Running Late

The car swerved around the corners familiarly.  She was going to be late for work again.  She watched the clock on her dashboard obsessively.  She should have been at this intersection about three minutes ago.  Her foot pressed down on the gas pedal a little harder. 

She saw the movement out of the corner of her eye but it was too late to stop.  Her car hit the fleeting form with a sickening thump.  Her foot now moved instinctively from the gas pedal to the brake and slammed down on it hard.  The car fishtailed until it finally stopped about thirty feet down the road, slightly sideways. 

In the rear view mirror she saw a young woman running towards the crumpled form and that’s when she realized it was a child, a small child.  She opened the car door and stepped out.  She surveyed the scene unraveling before her in slow motion.  


A car stops.  A man jumps out while talking on his cell phone, running towards the scene.  Another man is racing down the driveway from the same direction as the young woman had come.  He appears to be yelling but she can’t hear what he is saying.  Is he yelling at her and what is that in his hand?  The young woman is bent over the tiny form; her primal cries of anguish ripping through her body.  The driver feels sick and her morning coffee steams as it hits the pavement.  She crumples to the ground in a heap.

The paramedic calls to dispatch, “We have a male victim, approximately three years old.  Witnesses say he was hit by a vehicle that was moving at a considerable speed.  The second victim is a woman approximately forty years old and apparently the driver of the vehicle that hit the boy.  It appears she has been shot?!”