short story beginning

Mary awoke covered in leaves in a ditch. The spray of water from passing trucks and cars hitting her face awoke her. Bloody scum filled her mouth and she spat hard, struggling up from the ground and tearing wet leaves from her face. An instant sharp pain hit her head and her knees buckled under her. She fell back to her hands and knees, her fingers clutching at the ground for balance. Her vision narrowed, darkened.

Mary forced herself to stay awake, held her eyes wide and focused on the muddy grass in front of her. She heard lazy sirens, saw for the first time the flashing blue lights. She remembered what happened. Her head swam and again she passed out.

The day darkened. Night came, cold and quick. The sirens all moved away; the blue lights were gone. Traffic picked back up and headlights were flicked on, glowing for seconds at a time over the small crumpled figure in the ditch. Long shadows grew until they turned the reservoir to a moat of darkness in which Mary swam, half-passed out, barely conscious. She moaned, curled to the fetal position, blinked the dirt from her eyes. She remained still, waiting for her head to clear, breathing and trying to tell what hurt where.

She held quite still. She knew soon she'd have to climb out of the ditch. She wondered where the others were. How they had missed her, laying there in the ditch under the cover of leaves. It must have been bad.

The camp van had flipped several times after side-swiping the semi and bouncing off. Crunched between two larger girls on the bench seat, Mary was wearing no seat belt. She'd flown through a window, crashing her head through the glass and flopping into the ditch. The van had landed on the other side of the four-lane highway. Perhaps that was why they had missed her, looking in the wrong place.

People must be dead, she thought. Carla, the driver. Her friend, Becca, who surely would have pointed out Mary's absence. That boy, Mark, who wouldn't quit bugging her about her hair, her butt, her new boobs.

Mary slowly sat up and checked over her body. The gashes in her head had clotted up and now just seeped blood instead of gushing it. Her arms and legs were streaked red and deeply scratched through her shredded clothes, but not broken. She got to her feet, felt faint but held on. Now, out of the ditch.

Each step up was painful, jarring to her hurt head. She had to grab clumps of grass with her hands to hoist her body up. She felt like she was dragging stones behind her, her body felt so heavy. What didn't hurt was numb. The ditch was steep, and it was dark and getting very cold. Once she slipped, sliding back on the grass until she fell to her knees and dug in. She crawled the rest of the way out.

No cars passed for several minutes. Mary picked a direction and started walking. She walked with her head down, her wet, fouled hair hanging in straight clumps beside her face. She looked at her feet, automatically continuing, one in front of the other. She wasn't sure where she was going. She wasn't thinking. She was just walking. It hurt her head.

Finally, finally, a van pulled over. A woman with long, straight hair and a couple of kids in car seats told her sternly to get in. She complied. One of the kids started crying as she pulled her sodden body into the seat. The crying turned to screaming.

"Nathan SHUT UP." The woman said. "Shut UP!" The tone was threatening, like there was a backhand behind it. The child fell to whimpering. Mary stared ahead.

"What happened to you?" the woman said, glancing sideways at Mary before checking the right lane of the highway and pulling back onto the road.

"A wreck," Mary said. "There was a crash."

"What's your name?"

"Mary."

"Mary what?"

"Mary Keller," she said. "I live in Sufford."

"Sufford? What in the hell you doing all the way over here?"

"Camp," Mary said. "The van wrecked."

She was very tired. Couldn't rouse much more conversation. Didn't know what else to say. The woman glanced at her again and was silent. The child had fallen asleep and the van was quiet but for the rap, rap, rap of the baby's play, banging a yellow plastic ring against the car seat.

A while later, the van stopped and Mary opened her eyes.

"OK kid, here you go. Go through those double doors and tell the nurse you were in an accident. Go on, I've got to go. I've got to be at work in an hour and I've got to get these kids to my mom's."

"Thank you," Mary said, stumbling out the door.

Her legs almost gave beneath her again when they hit the sidewalk but she held it together, making her way to the emergency room door, which slid open in front of her. She went in and collapsed into a chair.

"I've been in an accident," she whispered. "An accident."