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I stop to press my palms to my ears and squeeze my eyes shut. Focus. What did I see when we burst from the forest? How far away was the car when it hit?

I don’t know.

Goddamn it, I just don’t know, and he won’t stop screaming.

I open my eyes, jaw set as I march along the roadside. The crowbar can’t have gone far. I shine the flashlight, and finally, the beam glints off something, only it’s in the forest, not on the edge.

Because Henry must have dropped it while running out.

I start walking, and Henry’s footsteps pound over to me.

“It’s in there,” I say, pointing at it with my light.

“I’ll get it.”

I shake my head. It’s only a dozen steps in, and I’d really rather he didn’t enter the forest alone again, even such a short distance.

I put out my hand. “Okay? To be safe?”

He smiles and his fingers envelop mine. We move into the forest. It seems like more than a dozen paces, but soon we reach it.

And it’s not the crowbar. It’s a twisted metal rod.

“Construction rebar,” Henry says. “Good enough.”

As he bends down the screaming peters out again, and I exhale.

“Finally,” I say. Then I make a face. “Sorry, that was insensitive.”

He passes me a wry smile. “I’ve been thinking it … and feeling terrible for thinking it. I know he’s in pain and in shock.”

“Is it wrong if I hope he’s passed out so we can work on him?”

“Not wrong at all. Just as long as he doesn’t wake up again and think I’m trying to murder him.”

As we walk back to the car, Henry hefts the metal rod. “If I can’t maneuver from the driver’s side, I might smash the passenger window and have you crawl in. See if you can get the door open that way.”

“Sounds like a plan. I just hope he’s not too badly injured. We need to get him back to the bar.”

“All I saw was the leg. Hopefully, once we get him out, I’ll only need to bandage him up and carry him to the bar.”

The driver’s door hangs open, and I’m sure Henry had shut it. Then I see the driver’s seat.

It’s empty.

THIRTEENEDGAR

Edgar feels as if he’s floating above himself, watching this old man scream and thrash while two Good Samaritans struggle to help him. He wants to shout at the old guy, tell him to shut the hell up and let these kids work. Only that old guy is him, and he cannot stop screaming. The pain is excruciating, as if his leg is being torn free, but that rational corner of his brain observes with disgust and shame.

Stop screaming. They’re trying to help you, and you’re making it harder.

Bad enough he’d jolted conscious and mentally flown back to that moment before the crash, when he’d seen a big, brown guy on the road and wondered whether he should stop. At least that had been a split-second reaction, a deep part of him that had never quite overcome his upbringing, despite being married to Sunila for almost forty years.

That part of him had shot back in those first seconds, and he’s ashamed of that, even more than he’s ashamed of the fact that he can’t seem to shut the hell up. Every time he gets the screaming under control, he falls into panic instead, barely able to breathe, the blood in his ears pounding so loud he can’t hear what the kids are saying.

Yes, the “kids” are in their mid- to late thirties, but still …

He needs to get it under control. What they must think of him, this old man screaming bloody murder. It’s like his nightmares where a new nurse comes to the house to care for Sunila, and she mistakes Edgar for the senile one and hauls him off to a home. Old woman. Old man. What’s the difference? They’re all as inept as toddlers.