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He lifted the drenched sweatshirt away and immediately pressed the pads to wandering guy’s head. Good. Maybe he would actually help the man.

Leaving the head wound at the side of the road, Olivia headed back into the carnage, snapping on a pair of gloves. The rest of the scene needed to be triaged. As she went from wounded to wounded, she listened for sirens, but they never came. Where the fuck were emergency services? The crash had to have been called in.

There was a mini-van with a heavier-set woman trying to struggle out. She had a knock to the head and her airbags had deployed, but she seemed coherent enough. Olivia told her to stay in place, then she moved on to the small red truck. There was an older gentleman in here, and she could tell that at least one of his legs were broken. The guy seemed to be handling the pain like a trouper, though. “Can you check on my wife? She got out to help but I think her arm is broken.”

Olivia found the woman. She was sitting with another, younger woman at the front of a completely demolished car. It had been crumpled like a pop can. Olivia pinned the younger woman with her gaze and pointed at the car. “You were driving this?”

The young blond nodded her head and seemed to be injury free. Fresh tears rolled down her cheeks, though, and she was obviously emotionally distraught.

“You are very lucky,” Olivia told her. It was amazing that the most damaged vehicle had the least damaged driver.

“Are you okay?” she asked the older woman.

She nodded, tears filling her eyes. “My arm is broken, but I’ll be okay.”

Olivia checked both women’s pupils, but they responded evenly. “No head trauma?”

They each shook their heads. “Okay, then sit right here and wait for emergency services, okay?”

She returned to the old man in the truck and related that she’d found his wife, safe and sound, helping a young driver. He smiled at her, weakly, and nodded his head.

“Emergency services will be here in just a few minutes, okay?”

He nodded again, and she left. As she moved to one of the last vehicles, she could finally hear a siren in the distance.

In one crumpled car, there was a younger woman slumped over the wheel. It was only as Olivia got around to the driver’s side that she realized that a long piece of iron had gone through and obliterated most of the right side of the woman’s skull. She felt for a pulse, but there was no saving her. Death had a certain look. She was about to turn away from the mess when she heard a small snuffle. She looked back into the car and realized there was a baby in a car seat, probably only a year old, in the back seat, and the same piece of metal that had killed the mother had also struck the child. Olivia jerked on the back door, but it wasn’t budging. The window had shattered glass everywhere, and there was no way the crumpled door was going to open. She hurried around to the other side, but it had been driven into the side of a short containing wall. Fuck!

Circling back around to the driver’s side, she debated how to get the damn kid out. Maybe the firefighters would have tools... something to wedge the door open. The sirens continued to wail, but if they were on scene, she couldn’t see them. One of the cars had begun to smoke, obscuring visibility. People were still milling about, and she could no longer tell who was injured and who was just trying to satisfy their sick curiosity. There were no cops on scene yet to keep the yahoos and rubberneckers out. It looked like someone had gotten the old man with the broken leg out of the truck and off to the side of the intersection. Good. One less person to worry about.

The heat billowed around her as she looked around for something to use to wedge the door open, but she didn’t immediately see anything. She was pulling on the door handle, cussing like a son of a bitch, when someone appeared beside her and started to pull with her. “There’s a baby in here,” she snapped, breathing hard.

“Move,” he growled.

Olivia backed away, only then realizing that the tall guy was a firefighter. He was in a dark blue T-shirt and canvas fire pants, with the red suspenders hanging around his hips. And he had an axe in his hand. Wedging the blade into the frame, he tried to force it open, his huge back and shoulders straining, but it didn’t work. He glanced down at her. “Back in a sec. Maybe you should sit down.”

Fuck that. Olivia looked for the next injury. While he was getting the child out, she could help someone else. She hurried to the smoking car. There was a guy inside, head lolling to the side. “Sir,” she called, but there was no response. She swiped at sweat rolling down her head with a forearm.

More sirens ground to a stop nearby, and Olivia knew that someone would be here in a minute. “Sir, you need to wake up. We need to get you out of the car.”

She did a sternal rub on him, but there was no response. The airbags had gone off and there didn’t appear to be any head trauma, but maybe she just couldn’t see everything. When she noticed blood on her arm, she realized she’d been wiping away blood, not the sweat she’d thought. Damn it. If she went down, she wouldn’t do anyone any good. Plus, the cross-contamination. Fuck!

Someone with a booming voice began directing the emergency services where they needed to go. About damn time. It had to have been at least ten minutes now that she’d been going car to car.

Olivia blinked and suddenly there were firefighters surrounding her, gently nudging her out of the way to get the man out of the smoking car. Paramedics were there with a stretcher, and she relayed the few details she was able to ascertain about the man. He began to rouse as they lifted him from the car and Olivia had a feeling he would be okay. She turned to head back to the trapped child’s vehicle, when someone caught her with a hand on her arm.

“Ma’am, you need to let the medics look at you.”

The firefighter looked very young, the helmet rocking on his head like he was a kid playing dress-up. “I’m okay. There’s a child trapped back here.”

That was enough to motivate the hero-to-be, and he followed her back to the other car, just in time to see the first rescuer wedge the door open with a pike pole. He glanced up at the other firefighter. “Get the paramedics,” he ordered.

Ah, he was the one with the booming voice.

The younger kid- hero- took off at a run.

“I’m a nurse,” Olivia said, pushing forward. “Let me look at her.”

Even standing amongst the wreckage and chaos going on around them, when the guy looked at her with brilliant, clear blue-sky eyes, it was enough to make her blink in shock. Damn. Dude was seriously something to look at. He had dark, curly, sweaty hair with a sprinkling of silver, and he seemed very tall.