I try to stand.
Another scream rips out of me instead.
The pain is unbearable — a violent pulse radiating from my leg. I force myself to look down, and the world tilts.
Blood pools beneath me.
And through the pain where blood pours out—
Bone.
A broken shard pushing through torn skin.
My stomach lurches.
A scream explodes again.
The world flickers white, then red, then nothing at all.
Darkness swallows me whole.
Beckett
I don't wait. I can't wait. The image of Adela on the road is already burned into me — the way her body went down, the way the car didn't stop — and every second I spend in this car is a second I'm not next to her.
"Slow the fuck down!" Theo screams at Nessa. Then his hand on the back of her neck, and his voice again, lower and harder, "Slow the fuck down and let us out."
The car is still moving when I go.
I open the door and jump.
I hit the asphalt and roll, the road tearing across my shoulder and forearm, and the pain registers somewhere distant and unimportant because the adrenaline has already made that decision for me. I'm on my feet before I've fully processed being on the ground, and then I'm running.
She's maybe a hundred yards back. Maybe less. It felt like more when I was watching it happen through the windshield.
I reach her, and my knees hit the pavement.
Her leg.
I look at it for one second, then stop because I need to be useful. Compound fracture, the bone visible through the skin, blood spreading dark and fast beneath her.
"You're okay." My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "You're okay. Adela. Can you hear me?"
She's unconscious. Her face is slack, her breathing shallow but present, and I check her airway first — clear — and then I run my hands carefully along her neck and spine before I move her head, checking for the resistance that would tell me not to move her. Nothing obvious. The leg is the priority. The leg is catastrophic and needs to stop bleeding now.
Theo appears behind me. Already on the phone, already talking, his voice fast and demanding.
I pull my jacket off. I don't have anything better. I fold it and apply pressure above the fracture site — not on it, above it, as proximal as I can get — and I keep my hands steady. I keep the pressure firm, and I talk to her even though she can't hear me because it's the only thing I have left to give her right now.
"You’re going to be okay, Adela. Stay with me. You're not alone. I've got you."
Headlights come around the corner.
The car stops.
The door flies open, and Cody is on the road, moving fast, his face doing something I've never seen on Cody's face before — uncontrolled, wide open, the expression of someone who was not prepared for what they're looking at.
"What the fuck happened!"
