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Lexie jumped, rearing back as he groaned and opened his eyes. His face twisted like just that small action hurt like the devil.
“Don’t move,” she said. “I’m here.”
Asking if he was alright seemed like a ridiculous thing to do given how he looked, so she reached for the passenger door instead. Her fingers tightened around the slippery handle and pulled, but it was jammed shut. She tried again, gritting her teeth until the crumpled metal gave way; she cringed at the protesting squeal. She braced her shoulder against the small opening and shoved. The man grunted and coughed as she pulled herself through and positioned her body awkwardly on the passenger seat across from him. His eyes were open now. They were deep and dark and full of questions. And pain.
Lexie’s hands danced in front of her, desperate to help in some way but not knowing what he needed or how to respond to the carnage she faced. She was no nurse, had never done so much as a first-aid course. All she knew she’d learned from TV. Hardly a reliable source.
“I’m going to help you,” she said, hoping she sounded reassuring. Her voice was so small she barely heard it herself.
He looked at her, holding her gaze. “Okay.”
Forcing her mind to focus, she reached into her pocket to try her phone again, but it was no use. Down here, she had even less reception than she had before.
“Come on, come on,” she growled at the screen, then a thought occurred to her. She touched his arm. “Hey. Where’s your cell phone?”
For a moment, he looked confused. His brow creased and his eyes darted side to side before landing on her face. “I-I don’t know.”
“Alright, look, I need to go find help. I’ll be right back.”
When she started to move away, he stopped her with a weakened, “Wait, please . . .”
Lexie shook her head. “I don’t know what to do here. Let me go get someone—”
“I can’t”—he gasped—“breathe.”
Alarm bells rang loudly, fear pumped through her veins at his words, and the way his eyes kept drooping shut every few seconds had her ready to hyperventilate. What if he died right here and now, in front of her? She couldn’t even think about it.
“What do you want me to do?”
He shifted again, face contorting. “Loosen . . . this seatbelt. Take it off if you can.”
Lexie ran her eyes over him, over the offending seatbelt wound tightly around his muscular frame. Beneath his jacket, he was wearing a white, buttoned, dress shirt tucked into suit pants and stained with blood from unseen cuts beneath. One quivering forearm gripped the dash, she assumed to relieve some of the pressure from his constricted chest. Then her eyes found something else, and they held there for long moments. Sitting on his belt was a shiny, gold badge. Beside it, a holstered gun.
“Please,” he urged.
“Okay, hold on.”
She tried the release button a half dozen times to no avail, then searched the cab for something to cut it with. The glove compartment held only papers, and there was nothing useful anywhere else that she could see. “I have a pocketknife in my car.”
Without waiting for a reply, she squeezed herself out of the SUV, returned to the wet deluge outside, and began the climb back up to the bridge. After retrieving the knife from the small toolkit she kept in the trunk for emergencies, Lexie chanced another minute to climb onto the roof of her Camry and try calling for an ambulance one more time. Finally, she got through. The dispatcher’s voice was little more than a crackle down the line, but it was enough.
“There’s been an accident at the Tolsack River crossing on Arcane Island,” Lexie shouted. “A man drove his car off the side of the bank. He’s badly hurt.”
It took a few attempts to relay her name and confirm their location. Surprised by how calm she sounded, a far cry from how she felt, Lexie clicked off with a plea for them to hurry as she scrambled back down to the wreck. He hadn’t moved, but then again, had she expected him to? She got to work sawing through the thick polyester of his seatbelt. After an eternity, it gave way. He fell heavily onto the wheel. A sharp honk of the horn startled her before he slid off to the side with another groan.
“Here.” Lexie reached around him to the seat adjuster. She worked it until the seat retreated far enough for him to lean back onto it, then she helped guide him into a semi-comfortable position.
He looked in bad shape, the new angle of his body throwing into stark clarity the extent of his injuries. His head wound was still bleeding heavily, dark bruises and swelling were forming on his jaw and cheekbones. His right shoulder sat funny, much lower than the left, and in such a way that Lexie wondered if the impact had pulled it from its socket. Then there was his leg—the left one—which had been hidden from her view until now. The bone had erupted through his skin, and blood soaked his pants in an overwhelming tapestry of mangled flesh. Lexie threw her arm over her mouth to keep from gagging.
“Oh my god,” she breathed. When he glanced at her through slitted eyes, she tried to pull herself together, saying, “Help is on the way.”
The small space had taken on the strong, metallic smell of blood. He appeared to be trying to remove his belt, with little success.
“Could you—argh!—give me a hand here?” he asked. “I c-can’t move my right arm.”
“It doesn’t look good,” she said. “I think it could be dislocated.”
“The bone,” he said, referring to his leg. “It’s”—he made a strangled sound of pain and she winced—“exposed. I’m losing too much blood. Needs a tourniquet.”
