Dangling

 

            Seven in the morning, somewhere in the thick of suburban traffic on a gorgeous autumn Friday. Jerry tapped his padded steering wheel at 10 and 2, jamming to the riff within his earbuds. His tie was loose, eager to be fully off by noon, when he would leave the office (prearranged) and pick up his kids at their school for a quick departure to their weekend home. This had become a favorable routine since Jerry and Beth’s divorce a couple years before—not every weekend, to be sure, but enough to calm the question of ‘custody’ in more familiar terms.

            Bikes were racked behind the trunk and snacks were packed and—BAM—the airbag blasted Jerry’s chest and chin before he’d see the backwards letters forward in his rearview mirror.

            Since his was an older car, the engine didn’t automatically shut off. Jerry swore and shook his head, then pulled the parking break to leap outside and surveil the damage. The driver of the ambulance was already doing the same, not having to tear his way through an airbag. His paramedic partner was viewable from deep inside the cab, scrambling to set some apparatus up to attend to this new trauma on whomever was the cargo of this run, lying out of sight.

            Jerry fumbled an apology that wasn’t sought, as the ambulance driver spoke brusquely over him: “undo the lock on this, pronto!”—the ‘this’ being a child’s bike half-buried in the grill. The exposed half was just as enmeshed with the next bike closer to Jerry’s trunk, a melee of training wheels and gripping pedals and festooned handlebars.

            “Don’ know if I can,” Jerry surmised, as the ‘lock’ was actually a set of U-bolts around the spines of these bikes, none of them uncrunched enough to let in a hand.

            The ambulance driver whipped up another plan: “I’ll go in reverse, you go forward—”

            “Um, okay, but—”

            “NOW!”

            

            By this time, other commuters had surrounded this demolition derby, offering advice and their own cars to rush the needy bloke in the back to ER. Someone had found out, however, that he was in cardiac arrest and tied to too many wires—as entrenched as the bicycles, perhaps. Plan B wasn’t working, a lack of horsepower on both sides. Smoke rose in wisps from each radiator and the rubber burns below these hamster wheels going clockwise, counter…. In twenty seconds the ambulance driver waved off the effort and hopped out to drum up a Plan C.

            “We just gotta wait for another crew,” he conceded, looking around for someone to call 9-1-1 before remembering he could use his own radio in the cab. The traffic lanes were log-jammed due to the spectacle and natural congestion this time of day, so it was hard to know if a patrol car was on its way, or if anyone outside the scene was even aware of the snafu. Voices, varied, lifted to whosever’s ears:

            “Patience, friends—another ambulance should come in seven minutes or so.”

            “Patients? Are there more than one inside?”

            “I heard six minutes was the window before someone can sue—”

            “Depends on a lot of things.”

            “Depends on some numbnut not wearing earbuds to block out the world.”

            “He’s taken one of them out, at least.”

            “Listen, the wait is gonna kill the guy! We gotta get him in a backseat or—”

            “And have that vehicle weave through rush hour without a siren? Stupid.”

            “Stupid to just stand here. Like watching the planet die.”

            “Huh?”

 

            Jerry, meanwhile, was sawing at the carbon steel pipes of the carrier with one of the minuscule options of his Swiss army knife. He was distracted, naturally, with the potential playout of this day: he’d be late to work only to leave early; he’d mull whether the car would be drivable and when to have a mechanic ‘retuck’ the airbag; he’d imagine his son and daughter in some awe of the story, due sadness about the status of their bikes; he’d rehearse how to frame this all to Beth, who couldn’t interfere with his weekend rights but could call foul on how they might be used, circumstances such and such.

            “That obviously won’t work,” the re-emerging driver declared, having checked his partner’s efforts to keep their ward alive. “We gotta plow ahead.”

            “Plow ahead?” Jerry echoed.

            “You know the way to Resurrection Hospital?”

            “Yeah, but—”

            “Get back in and keep the car in neutral. I’ll push and your job is to steer with as little resistance as possible.”

            Scratching his head, Jerry demurred: “wouldn’t it be better if I were in drive?”

            “No! Cuz then our braking would also have to be in synch, adding fuel to this fire. The road ahead has cleared out for the time being, but I’ll have the sirens on to part the waves, so to speak—”

            “As long as a driver isn’t wearing earbuds!” someone from the side decided to remind.

            The ambulance driver didn’t wait for Jerry’s endorsement of the idea, replacing any further discussion with his trademark “pronto!”

 

            Resurrection was nominally Catholic, as was Jerry. Perhaps their ER workers prayed through triage routines or had their subtle ways with divine unction and the like. Though Jerry had no knowledge of the afflicted person he was towing, sort of, he tried to imagine his best chances at, well, resurrection. Arguably, the hapless person would survive or succumb regardless of this coupling of vehicles—fate is not a flowchart, per se, and probably prefers to go off those arrowed lines once in a while.

            “I mean,” Jerry mused, concentrating enough on his conservative steering to a weirdly unzipping road, “how do any of us wake up to face or efface plans? Our own and those of anyone whose path we’re bound to cross?...”

            Miraculously, the engine of the ambulance didn’t overheat: autumn extends its form of grace. Sliding into the ER ramp, they stopped. Hoping for due urgency, Jerry jumped to help—

            

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2023)