“I can’t say for sure.”
“Try to remember.”
“I don’t think she was.”
“Probably not,” he said. “After all, if she goes walking in a storm like this without a raincoat or an umbrella, why would she bother to take a purse? We’ll search the street anyway. Maybe she dropped it somewhere.”
“What happens if you can’t find out who she is? How will you get in touch with her parents? I mean, she shouldn’t be alone at a time like this.”
“No problem,” Weatherby said. “She’ll tell us her name when she regains consciousness.”
“If she does.”
“Hey, she will. There’s no need to be concerned about that. She didn’t seem seriously injured.”
Carol worried about it nonetheless.
For the next ten minutes, Weatherby asked questions, and she answered them. When he finished filling out the accident report, she quickly read over it, then signed at the bottom.
“You’re in the clear,” Weatherby said. “You were driving under the speed limit, and three witnesses say the girl stepped out of a blind spot right in front of you, without bothering to look for traffic. It wasn’t your fault.”
“I should have been more careful.”
“I don’t see what else you could have done.”
“Something. Surely I could have done something,” she said miserably.
He shook his head. “No. Listen, Dr. Tracy, I’ve seen this sort of thing happen before. There’s an accident, and somebody’s hurt, and nobody’s really to blame—yet one of the people involved has a misplaced sense of responsibility and insists on feeling guilty. And in this case, if there is anybody to blame, it’s the kid herself, not you. According to the witnesses, she was behaving strangely just before you turned the corner, almost as if she intended to get herself run down.”
“But why would such a pretty girl want to throw herself in front of a car?”
Weatherby shrugged. “You told me you were a psychiatrist. You specialize in children and teenagers, right? So you must know all the answers better than I do. Why would she want to kill herself? Could be trouble at home—a father who drinks too much and makes heavy passes at his own little girl, a mother who doesn’t want to hear about it. Or maybe the kid was just jilted by her boyfriend and thinks the world is coming to an end. Or just discovered she was pregnant and decided she couldn’t face her folks with the news. There must be hundreds of reasons, and I’m sure you’ve heard most of them in your line of work.”
What he said was true, but it didn’t make Carol feel better.
If only I’d been driving slower, she thought. If only I’d been quicker to react, maybe that poor girl wouldn’t be in the hospital now.
“She might have been on drugs, too,” Weatherby said. “Too damned many kids fool around with dope these days. I swear, some of they’ll swallow any pill they’re given. If it isn’t something that can be swallowed, they’ll sniff it or stick it in a vein. This kid you hit might have been so high she didn’t even know where she was when she stepped in front of your car. Now, if that’s the case, are you going to tell me it’s still somehow your fault?”
Carol leaned back in the seat, closed her eyes, and let her breath out with a shudder. “God, I don’t know what to tell you. All I know is… I feel wrung out.”
“That’s perfectly natural, after what you’ve just been through. But it isn’t natural to feel guilty about this. It wasn’t your fault, so don’t dwell on it. Put it behind you and get on with your life.”
She opened her eyes, looked at him, and smiled. “You know, Officer Weatherby, I have a hunch you’d make a pretty good psychotherapist.”
He grinned. “Or a terrific bartender.”
Carol laughed.
“Feeling better?” he asked.
“A little bit.”
“Promise me you won’t lose any sleep over this.”
“I’ll try not to,” she said. “But I’m still concerned about the girl. Do you know which hospital they’ve taken her to?”
“I can find out,” he said.
“Would you do that for me? I’d like to go talk to the doctor who’s handling her case. If he tells me she’s going to be all right, I’ll find it a whole lot easier to take your advice about getting on with my life.”