ONE
SPENCER COULDN’T TAKE HER EYES away from the officer’s pen as it hovered over his report, patiently waiting. The cap of the pen had been chewed like a dog toy. Her head throbbed, pain all over. She blinked, realizing he’d asked her a question.
“What?”
Spencer’s mother squeezed her hand and said, “Can’t we do this some other time?”
“I understand that, Dr. Sandoval. I truly do. However, a child died. We take these things very seriously.”
Spencer’s gaze landed on his badge. Officer Potentas, no, Detective Potentas. He’d introduced himself earlier. Her brain was hazy around the edges, like a cloud. How much time had passed? A second? An hour? The drip of the IV was cool in her arm. Spencer could sink right through the hospital bed and onto the floor.
“Okay, Spencer, let’s try again. What happened last night? Can you walk me through it?”
Scream. Float. Crash. An eternity in the blink of an eye. Who screamed? Did she?
“There was an accident,” she said, and swallowed, her throat dry. Her teeth felt too big for her mouth, or maybe it was the other way around. He wrote as she spoke. “We were at a party … Before school starts. End of summer. In the hills.”
End of summer. End of Spencer. Her heart pounded. Why was it so hard to breathe? She didn’t feel real. She wasn’t sure she was talking; in fact, she wasn’t sure she had a mouth and she folded her lips over her front teeth. Drip-drip went the IV, away-away went the pain. Cloud nine.
“Do you remember who was in the vehicle with you?”
“My boyfr—Ethan.”
“The driver.”
Spencer’s breath hitched. Scream. Float. Crash. Pain. Ethan.
“Do you remember what happened next?”
When she screwed up her face, remembering, the skin on her cheeks pinched. Stitches from her cheekbone to her jaw. Sewed together like a doll. Chewed up like the detective’s pen cap. “No. I can’t … think.”
“She’s on sedatives, Detective,” her mother said. Her brown hair was so shiny, like a penny. Spencer wanted to reach out to touch it, but her other hand was in a cast and too heavy.
“I know this is difficult. But everyone’s story checks out. I’ll be in touch.”
One minute the detective was sitting at the foot of her hospital bed, and the next he’d teleported to the door where Spencer’s father stood, holding Spencer’s sister’s hand while talking to a doctor. The detective said something to him, and her sister Hope looked at her and something inside Spencer snapped.
She cried, blinked, reliving it all over again. Scream. Float. Crash. She had to go. Run for help. Her mother held her down and called out, and a nurse rushed in and pushed a button on the IV. More cold snaked up her arm. Sink into the bed. Let it swallow her up. Sleep came over her like a wave crashing on shore.
“Shoo … shoo…” Her tongue felt like a worm trying to crawl out of her mouth.
“He’s going, sweetie. He’s leaving,” her mother said, squeezing her hand.
Her lids were almost closed, going bye-bye. Scream. Float. Crash.
Bliss took her away.
OFFICIAL COPY
Los Angeles Police Department
Crash Report Form
Crash Severity
Fatal / Injury / PDO
Time & Location Information
Date of Crash: 03/SEP/2021
Time of Crash: 2:30 A.M.
Time Officer Arrived: 2:34 A.M.
Weather Conditions: Clear
Road Hazards: None
At Intersection: Sunset Blvd & Benedict Canyon Dr
Number of Motor Vehicles: 1
Number Injured: 3
Number Fatal: 1
Section 1
Vehicle Year: 2019
Make: Porsche
Vehicle Type: Automobile
Use: Private Transportation
Airbag deployed: Yes
State: CA
Vehicle Identification Number:
Vehicle Speed Est. 120 mph
Posted Speed: 45
Section 2
Name of Driver: Ethan Amoroso
Current Address:
Date of Birth: 12/NOV/2003
Driver License Number:
Injury Status: Minor injuries, declined transport
Drug & Alc. Test: Pending
Section 3
Please Fill Out for All Other Occupants Involved
Spencer Sandoval—18—F—Injuries requiring hospital transport
Tabby Hill—16—F—Minor injuries, declined transport
Christopher Moore—15—M—Fatal
Officer’s Notes: Vehicle 1 collision—damage extensive—no fire. No immediate danger to first responders. Impact with tree (standing). Light conditions dark-lighted. Weather clear. Driver sitting on pavement next to Passenger 2 prone, unconscious. Driver suffered injuries to head and shoulder. Passenger 2 had substantial injuries to arm and face. Passenger 3 emotionally distressed on curb, visible facial injuries. Passenger 4 remained in vehicle, fatal status. Resuscitation unnecessary. EMS arrived at 2:45 A.M. Driver and Passenger 3 declined transport. Driver claims they were coming home from a party in the hills. No tire marking to indicate brakes were applied. Driver tested for alcohol and drugs on-site. Pending results.
Officer Diagram Attached
Case Status: Open
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TWO
SPENCER WAS SECRETLY GRATEFUL THAT her parents had left her in peace for a couple minutes. If the doctors hadn’t interfered, they would continue to fuss over her, constantly asking her every five minutes if she needed anything. Sleep. Lots of sleep. Maybe some more pain meds. A snack. And a book, something mindless. Her dad, chronically unable to sit still, went to the bookstore in the hospital lobby, no doubt picking up some reading material for them all, and her mom went to the cafeteria, hopefully grabbing Spencer as much cake and chocolate as her stomach could handle.
It was her younger sister Hope’s first day of eighth grade at Santa Monica Middle School, so the lumpy chair she had draped herself in while flipping through channels on the television in the corner for the past week was empty. Things had been chaotic since the accident, but Spencer was starting to get into the rhythm of hospital life. Wake up, nurses make the rounds, a dietary aide asks her what she would like to eat for breakfast, eat breakfast that was unfortunately not sugary enough for her unquenchable sweet tooth, nap, check her pain levels, eat lunch, nap again, check her pain again, dinner, sleep, wake up with a nightmare, sleep, start over the next day.
Perhaps nightmare wasn’t the right word. Night terror. Emphasis on the terror.
Scream. Float. Crash.
Memories of that night were still hazy, but the emotion was real. Her mind convinced her body that she was back in Ethan’s Porsche, and she’d wake up in a cold sweat, screaming and crying, and the nurses would come running to make sure she wasn’t being murdered. She couldn’t help it. Flashbacks of the crash felt just the same as the real thing. Sometimes it would take a moment to realize where she was, but it would take hours for her heart to stop hammering in her chest and realize she wasn’t actually dying.
It got bad enough that Spencer was afraid to close her eyes. She kept seeing the second before impact over and over again on a nonstop loop. They’d given her sleeping pills to help, but it could only do so much.
But being awake didn’t solve her flashbacks, either. She couldn’t stop it.
The doctors said she would need time.
While Spencer was alone for a glorious few minutes, she tried not to think about the crash and focused on counting the drop ceiling tiles. Two hundred six, if anyone asked. She was sick and tired of the daytime talk shows on every television channel in existence. Her phone had folded in half in the crash, completely destroyed, so she wasn’t able to text anyone, hence her newfound interest in counting tiles. Her phone had been such a fixture in her hand, sometimes she’d fumble around in the folds of the sheet trying to find it before she remembered that it was gone. She wanted to think about literally anything else other than the wreck that was her life.
Hospitals, in Spencer’s opinion, were made for three things: sickness, death, and waiting, the last of which Spencer was extraordinarily familiar with. They’d kept her for a week for observation, and that meant Spencer didn’t do much else but be confined to her hospital bed for the better part of a week, bored to tears. Already, the skin beneath the cast on her arm was starting to itch. The surgeon had done a good job, at least from what she could tell, putting the bones back into place inside her body where they belonged.
That meant Spencer would have to get used to this cast for the next four weeks at least, plus physical therapy to get back in shape enough for field hockey. She’d played field hockey year-round since she was fourteen, and she wasn’t about to let a broken arm, wrist, and face stop her now. Even if she did have such a huge gash on her cheek it hurt to even smile.
Voices carried down the hall. They were muffled at first but got clearer as they grew closer.
“Oh, she’s my sister, it’s okay.”
Before the baffled nurse could say anything more, Olivia’s smile entered the room first, in her bubbly Olivia way, clutching a fistful of balloons in her hand. Olivia Santos definitely wasn’t Spencer’s sister, but they might as well have been. Ever since middle school, they had been next to each other on class attendance sheets, always had their lockers next to each other, and were practically joined at the hip. Muscles she didn’t even know were tight loosened in Spencer’s back when she saw her best friend in the whole world.
“Wow, you look terrible!” Olivia said with a grin, her cheerful face a welcome difference from the tired and professional expressions of the hospital staff.
Copyright © 2023 by Melissa de la Cruz