Prompt: The Good Samaritan
Writing Exercise #43
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Prompt: A woman discovers a car crash on a rural highway. The engine is steaming, there’s blood on the ground next to the open drivers door. But no one is there.
“Hey, Lisa?”
“Is this the call?”
“This is the call. How soon can you get to the hospital?”
“45 minutes, tops.”
“Great. See you soon.”
Lisa rubbed her eyes. She was already in her scrubs—a requirement when on-call. She could be called any time, anywhere. It’s why she preferred the graveyard shift, no temptation to go out. All they are interrupting is sleep, at best. And Lisa never slept when she was on-call. She glanced at her clock radio—it was 2:30am. There was always something—no way to tell when it would be a busy night at a hospital or not. Superbowl Sunday was always bad—drunk drivers, and the like. But today? She shrugged. Didn’t matter, they needed her, she got the call.
She grabbed her on-call bag by the door, stepped out of her apartment, and locked the door. Before she realized what she was doing, she had already dialed her friend.
“Mmm? Hello?”
“Hey Sue. It’s me.”
“Oh, hey.”
Lisa started her car. “Just got the call, going in.”
“This early?”
“It’s always this early, hashtag on-call-life.”
“How you doing girl?”
Lisa was across town from the hospital—it was slightly more rural, but still accessible to all the fun bars and hang-out spots downtown. She merged onto the main road. “Oh, I’m fine. I caught myself scrolling instagram again.”
“Giiiirl!”
“I know! I know. But Kelly wanted to go shopping this weekend and I was looking for a fall aesthetic I liked and I just, I was sucked in, you know?”
“Did you find what you were looking for?”
Lisa laughed. “Noooo,” she said guiltily. “Actually, confession. I got DMs from that weirdo again.”
“You did not!”
“I didn’t respond! I read them, but I didn’t respond. Isn’t it like, just awful? I haven’t posted to insta in MONTHS and the creeps still find me.”
“OMG same, it’s like you show your face online once and that’s it, it’s over.”
“Hang on, I’m about to go through that dead zone. Call you back? Or maybe not, I’ll be close to the hospital once I’m out.”
“Okay, text me any time girlie.”
This little ritual was how Lisa kept in touch with her friends. Since becoming a nurse, the hours had been strained, but her three closest friends told her to call at any time. And she did—and they answered. Lisa smiled as she entered the winding, forested road between her apartment and the hospital.
She rounded a corner, and in the distance red brake lights caught her eye. As she drove she realized the lights weren’t moving—a car was stopped by the side of the road. As she got closer, more details resolved—was that steam coming out from the engine? Was that the drivers side door open? Was it pushed up against a tree?
It was clearly a wreck. Lisa felt a shiver along her arms—her ‘spidey-sense’, her intuition that someone needed helped. She pulled in behind the wrecked car. I should text Sue… she grabbed her phone, but it showed zero bars. Ugh, okay. I’ll make this quick, or I’ll be late. She tucked her phone in her pocket.
She grabbed the first aid kit she kept in the footwell of the passenger seat, and stepped tentatively out into the early morning night. The air was chill and damp, not with rain but dew which soaked the leaves and fixed them into a new layer of soil. The gentle yellow of Lisa’s headlights illuminated the back of the car in front of her. It was a black sedan of some kind. Lisa had seen car accidents before—she prepared herself for whatever injuries she might find. Concussion. Broken limbs. Lisa had never seen the cars that her patients crashed in—but the open door seemed unusual to her. Does that happen? She stepped slowly forward.
In the strange, low-angle light of her headlights, she didn’t recognize what she was looking at until she was standing right over it. Blood. Lots of it—on the ground, dripping out of the drivers seat, on the steering wheel, on the dashboard. Lisa’s medical-brain kicked in—lacerations, blood loss. Need bandages. Need to call an ambulance—but there’s no service…or patient. Where’s the driver?
A woman’s scream pierced the night—shrill yet distant—like terror or pain. Lisa jolted straight up, the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. If there’s someone hurt, I can help stabilize them until help arrives. She looked up the road, and back the way she came—the night air felt overcrowded with darkness. It was too early in the morning for any other traffic, and there was someone out there with serious injuries, judging from the blood. This is what I do, I help people. She took a deep breath, and marched into the woods in the direction of the scream.
She pushed her way through the dark forest like a ship through a storm. Away from her car and it’s headlights, she was quickly blinded by the night. She pulled out her phone—still no signal—and turned on the flashlight. She stepped carefully through the leaves and branches.
“Hello?” she called out. “Are you there?”
Another shrill scream echoed through the night—closer this time—and then was cut short.
“Hello?” Lisa called out again, urgently.
This time, silence answered her. She was getting closer…but I don’t have time for Marco-Polo. Lisa scanned the ground for any traces of blood. With that much blood in the car, there had to be blood on the ground. If the patient was in pain or, worse, if she was now unconscious it meant there wasn’t much time. I have to find her.
The light from her phone glistened on the damp leaves—she scanned the ground ahead of her, looking for something, anything. There! A wet patch of leaves that didn’t reflect the same as the rest. It looked dark and viscous. Blood. Sure enough. She scanned ahead for another patch, and found it. This will lead me to the patient. She paused, to call out again.
“Hello? I’m a nurse! I’m here to help!”
Silence caught her words and held them to the wet leaves on the ground.
She took a few more tentative steps forward. There was a clearing ahead of some kind. Something crunched behind her—she whirled around, and held up her phone. The white light faintly illuminating nearby trees.
Not a sound. Nothing moved. Probably a squirrel. She turned and marched back in the direction of the clearing.
The flashlight on her phone caught something pale in the night. Lisa rushed over—it was a woman, the patient! Lisa acted on autopilot, placing her first-aid kit down next to the woman, stabilizing her neck, checking her pulse. Nothing. Lisa checked the woman’s wrist—nothing. She was too late. She checked her phone—2:53am.
Medical necessity removed, Lisa finally looked past the patient and saw the woman. Her clothes were stained with blood, her skin deathly pale. She had a bruise on her forehead, but other than that, she was covered in lacerations or maybe even stab wounds on her arms and body. These are not the injuries of a car accident—this woman was attacked. The realization crept into Lisa’s mind like a spider in a dark room. I don’t need an ambulance—I need the police. How did the woman get this far in the woods? Lisa stood slowly, and panned her phone flashlight around the ground. Was she dragged here? What happened?
She shone her flashlight back through the woods, towards what she hoped was the road, though she had lost sight of it now.
From behind a tree, a man stepped out. He wore a dingy white shirt under denim overalls, a black gallows-hood over his face, and a circle of rope around his neck. His overalls were splattered with blood, his feet were bare and dark with dirt.
He stood between her and the road. He held out a bloody knife, held by blood-stained hands.
“Hello?” Lisa asked almost without thinking.
The man leapt at her in an instant, tackling her to the ground, knocking the air out of her lungs for a moment. Instinct overriding reason, Lisa kicked, flailed, and screamed—the man struggled to contain her, until she kicked up with her knee and connected with his ribs. He groaned, and loosened his grip—she clambered out from under him, her scrubs stained with blood from his clothes, got to her feet, and ran.
As her lungs heaved hot breath, her only thought was to get away from whoever—whatever—attacked her. She heard the sound of movement on either side of her, unsure if it was her own footfalls echoing back at her or her attacker. Her foot caught painfully on a root, twisting, and she fell hard to the ground, her phone tumbling out of her hands somewhere into the dark leaves beyond. Hands grabbed at her, a knife plunged into the earth next to her head. Lisa rolled away from it, or tried to—the hooded man was trying to grab her legs. She heard more movement in the forest—she thought she saw more hooded figures moving through the trees.
She kicked out hard and connected with the hooded mans face, scrambled to her feet again. He wrapped his hands around her leg and yanked hard, tumbling her to the ground, her head knocking back into the wet earth. He tried to stand up, and she shifted away from him along the ground. She kicked out again at his knees, and he tumbled to the ground. In an instant, she was back on her feet, running back in the direction of the clearing, and the road.
The sounds again, in the forest, the sounds of rushing feet across wet leaves, but now it was all around her. She glanced back—nothing. When she looked forward again, another hooded figure leapt out at her, dragging her to the ground, pressing her face into the ground. She felt another set of hands holding down her legs, and another trying to pry her arms out from under her. She managed to turn her face enough to scream: “HELP!”
A car stopped on the road—she didn’t realize she was so close! The hands evaporated, and the footfalls of the hooded figures faded into the forest. Lisa crawled frantically away from the woods and towards the light of the car—the light! The glorious light. Tears streaming down her face, she sobbed openly as she emerged from the woods. A young man had stepped out of his car, his windows were down.
“Hey—hey! Hey…” he said, assertive at first, but then alarmed, then softening when he noticed Lisa’s condition—covered in dirt and blood. Lisa got to her feet, and took lurching, limping steps toward the car.
“Help!” she sobbed. “Please!”
“What, I mean, who—what’s going on?”
Lisa helped herself into the passenger seat of his car, opening the door and falling heavily in. “Just drive, drive! Please! Go!”
She looked into the woods, at the figures, hooded and roped, slipping invisibly behind trees.
“DRIVE!” she shrieked.
The young man jumped into his car, and gunned the engine—the car took off down the desolate road. Lisa sank into her seat, exhaustion and terror finally settling over her, and gasped for breath between desperate sobs.
“Listen, what happened back there? Are you okay?”
(1,921 words)
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Do you know the American DJ that goes by the moniker "Girl Talk"? I think you should check him out.
1. That made me scared reading it, so well done, you.
2. The Story of the Inexperienced Ghost, by H.G. Wells.
3. "The Lady or the Tiger?" by Frank Stockton. It's one of them, anyway. :)