She hiccupped to stop midscream. Her voice was harsh, scraped raw, and unsteady as she rasped out, “It’s so hot. Why’s it so hot?” The driver’s seat shuddered as she struggled in place. “I can’t get out. Oh God. I don’t want to burn. Please don’t let me burn!”
Panic made her voice spiral back up to a harsh, terrified wail, and a wildly flailed arm jabbed back between the seats and caught Boyd in the temple. He shook off the impact and blocked her arm as she swung it his way again.
“You won’t. That’s why we’re here,” he told her. “All you have to do is stay calm and let us do our jobs, okay? We’ll get you out of here. What’s your name?”
“Laura.”
“I’m Boyd, and I’m a paramedic,” he said. “So I’m going to take a look at you and see if you’re hurt.”
He squirmed between the seats and into the front of the car. The driver hung upside down from the seat belt, face flushed and puffy from gravity. When the airbag deployed, it had broken her nose, and blood dribbled down her forehead and matted her hair.
“Why’s it so hot?” she asked frantically as she pulled at the collar of her prim silk blouse. Sweat plastered the pale material to her body. Tears welled in her bloodshot eyes as she blurted, “What thefuckhappened? I was on my way to work and… I can’t remember what happened.”
“There was an accident,” Boyd said calmly. He gently caught her arm and pressed his fingers against the inside of her wrist. Her pulse battered frantically against the thin layer of neoprene—too fast but strong. “Your car was flipped, but as soon as I check you over, we can start to get you out, okay?”
It was a simplified version of events, but Boyd didn’t think the full details would help her calm down any. As far as the team had been able to reconstruct, a drunk driver in an old flatbed truck sideswiped her Prius on the way to the off-ramp and flipped it. The car had slammed, upside down, into and under a semi in the fast lane. She was dragged down the road for about half a mile before the driver of the semi lost control and spun off the road into a tree.
The heat was because the truck was on fire, and so far they’d only been able to suppress the flames, not put them out. It hadn’t reached the back of the truck, where Laura’s car was wedged between the rear set of tires, but it would. So they needed to get her out.
He could hear the chatter of the rest of the crew outside, the rattle and groan of overheated metal as cold water hit it. The driver of the truck had a dislocated shoulder and burns to his hands. The drunk driver was, until he sobered up and realized how much trouble he was in, fine.
“Does anything hurt?”
“Everything,” she said with a nervous gasp of laughter. “My head, it’s killing me. And my legs. Jesus, my legs really hurt.”
Boyd reached up and cupped her head so he could explore her skull with careful fingers. The broken nose he’d already noted, but there was also a bruise on the far side of her temple that made her yelp when he tested it. It was probably from the side window.
“I can’t see, so I’m going to have to go by feel,” Boyd said as he got his knees under him. “That okay?”
She nodded with a small, decisive jerk of her chin. Boyd pulled himself and tracked her legs down from her knees to—
Fuck.
His fingers touched hot metal and raw flesh. Laura whimpered and tried to move her legs at the contact. Fresh blood dripped down onto Boyd’s jacket.
“Stay still, Laura,” he said. “You’re doing great, okay?”
He unhooked a flashlight from his harness and flicked it on. The beam lit up Laura’s knees—very white and vulnerable-looking through her torn tights—and then into the dark, awkwardly shaped space under the steering wheel.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. He could hear her throat tighten in anxiety, her breathing quick and shallow as fear spiked again. She tried to grope up into the space herself, her body twisting as she clawed blindly. “Can you get me out?”
“Absolutely,” Boyd told her confidently.
The light played along the twisted, rust-iron bar that had punched through the side of her car, both of her legs, and then driven itself into the center console. It had gone through the bone, it looked like, on one leg, and the meat of her calf on the other.
“I just got to get some stuff to cut you loose, okay?” he said.
“No. No. No,” she stammered as she grabbed at him and hooked her fingers into his collar. “Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me alone! Please. Please!?”
Boyd swallowed the lump in his throat, a sour wedge of old guilt and sorrow, and peeled himself free.
“I won’t be long,” he said. “I promise. Just stay still. Okay?”
He squirmed into the back seat and went, ass first, through the broken window. Someone grabbed his feet and yanked him out the last few. His jacket scraped loudly over the wet road as he skidded.
“Can we pull her out?” Chief Deacon asked as Boyd rolled over onto his back.
Behind him Danni and Rob had the hoses spooled out and a heavy stream of water directed onto the charred metal of the truck from both sides. Steam and smoke seeped out of the cab in thick, acrid clouds of gray and white.
