Accident (39 page)

“She's killed six people,” Page said quietly, counting Phillip. Seven if Allie died, and she still could. But Page couldn't bear to think it. “How could she come to Phillip's funeral? How could she do that?”

“It was a smart thing to do. It made her look sympathetic,” Trygve explained wisely.

“What a terrible thing to do,” Page said, looking shaken. And she lay in bed and cried in his arms that night, it was as though they finally knew who had killed, or almost killed, their children. It didn't change anything, but it made it all so much more real. You knew who was to blame, and what she had done. There was no question in their minds that Laura Hutchinson had been drunk that night on the Golden Gate Bridge when she and Phillip Chapman had collided.

Trygve carefully checked the newspapers the next day, and he turned the news on over breakfast. Page watched somberly with him as the Senator made a statement to the press about how terrible he felt, and how devastated his wife was. They were paying for the funerals, of course, and a full investigation, and full disclosure would be made. He had some serious questions about his wife's car. He believed that the steering column and the brakes had been defective. Page wanted to scream as she listened. They showed him then with his injured child. She looked glazed and nervous as she clutched his hand and tried to smile. Laura Hutchinson herself was nowhere to be seen. They said she was in shock and under sedation. Page said she probably had the DT's and was drying out somewhere.

And when they opened the door to go to the hospital, they ran straight into the arms of a cameraman and four reporters. They wanted a photograph of Chloe in her wheelchair, or on her crutches, and they wanted to know how Trygve felt about Laura Hutchinson's accident in La Jolla.

“Terrible, of course. It's a shocking thing,” he said somberly, trying to avoid them. He had refused to let them photograph Chloe. But as he and Page slid into his car, she suddenly realized there would probably be reporters at the hospital too. And she ran to the ICU as soon as she got there. She didn't want anyone photographing Allie the way she was, or turning her into a ghoulish spectacle, or an object of pity. This was not the Allyson Clarke that anyone had ever known, and they had no right to use her to arouse public outrage. No matter how guilty Laura Hutchinson was, Page was not going to let them use Allie as an object to torment her.

Half a dozen reporters and photographers were clustered in the hall outside the ICU and they tried to stop her when they realized who she was, and ask her endless questions.

“How do you feel now that you know Laura Hutchinson was probably responsible for your daughter's accident, Mrs. Clarke? …how is she now? …Will she ever come out of the coma?” They had tried to talk to the doctor too, but of course he wouldn't talk to them, nor would the nurses in the ICU, despite all their pleas and cajoling. They had even tried to bribe one of them to let them in for a quick photograph, but unfortunately for them, the person they had chosen to bribe was Frances. She had threatened to have them thrown out of the hospital, and get a court order against them. And she came out to rescue Page now, while Trygve tried to get them to leave her alone. Page insisted that she had no comment.

“But aren't you angry, Mrs. Clarke? Doesn't it make you furious that she did this to your daughter?” They tried to provoke her.

“It makes me very sad,” Page said in a dignified voice as she walked past them, “for all of us, all those who have lost loved ones, or suffered the agony of this accident. And my heart goes out to the relatives of the family in La Jolla.” She said not another word, and walked into the ICU with Trygve, feeling as though they just climbed through a tornado. The nurses closed the doors to the ICU that day, and drew the shades, so no one could get photographs of Page or Allie.

Trygve called his investigative reporter friend later that day, and was amazed by what he told him. Laura Hutchinson had had four stays recently in a well known dry-out clinic in L.A., all in the past three years, and apparently none of her stays had been successful. She had gone there under another name, but a source at the clinic itself confirmed that she had been there. In addition the DMV records showed that she had been involved in at least half a dozen small accidents, and one larger one in Martha's Vineyard, where she spent the summers. There had been no fatalities in any of them, except the one on the Golden Gate Bridge, but there had been minor injuries, and in one of them Mrs. Hutchinson herself sustained a concussion. They had all been carefully hushed up, of course, and wherever possible, the records had been sealed. But somehow, Trygve's friend had gotten around that. He said there might have been bribes to close the records on her, and some political favors called. But her husband's lawyers and PR people had done a brilliant job at hiding Laura Hutchinson's record.

It was horrifying to realize that in this year alone, she had injured her own child, and she had killed six people, nearly crippled one, and left another in a coma. It was quite a record.

And by the end of the day, the public outcry over it was enormous. Mothers Against Drunk Driving had given interviews, and made public statements, and the Chapmans had given an interview talking about the young life that Laura Hutchinson had taken, and the reputation she had sullied. Meanwhile, spokesmen for the Senator were continuing to say that her brakes had failed and the steering column had gone out, but they were going to have a tough time selling that one. And through it all, Laura Hutchinson herself was “unavailable for comment.”

By the following week,
Oprah
and
Donahue
had interviewed families who had lost children and husbands and wives in similar accidents, and the news showed Laura Hutchinson running into the courthouse in dark glasses, to be arraigned for felony vehicular manslaughter. The maximum possible jail sentence she faced was forty years, which Page felt didn't even begin to touch what she owed them.

Every time Page saw Allie that week all she could think of was Laura Hutchinson and the young woman who had died with her unborn baby in her belly.

By midweek, the press had started to go wild with the story. They continued to interview the Chapmans about how they felt about their son, and to hound the Applegates, Page, Brad, and Trygve. The news camera continued to show up at the ICU, and the producer of the show tried to get her to agree to having Allyson shown on TV in her coma.

“Don't you want other mothers to see what happened to you? They have a right to get people like Laura Hutchinson off the road,” a very aggressive young woman explained, “and you have an obligation to help them.”

“Seeing Allyson won't change anything.” All she wanted was to protect her.

“Will you talk to us at least?” She thought about it at length, and then finally agreed to a brief interview in the hallway, if only to support the case against Laura Hutchinson in La Jolla. She explained what had happened to Allyson three months before, the physical results of the accident, and her current condition. It was fairly straightforward, and for a fraction of a moment, she was glad she'd done it.

Then the same aggressive young woman asked her if her life had been affected in any other way by the accident. Had there been any other complications? And as she asked her that, Page realized that someone must have told her that she and her husband were separated. But she wasn't about to become an object of pity on TV, and she evaded the question.

“Do you have any other children, Mrs. Clarke?”

“I do,” she said quietly, “a son, Andrew.”

“And how has this affected him?”

“It's been hard on all of us,” she said candidly, as the reporter nodded.

“Isn't it true he ran away several weeks after the accident? Would you say that was a direct result of all this trauma?” They had checked the police records and Page was angry at the invasion of their lives. These people were using them to make a point. Trygve had been right not to talk to them in the first place.

“I'd say it's been difficult for all of us, but we're coping.” She smiled pleasantly, and then thought about why she had agreed to do the interview. “I'd just like to say that I think that anyone responsible for this kind of tragedy must answer for it, to the fullest extent of the law …not that that changes anything for us now,” she said as they ended the interview. But if they had been honest in dealing with Laura Hutchinson's drinking problem years before, maybe she wouldn't have been on the road, behind the wheel that fateful night in April.

Page was unhappy when she saw the interview on TV, they edited it so it made her look as though she had said things she hadn't. And they made her seem pathetic. But maybe if people knew what Laura Hutchinson had done to all of them, maybe she'd be fairly punished in La Jolla. This accident would not be admissible evidence because she hadn't been tested for alcohol at the time. But it established a pattern of what she'd done. It was the only reason Page had talked to them, but she was sorry she'd done it.

None of it changed anything for Allyson, but Page felt better knowing that the woman who had done it would be brought to justice. The trial was set for the first week in September.

CHAPTER 18

T
rygve and the children left for Lake Tahoe on August first, and Page had promised to join them there with Andy in mid-August. Brad was in Europe with Stephanie by then, and for lack of anything else to do with him, she had put Andy in day camp. Trygve had offered to take Andy to Tahoe with them, and Andy was tempted to go, but he still wanted to stay close to his mother. He was not as secure as he had been before the accident, he didn't like to spend the night at friends' anymore, and sometimes he still had nightmares about Allie.

The accident had been almost four months earlier. The feared three-month mark had passed, without a whimper from Allie. Page had almost come to accept that. She had wanted so desperately for her to wake up, for her to be herself again, even if it took a long time to get her back on her feet or rehabilitate her. She would have done anything to bring her back. But she was slowly beginning to understand that it wasn't going to happen.

Trygve called her from Tahoe every day. And she was settling into a routine by then. She took Andy to day camp, went to the hospital, visited with Allyson, worked with the therapist to keep Allie's body moving and from atrophying completely. Then she'd work on the mural, sit with Allyson again. And pick Andy up at day camp, go home, and cook dinner.

She missed Trygve terribly, more than even she expected. Once he said he was so lonely for her that he drove down one night just to spend the night with her and go back up in the morning. He was wonderful to her, and they were very happy together.

She had finished the first mural by then, and had started on the port scene in the waiting room by the end of the first week in August. There were a lot of intricate details she had done in her early sketches, and she was sitting next to Allyson thinking about them, and checking her drawings. It was a peaceful afternoon and the sun was streaming into the room, as Page felt a little movement of Allie's hand on the bed. She did that sometimes. It didn't mean anything, she knew now. It was just the body responding to some electricity in the brain. But instinctively she looked up and glanced at her, and went back to her drawings again as she munched absentmindedly on her pencil. There was a detail she wanted to do that wasn't clear to her, and she sat and stared out the window for a minute trying to figure out how to do it. And then she glanced at Allie again, and saw her hands move. They seemed to be clutching the sheets this time, and reaching out to her. It was something she had never done before, and Page stared at her, wondering if this was just more of the same, or something different.

And then, almost imperceptibly, she saw Allie's head move. She seemed to be turning it slowly toward her, as though she sensed that Page was there. Page watched her, feeling her breath catch. It was as though she knew that someone was there, as though she herself were back in the room again, and Page could feel it.

“Allie? Are you there? …can you hear me?” It wasn't like the time she had almost died, it was much stronger, and much more real, although that had seemed real at the time too, but this was very different. “Allie …” She put down her pencil and pad and took Allyson's hand in her own, intent on reaching her if there was any chance at all. “Allie …open your eyes, sweetheart …I'm right here …open your eyes, baby …it's okay …don't be scared …it's Mommy …” She spoke very softly to her and stroked her hand, and then weakly, Allyson squeezed her hand, and Page started to cry. She had heard her. She knew it. She had heard her. “Allie … I felt you squeeze my hand … I know you can hear me, baby …come on …open your eyes now …” And then ever so slowly, as the tears streamed down Page's cheeks, she could see Allyson's eyelids flutter, and then they stopped. As though it were all too much for her, and she was exhausted. Page sat looking at her for a long time, wondering if she had slipped deeper into her coma again. There seemed to be no sign of life now, and then suddenly she felt her squeeze her hand again, but this time it was stronger.