She pressed her palms to her ears in suction-cup motion, trying to unplug them, unsure why she heard nothing but a steady droning, the low buzzing of hummingbird wings fluttering against her ears. She stepped out of her car and placed ballet flats to concrete, squinting as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, following the wreckage. Had she been knocked out again? No, she was awake—the city had been knocked out. East and west, along the side of the road, in the sagebrush-covered median, wedged or gaping or beetling over the metal rails, piled atop each other in appalling angles: cars and trucks and minivans, all crashed.

She staggered forward, calling Andres under her breath. Tucking one hand beneath the twins for support, with her free hand she pried open the rutted trunk like a tuna-can lid, withdrew the first-aid kit and a small pen flashlight that Andres had cached there along with other emergency equipment she didn’t think she’d ever need, and stumbled to the nearest car.

“Stay calm,” she called as she approached the driver’s side of an upside-down station wagon teetering backside-first over the edge of the bridge. “I’ll get you out.”

No one responded.

“Hello?” She wished she’d paid more attention to her paramedic husband’s stories about the people he’d rescued. The gory details made her sick, so she never listened.

Groaning with effort, she knelt on all fours to face the driver she suspected unconscious. Bracing herself for blood and guts or worse, she peered into the open window, shining her light into the car.

There was nothing. No driver. No passengers. No blood. Only embankment gravel.

Disoriented, she heaved herself up and tried focusing on her surroundings; she must have missed something. Water lapped the cragged edges of river rock below. Cottonwoods rustled. She hadn’t heard anything else on the bridge. No screaming. No calls for help. No sirens.

Supporting her belly with one hand, she lumbered toward another car across the street. This one, a sports car, lolled in the median with no immediate signs of damage. No broken windows. No dents. It too was empty. Car after car. Where was everyone? Where were the rescue workers? The ambulances? The other victims? She stifled the urge to shout. There had to be a logical explanation. Maybe she’d been unconscious longer than she’d thought. Whatever explosion had caused her crash was responsible for the others. When rescue workers came, they’d missed her somehow, and now, late at night, she was the only one not taken to a hospital.

Why weren’t Andres and her mother looking for her? Surely they would’ve worried when she hadn’t returned from the university. Where was the search crew? How could they have missed her? She hadn’t been obscured by anything. Her car had crashed in plain sight with the others.