RTA

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RTA

A short story by Ryan Cartwright - CC:By-SA

By Ryan Cartwright

Published: Jul 2017

Publisher: Crimperbooks (crimperbooks.co.uk)

Categories: Ages-13-and-up, Short-stories

Original URL: https://www.crimperbooks.co.uk/short-stories/rta/

License: Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC-BY-SA 4.0).

You are free to share, copy, distribute and adapt this material under the same license terms.

RTA

This is a short story I had published in The Londonist a few years ago. As enough time has passed I'm reposting it here. It deals with death in a road accident so it's probably more suited to older readers.

The sun blinded her temporarily as she sat down on the kerb. Was that how it had happened? Did the same sun, reflected off the same window obscure her from the driver? She could see him in the middle of the road, fussing over the front of the bus and shouting about how he hadn’t seen her. Hadn’t seen her? Hadn’t looked more like. She winced as the pain in her leg spread like warmth through her torso into her head. As far as she could see there were no cuts, no blood. Certainly there appeared to be nothing broken but the pain reminded her that the absence of obvious signs of damage might be worse news than she had thought. The driver was becoming visibly upset and a few people tried to calm him. Her bike was crushed, mangled, wrecked. It looked more like some piece of eclectic, contemporary art than a bicycle.

The passengers were let off the bus and divided themselves between those who just couldn’t be late for work and those joining the crowd of gawkers getting their phones out. She heard mutterings from the crowd. “Well, that’s what you get for not wearing a helmet.”, “Did she jump the lights? They do it all the time you know.” She wanted to scream at them! Her helmet was clearly on her head for all to see! Not that it would have made much difference judging by the state of her bike. As for jumping the lights, she had done her share: when you justify to yourself that you wouldn’t have been able to stop in time or the thought of using all that energy starting off again convinced your aching legs to keep pumping, but not this time. This time the lights were green. She had come from the same direction as the bus. Couldn’t they see that? It was clear that the bus had turned too tight and tried to occupy her piece of road before she had vacated it.

Her whole body ached as she tried to stand again. It was surprisingly easy to stand. It felt more like she’d slept bad than been involved in the carnage she saw before her. She looked up Lombard Street behind her, the gold painted signs hanging over the doors glinted at her. The sun, had it been the sun? No it couldn’t have been! The sun was behind her now. It would have been behind her as she turned. It would have been behind the bus driver. She was, to be honest, a little put out that nobody had come to check on her. Most people were either standing over the remains of her bike or had started to drift away from Bank junction. All those little squirrels running off to tend to their particular pile of acorns. She looked across at the statue of Wellington, sitting proudly on his horse. She had passed him several times but never really looked at him. She noticed he had no saddle, no stirrups. Was that meant to say something or did he usually ride like that? Meh, who cares.

The paramedics whisked past her so fast she barely felt the breeze

Her attention was caught by the arrival of the ambulance. The paramedics jumped out and ran to the scene. Ran not walked. Had they not been told she was reasonably okay, that there was no need to hurry? They whisked past her so fast she barely felt the breeze. She called out but her voice came out weak. They carried on running. Why did nobody care about her? Surely they could see from the state of the bike that she would be hurt, seriously hurt.

Very seriously.

Except she wasn’t that hurt. She should have been but she wasn’t. Anyone riding that bicycle would have been really, really hurt. Maybe even? She didn’t want to think about it.

Like most dawns, this one came slowly