Copyright © 2021 to the author
**
The alarm jangled in the darkness. Melina opened her eyes, saw the deep blue December morning outside and considered simply returning to sleep for another thirty minutes. The thought tempted her, but in a show of self-discipline, she threw back the sheet and blankets and got up instead. She made the bed quickly so she would not lose her resolve to stay up.
That task completed, she moved to her chest of drawers and rifled through it, pulling out biking shorts, stirrup pants and the other clothing she would need for her morning bike ride. Three minutes later, she trotted downstairs to grab a bottle of water from the fridge and stuff half a muffin in her mouth before fetching her bicycle.
Raising the garage door, she retrieved her bike and wheeled it outside. Snapping her helmet straps into place, she got on, wriggled into the proper position on the seat and embarked on a ride that would take her around a loop that stretched from one side of the city to the other.
It never took long before the rhythm found her legs and pushed them along. She rode north, around the park and beyond the high school before turning east on the street that would take her past government buildings, then blocks of rowhouses, then project apartments. As usual, she shook her head as she rolled past the housing projects, neat brick apartments set on grassy greens. They didn't look at all like the projects she knew from large cities. The grass seemed lush, even this late in the year, and some people even had gardens. Yet some of her classmates spoke nervously about these buildings and the people who lived in them. Infants, she thought. They knew nothing about real projects!
She rolled past more rowhouses before it came time to make her turn north and then another turn to head back west. She came to a park, the part of the ride she liked best. Here she would take a long drink of water, secure that no cars would try to pass her too closely. Then, all too soon, came the industrial section, the part she liked least. The big construction trucks made her nervous as they roared past her.
After that, she pedaled past block upon block of rowhouses, some well maintained, some not. By now, people had begun to stir. She looped around the city's western boundary and prepared for the homestretch. She saw the little old lady who always seemed to be crossing the street when Melina rode by, but never seemed to notice anything around her, so lost she was in her own thoughts. Melina grinned. Would she one day be oblivious to her surroundings and would people go out of their way to avoid hitting her with their bikes and cars?
She turned south at the park, passed the church, and greeted the groundskeeper.
"God bless you, child!" he called with a smile.
"And you too!"
"All right, all right," he replied, and returned to sweeping up the debris left by the previous night's partiers.
An unfamiliar figure stood on the next corner, a tall, beefy man from what she could tell. He wore a hooded sweatshirt under his bulky coat, with a scarf over the lower half of his face. With the rising sun just over his shoulder, she could not see him clearly, although he seemed to be staring at her. She dropped her head against the sun and gave a mental shrug. Maybe he was worried she'd hit him or something.
The next thing she knew, she had slammed into the pavement, her legs twisted up in the bike's frame. Before she could move, something smashed into her bike, and then her head. She heard thudding footsteps, and then nothing else.
As he clucked over the mess the neighborhood kids made on the church grounds, Jack Curtis heard a crash, then a thud. He dropped his broom. While his youthful strength and speed had left him long ago, Mr. Curtis could still dogtrot as well as he had as a raw recruit. As he jogged toward where the sound had come from, he hoped he had not just heard that nice little bicyclist crashing into something.
He rounded the corner and saw a heap of gleaming metal and a heart-stoppingly still girl lying on the pavement. Quickening his pace, he reached her with a few more steps, looked down, and took a deep, trembling breath. Dear Lord in heaven, she looked bad! Fighting the urge to panic, he knelt and felt her wrist. Her pulse throbbed beneath his twitching fingers. He put a hand over her mouth and thought he felt a breath. He thanked God for that mercy, said a short prayer, and looked around for help.
A car driving by braked sharply as the driver saw the man and girl. She jumped out. "What happened?" she cried.
"The girl took a nasty fall," Mr. Curtis said, his voice quavering. "Do you have a cell phone? Could you call nine-one-one for an ambulance?"
The woman dashed back to her car and fished a cell phone from under the driver's seat. Standing over the pair, she made the call, explained the situation, and nodded twice.
"Do you know if she has a pulse and if she's breathing?" she asked, covering the phone's amplifier.
"Yes to both," Mr. Curtis said, his voice more controlled this time.
"Yes on both counts," the woman said into the phone. "No, she's not conscious. No, I don't know who she is. She looks about sixteen or seventeen. She's all twisted up in the bike frame and her head's bleeding. It looks real bad."
She listened again.
"An ambulance is on its way," she told Mr. Curtis. "They said we shouldn't try to move her or straighten her out because she might have a spine injury and moving her could paralyze her."
Her eyes teared up.
"Poor thing. I'm glad it's not my daughter."
Mr. Curtis bit back several rejoinders to that remark, opting to concentrate on the girl's breathing and pulse. As long as those continued, she'd live.
"Does she have any ID on her?" the woman asked him.
"I haven't had time to look," he said. "Why don't you look in that little pouch under the seat?"
The woman gave him a dubious look.
"I might get my clothes dirty."
"I think if you stand on the other side of the bike and hold onto your skirt, you can do it," he said. You idiot! he thought, then apologized to God for his unworthy behavior. Some parts of creation were a little harder to honor than others, in Jack's opinion.
Giving him another doubtful glance, the woman stepped up to the bike, placed the phone on the ground, clutched her skirt to keep it from touching anything and reached for the pouch. She unzipped it, poked a hand into it and drew out a slip of paper.
" 'This bicycle belongs to the Taylor family,'" she read. "Oh, it's got a phone number!" Her face fell. Using the number would surely bring anguish to whomever she reached. Still, she thought, gazing at the girl's limp form, if it were her child, she would want someone to call. Her fingers shaking, she punched the sequence.
"Hello?" a woman's voice said.
"Uh, hello. Is this Mrs. Taylor?"
"Yes. Who's this, please?"
"Uh, my name's Corinne Baker. I'm awfully sorry to tell you this, but your daughter's had an accident. The ambulance isn't here yet, but I'm with her and so is a man..."
"Jack Curtis," he said.
"Jack Curtis."
"Where are you?"
Corinne gave the woman their location.
"That's just a couple of blocks from here," Mrs. Taylor said. "I'll be right there."
Corinne heard a click and turned off her phone. In the distance, a siren sounded.
"Thank God," she said. "I thought they'd never get here."
"You said it," Mr. Curtis replied, concentrating on the girl's breathing. In, out. In, out. That's right, child. That's right. Keep it up. In, out.
As often happens in crises, when things started happening, they did so all at once. The ambulance pulled up and three blue-shirted crew members jumped out of the rig. As they did so, a slender woman ran up.
"Kate! What are you doing here?" one of the medics asked.
She gulped, stunned at the sight of her younger child tangled in the bike frame, her helmet split in two, her face pale and sweaty where blood did not cover it.
"That's my daughter. That's Melina."
