After an agonizing minute that felt like hours, she was able to rake in a breath. It took longer to mentally check over her body for injuries. She felt stunned, but not seriously injured. At least not in terms of bleeding or breakage.
She’d landed on her front side with her head turned toward the water. From that position all she could see was the ocean and sky. The wind was cold, punishing, and relentless. When she was able to lift her head and turn it the other direction, she saw that the dune buggy was turned over. She tried to call for Sol, but with the wind so high she wasn’t sure she’d actually made a sound. All she’d managed to do was get a mouthful of sand.
With nothing to help her but will and determination, she managed to get to her hands and knees. She started crawling toward the wreck while spitting sand out of her mouth. If it was June the beach would be populated with people walking dogs, jogging, building sand castles with their children. But the beach at Cape May in March seemed as deserted as the Siberian tundra. There was no one to help.
She couldn’t see Sol so she assumed he was on the other side of the dune buggy. When she got close enough to touch it, she got a grip on the undercarriage frame and used it to pull herself to an upright position. Her body protested loudly, letting her know that she needed to prepare to be one solid bruise for a while.
She tested her ability to walk with a small step, still holding onto the buggy’s frame. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was possible. She continued gingerly inching her way around to the other side.
“Sol,” she tried calling again. “You’re scaring me.”
She thought she heard him answer, but couldn’t be sure. So she kept going that direction.
There was nothing that could have prepared her for the trauma of what she saw when she came around the front and could see the other side. Sol lay on his back, his leg pinned underneath the buggy where a monstrous pool of blood had formed. His face was white as snow.
The sight swept her off her feet as surely as if she’d been physically knocked down. She fell to her knees and crawled the rest of the way. She heard a strange hiccupping sound through the wind. When her muddled mind put together that the sound matched the jerking of her chest, she realized it was coming from her, that and sheets of tears blown dry by the wind almost as soon as they fell.
When she reached him, she saw his eyes cut to her face. He opened his mouth and tried to say something, but nothing was coming out.
“I’ve got to get help. Got to get help.” She started jerking her outerwear off and covering him up with it. The whole time she was chanting, “Got to get help,” in between sobs. She couldn’t leave him and couldn’t help him without leaving him. Finally, the cloud in her mind cleared away enough for an image of a phone to form. “Phone,” she said out loud.
She started looking around and spied the red crocheted bag she’d brought along on their outing. It must have fallen out of the vehicle when it started to roll because it was lying on the sand about thirty feet away. She pulled herself up and tried to make her body run for it. She fell twice on the way, the second time she was close enough to scramble on hands and knees.
The phone was in the bag and perfectly fine. She called 911.
“911. What is your emergency?”
“My… my fiancé is caught underneath a dune buggy. I think his leg is… is…”
“Where are you?”
“On the beach. We’re… I don’t know.”
Someone in one of the nearby houses had finally looked out and seen what was happening. He’d come running as fast as seventy-year-old bones could bring him and arrived just as she was telling the 911 operator that she didn’t know where they were. She couldn’t hear the man come up behind her in the wind, but she was in too much shock to be startled when he took the phone out of her hand and began speaking.
“Near Spirit of Cape May. Beach patrol knows where that is.”
She didn’t know how long it was before the ambulance arrived, but he was dead before they got there. She overheard one of the paramedics say to the other that, if she had applied a tourniquet that, it wouldn’t have saved his leg, but it might have saved his life.
The resident who had come to her aid asked if he could take her somewhere. It was easy for him, with no medical training whatever, to recognize shock by the glazed and distant expression on her face.
“Look here,” he said to the paramedics. “The young woman is in shock and needs to go to the hospital herself.”
“Yes sir. Another unit is on the way.”
“All right,” he said. “How long will that be?”
“Hard to say.” They handed him a blanket from the ambulance. “Keep her warm until they get here.”
The ambulance drove away. When no one had come an hour later, the good Samaritan said, “I’m going to get my car and drive it as close as I can. Stay here until I get back. I’m going to take you to the hospital myself.”
On the way to the emergency room, he tried to get her to name someone he could call to come and help her. When she didn’t speak, he resorted to calling contacts on her phone.
Sol had fought to keep his eyes open as long as he could. When they finally closed of their own accord and refused to reopen, he’d been freezing cold, lying on wet sand, with the worst imaginable sounds ringing in his ears, the combination of howling wind and Farnsworth weeping. He’d been angry about the entire turn of events and ready to take names.
When he opened his eyes again he saw sunlight filtered through gently rustling leaves in a tree overhead. Looking around he saw that he was lying on grass so green it looked fake. He heard tinkling wind chimes and people nearby laughing like they were playing. Playing like children. The sound of a flute might have been coming from a distance, but he hoped he was imagining that part. The flute was just enough maudlin overkill to make him want to beg to be put out of his misery.
He checked himself for pain, but no. There wasn’t any. Matter of fact all physical sensations were pleasant. Maybe even nice. Or they would be if the flute would find something else to do.