This is my first Teaser Tuesday posting, ala the Twitter group, so I hope you enjoy. This is from the first chapter of my unpublished but finished novel, The Three of Us. 

The setup: A couple is driving to the hospital with their son who has just been hit by a car and is unconscious. 

The Three of Us, an excerpt

“Shouldn’t we call an ambulance?” The driver, shaking and terrified, asked again.

Mary looked at her, and looked back at her son. “You did this. This is your fault,” she said.

The woman said nothing more. She stood frozen, watching as Jack gathered the boy into his arms and slid him into the back seat of the car. Mary climbed in back beside him, resting Will’s bleeding head in her lap.

“I need something. To stop the blood,” she mumbled, searching the floor of the car at her feet to find something to press against the wound that was seeping blood from her baby’s head. A sweatshirt, a towel, she needed something to catch this blood or she was sure he would bleed every drop of life right into her lap.

As Jack flew toward the hospital she spied a  strip of blue cloth shoved beneath the driver’s seat. Tugging it out with the toe of her sneaker, for just an instant she registered the silky soft material and pale pink edging.

She grabbed the swath of cloth and crumpled it into a tiny ball, the faint waft of perfume echoing through the back seat.  Pressing it to her son’s head, she thought, “Not now. I cannot think about this now.”

Then she watched the pretty blue silk turn purple, then black with her only child’s blood.

As the blood drained out of him, Will’s eyes grew empty and lifeless. He lay limp in her lap and his skin shone pale and sickly, and cool to the touch.

“Will, honey, I need you to wake up,” she murmured to him. “Please baby, open your eyes.”

But he didn’t move. His eyes slipped quietly shut and she felt the last bit of strength fall away from his body.

“Jack, I think he’s unconscious,” she cried. “What do I do?”

“I don’t know,” he shouted back, desperation welling in his own voice. “Just hold him still. We’re almost there.”

He sped through the neighborhood, careening down Central Street and flying through the quaint downtown where shoppers sat sipping coffee at tiny sidewalk café tables, enjoying the pleasant Spring day. Jack ignored them all, flooring it through yellow lights and skidding around corners to get to Evanston Hospital.  It was the place where Will had been born, the place where their family had begun.

He pulled into the ambulance bay next to the emergency room and threw open his car door.

“My son’s been hurt, we need help!” he shouted jumping out of the car. He threw open the back door and reached in to take his son from Mary’s arms.

“Be careful of his head,” she said, feeling helpless as her only son slipped out of her arms, and a cold spot grew in the damp red stain on her shirt.

The bloody scarf fell away from his head as Jack lifted him, and dropped into the gutter beneath the car. She stared at it, this pretty stranger’s scarf soaked with her child’s blood, and wondered whether anything would ever be the same again.