The Night Route

Ruth drove the last bus of the night, the one that left town at ten and went out along the coast road through the villages. The company called it route nine. The drivers called it the ghost bus, because on most nights it carried nobody at all.

Ruth liked it that way. Ten years on the buses had taught her that trouble gets on after dark, and that an empty bus is a quiet friend.

That night she had three passengers. An old man with a bag of tools, asleep before the first stop. A young woman who worked at the hotel and never said a word. And, at the stop by the church, a man carrying a small girl wrapped in his coat.

The man counted out the money in small coins. His hands were shaking. The girl's face was white, and her eyes were open, but they were not looking at anything.

"She is hot," the man said. "She has been hot since this afternoon."

Ruth looked at the girl. She had two children of her own, both grown now, and she knew the difference between a child who is ill and a child who is in trouble. This girl was in trouble.

"There is a doctor in Marden," the man said. "We will get off there."

"The doctor in Marden closes at six," Ruth said. "She needs the hospital."

"The bus does not go to the hospital."

That was true. The hospital was four miles off the route, on the far side of the river. Rule four in the company book said a driver must keep to the route, whatever happens. There was a radio for everything else: call the office, and the office decides.

Ruth called the office. The radio made a sound like rain, and nobody answered. It was half past ten at night.

She looked at the girl again in the mirror. The girl had started to make a small sound, over and over, like a machine that is going to fail.

Ruth turned the bus off the route at the bridge.

The old man woke up when the bus turned. He looked out of the window at the wrong road going past, then at the man with the girl, and understood at once, in the way old men do. He moved to the front seat. "Take the low road," he said. "It is faster."

The young woman from the hotel came forward too. She had done a first-aid course in the summer. "Give her to me," she said to the father. "You cannot hold her and think at the same time."

Nobody said anything about the route.

Four miles is nothing in a car. In a bus, at night, on a small wet road, it is a long way. Ruth drove faster than the rules allowed and slower than she wanted to. The father sat with his hands on his knees and watched the front window, as if watching could pull the hospital closer.

At the hospital Ruth stopped the bus at the main door, where buses do not go. The lights inside were very bright. A nurse came out, took one look at the girl, and started to run.

Then the doors closed, and the bus was quiet again.

The old man went back to his seat. The young woman looked at her hands for a while. Ruth turned the bus round, drove back to the route, and finished it, an hour late, carrying nobody at all.

The letter from the company came on Friday. It said she had broken rule four, that the matter was serious, and that it would stay on her record for two years.

The letter from the girl's father came a day later. It was shorter. It said the hospital had measured the girl's temperature, and the nurse had gone quiet when she read it. It said the fever broke at four in the morning. It said that another hour would have made this a different story.

Ruth read both letters at her kitchen table. She kept both. Only one went up on the wall.

She still drives the night route. The drivers still call it the ghost bus, and on most nights it still carries nobody at all. But at the bridge, where a small road turns off towards the hospital, she always looks. Ten years on the buses teach you the rules. One night can teach you which ones matter.