating and breathing heavily.
“His leg is broken,” Carlos reminds Bobby.
“Then this is gonna hurt,” Bobby says. “Start pulling him back. We gotta slide him under his harness.”
Both men pull at the trapped body, grabbing under his arm and yanking.
For a moment it doesn’t look like it’s going to work.
Then he suddenly starts to move. And while they pry him free, the driver simply grimaces and keeps his mouth shut, still sweating and wincing but never crying out.
Soon the body is being lifted out of the back window by other helpers.
The car . . .
I’m not gonna get out of here.
Bobby is in the backseat, Carlos starting to head out the back window, when the car jerks again.
It all happens at once.
Elena.
Carlos is above him, standing, reaching out to him, then grabbing his hand and pulling and yanking.
He’s scampering out of the car until he can’t feel anything and he’s in the air and then Bobby knows he’s falling to his death over the bridge . . .
Until he slams down on the hard surface of the bridge, breathing and looking up to see the car now gone.
Bobby then looks at his side and sees Carlos on his back.
Out of breath and still reeling to take it all in, he can only think of one word to say to the man who saved his life.
“Thanks.”
It’s so insufficient but it’s something. Carlos just shakes his head, his breathing still fast and quivering.
“Don’t mention it,” Carlos says.