-Going Home

Dr Bunting walked out of the emergency room at Hebron that morning, feeling drained.  Helen and Pembry had just gotten back from the hop to Lincoln and had found him in the cafeteria sipping a cup of badly needed coffee.  The family had made it, they had said.  For what they had done, they had done it as well as could be expected.  The family was safe, and that was what was important.  They would put the fiasco of the night behind them. 

Outside the sun was up.  It was a clear and beautiful winter day, crisp and cold and not a cloud to be seen.  The emergency room had been restored and cleaned up from the shenanigans of the early morning, and there was little sign that anything out of the ordinary had even occurred there.  The on-call staff had all gone home and the place was quiet, except for a couple of staff coming in to start the day.  No other emergencies had occurred last night which he was very grateful for.  He could rest soon, but now he needed to take care of one more duty.

He opened the door to the small exam room and turned on the light.  On the table, covered by a thin white sheet, mom lay naked on her back.  Beside the table, a plastic bag containing her clothes and effects had been placed.  He picked it up and looked in.  On top of the dirty and bloody blouse was a necklace that she had worn.  It was a small white porcelain medallion depicting a windmill drawn in blue in the Delft style.  He held it for awhile, then closed his palm around it and looked at her.  It gave him a glimpse into the person she had been, and he felt a pang of sympathy for her.  He would make sure it made it back to the family with her.

They would all live, he was pretty sure.  They survived the night with an almost total lack of care, except that given by the dad.  At least he was a doctor, and seemed to know for the most part what he was doing.  Doctor Bunting just wished they could have helped more.  It is very important to the staff to feel like they are doing something in cases like that.  God forbid one of those kids died there.  Some of the staff would have not been able to handle that, he knew.

He turned to the table and gently pulled the sheet back.  Mom lay before him, exposed and vulnerable, just as she was when she came into the world only thirty two years before.  He carefully examined her body, noting to himself all of the broken bones and bruises she had suffered.  It was very obvious that she had died immediately, and didn’t have to sustain the pain from all of her wounds. 

Most of her major bones were fractured, and cuts and contusions were present across her entire body.  She had been subject to an incredible force when she had been ejected from that plane.  The ghastly wound on her head was indicative of an impact by a flying object.  Probably some piece of the plane, he thought.  It had caused massive damage to her head. 

Mom was dead before she was flung through the windshield and out onto the field a split second later, when we impacted into the ground.  No one can say whether if she had been wearing her seatbelt she’d have survived.  For me, I try not to wonder about it.  I guess it doesn’t matter now.

Doctor Bunting concluded his examination then signed the death certificate.  He wrote the cause of death as a compound fracture of her skull.  It didn’t seem to do justice to the rest of what she had gone through.  Rather, it seemed like such a simple thing, like a bump on the head.  Someone else would have to fill in the blanks.  That wasn’t his job, as much as he’d have liked it to be. 

The family minister in Lincoln had told Helen that a funeral home up there would be sending someone down to recover her later that day.  Nothing more he could do.  He hung the clipboard on the end of the bed by the paper tag that was tied to one of her toes and pulled the sheet back over my mother.  He stretched and sighed deeply, rubbing his eyes.  It had been a long night.  He couldn’t think of a longer one in recent memory.  Hopefully he could get a little sleep before the next emergency. 

He walked from the room, flipping the light off as he went and closing the door behind him.  The dead body of the young woman who gave me life now was left all alone in the cool darkness.

A tan hearse pulled out of the garage at the Lincoln Memorial Funeral Home.  It made its way to the interstate and headed west toward York where the driver could pick up highway 81. Once there, it turned south, traveling several miles, past the road where my dad had stood, past the wreckage of our plane three-quarter miles away, past the monument to the pioneers, into Hebron.  It was the same exact route that Kim and I would follow thirty years later. 

A black vinyl body bag lying on a rolling stretcher was awaiting the driver when the hearse pulled up to the hospital.  They had said it was a woman killed in some kind of airplane crash.  Without much ceremony, the driver signed the release, placed the bag in the back of the hearse, and pulled away, bringing my mom the rest of the way home.