Story code: ST-001155
Part 3: The Deductible
The harsh scrape of Kydex echoing off the metal gas station canopy was the loudest sound Marcus had ever heard.
The officer had drawn his weapon.
“Both hands out the window! Right now!” the officer roared, stepping quickly backward to put the heavy steel of the cruiser’s engine block between himself and the sedan. “Do not reach for the keys! Do not drop your hands!”
Marcus shoved his arms through the open window, thrusting them into the frigid night air. His left palm was slick and glistening in the blinding beam of the tactical flashlight. It didn’t look real. It looked like bright red paint.
“What happened in that car?” the officer shouted, his voice cracking with adrenaline. The muzzle of his Glock was leveled squarely at the driver’s side door. “Did you stab her? Did someone shoot at you?”
“No!” Marcus screamed, his voice shattering in terror. “She’s sick! She’s bleeding from inside!”
Beside him, Elaine tried to deploy her polite, suburban charm one last time, but her body finally betrayed her.
“Off-ficer… we are… we are perfectly…” Her jaw hung slack. Her voice was incredibly thick, the words slurring heavily together as if she had just consumed a bottle of whiskey. She tried to raise her hand to wave away his concern, but her arm moved in a violent, jerky spasm, her knuckles cracking hard against the passenger window. She blinked slowly, her head lolling toward her shoulder.
“Hey! Passenger! Stop moving!” The officer aimed the flashlight directly into Elaine’s face. Her pupils were pinpoint dots in the glare. “What is she on, kid? Is it meth? Fentanyl?”
“She hasn’t taken anything!” Marcus yelled. He turned his head just enough to see his mother. Her lips were turning a faint, translucent blue. The erratic thrashing wasn’t a drug high; it was severe hypoxia. She was bleeding out from whatever had ruptured in her stomach, her brain starving for oxygen and beginning to misfire.
“Don’t lie to me!” the officer barked, keeping his weapon raised. “Look at her! She’s tweaking! If she’s OD’ing and you lie to me about what she took, she is going to die right here!”
“I’m not lying! She collapsed in the kitchen! She’s bleeding!”
The officer didn’t wait for more. He reached up with his left hand, pressing the radio mic on his shoulder. “Dispatch, 3-Adam-12. I have a suspect vehicle at the Route 9 Chevron. Driver detained. Passenger is exhibiting erratic behavior, slurred speech, and heavy bleeding. Suspected narcotic overdose or violent trauma. Start a bus, code three. Tell EMS to stage until I clear the vehicle.”
The word *bus*.
It hit Elaine like a physical blow.
The sluggish, fading woman vanished in a heartbeat. Elaine bolted upright, her seatbelt locking with a harsh, mechanical clatter. Her arms flew out wildly in a sudden burst of panicked adrenaline, knocking the rearview mirror clean off the windshield glass.
“No!” she shrieked, the sound tearing through her throat, spraying fine, dark droplets of blood onto the dashboard. “No ambulance! Cancel it!”
The officer immediately locked both hands on his gun. “Ma’am, do not move! Keep your hands where I can see them!”
“Cancel the ambulance!” Elaine clawed frantically at the door handle, her coordination entirely gone. Her slurred speech was now a desperate, wet scream. “Marcus, start the car! Start the car! We have to go!”
“Mom, stop!” Marcus reached across the console, terrified the cop was about to pull the trigger. “Stop moving! He’s getting help!”
“I can’t afford help!” she sobbed, ripping the door handle backward. The heavy passenger door swung open. “Do you understand me? The out-of-network fee! The transport! It’s three thousand dollars just to step inside the rig! We’ll lose the house!”
Marcus stared at her, the breath completely knocked out of his lungs.
Suddenly, the entire agonizing night slammed into focus. When she had collapsed on the kitchen floor, clutching her side, Marcus had reached for his phone to dial 911. She had slapped it out of his hand, screaming that they couldn’t pay for it. He thought it was just the pain talking. When she forced him behind the wheel, he assumed they were rushing to the nearby ER.
But she had forced him to drive exactly forty-five miles an hour. She had demanded perfect lane changes and full three-second stops. She was navigating him through the dark backroads all the way to the county line. The underfunded public clinic was out there-the only place her cut-rate insurance would cover.
She hadn’t been demanding perfect driving to hide a violent crime. She wasn’t muling drugs. She had been terrorizing him to avoid a traffic stop, because a traffic stop meant police, and police meant a mandated ambulance. She was willing to quietly bleed to death in the passenger seat of a sedan rather than let her son inherit a crippling medical debt.
“Mom…” Marcus whispered, the horror of it paralyzing him.
Elaine fell out of the car.
Her legs gave out instantly. She hit the oily concrete of the gas station on her hands and knees. The harsh, overhead fluorescent lights of the canopy illuminated the catastrophic amount of blood soaking her silk skirt and pooling on the floor mat.
“Ma’am! Get on the ground!” the officer yelled, but his voice broke. The aggressive, tactical posture faltered as he watched the middle-aged woman weakly trying to crawl away from the vehicle.
“I am not getting in that ambulance,” Elaine slurred, violently swaying on her hands and knees. She slowly raised her head, staring up at the officer’s drawn gun with absolute, feral defiance. Her erratic twitching was worse now, her body violently shivering as it failed to pump enough blood to keep her warm. “Shoot me if you want. It’s cheaper.”
Marcus hung his bloody hands outside the window, helplessly watching his mother bargain her life against a deductible.
“Tell them to stand down,” Elaine gasped to the officer, a fresh surge of dark blood spilling from her lips and spotting the concrete beneath her. “My son… he’s driving me to the county clinic. Just let us drive. Please.”
The officer stood completely frozen behind his drawn weapon. He looked from the massive pool of blood spreading over the concrete to the pale, slurring woman who was physically fighting off a rescue. His shoulder mic crackled loudly in the cold air, the dispatcher’s voice calmly confirming the ambulance was three minutes out, but the officer didn’t have a single word in response.