Her Last Breath: A Kate Burkholder Novel

doesn’t matter. I rub my thumb over the top of his hand. “Shhh.” I lean close. “Don’t try to talk.”
    He shifts slightly, turns his head. His eyes find mine. They’re gray. Like Mattie’s, I realize. In their depths I see fear and the kind of pain no child should ever have to bear. His lips tremble. Tears stream from his eyes. “Hurts…”
    “Everything’s going to be okay.” I force a smile, but my lips feel like barbed wire.
    A faint smile touches his mouth and then his expression goes slack. Beneath my hand, I feel his body relax. His stare goes vacant.
    “Hey.” I squeeze his hand, willing him not to slip away. “Stay with me, buddy.”
    He doesn’t answer.
    The sirens are closer now. I hear the rumble of the diesel engine as a fire truck arrives on scene. The hiss of tires against the wet pavement as more vehicles pull onto the shoulder. The shouts of the first responders as they disembark.
    “Over here!” I yell. “I’ve got an injured child!”
    I stay with the boy until the first paramedic comes up behind me. “We’ll take it from here, Chief.”
    He’s about my age, with a crew cut and blue jacket inscribed with the Holmes County Rescue insignia. He looks competent and well trained, with a trauma kit slung over his shoulder and a cervical collar beneath his arm.
    “He was conscious a minute ago,” I tell the paramedic.
    “We’ll take good care of him, Chief.”
    Rising, I take a step back to get out of the way.
    He kneels at the child’s side. “I need a backboard over here!” he shouts over his shoulder.
    Close on his heels, a young firefighter snaps open a reflective thermal blanket and goes around to the other side of the boy. A third paramedic trots through the ditch with a bright yellow backboard in tow.
    I leave them to their work and hit my lapel mike. “Jodie, can you ten seventy-nine?” Notify coroner.
    “Roger that.”
    I glance over my shoulder to the place where I left Paul Borntrager. A firefighter kneels at his side, assessing him. I can’t see the Amish man’s face, but he’s not moving.
    Firefighters and paramedics swarm the area, treating the injured and looking for more victims. Any cop that has ever worked patrol knows that passengers who don’t utilize safety belts—which is always the case with a buggy—can be ejected a long distance, especially if speed is a factor. When I was a rookie in Columbus, I worked an accident in which a semi truck went off the road and flipped end over end down a one-hundred-foot ravine. The driver, who’d been belted in, was seriously injured, but survived. His wife, who hadn’t been wearing her safety belt, was ejected over two hundred feet. The officers on scene—me included—didn’t find her for nearly twenty minutes. Afterward, the coroner told me that if we’d gotten to her sooner, she might have survived. Nobody ever talked about that accident again. But it stayed with me, and I never forgot the lesson it taught.
    Wondering if Mattie was a passenger, I establish a mental grid of the scene. Starting at the point of impact, I walk the area, looking for casualties, working my way outward in all directions. I don’t find any more victims.
    When I’m finished, I drift back to where I left Paul, expecting to find him being loaded onto a litter. I’m shocked to see a blue tarp draped over his body, rain tapping against it, and I realize he’s died.
    I know better than to let this get to me. I haven’t talked to Paul or Mattie in years. But I feel something ugly and unwieldy building inside me. Anger at the driver responsible. Grief because Paul is dead and Mattie must be told. The pain of knowing I’ll probably be the one to do it.
    “Oh, Mattie,” I whisper.
    A lifetime ago, we were inseparable—more like sisters than friends. We shared first crushes, first “singings,” and our first heartbreaks. Mattie was there for me during the summer of my fourteenth year when an Amish man named Daniel Lapp introduced me to violence. My life was irrevocably changed that day, but our friendship remained a constant. When I turned eighteen and made the decision to leave the Plain Life, Mattie was one of the few who supported me, even though she knew it would mean the end of our friendship.
    We lost touch after I left Painters Mill. Our lives took different paths and never crossed again. I went on to complete my education and become a police officer. Mattie joined the church, married Paul, and started a family.