the missing hubcap

The fog hung like a curtain over the familiar bend in the road that morning. She took the turn too fast and the car rolled. She was entrapped in the wreckage and extraction was prolonged. Transport was delayed, and when the ambulance finally left the scene it detoured to a smaller hospital before arriving at the trauma center. When the ICU nurses settled her in bed, her face above the Miami J collar was swollen tightly around her endotracheal tube and cracked like an overripe grape. 

            At first it seemed odd to the ICU staff that her father appeared in the family waiting room immediately after she arrived in the ER trauma bay. His face was blanched like old paper. He held his head high, but under his navy paramedic’s jacket his shoulders were slumped. A family friend arrived soon after, reverently solicitous and wide-eyed. And then one of the nurses heard them talking. 

            “It was right past the chicken farm,” her father said. “We found that the car had rolled into that ditch by the fence. I knew it was her car right away, because she’s been missing that hubcap off the left rear tire. Took us twenty minutes to get her out. Then the ground was too uneven for the helicopter to land, and her face was too swollen for us to intubate her. We rushed her to a smaller ER so they could get a tube in. Then we brought her here.”

            Her memory of all this - if she has one - will be vague, like a fading dream she can’t recall.

            Asleep or awake, he’ll never forget that missing hubcap.