Choosing to SEE - Mary Beth Chapman [58]
“The first thing you need to do is dispatch LifeFlight!” I screamed. “My little girl has been hit by a car and it’s really bad . . . my husband’s working on her.”
The dispatcher told me to slow down.
“Look,” I said, “this is a trauma situation and we will need Life-Flight! Please, believe me, get LifeFlight here! Help me, oh my God, please help me!”
The 911 operator dispatched all the various rescue vehicles, even as she was telling me what to tell Steven.
Steven did everything I told him to do. He rescue-breathed and did chest compressions. I kept hearing him beg Stevey Joy to breathe.
“Steven!” I yelled. “It’s not Stevey Joy! It’s Maria!”
It was awful. Because of the blood, his panic, and the fact she was wearing a tutu, Steven had assumed it was Stevey Joy, since she was the one who was always dressing up.
“Is there any response yet?” the dispatcher asked.
“She’s gurgling,” I cried.
A paramedic who lives close to us heard the dispatch on the scanner. He was the first responder to pull into our driveway.
“Is the ambulance there?” the dispatcher asked me.
“No! Not yet!” I sobbed. “Is LifeFlight coming? Are they coming?”
I saw the paramedic getting out of his truck in the driveway. I ran toward him and grabbed his arm. “You’ve gotta save my little girl!” I screamed over and over.
“You’ve gotta calm down and show me where she is!” he yelled. I pulled him around the corner and into the garage. He took over working on Maria.
Will was running down the driveway and across the yard. Shaoey was chasing him, crying and yelling for him to stop. Caleb came tearing out of the house. He ran after Will and tackled him on the grass by the pond in front of our house.
“I can’t stay here!” Will was screaming. “Why was she taking a nap on the driveway?”
He was in shock. Caleb held his brother on the ground, using all his strength to hold him down. Will was struggling, fighting back. He just wanted to get away.
“Where would you go?” Caleb yelled. “We love you! It’s gonna be okay!”
I somehow called my friend Lori, whose daughter had been killed in a car crash nine years earlier.
Jim Houser, who had been talking with Steven until he dropped his phone in the grass, had called David Trask, Steven’s road manager. David lived close enough to be able to get to our house within a few minutes.
Caleb grabbed at Will’s shirt, which was covered in blood. “We’ve got to get this off of you,” he cried.
“No!” Will sobbed. “Everyone needs to know that I’m the one that did this!” He wrestled against his brother. “I did this!”
Caleb grabbed Will’s white V-neck undershirt, tore it off of him, wadded it up, and threw it into the pond.
Steven’s brother Herbie, who’d been up at our barn, came running. After he realized what was happening, he got hold of Shaoey and went to look for Stevey Joy, who’d gone missing in all the chaos. He eventually found her curled up in a ball, as small as she could get, under her desk in the room she shared with Maria.
David arrived. Herbie, weeping, told him what had happened. David ran to Will, who collapsed in his arms. David held him. He, of all people, knew what Will was going through. When David was seventeen, he was driving down a crowded street and a little boy darted into traffic. David had hit him . . . fatally.
Will sobbed as he lay in David’s lap. David stroked his hair. “Maria is in God’s hands, Will. She’s in God’s hands.”
Sirens. The ambulance arrived, pulling up the driveway and around to the back. They loaded Maria onto a stretcher while continuing to work on her. The LifeFlight helicopter landed in a neighbor’s field down the street; our property didn’t have a clear enough landing area.
Rick, a friend who’d been taking a walk, came running up our driveway. “Let me drive you to the hospital,” he said. We loaded into our minivan, Lori and me in the back, Steven up front.
A policeman appeared as we were getting into the van. He wanted to see Steven’s driver’s license. “Were you driving the car that hit your daughter?” he asked.
“No,” Steven said. “My son was, but