“Responsive and coherent in the ambulance,” Rocco says, relief seeping into the edges of his stressed expression. But only the edges because we all know that isn’t an all-clear. There was fire. Lots of it. She will have smoke inhalation and burns. We wear protective gear but…I reach for my phone.
“Bash isn’t answering. His phone is off I think. Did you find Frankie?”
“She says you run the quali if we have it. And someone needs to keep trying to reach Bash,” I say, and he nods tersely as I watch his father attempt to run towards us. He must have been in the garage when this happened because he’s coming from that direction. It’s clear that he’s out of shape even before I can hear the huffing and puffing coming from his mouth.
“Rocco, you should take over today,” Dario says.
“Frankie already gave him the go-ahead,” I say.
Dario frowns a little. “Oh. Good. I was thinking she might still try to run the show, which is ridiculous because she can barely contain her emotions on a normal day.”
“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” I bark, and Dario looks honestly confused by my angry reaction.
Rocco doesn’t. “Let’s all just shut the fuck up and get through this day so we can all go support the Castera family.”
Dario and I both nod, thankfully, because if he’d opened his fat mouth to argue in any way, I swear I would have clocked him. Dario follows Rocco back to the garage. I head back to my dressing room.
Four long hours later, our qualifying is done. I manage to snag second and Antonio fifth. I wish I’d done better, for Lucia and for Frankie. She would have wanted Mirabella on pole, even with everything. I feel like I let her down. Now that it’s all over, I have the torture of interviews. I give as few as I can get away with. Every single reporter asks about Lucia and my thoughts. I find out from a female reporter for a Canadian channel that Lucia is alive and stable, at least that’s what her source at the hospital says. “Good. Great,” I reply with a sigh. “Well, sounds like you know more than I do. Thanks for sharing.”
I don’t change, and Clara must anticipate my next move because she meets me in front of the Mirabella paddock with a bag full of my stuff and the car keys. “You should drive,” I tell her as she falls in step beside me and we head towards the parking. “Because I’m not going to be able to drive the speed limit.”
She just nods.
We get to the hospital and Clara lets me off at the front door. “I’m going to park this in the visitor lot and Uber back to the hotel, okay? Give everyone my best.”
I nod and rush inside. First I have to make my way through a cloud of reporters to get to the door. They all immediately start snapping my photo or filming me and yelling out questions. I ignore them and slip past the security who lets me in with a knowing nod.
After a brief stop at the first nurses’ station I stumble across, I’m directed to the fourth floor. I jump into an elevator. I’d unzipped the top part of my race suit as I was walking back to the paddock, like I always do, so it was hanging at my waist. I play nervously with the cuffs of the arms until the elevator doors open. I didn’t even think to ask more details about where I was going, so when I step off the elevator and see the sign that says Burn Ward, it’s like getting slapped in the face.
My heart feels like it’s turning to stone in my chest. I swallow down bile and turn left and start down the hall as the nurse directed. There’s a small room tucked into the corner of the hallway with a marker on the front that says ‘Waiting Room. Private.’ The door is open though, and Nick and Lucia’s bodyguard Michael pace inside. Frankie is nowhere to be found.
“I came as soon as I could. I hope that’s okay,” I say.
Nick nods. “Bash isn’t here yet. He was already in the air when it happened. The flight landed in California, and he got Frankie’s message and a billion emails and texts, I’m sure. Anyway, he’s on his way back.”
I nod. “How is she?”
“Burned, but not severely,” Michael explains. “Her left hand. Glove didn’t protect her like it should have for some reason. But other than that, a mild concussion is all, miraculously.”
“The halo worked,” I say with relief, referring to the metal T-bar in front of our cars that has been mandatory for a few years.
“If it wasn’t for that, she would have been decapitated instantly,” Nick tells me, his voice gruff and choked. “Even the doctor said it.”
We both stand there at opposite ends of the small room and stare at each other in silence, absorbing that hideous fact. “You can go in. I’m sure Lucia won’t mind, and Frankie will be happy to see you.”
“I don’t know. I mean… I’m not… I just feel like…” I want nothing more than to walk in there and see them both, but on paper, I don’t belong. I’m not family. I’m just a guy who races for their team. That’s it. I should go back to the hotel like I’m sure Antonio did. And Rocco even.
“Look, Frankie is handling this like a boss. And I don’t mean that figuratively,” Nick explains, and I notice his hands clench and unclench repeatedly at his sides. “She has called her dad, released a statement, dealt with the doctors and hospital paperwork and team insurance. But she’s not just a boss. She’s a sister. A sister who has already lost one person in her small, close-knit family. She needs to be taken somewhere private with someone safe so she can react like a sister and have a good old fashion cry.”
I nod. “I can wait here until Bash arrives if you need to take her back to her hotel. I promise I’ll call if anything happens.”
Nick shakes his head and the veins in his thick neck seem to pulse as his brow furrows. “I was actually going to ask if you could take her.”
“Oh.”
Nick’s dark eyes lose a layer of polite denial they’ve been harboring, and I didn’t even know it. “She won’t let me take her from here, but she will let you, and we both know it. And besides, I want to stay with Lucia.”
I nod, slowly. I could ask why he wants to be with Lucia over doing his job, which is taking care of Frankie, but I already know the answer. The same reason I’m here to check on Frankie. Nick is sleeping with Lucia, and judging by the look on his face, up until today he, like me, was fooling himself into thinking it was just sex.
