“Better make it twelve just to be sure,” Ciara yelled after me.
The longest part of each day was the walk to my car in the back of the hospital lot and the drive home. And today, it would be even worse because of one simple reason: rain. Boston was my favorite city in the world, but the traffic was a nightmare—especially this close to the start of the work and school day—and rain seemed to bring out the worst in most drivers. They either drove too quickly, making it unsafe for everyone, or they drove much too slowly, acting as though they were crossing the Red Sea rather than a puddle. It would be forty minutes, at least, before I made it home.
The only thing worse than my exhaustion was my hunger. I’d eaten a microwavable meal six hours into my shift, but that seemed like forever ago. As I pulled onto the highway, I prayed Greg hadn’t eaten my leftover taco from dinner the night before. Then, I wondered what kind of life I was living that a reheated taco and crashing in bed was enough to make me deliriously happy.
Rain pelted my windshield and the truck ahead of me spit a fine spray of water up, making it nearly impossible to see more than a few feet in front of me. I flipped on my blinker and changed lanes, hoping to get around the truck, only to find myself stuck behind two cars and a school bus. But before I even had time to groan to myself, the bus took a sharp turn towards the shoulder of the road.
The cars in front of me swerved into the left lane, but there was no opening for me. I could either go into the ditch on the right or get in an accident on the left, and with the school bus sitting perpendicular to my lane, going straight was no longer an option. So, I slammed on the brakes.
My tires squealed to a stop on the wet road and I winced, preparing myself to be rear-ended, but miraculously, the pile-up never came. I turned around and saw the car behind me was pulling off to the shoulder of the road and the cars behind it were merging into the left lane and going around us.
Satisfied my car wasn’t going to be turned into a metal accordion, I focused my attention on the school bus. The back tires were still on the road, but the front tires were sinking down in the mud of the ditch. Through the foggy back windows, I could see the outlines of little heads bobbing around.
Without another thought, I navigated my car over behind the bus, grabbed my black nurse’s bag from where I always kept it in the backseat, and ran through the rain to the bus. As I got closer, I could see the metal lamppost bent angrily and resting on the hood of the bus.
“Oh, thank God,” a man said when he noticed the first aid bag I was carrying. “I want to help, but I have no medical training.”
“Call 9-1-1,” I said as I moved around the bus to the driver’s side door.
I rested my bag against the tire well and knocked on the glass. The driver was an older man with thin gray hair and soft jowls. He opened his door.
“Are you injured?” I asked.
“I don’t know what happened. The wheel got away from me. I couldn’t control it,” he said, shaking his head and intermittently turning around to look back at the kids.
“Are you injured?” I repeated, slightly louder this time.
He looked at me as though seeing me for the first time and shook his head. “No. No, I’m okay.”
“Okay, great,” I said with a smile I hoped was comforting.
“I need to get the kids off the bus,” he said, beginning to stand up.
“No!” I waved my hands at him, drawing his attention back to me. “We can’t have all of these kids walking around on the side of a highway. Keep them on the bus until emergency services arrive. Is anyone injured?”
Armed with a task, the bus driver seemed to pull himself together. He stood up and called back to the children, asking if anyone needed any attention. All at once, I could hear kids shouting back about sore necks and spilled pencil cases.
“Is anyone bleeding?” I asked.
The bus driver relayed my question and a small line of children made their way to the front of the bus, standing in front of the driver.
I stepped into the bus. There was a dull roar of voices and excitement, but mostly, I saw shocked faces and teary eyes. I smiled, wanting to keep them all calm.
“Hey everybody,” I said loudly, though I was mainly focused on the children lined up in the center aisle, assessing injuries. I saw some bloody knees and a few scrapes on elbows and hands. Nothing major. “The police will be here really soon to make sure you all get where you need to go, but for the moment, I’m going to take care of you.”
“Who are you?” a little boy in the front asked. His bottom lip wobbled, and I knew he was holding back tears.
I knelt down in front of him and opened my bag, letting him see the stethoscope, bandages, and antibacterial swabs inside. “I’m a nurse.”
I learned the boy’s name was Deonte, and he hopped up into the front seat of the bus and held up his legs to me as I cleaned them off with alcohol wipes and bandaged him up. Next up was a little girl named Braylee who explained calmly that she had fallen out of her seat and into the aisle when the bus swerved, scraping her elbow on a metal screw. It had ripped the sleeve of her white sweater and she was worried her mother would be angry.
“Your mom will be so happy to know you’re safe that she won’t care a bit about your sweater,” I reassured her as I crisscrossed two pink bandages across the gash.
Then, a little boy with a mop of bright blond hair stepped up. He was the last in the line, but had the most severe of the rather mild injuries—a cut just above his eyebrow. Blood was dripping down his face and his hands were bloody from trying to keep it out of his eyes. Remarkably, he seemed perfectly calm, though he looked no older than ten.
“What’s your name?” I asked as I helped him into the seat.
“Jamie,” he said, managing a small smile.
“Well, Jamie, it looks like you have a little cut here. It looks worse than it is, though. Just some clean-up and a bandage and you’ll be good as new.”
“I know,” he said, kicking his legs against the seat, hands folded in his lap.
“You’re very brave,” I said as I rubbed an alcohol wipe against the cut. I knew it would sting, but he only barely winced. “Most people are scared of blood.”
Jamie shrugged his little shoulders. “My dad’s a doctor.”
“Is that right?” I asked. “Is he a good doctor?”
Jamie nodded and smiled. “The best.”
“I’m sure you’re right. I bet he will be so proud to hear about how brave you were.”
I offered him a choice of five different bandages and he chose lime green. I smoothed it over the inch-long cut on his forehead and crumpled the trash in my hand. Just as I was about to stand up, Jamie lunged forward and wrapped his skinny arms around my neck.
“Thank you.”
Before I could even return his hug, he had pulled away from me, jumped down from the seat, and trotted back towards the rear of the bus. While I helped the kids in the front, the bus driver—now completely calm and under control—had taken to singing a song with the kids.
Sirens broke through the singing and within the next thirty seconds, every little face on the bus was pressed against the foggy windows to watch as the ambulance and police cars arrived on the scene, lights flashing. I met the paramedics outside.
“I bandaged up a few kids, but otherwise, everything seems fine.”
As I finished talking, I realized I recognized one of the paramedics. I didn’t know his name, but I’d run across him a time or two in the emergency room. He tipped his head to me in recognition and understanding and jogged towards the bus.
And just like that, my duty was done.
I sunk down into the driver’s seat of my car feeling entirely drained. Seeing the accident, I’d gone into full-on nurse mode, but now that everything was handled and I was once again off duty, the eighteen hours I’d been awake were more than catching up with me.
My body was on autopilot for the rest of the drive. When I got home at just past eig
ht in the morning, the lack of lights on in the house and in Greg’s room told me he was still asleep. I washed my face in the sink, ditched my scrubs in the hamper next to my door, and replaced them with flannel pajamas, and then dove beneath the covers and fell instantly into a dreamless sleep.
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