Greg had forgotten about her.
How could he have forgotten about her?
He looked over his shoulder. The silver sedan was crumpled against the median barrier, caved in on the driver's side. Sirens sounded in the distance, barely penetrating the haze in Greg's head.
He searched for the pull in his chest, the compass needle, the tug of a soul needing guidance, and found nothing. Just silence where the signal had been.
The window must have opened and closed while he was on his knees with his hands on Dustin's face.
He hadn't noticed.
From the moment Dustin hit the ground, there had been nothing in Greg's awareness but Dustin.
Not his job, the very thing he'd been created for.
Only Dustin.
“Greg.” Dustin had gone very still. He was reading the answer on Greg's face. “No.”
Greg said nothing. He didn't have words for the horror inside of him.
“No.” Dustin tried to sit up again, and this time he made it halfway before the pain in his shoulder flattened him. “She's nineteen — you have to — Greg,go?—”
“The window's closed.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I can't feel her anymore.” Greg's voice came out hollow. “I should have… it opened, and I didn't…”
“Youdidn't?” Dustin was staring at him from the asphalt, his face scraped raw on one side, road rash angry and red across his cheekbone, his left shoulder sitting visibly wrong. “She wasnineteen, Greg.”
“I know.”
He knew he'd failed. He knew Jessica might be lost now. All because Greg had forgotten she'd existed when it mattered the most.
He looked down at his clipboard.
MISSED COLLECTION: Torres, Jessica. 19. Pileup, Interstate 25. Status: UNCOLLECTED. Report to HQ immediately.
He stared at the words. Then he set the clipboard down on the asphalt and turned back to Dustin.
“We need to get off the highway,” he said.
“Greg—”
“I can't undo it.” His voice cracked on the last word and he tried to fix that, pressing everything down. “Please. Let me get you off the highway.”
Dustin looked at him for a long moment. Then he nodded once.
Getting him upright was bad. His shoulder was visibly, grotesquely wrong. Shoved out of its socket and left hanging. The whole left side of his body was scraped raw, gravel embedded in his forearm, blood beading along the worst of the abrasions.
He swore extensively when Greg helped him stand, using expletives Greg had never heard before, words that he mentally cataloged for later examination, because apparently some part of his brain was still collecting human phrases even now.
They made it to the highway shoulder, then up the embankment, then to the frontage road, where Dustin sat heavily on the tailgate of his truck and breathed through his teeth.
Greg stood in front of him and didn't know what to do with his hands.
He needed to go back for his clipboard.
