After the Rains (10 page)

“From what EMS said, she was dead at the scene—probably instantly.”

“But the wreck wasn’t Natalie’s fault, was it?” Daria wept, pleading for the answer she needed so desperately to hear.

“It doesn’t sound like it, Daria,” Dr. Davidson sighed. “But of course they won’t determine that for a while. The sheriff has ordered blood samples on everyone. Witnesses said that both vehicles came from the party, and you know there was plenty of beer flowing out there.”

“Both vehicles? They think Natalie and Sara were out there too?” Cole asked.

Daria could tell that he was near tears.

“I really couldn’t say for sure. You’d have to talk to the sheriff about that.” Dr. Davidson pushed his glasses up on his nose. “It’s a miracle, really, that anyone survived at all. Be grateful that you have your daughter in one piece. You’ll cross the other bridges when you come to them.”

Cole rose from his seat, his voice choked with emotion. “Thank you, Marlin. Thank you so much for everything. We’re grateful.” He extended his hand to the doctor who stood to shake it.

“Can we see her now?” Daria rose too.

“Sure. I’ll walk you to the wing. It’s hard to say how long it might be before she comes to, but you can sit with her for a while.”

He showed them through the halls and pointed toward the corridor that led to the ICU.

Daria clung to Cole’s arm as they went down the hall. Natalie was lying in a hospital bed, her strong young body connected to the bed and the IV equipment by numerous tubes and straps. Daria rushed to her daughter’s bedside and took a quick inventory. She couldn’t help thinking of the moments immediately after Natalie’s birth when she had inspected
her baby, counting precious fingers and toes. Now she saw that there was a nasty bruise on Nattie’s left forearm and that both her arms were bandaged. Her pale hair had been brushed away from her forehead, revealing a large goose egg of a bump. Her face had been scrubbed clean, and except for the bump on her forehead and the pallor of her complexion, her face showed no other sign of the trauma.

Daria gingerly stroked her daughter’s cheek as tears coursed down her own face. Cole came and stood beside his wife, put his arm around her, and pulled her head to his chest, cradling it there.

She wept bitterly. It seemed unbelievable that they were here. She and Cole stood together that way for several minutes, quietly giving thanks to God that the life of their eldest daughter had been miraculously spared … and praying for the strength they would need to tell her that her dearest friend in the world was gone.

They stayed by Natalie’s bed for hours, listening to the drone of the blood pressure machine and watching for any sign that she was waking up. Finally, Daria decided to go home long enough to break the news to Nicole and Noelle and to get some of Natalie’s things to bring back to the hospital.

As she drove the few miles home in the gray light of morning, her mind reeled at all they still didn’t know about the accident. Her heart went out to the Devers. She knew they would have to face Don and Maribeth, and she dreaded it, especially knowing that Natalie had been driving.

Please, God
, she begged silently,
don’t let it be Nattie’s fault. Oh, Father, it will be hard enough for her to accept that Sara is gone. It will be unbearable if Natalie was responsible
.

She felt guilty even as she begged God for the fault to lie with someone else. She knew it was pointless to pray about something that was past, but somehow she hoped her words were true.

Daria pulled into the garage and went into the house. The farmhouse was quiet on this Sunday morning, and a sob escaped Daria’s throat as she thought about waking the girls and telling them. Nicole, especially, would
be devastated by Sara’s death. Daria wondered if Jon might already have called her.

Daria walked through the kitchen into the dining room, where her parents were sitting somberly over coffee.

Margo Haydon jumped up and crossed the room when she saw Daria. “How is Nattie?”

“Hi, Mom.” Daria walked into her mother’s embrace. “She still hadn’t come to when I left, but they think she’s going to be all right. At least physically.” Her shoulders slumped. “But I don’t know how she’s ever going to get over Sara’s death.”

Her father set his mug on the table. “So Natalie doesn’t know yet?”

Daria shook her head. “The girls are still sleeping?”

Her parents nodded in unison.

“I’d better go tell them.”

She went up to the room her younger daughters still shared. Turning on Nicole’s bedside lamp, she shook the slight shoulders. “Nikki, wake up, honey.”

Nicole stretched and rubbed her eyes. “What time is it?” she murmured.

“It’s early. About five-thirty. But wake up, honey. I need to tell you something. There’s been an accident.”

The words brought Nicole upright in bed. “What happened? Is it Daddy?”

“No. Daddy’s fine.”

In the other bed, Noelle rolled over and sat up in bed. “What’s going on?”

Daria looked over at her youngest daughter and braced herself to tell the news. “Natalie was in an accident last night. A terrible accident.”

Both girls began to cry, and Noelle came and sat on her sister’s bed, huddling up against her. “Is Nattie dead?” Noelle wailed.

Daria joined her daughters, weeping unashamedly. “No, I think Nattie will be all right, but—Sara was with her … And she—Sara didn’t make it.”

“Oh, Mom! No! Not Sara! What happened?” Nikki wailed. “Does Jon know?”

“I’m sure he does, honey. It just happened a few hours ago. We haven’t talked to Don and Maribeth yet.

“There was another fatality too,” she told them.

“Who?” the girls asked in unison, hands to their faces in disbelief.

She shook her head. “We don’t know. No one at the hospital could tell us anything.”

“Was—Was Sara at the hospital?” Nikki asked, her voice trembling.

For a minute Daria wondered if Nicole was in denial, not accepting that Sara was really dead. But then she realized that Nikki meant Sara’s body. The thought took her breath away, made it all too real. “I don’t know, honey,” she finally said. “Dr. Davidson said Sara was … dead at the scene, so they probably didn’t take her to the hospital.”

“Then … where would they take her?”

“I don’t know, Nikki. Probably the funeral home. But I don’t know for sure.”

Such hard questions. Their tears and weeping filled the room, and as Daria gathered her daughters into her arms, the three of them sat on the bed, lost in their separate thoughts.

How strange that a few short hours could change their world so suddenly. Yesterday they had been carefree and happy. Today Sara and someone else’s son or daughter, brother or sister, were gone. And another young person was fighting for life in a Wichita hospital. Names they didn’t know yet. Names that in all likelihood they would recognize and mourn.

And Natalie lay a few miles away, not even aware yet that her life had been devastated.

Nine

N
atalie opened her eyes and strained to keep them open against the bright lights above her. Everything felt so heavy. Her eyelids, her arms, her head … especially her head. She couldn’t move without extreme effort, yet it was a rather pleasant sensation—like the weight of heavy quilts on a wintry night. She gave in to its pull and closed her eyes for a minute.

A muffled sound reached her ears. She blinked and tried to open her eyes again, squinting against the harsh light overhead. The dull ache in her head had subsided somewhat, and with minimal effort she turned in the direction of the voice. Why were there rails on her bed? And what were all these machines whirring and beeping beside her? She must be in a hospital.
But why?
She tried to remember why she would be here.

Her eyes adjusted slowly to the light, and without moving her head she took in her surroundings. Things began to come into sharper focus. There was a window opposite her bed, and though the heavy draperies were pulled, light leaked in between the two panels and around the edges of the window. It was daylight.

She racked her brain for a recent memory. Bits and pieces started coming to her. She remembered driving around town with Sara, bored, then ending up out at Hansens’. Something must have happened there. She formed a picture of Sara going off to sit in the car. Yes, she remembered that. And she had gone after her. Sara was angry with her for being at the party. But that was all she could recall.

She tried to sit up in bed and immediately fell back on the pillows as pain seared through her head from front to back. She moaned, and instantly two worried faces hovered above her.

“Natalie? Can you hear me, honey?”

It was her mother. Daddy was right beside Mom. She felt warm hands on her arms and a gentle palm against her cheek.

She heard her dad’s voice as though from a long distance. “Hey, sleepyhead. How are you?”

She allowed the heavy feeling to take her under again. She drifted off feeling happy that her parents were there, too sleepy to wonder anymore about where she was or why she was in this strange place.

There were voices calling her name. Over and over.
Natalie, Natalie, Natalie …

She willed her eyelids open and saw her parents standing over her bed. She remembered waking up before. Sunlight was still coming in the window, but she had no sense of how much time might have passed.

“What—What happened?” she croaked.

“You had an accident, Nattie,” her father said, so quietly she could barely hear him.

Beside him Mom turned away, but Natalie could see her shoulders heave as though she were crying.

“An accident? My car? What—?”

“Shh.” Her dad patted her arm. “We’ll talk later … when you’re feeling better.”

“Why is Mom crying?” Something was terribly wrong.

She struggled to pull herself up in the bed, and instead of trying to stop her, her father helped her lean forward and plumped the stiff pillow at her back.

A nurse appeared on the other side of the bed and helped with the pillow, then began working over her, unclamping, then replacing what looked like a plastic clothespin on Natalie’s index finger, and fussing with the tubes that led from various parts of her body.

She felt dizzy for a moment, then everything righted itself and she became oriented to her surroundings. She looked down at her arms and saw that there were needles and tubes running from the veins on the back of her hand to a metal pole beside the bed. Above her, hanging from the pole, a bulging bag dripped a clear substance into the tube. Her upper arm sported a blood-pressure cuff.

“What happened?” she asked again, seeking her father’s face.

“Shh,” he warned, indicating with his eyes that she should wait for the nurse to finish.

She submitted to the nurse’s careful examination. Then, when the woman left her bedside, Natalie asked the question a third time.

“You were in a car accident, Nattie,” her father told her. “Do you remember?”

She shook her head. “Where was it?” Even as she spoke the words, it struck her that if the wreck had happened after the party, Mom and Daddy probably knew that she had been there. They didn’t seem angry with her, though.

“It was out on the highway, west of town … near Hansens’.”

She bit her lip. “I’m sorry, Daddy. I … I went to a party out there. I shouldn’t have gone. Sara tried to tell me—” Suddenly she remembered Sara with her in the car. “Where is Sara? Is she here too? Is she okay?”

Mom started crying again. Daddy sat down in a chair beside the bed so that his face was right next to hers. For the first time she saw that his eyes were red-rimmed and swollen. He reached out and put a hand on her arm. “We have something very hard to tell you, Natalie. Are you—do you feel well enough to hear it?”

“What?” She could feel her heart thumping beneath the thin hospital gown. “What is it, Daddy?”

He shook his head slowly. “Sara— Sara was in the accident too.”

Like a bolt of lightning, a memory came to her. She and Sara were driving down the lane at Hansens’, leaving the party. What had happened after that? She couldn’t conjure any recollection beyond that moment.