She was about to find out just how hard that would be.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The crash happened three blocks from the shop.
Brian heard it before he saw it. The screech of tires, the sickening crunch of metal on metal, the shattering of glass that seemed to go on forever. He was on his feet and moving before his brain caught up with his body, muscle memory from twelve years of responding to exactly that sound.
"Brian!" Hank's voice was behind him, but Brian was already out the door, sprinting down Bay Street toward the intersection.
A pickup truck had T-boned a sedan in the middle of the crosswalk. The sedan was crumpled on the driver's side, pushed up onto the curb, its front end wrapped around a lamppost. Steam hissed from under the hood. The pickup's driver was already out, stumbling, blood running from a cut on his forehead, but otherwise moving okay.
The sedan's driver wasn't moving.
Brian reached the car in seconds. An older woman, sixties maybe, slumped against the deflated airbag. Her eyes were closed, her face pale beneath a mask of blood from a gash on her temple. The door was jammed, the frame bent inward from the impact.
"Ma'am? Can you hear me?" He knocked on the window, tried the handle. Nothing. "Ma'am!"
No response.
A crowd was gathering. Someone was on the phone, hopefully calling 911. Brian blocked them out, focused on what was in front of him. Assess, stabilize, treat. The training was still there, buried under two years of trying to forget.
The passenger side. He circled the car, tried that door. It opened with a groan of protesting metal. He leaned in, reached across the center console, and pressed two fingers to the woman's neck.
Pulse. Weak but there.
"Okay," he said, more to himself than anyone. "Okay. You're okay."
Her breathing was shallow, labored. Possible chest trauma from the airbag. The head wound was bleeding freely, scalp lacerations always did, but it didn't look deep. What worried him was the angle of her neck, the way she was slumped. If she had a spinal injury and he moved her wrong...
Don't move her. Stabilize. Wait for the ambulance.
But then he smelled it. Gasoline. Sharp and unmistakable, pooling somewhere beneath the car.
"Shit." He looked under the vehicle. Fuel dripping from a ruptured line, spreading across the asphalt. Not a lot yet, but enough. If something sparked...
He couldn't wait.
"I need help over here!" He grabbed the nearest bystander, a young guy in a delivery uniform. "Hold her head. Don't let it move. Keep it in line with her spine. Can you do that?"
The guy nodded, eyes wide, and climbed into the passenger seat. His hands were shaking as he cradled the woman's head, but he held steady.
Brian moved to the driver's side. The door was jammed, but the window was already shattered. He cleared away the remaining glass with his elbow, ignoring the cuts on his forearm, and reached in to unbuckle her seatbelt.
"On three, we slide her toward you," he told the delivery guy. "Keep her neck stable. Ready?"
"Ready."
"One. Two. Three."
They moved her together, Brian supporting her torso while the delivery guy kept her head immobilized. It wasn't textbook, wasn't how you'd do it with a backboard and a cervical collar, but it was the best they could manage. They got her across the console, out the passenger door, and onto the sidewalk just as Colby arrived with a first aid kit from the shop.
"Ambulance is four minutes out," Colby said. "What do you need?"
"Pressure on the head wound. Clean gauze if you've got it." Brian was already checking her airway, tilting her chin slightly to make sure she could breathe. "She's unconscious but stable. Pulse is stronger now that she's flat."
Colby knelt beside him and pressed a wad of gauze to the woman's temple. His hands were steady, calm. They'd done this before, the two of them. Different accidents, different victims, but the same rhythm. Assess, stabilize, treat.
The woman's eyes fluttered open.
