Package Deal(44)

But she couldn’t beat the car. She felt the bumper smash into her hip, toss her into the air. And, then, for a moment, she felt as if she were a bird, flying in the air away from the bad man until the windshield reflected in the sunlight out of the corner of her eye. Then she must have hit it with her head. Now she was seeing flashing things. The sound of shattering glass ringing in her ears. Stabbing pain in her side and her leg and her arm. She tried to lift her arm away from the pain. Suddenly the car seemed to drop her and she was sliding off onto pavement.

She couldn’t catch her breath, didn’t think she could move, didn’t want to move. Mama! Help me! Every part of her body hurt, even her head, but before she could cry out, the world went black.



Marcus parked his car up the block and walked toward Amanda’s house, looking forward to taking Cecelia shopping. He was surprised to see the neighbors gathered in clusters on nearby porches, watching as a police officer interviewed a driver, sitting in the seat of the police cruiser, the door open. His head was cradled in his hands.A car was stopped crookedly in the middle of the street, its windshield a spiderweb of glass shards.

A young woman was sitting on the curb across from Amanda’s open front door, crying and talking to another police officer.“I told him to slow down—after he went around the corner, but he just went faster. And then I saw the kid. She ran into the street. She never even looked. I yelled at him to stop, but he couldn’t,” she sobbed. “He tried, but he couldn’t. The brakes screeched and screeched.”

Marcus started toward the young woman when he saw the blond curls of the victim, still lying next to the curb on the other side of the car. A child, from her size. He looked again and saw that it was Cecelia. His heart lurched.

“Oh, my God!”Marcus ran over and bent down near the child.

“Don’t touch her. Leave her be,” the nearby police officer cautioned. “We were a block away when the call came in. An ambulance has already been called. It should be—”

A siren wailed, drowning out whatever the man was saying as it screeched to a halt, blocking the street in both directions. Two paramedics approached Cecelia and motioned for Marcus to move out of the way. He backed up and then saw Amanda walking up the hill too far away to see the activity in front of her house. When one of the neighbors called out to her and pointed, she looked up and began to run. Marcus headed toward her, wanting to shield her from the scene. But when she saw Cecelia lying on the ground being attended to by the paramedics, her face turned white. A bag of groceries fell from her arms, and a milk carton emptied along the curb, blending with the blood running down the street, blood that curled out from under the child’s body.

“Let me go.” She pushed past Marcus and reached for Cecelia’s hand.

“Ma’am.Please move.” The paramedic spoke to her. “We need to get her on the gurney.”

Amanda did not respond.

Marcus came up behind her. “Amanda. Let them do their job.”

“I have to go with her.”

“Of course, and you will. Let them put her in the ambulance.”

She turned to him, shaking, her face ghostly. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. I pulled up after she—it must have been right after it happened. You go with her. I’ll be right behind you.”

He helped her into the ambulance. It left, siren wailing, for the nearby hospital. He followed in his car.



Hours later, Marcus and Amanda sat together, waiting.

“I just don’t understand how this could have happened. I was only gone a few minutes, and now—she—she could be dying.”

Amanda’s distraught expression and her words tore at Marcus’ heart. The doctors had not yet emerged from surgery. He clung to the hope that Cecelia must still be alive and that they were working to save her.

“Have you talked to your mother yet?” he asked, holding her hand.

She shook her head. “I can’t—not until I have something to tell her—more than that she was hit by a car.” Her voice cracked as she choked back tears.

Amanda looked up when the doors of the operating suite opened and the surgeon came toward her. She stood up.

“She’s sedated and will be for some time.”

“Can I see her?”

The surgeon pulled off the green cap on his head.“Not yet. Maybe later.You go home. We’ll call you the moment you can see her.”

“What are her injuries, Doctor?” Marcus stood next to Amanda, holding her as she stood, trembling.

“She has a broken left humerus, three cracked ribs, and a broken left femur. We stopped the internal bleeding when we removed her spleen. But we’re most concerned about her head injury. There’s some brain swelling. We won’t know for a while how quickly that will resolve. She’s in recovery right now. You can see her, stay with her, when she’s out of recovery, in a regular room.”