Going Too Far(30)
Author: Jennifer Echols

I started my circle around this new room of the art gallery. One of the first drawings I came to was of the Devil fountain at Five Points, with several of the animal statues coming to life and wearing hats. Then more angles of the artsy section of Birmingham, ornate mansions next door to dilapidated apartment buildings.

And then, across from his bed, right where he could see it first thing when he woke up each morning (or afternoon), was a large drawing of the bridge.

With no green aliens in it, no hat-wearing animals. No people.

Just the bridge, a stark shape against the too-blue sky.

He burst from the bathroom. At least, you would think he had, the way I jumped back from the drawing.

While he stepped into clean boots, I crossed to the dresser like nothing had happened, uncapped a bottle of cologne, and sniffed. That wasn’t it. I picked up another. That wasn’t it, either. If his scent of cologne was really laundry detergent or deodorant or even aftershave. I would be disappointed.

He reached past me for the last bottle and handed it to me. "It’s this one."

I unscrewed the top and wet my finger with cologne. I half thought he would kick me out of his apartment, never to return, not even at 6:01 a.m. Thursday, for what I did next. I did it anyway. I reached up to touch his neck. Sliding my hand past his dark collar, I rubbed my finger across his collarbone.

He looked down at me and put his big, warm hand over my hand.

The scanner buzzed to life with Lois’s voice. John didn’t move, but those worried creases appeared between his eyebrows.

"I don’t understand Lois’s code," I whispered. "What is it?"

He dropped his hand and stepped away from me. Picking up my soaked clothes from the floor, I followed him into the living room, where he was already putting on his gun belt. "A fatality at the Birmingham Junction," he said. He bent to strap the other gun onto his leg. "What we’ve been waiting for."

I trailed him through the wake of his cologne. Out the door, into the fog that had replaced the rain, down the stairs, and into the car. He radioed to Lois that we were close by and could respond to this call. Which didn’t matter, because every siren in town was already wailing.

I drew the seat belt across my chest and fastened it like a good girl. The past few nights I’d gotten used to wearing it. I hardly ever felt faint. Now I was back to the panicky feeling. I knew what John had meant when he said we’d been waiting for this wreck. Finally, after holding their breath responding to crashes at the dangerous intersection, the emergency response personnel had the fatality they’d dreaded. It was The Big One. And John wanted me, Tiffany, and Brian to get an eyeful.

I was scared. And tired of being scared.

As he checked both ways for nonexistent traffic and pulled onto the main road, I said, "My favorite drawing wasn’t the one of Venice. It was the one of the bridge. Your bridge."

He took a deep breath and sighed through his nose: Here we go again.

"But the view you should draw isn’t the view of your bridge," I went on. "It’s the view from your bridge."

His jaw hardened. "That’s illegal, as we’ve established."

"Sometimes breaking a rule is worth it. You’re so obsessed with this bridge. Haven’t you ever longed to see the view from the other side?"

He made one final turn, and the red and blue lights came into view, flashing long on the wet pavement. "Why are you doing this?" he asked so quietly that T could hardly hear him over the sirens.

"Because of what you’re about to do to me."

It was a one-car crash. A circle of cop cars, fire trucks, and ambulances surrounded the car. It had crumpled against a round pillar holding up the interstate. "How do you even have a wreck like that?" I asked.

"Drunk. Poor judgment." He opened his door. "Come on."

Normally I would have jumped at the chance to get out of the cop car with him on a call. Brian and Tiffany were there already. They stood on either side of the mangled car, far apart from each other, both with their arms folded. But I hung back against the hood of the cop car, trying to tamp the panic down.

John crossed the accident scene and talked to a couple of firemen in their long coats with their helmets on and face shields down. He slid an engine enclosed in a cube-shaped metal frame off the fire truck and set it heavily near the wreck. The firemen screwed some hoses into the motor. They attached the other ends of the hoses to what looked like an enormous set of pliers.

Quincy the paramedic passed by me. I called out to him, "Are those the jaws o’ life?"

"Yeah. A little late for the life part. You can see no one’s in a huge hurry." He kept ambling on his way.

The jaws o’ life engine started up with a racket, and the firemen set to work spreading open the collapsed space that used to be the car’s front door. Broken glass and shards of metal flew into the air, bounced on the hood of the car, and cascaded to the pavement.

John beckoned me forward to the crumpled car.

My heart raced. My fingertips tingled. Red lights flashed behind my eyes. But I had to do what John said. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t put it past him to throw me in jail again, 6:01 a.m. or no 6:01 a.m. I took a few steps forward.

Brian put himself in my path. He shook his head at me. "Meg. You don’t want to see this."

Behind Brian, John still motioned to me. He called, "Come on."

Brian walked over to John. "Don’t make her." He put his hand against John’s shoulder to stop him.

John flinched away. "Do not touch me while I’m in uniform," he shouted.

Brian ducked back.

John walked toward me, grasped my wrist, and pulled me. By now my face felt like a mask, with no blood pumping to my skin. I knew I was as good as gone, but I’d lost the strength to fight. I stumbled after him toward the wreck.

The noise from the jaws o’ life was so loud, I didn’t see how the firemen or anyone else could stand over here. It pulsed loud enough to hurt, like a motorcycle twice as big as mine with no muffler. I felt the concussion of every pulse in my chest, throwing the rhythm of my heartbeat off. As the scene collapsed into tunnel vision, the pulse of the engine melded into one long scream.

The interstate lights glared off the firemen’s face shields so I couldn’t see their expressions. They looked like aliens in space suits. At a signal from John, they backed away from the car to let us see inside.

She was twisted in a way the human body did not twist, in a very, very, very small space.

For me to hear him over the jaws o’ life, John must have shouted. But in my head his voice sounded smooth and hollow and sinister, like a doctor in my hospital room after I’d been sedated.