Small blue car

February 2018 - Small cars often seem to have incidents. Some roll over. This one did. ABC in September 2017 wrote a short article about the most dangerous cars, many of which were small cars - have a look if that interests you. This short story includes a car accident and a woman who is recovering from... what? What do you think?

She'd never heard music on the farm. She heard it now, almost mute. She turned towards it. She was moving towards the road, where she had never been since she'd been here, after her own accident. It was supposed to be about recovery, yet the music outside her farm house got louder. She couldn't go onto the road. She crouched behind the hedge, crawled along, getting closer to it. She peeked through the hedge, trying to find where it was.

It came from the other side of the road. Damn! she whispered. Then she saw it. A blue car, a small blue car, rolled almost onto its side, hidden almost in the drain over there. She gasped.

She sat down on her side of the hedge, felt her heartbeat thumping. What could she do? She closed her eyes, took deep breaths and counted - 1... 2... 3... She turned and looked through the hedge, working out what she could do. She looked up and down the hedge, couldn't go out the driveway. How could she go over there? Her pulse beat against her wrist, in her head, in her heart, bouncing in her chest. She felt her memories swirling around in her head. She leaned onto her knees... breathe again, she told herself - 1... 2... 3...

A wee way along to her right was a gap in the hedge, just a less-grown bush which didn't really join the hedge. She crept along to that and looked again at the road. Nothing coming. The music seemed to be too loud. She needed to turn it down. She climbed through the gap in the hedge, crouched on the roadside, looked both ways. She jumped up and dashed across the road, to the small blue car.

It was damaged. There was a person in it, behind the steering wheel, with his head on the wheel, held into his seat with his seatbelt. She backed up just a wee bit, the person frightening her more than the car did. She took more deep breaths, and reached towards the car door. She pulled at it. It opened, but it would go mostly upwards, from how the car was lying. Almost on its side. She grunted and hauled the door up. The music was very loud now, so much louder than anything she remembered.She stretched in, turned the volume off. What now? She was panicking. More breaths - 1... 2... 3...

Her pulse calmed, just a little bit. What now? she whispered. What do I do? On the floor, leaning on the gear box in the middle, was a phone. She couldn't remember one of those things. How could she work it? She reached in and pulled it out. She turned it over in her hand. She knew that Ambulance was 999. Could she ring it? Tell it to come, and then run back to the farm, stay out of their view? She pressed a button and the screen lit up. Dial, she told herself. You can work that out! She pressed another button. Maybe, she thought, it was the dial place. She pressed 9. It showed up on the screen. She pressed 9 again, and again. It rang once, then someone answered it: "Police, Fire or Ambulance?" She gasped, almost dropped the phone. Breathe. Breathe. Ambulance. She told them where the car was. That a person was in it, unconscious. She gave them the registration number, but she didn't know where it came from. They tried to talk to her, but she couldn't do that. She hung up, dropped the phone back into the car and ran back across the road to the gap in the hedge.

She crawled through that, collapsed on the inside, breathed deeply. It was now very, very quiet. Not even any birds tweeting in these trees. She seemed to sit there for such a long time, waiting... for what? The ambulance? She heard a siren approaching. She peered through the hedge, saw it pull up beside that blue car, watched two people race out and look in through the door she had opened. And left open. One stood up and looked up and down the road. She pulled back, hid within the hedge. Didn't want to be seen. She could hear them talking. She heard more vehicles coming along the road, one with a siren. Oh my god, she thought, what have I done?

She wormed deeper into the hedge, hiding as best as she could. She couldn't be seen. Tears started down her cheeks. She covered her face with her arms, cried onto her knees. Silent. Please, Ambulance, just go! She only thought that; she couldn't ask them. Breathe: 1... 2... 3... she told herself.

She couldn't stay here, she couldn't be here. She closed her eyes, and her mind wandered off. She thought of an apartment in a city, somewhere very close to her. She drifted through it, looking at the stuff that she seemed to know. She stopped and looked at a painting on the wall in the lounge... a woman and a dog. Who?? She drifted outside to a large balcony with a beautiful vista out towards the ocean, calling to her about how beautiful and how real it was. Why was she there?

She heard more noise out beside the small blue car, a mechanical sound, a cutting sound. What were they doing? Why couldn't they just wake him up and get him out? The noise stopped. She felt like she was blacking out; why? Why? She heard voices talking. She couldn't open her eyes again. She heard them picking him up on a stretcher, putting him into the ambulance.

"You'll be fine, sir," she heard one of the paramedics saying to him. "We're heading to the hospital. You'll be okay."

She needed them to leave, this car must go, so she could get back to her farmhouse and shut herself back into that. She would wait. She had to.

It was for her recovery and she needed to be alone.