I was so incredibly bored. An active child, being forced to sit for two days on a moving bus was torture. Mom tried to make it better by playing games and reading to me, but my head hurt. I was cranky, weepy, and felt really bad. Almost as if I was getting car sick.
At the next lay-over where they changed drivers and buses, she bought Pepto-Bismol from the little shop in the terminal. It came in plastic wrap, little pink circles. She gave me four, but I didn’t want anything in my belly. It felt like a volcano ready to erupt, the Mt. Vesuvius of all stomach aches. I knew better than to play the brat, would never have dreamed of swatting the pink pellets out of her hand but that’s exactly what I did. I watched her with round eyes and my mouth hanging open as the sissy pink lozenges sailed across the aisle and hit another passenger on the head. An old lady with curly blue hair like the fur on Mrs. Lang’s poodle, she swatted at it as if the pills were flies buzzing around her head. Mom jumped up and apologized as she picked the stuff out of the poodle curls.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “My son isn’t usually like this. He isn’t feeling well. He’s never cranky. Cris, apologize to the lady.”
I grit my teeth as a wave of yucky stuff rose to the back of my throat. “Sorry, ma’am. Mom‒”
She recognized the look on my face but couldn’t react fast enough as I spewed copious amounts of Dr. Pepper and Subway sandwich onto the bus’s floor. The sour smell permeated the entire bus and overwhelmed the feeble air-conditioning. It drew moans of complaints from the other riders and the driver swallowed as if the smell was going to make him hurl, too.
Mom asked the driver if he could stop. He said no, not on the Interstate but there was a rest stop coming up in the next forty miles. He’d planned to stop there for fuel, toilet breaks and lunch. If I could wait until then, he’d give us an extra ten minutes before he had to leave.
He apologized and said that the company ran the bus schedules so close that to delay risked losing connections down the road. People would miss their next bus change which would screw up everything from bus transfers to connecting flights.
She nodded and set me on the seat closest to the toilet, way in the back of the bus. Which made the nausea worse, but I was close enough to run for the toilet when I felt it coming up. She went forward and tried to clean up my mess with paper towels and wet-wipes. She’d done it many times before – cleaning up after drunks at the motel.
When she finished, she came back and pulled me onto her lap, tucking my head into her chest. She smelled of cherry blossom and coconut shampoo. I was comforted to my soul.
“I’m sorry, momma,” I whispered and closed my eyes.
“I know, baby boy. It’s not your fault. You can’t help getting car sick.”
The blue-haired lady came back to us, holding onto the backs of the seats for balance as the bus swayed and rocked on the highway. I thought she was coming to use the toilets but as she approached us, she held out her hand. In it was a small, plastic wrapped square‒sort of like a Band-aid yet it wasn’t. It had something written on it‒DERM.
“Dramamine,” she told us. “A patch. I always use them when I’m traveling. I get car sick, too,” she admitted. “They work. Might make him sleepy; he’s six, seven?”
“He’s ten,” Mom said quietly. “Just small for his age. Is it safe for kids his age?”
“Says so on the box. One dose for twelve and under, two for adults.”
“Are they expensive?”
“$5.95 at the Rite-Aid,” she smiled. Her teeth were very white. “For a package of ten. So, it cost 60 cents for each patch.”
She thrust it out and Mom took it although I suspected that she didn’t believe the old lady about the cost. She peeled the covering off and stuck it on my upper arm. I eyed it suspiciously.
“I don’t feel nothing,” I said, and the old lady laughed.
“You probably won’t for an hour. It takes 15 minutes just to get into your bloodstream.”
“How? I didn’t swallow nothing.”
“The medicine leaches through your skin into your blood. Takes longer than swallowing but it also lasts longer. In about 30 minutes, you’ll start to feel better. Feel sleepy.”
“How come you ain’t sleepy?”
“I’ve taken them so much that I’m used to the medicine. They just make my tummy feel better.”
I eyed her. Dressed in sensible blue short-sleeved shirt, pressed blue jeans and a long, quilted jacket, she looked like somebody’s Grandma. Except for the blue hair. Her socks were white, and her sneakers looked brand new, blue to match her jacket. She was the blue lady.
“Your hair real? Blue like that?” I asked. Mom shushed me.
The lady laughed, her white eyebrows raising to her hairline. “Sometimes, I dye it purple,” she confided in a whisper.
“No!” I goggled at her. I’d seen teens with hair those colors as well as an improbably red and orange but never old ladies in blue or purple.
“It’s called a rinse. Cris, is it?” I nodded. “My name is Penny Weismann. I’m heading to Trenton, NJ to visit my grand-kids. My hair is plain white, not silver or gray, that’s so boring. So, I have the hair salon dye it blue or purple with a colored rinse. It washes out after a few shampoos so if I don’t like it or want to change, I can do it easily enough.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Weismann,” I said. I held out my hand and she shook it.
Mom said, “Violet Smith.” She shook Mrs. Weismann’s hand, too.
“Your son has nice manners, Violet. So many children today have no respect for anything. Especially us older citizens.”
I didn’t wonder why Mom hadn’t given out our real last name. It was habit; she wanted to leave no trace for my Dad to follow. I knew that he was still actively looking for us, I’d seen posters in towns up and down the coast on my travels to pawn shops.
Mrs. Weismann was right. About 15 minutes later, I started to feel sleepy, so Mom cradled me next to her by the window. She’d cracked it an inch, so the fresh air had helped settle my stomach before I’d taken the patch. She left it open. I fell asleep to the soft murmurings of their voices as both ladies got to know each other. I knew mom would keep the conversation light of facts and subject.
I woke once with drowsy complaint when one of them got up to use the toilet. I was pretty sure that it wasn’t Mom because whoever held me didn’t smell like her. She smelled more of expensive perfume, skin cream and perfumed soap.
The first inkling we had of disaster was when the rear end of the Trailways slewed around, bouncing off something equally as large as the bus. Tires squealed, and pieces flew up against the windows, cracking some of the glass near me. Brakes shrieked, and the smell of burning metal gagged me. Horns interrupted my dreams and caused my head to throb. Mom’s arms tightened around my waist. She was torn from me with a shriek that made my ears hurt.
In slow motion, I saw people go flying out of their seats to smash against the right side of the bus as it flipped onto its side. Windows cracked and shattered in a shower of red and crystal sparkles. People screamed almost as loud as the sound of metal tearing and a 45-foot, ten-ton bullet that was the bus shredded on the concrete grater of the roadway.
I saw and felt the bus land on its side and then the darkness covered everything, closing off the light shining in the windows. Except for the sparks that fizzled above my head where metal contacted other metal. The smell of diesel lay heavily in the air and tendrils of smoke began to curl in lazy tendrils down the aisle. Small flames sparked up near the driver’s seat, cheerful and deadly reminders of summer campfires in the woods. I watched the red flowers in fascination as they danced into playful shapes, not realizing the dangers they represented.
I watched in disbelief from my seat, wedged between the jump seat and the restroom door, pinned beneath something so that I could not move as the dark came closer and closer. It was the side of a semi-truck as the bus slid into and under the trailer part. When I stopped thrashing around, I saw spots of black and gray flit across my eyes. I couldn’t see anything.
The noise was the first thing I heard. The awful sound of ripping metal, crackling steel, and fracturing aluminum. But that wasn’t half as bad as the sound of human bodies being ripped and cut apart by the undercarriage of the 18-wheeler as we plowed beneath the frame of the trailer. I screamed as someone’s head went rolling past me, so much more horrible than the hungry sound of the flames as they began to devour the readily available fuel spread out before it. Clothing, diesel. Human fat. The smell of pork roasting gagged me.
My head whipped back and forth. Striking the wall, the door, and the seat as I was smashed each time the bus rolled and spun. Blood poured through the air, a veritable rainstorm of thick red liquid. Pee and poop smells wafted to me along with the thick, coppery glittering blood as the lights from the trucks hit the wreck.
I tried to call for Mom, but my throat wouldn’t open. I couldn’t draw a breath to speak or even to gape my mouth to breathe. I looked for her, for the lady with the blue hair but my eyes wouldn’t focus and there was something dripping into them, gumming them shut and running into my mouth. I gagged and spat out blood.
It wasn’t until the bus stopping spinning and sliding that I could move enough to reach out for the jean-clad legs I saw lying just at the end of my row of seats. I pulled. By the hem of the jeans. Her ankles were thin and delicate with white socks covered in blood splatters and blue sneakers that didn’t look so new anymore. They were covered in pieces of…stuff. They looked like Ms. Weismann’s shoes.
I tugged harder and called her name. She didn’t answer. I pulled again and wondered why she was so easy to drag and when I pulled at her knees, I screamed in horror. That’s all that was left of her. Cut off just below the waist, the torn top of her jeans empty, except for bone and slimy ropes of twisted things that smelled awful. No blue hair, no arms, no face just two legs up to her hips. I went nuts. Fighting, pushing, shoving, trying to get free so I could look for my mother.
Placing my hands on the restroom door, I pushed back and up. Warmth ran down my chest and there was a sudden, sharp pain in my neck. Like a knife slice where you look at it, not quite sure that you’re hurt until the iciness stops and the hot pain begins. I watched with dull apathy as blood spurted all the way across the side of the bus, hitting the one window that hadn’t broken.
I started to shiver. I’d never been so cold before. I felt really tired and my head ached. It dropped onto my chest, I couldn’t hold it up on my own, it weighed a ton. It weighed more than my whole body. It felt as if there was the weight of the whole darn bus on my neck. I faded in and out, each time I woke, I felt weaker and colder. Nothing looked right. Things looked as if they were stretched, misty, too far away to see clear. Like everything was under water.
Orange, blue, and white lights flashing across the new roof of the bus and drew back the dark. Voices called out stridently and there was movement followed by flashlights bouncing on the walls, the sides, and the floor of the bus. I heard the hiss of fire as it was doused by water. Smelled the sharp tang of chemicals from extinguishers.
I saw with wavering eyesight as a monster loomed out of the brightness, wearing a strange helmet and bulky skins as it inched its way toward me.
“DB, human body parts, dead body times 5, 6, 10. Body parts of three women, one male. DB,” the lead monster said.
“Any survivors? Dispatch says there are twenty-nine adults listed on the passenger manifest, one driver. One passenger traveling with a child under twelve.”
“No sign of survivors but there have been victims ejected through the windows. The driver was found three hundred yards back under an SUV.”
Radios crackled. The footsteps came closer. The flashlight illuminated scenes from my nightmares. There were people crammed up against each other, smashed into and through the windows. Blood and guts were everywhere. I thought I saw a trail of blonde hair and stretched my hand toward it.
“Holy Christ, what a mess,” the paramedic whispered. My eyes knew what he was before my brain had recognized his shape. No monster but a helper.
“Uh,” I managed to get past my locked jaws. I tried to call for Mom, but blood filled my mouth, made breathing difficult. There was something lying on top of me, covering me from his view as he searched among the pile of bodies. He passed by me twice as he stepped over Mrs. Weismann, turning around as he shined the flash under the seats. His radio crackled, and he spoke into his shoulder where his mic was strapped to his jacket with the wide night-glow stripes.
“Send for the ME. It’s nothing but DBs and body parts. A butcher shop in here. I smell diesel fuel and some smoke. No fire, I put out a small blaze that had started under the driver’s seat. Cigarette, I think. Man, it’s a mess in here.”
I raised my head and the stream of blood shot out again, hit the glass window and dribbled down, the drops making a noise that he heard over the dead silence. The man turned, and his eyes widened as he ran for the back of the bus, screaming into his radio.
He followed the blood to the corner, lifted off Mom’s suitcase and started shouting again. His hands wrapped around my throat and held it as if he could keep the blood inside. He pushed my chin down.
“Hang on, little guy. Keep your eyes open and on me, okay? Cap’n, I need LIFE FLIGHT here STAT. I have a six, or seven-year-old victim with a severe laceration to the external jugular. He’s bleeding out.” He went on, but I stopped paying attention as he picked me up. My body felt warm, my feet dangled below his arms. Suddenly, I felt like I was drowning in molasses. Sounds echoed in my head and his feet pounded on the floor as he leaped over the seats toward the door. I began to draw away from his face into a long, dark tunnel.
I floated above my body and watched with great curiosity as I was carried out of the wreck straight into an ambulance. There were more ambulances, cop cars, rescue units in one place than I had ever seen. Not even the big 4th of July parade had that many Emergency vehicles in one place at the same time.
They cut my clothes off and I lay naked. My belly was swollen as if I had swallowed a watermelon, my eyes were black and blue holes. My face had blood covering so much that you couldn’t see the color of my skin. My neck wept blood from a jagged cut across the throat, pieces of glass still embedded in it. So skinny. I looked so skinny and pale, my chest not moving any more.
Two of the men dressed in black like the first man in the bus stuck needles into me, complaining that he could not find a vein. I watched him, a passive observer.
“No pulse. Can hardly find a vein, he has almost no pressure. BP is 40/20. Pupils fixed, dilated. Severe laceration of the external jugular. Pushing fluids and plasma expanders. Bag him. Starting CPR. When’s that airbus getting here?”
“ETA three minutes.”
“Any other survivors?”
“No. Looks like a Halloween butcher shop inside. Bodies and body parts everywhere.”
“You know this kid’s name? Were his parents inside?”
“No. I found him in the back wedged against the restroom door. By a pair of woman’s legs. Only saw him because his arterial spray hit the window when he lifted his head. I heard it.”
“Did he have a pulse?”
“Yeah. He looked at me. You have one now?”
“Thin and thready. Hey, little dude. Can you hear me? Hang in there, we’ll get you better, but you have to fight, okay? There’s a large hematoma on both the front and posterior skull. Crepitus in his ribs, fracture of the ankle, right tibia and right humerus. Belly is swollen, possible rupture of the liver or spleen. Swelling on L3,4,5. This kid is critical, requesting Life Flight ASAP.”
The wind picked up, blowing their suits and brilliant lights spread out on the ground as a helicopter came to land on the median between the north and southbound lanes of the Interstate. State Troopers had closed off both sides and traffic had crawled to a stop. The entire area was lit up like a football stadium during the Super bowl.
I watched as people in gray coveralls ran from the bird and met the ones carrying the stretcher with me on it. I was hooked to many lines and machines which the paramedics carried over my head. I could not find my mother.
When the chopper lifted, I drifted away and followed, bound to the limp body in a way I did not understand.