The Drift

Hannah

A watch alarm was beeping. Someone was being sick. Loudly, close by. Several people were sprawled at odd, impossible angles over the uprooted coach seats. Blood pooled in eyes and dripped from gaping mouths.

Hannah noted this dispassionately, clinically. Her father’s nature kicking in, her mother would have said. Always able to detach. Sometimes, this lack of emotional empathy made life difficult. Other times, like now, that side was useful.

She unclipped her seatbelt and eased herself out of her seat. Wearing the belt had probably saved her life when the coach tipped over. It had rolled twice down a steep slope, causing most of the carnage, and then come to rest softly, propped half on its side, embedded in a snowdrift. She hurt. Bruises, scrapes, but nothing seemed to be broken. No massive bleeding. Of course, she could have internal injuries. Impossible to know for sure. But for now, in this immediate moment, she was okay. Or as okay as she could be.

Others were moving. Hannah could hear groans, crying. The hurler had stopped, for now. She looked around the coach, assessing. There were a dozen students on board. They hadn’t really needed such a big coach, but it was what the Academy had provided. Of the students, she’d say almost half were dead (mostly those who hadn’t bothered with their seatbelts).

There was something else, Hannah thought, as she took in the scene. A problem she hadn’t fully comprehended yet. Snowstorm outside, coach tipped over and half buried in a drift. What was it? Her thoughts were interrupted by a voice shouting:

‘Hey. HEY! Can someone help over here? My sister, she’s trapped.’

Hannah turned. At the back of the coach an overweight young man with a mass of dark curls was crouched over an injured girl, cradling her head on his lap.

Hannah hesitated. She told herself she was just gathering her wits, preparing. Not that she was hoping someone else would move forward, step up, so she didn’t have to. She didn’t like close physical or emotional contact. But no one else was in any fit state to help, and as she had medical knowledge, it was her duty. She started to move forward, awkwardly, stumbling her way along the lopsided gangway, stepping over bodies.

She reached the man and his sister. Straight away, she could tell, as they said in the movies, that the girl wasn’t going to make it. This had nothing to do with the stuff Hannah had learned in the classroom during her medical training. That was just a plain, honest gut reaction. Hannah was pretty sure the girl’s brother knew it too, but he was clinging to hope, as people do in these situations, because it was all they had.