Broken Wings

The drive to the Medical Examiner’s was long and boring to the veteran detective, like so many other things that had lost their sparkle. He had stalwartly put his thoughts to the side as he focused on the road, scratching the captain’s car was never an option one ever took. With only the police scanner as his companion for the ride, Munch had resorted to watching the people he had passed. Despite several failed marriages and countless lost loves, he envied the majority of people that he passed or rather passed him as he waited for the traffic light to turn. Everywhere he looked, Munch say saw the oblivious and intoxicating effects of what he had sought all his adult life: love. In a city as populated as Manhattan, he felt as though he were the odd ball out as couples seemed to crawl out of the woodwork and flaunt the priceless commodity before him.

As the holiday steadily approached, Munch felt the bitter taste of loneliness creep back into his heart. Guilt quickly followed in suit as he practiced the mask of denial, bracing himself for friendly inquires into his plans and whether he would like to join this co-worker or that for the holiday celebration. In the short years that he had worked in SVU, Stabler and the others would never fell to politely invite him to join in their celebration and every year he would politely decline, frequently resorting to lying. It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy their company, but rather the opposite. While he enjoyed their company and often shared after work drinks with the other detectives, Munch savored the comforting guilt that the month brought him. To him the guilt was always an old friend come to visit after an overly long absence. The traffic light wavered as hanghanged to green.

Accelerating through the intersection, his mind briefly wondered over the case at hand. To his overworked and underspent mind, the case seemed pretty cut and dry. What could the medical examiner tell them that wasn’t obvious in Ms. Finnie’s death? A quite and persistent voice whispered in the dark recesses of his mind, a voice that he had learned long ago to listen to as each new case found its way onto his desk and each new clue led him to the suspect like a trail of bread crumbs. Pinching the bridge of his nose, Munch sighed as his concentration was irrevocably shattered as the minivan in front of him collided with a semi-truck. Slamming on the brakes, “who opened the flood gates?!”

Mumbling to himself, Munch pulled the car off to the shoulder before shifting it into park. He let the door bounce back and forth on its hinges as he climbed outside the car, he bit his lip in frustration as the seat belt restrained and and pulled him back to the driver’s seat. Grumbling as he pushed the release, Munch shook his head. “Anything else?” He asked no one in particular as he slammed the door behind him. Irritation showed on his face as he stalked towards the steaming vehicles. Munch’s nose twitched as he drew closer to the minivan and noticed the disheveled driver’s attention was focused on the back seats. Peering through the smokey windows, Munch felt his gut instinctively clench. He felt as though a ton of bricks had him, knocking him for a loop as the air was roughly squashed from his lungs.

The world around them decompose, fading to black as he was jerked away from reality. He could easily stomach the straight out murders, especially those related to drugs. He had discovered when he joined the Special Victims Unit that it was the living victims that really got to a person. One thing had stayed the same when he had transferred to the unit, the worst cases involved children. Dialing on his cell phone for help, Munch quickly circled the minivan. Tucking the object between his shoulder and ear, Munch groaned out loud at both the sight that greeted him and the continuous ringing. “Come on already!” Today was definitely one of those days that he hated living in New York, Munch decided as he waited for the operator. As he waited, Munch desperately clung to the youthful aspirations of a job that he had once loved and believed that one person could make a difference in, a job that had become bittersweet to the taste.

During the collision, the sliding door on the minivan had been bent inward and the whole side of the vehicle looked like only sheer will was keeping it from collapsing onto itself. He was absently aware of other cars pulling to the side of the busy street and a motorist putting out flares somewhere behind the scene. A hand fell on his shoulder, startling him. Turning, he noted the young man that had placed the flares standing behind him. “I managed to get through on the CB radio in truck,” he indicted the Ford Explorer parked behind the detective’s car. “They’re en route.”

Munch nodded his head as he collapsed his cell phone and tucked it into his pocket. “Direct traffic then until a uniformed officer gets here.” He said before turning his attention back to the minivan.

“Going to need the jaws of life to get into there.”

“A crowbar should suffice. Do you have one?” Munch asked, keeping his eyes on the pair inside the vehicle. The mother was shaking her ten year old daughter in the van, oblivious to the help waiting outside the crushed minivan.

“No, I’ll ask around though.” The man said as he started to walk away.

Munch tapped on the glass, trying in vain to attract the mother’s attention. Frustrated, he looked around for something to smash the window in, but thought better of it since he didn’t know the extent of the injuries and didn’t want to cause any further harm if possible. Knocking harder on the window, Munch suddenly froze. Dark crimson blood was pooling out on the seat around the child. “Please, God.” Munch prayed silently as he turned to find the young man that had promised him a crowbar.

A light tap on his shoulder made Munch turn on his heel in mid-step. “Here you go, one crowbar as promised.”

Munch spared him a quick nod as he reached for the tool. As he pried his way into the collapsed side of the minivan, Munch fought the panic that was swelling inside of him as thild’s b’s blood dribbled across the seat and dripped onto the floor mat below. The child’s mother screamed in his ear as smoke curled from beneath the vehicle. Wincing, Munch reigned in the instinct to scream back at the hysterical woman pawing on his arms and hindering him from reaching the trapped child. Without taking his attention off the injured child, Munch absently slapped the woman’s face as though she were nothing but a fly bothering him. “Shut up!” He let his voice convey the anger, frustration and fear that his face was unable to say as he searched his pockets for the pocketknife kept there.

In all of his years on the force, Munch knew that no one had ever thought of him as craven. Though he always preferred using the issued firearm when situations called for the use of violence, Munch had always felt a small measure of security in the knowe the that the pocketknife was there. Though the small length of the blade would cause little damage in reality, it was a piece of personal history carried over from his childhood. It had ceased to amaze him how handy the small weapon was in situations such as these. Flipping the blade open, Munch began to saw at the seatbelt.

Somehow he knew that the other detectives would be unable to relate to him, their eyes were still blinded as far as Munch could see. In addition to the obvious age gap that placed him in the awkward position of playing the role of big brother to Captain Cragen’s father figure role, the SVU detectives lacked his experience and thus they wouldn’t understand the motives behind his reasoning. Munch sighed, knowing that the burden was his and his alone. The demons were his to fight, his alone.

The seatbelt snapped as the tension was abruptly broke. Pushing the mother out of his way, Munch checked the girl over as best as he could. His heart broke with each of the child’s plntive whimpers as he pushed some discarded newspapers from the floorboards to the gushing wound on the child’s side. What had caused the injury, Munch wasn’t able to see with the girl in the way. As he opened his mouth to ask the helpful young man what the ETA on the ambulance was, he heard the first wail of the sirens as they approached from somewhere up ahead of the accident. Relief flooded him as the wail grew louder and he packed more newspaper between his hand and the rushing geyser. Oblivious to the world outside of the hurt child, smoke slowly drifted into the minivan from the floorboards.

The van rocked as the paramedics stepped inside, “what do we have?”

“What the hell does it look like?!” Munch snapped as he rolled his eyes. “She’s lost a lot of blood, I didn’t see what caused the injury.” He said, keeping his voice as neutral as possible.

The dirty blonde paramedic nodto hto himself as he began to pack the wound with cotton. “Alright, we’ll take it from here.”

Stepping back, Munch moved out of the way as another paramedic approached the van. He watched as they worked on the girl from his post on the sidewalk, oblivious to the red stain on his hands. “Please,” he whispered.

As the paramedics worked on the child, another ambulance had pulled up. Within moments they were treating the hysterical mother and the shocked truck driver. A marked squad car had pulled up behind the accident site and a uniformed officer had taken over directing traffic. Light grey wisps of smoke curled around the minivan’s tires, dissipating in the chilly December wind. Munch watched as the paramedics began to slowly carry the child from the van. A tap on his arm drew his attention away from the nightmarish scene. “Yes?”

“Mr. Gibson said that you were on the scene before him, Mr.....?”

“Munch. Detective John Munch, and yes I was.”

“Sorry, Detective.” The young officer said, “we’ll need your statement, sir.”

“Of course,” Munch grumbled as he followed the auburn haired officer back to the squad car. “More paperwork, always more paperwork.” Munch grumbled to himself as they approached the squad car.

A fire engine screeched to a stop next to an ambulance as hell erupted on earth. The minivan exploded in flames as the last paramedic took the first step onto the sidewalk. Flames roared suddenly to life, engulfing the crumbling shell of the vehicle. The back board was haphazardly thrown to the side as the paramedics were thrown from the force of the explosion. The child screamed as she collided with a cement pillar and was bounced back to the cemented sidewalk. Strapped to the back board, all she could was cry as the pain rocketed through her traumatized body. A fresh trail of blood streamed down the side of her face and pooled on the glass littered sidewalk.

The raven haired paramedic crawled on his hands and knees across the river of broken shards of glass to reach his partner’s side. Turning the dirty blonde over, he listened for a heartbeat before pounding on his chest. “Come on, Mike, come on!” His bruised and scratched hands clenched together in a fist as he performed CPR on the lifeless body. “Fight, fight Mike! I know you can hear me, fight damn you!” His voice croaked with emotion as he was pulled away by another paramedic and he was
forced to watch someone else work on his partner. “Fight!”

When the minivan had exploded, the second ambulance crew abandoned their patients and hurried to the flaming ball of metal across the street Unaware of the already injured child, they descended on the injured paramedics in blur of activity. As the ambulance driver pulled the raven haired paramedic away from the his partner, the second paramedic bent to work on the fallen one. “Shut and be still, Jesse will do everything he can for your partner.” The ambulance driver said as he pinned the raven haired paramedic’s arms behind his back, stray streams of water fell from the heavens above and onto the group.

The firefighters had swarmed from the engine as the first flames erupted as it quickly consumed the minivan. They had to raced to circled the van with the hose. The knowledge that there were four lives at stake, sitting on the opposite side of the vehicle and near the gas tank, seemed to give them the edge that they needed to beat back the flames. As he circled the flaming blob, Steven heard a plaintive cry from behind a nearby planter. Gripping the axe in his hand, he slowly circled the cemented pea-gravel. Steven’s eyes widened as he sank to his knees next to the wailing child. “Shh,....it’s going to be okay.” He patted his pockets until he found the small black two-radio. Pressing in the button, “sir, I’ve got an injured child here on your one o’clock beneath the....” His voice trailed off as he glanced upwards, “beneath the Bank Of America sign. It looks like the paramedics were just bringing her out when the minivan went.”

“Copy. We’ll try and get someone over there.”

“Ah, what should I do in the meantime?” Steven asked unainlainly as he glanced at the sobbing child.

“Don’t move her, the planter there is blocking her. Just talk to her, hold her hand. Hell, tell her a story.”

Steven swallowed hard, he wasn’t suppose to be the one in this situation. It was only his first day on the job and he hadn’t expected to be doing something like this yet. His head hurt from searching for a suitable story and the heat from the burning fire seemed to only compound the fact. Inhaling deeply, Steven took of his helmet as he began with the only four words that he could come up with. “Once upon a time......”

The ground rumbled behind him as he spoke with the uniformed officer. Turning in time to see the minivan engulfed in flames, Munch felt a hand on his shoulder pulling him backwards. His eyebrows scrunched together as went unresisting with the guiding force behind him, “Wha....?!” He felt as though some titanic force was sucking him into a void as he fell unceremoniously to the cracked sidewalk.

“Sorry, Detective.” The officer apologized as he offered a hand to help up. Munch accepted the assistance. “There wasn’t a lot of time and...” He trailed off as Munch waved him off and started towards the eruption of flames. “Detective, I really think you ought to wait until the firefighters have got it under control.”

Shrugging off the uniformed officer, Munch charged towards the flaming minivan. This was one of those days that all he wanted was to turn in his badge and walk off the face of the planet.