A Fistfull of Charms(93)

It happened fast.
The truck veered across the temporary line. My feet slammed into the breaks, self-preservation taking control. I stiffened my arm, clenching the wheel and Peter’s hand both.
Nick’s truck swerved. It loomed before us, the flat panel of the side taking up the entire world. He was trying to get entirely across the lane and miss me. I spun the wheel, teeth gritted and terrified. He was trying to miss me. He was trying to hit the passenger side only.
The truck smashed into us like a wrecking ball. My head jerked forward, and I gasped before the inertia-dampening curse took hold. I couldn’t breathe as the air bag hit my face like a wet pillow, hurting. Relief filled me, then guilt that I was safe while Peter. Oh God, Peter…
Heart pounding, I felt as if I was wrapped in muzzy cotton. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t see. But I could hear. The sound of squealing tires was swallowed by the terrifying shriek of twisting metal. I managed a breath, a ragged gasp in my throat. My stomach lurched, and the world spun as the momentum swung us around.
Pushing at the oil-scented plastic, I forced it away. We were still spinning, and terror shocked through me as the Mack truck plowed into the temporary guardrail and into the empty northbound lanes. Our vehicle shook as we hit something and came to a spine-wrenching halt.
I pushed the bag down, fighting it, shaking, blinking in the sound of nothing. It was smeared with red, and I looked at my hands. They were red. I was bleeding. Blood slicked them where my nails had cut through my palms. Yes, I thought numbly, seeing the gray sky and dark water. That’s what the hands of a murderer should look like.
Heat from the engine washed over me, pulled from the breeze on the bridge. Safety glass covered the seat and me. Blinking, I peered out the shattered front window. Peter’s side of the truck was smashed into a pylon. There would be no getting him out that way. We had been knocked clean into the empty northbound lane. I could see the islands past Peter and the guardrail they were repairing. Something…something had ripped the hood off Nick’s blue truck. I could see the engine, steaming and twisted. Shit, it was almost in the front seat with me along with the front window.
A man was shouting. I could hear people and car doors shutting. I turned to Peter. Oh, hell.
I tried to move, shocked when my foot caught, panicking until I decided it wasn’t moving because it was stuck, not because it was broken. It was wedged between the console and the front of the seat. My jeans were turning a wet black from the calf down. I think I had a cut somewhere. My eyes traveled numbly down my leg. It was my calf. I think I’d cut my calf.
“Lady!” a man said as he rushed up to my window, gripping the empty frame with a thick hand, a wedding ring on his finger. “Lady, are you okay?”Peachy, I thought, blinking at him. I tried to say something but my mouth wasn’t working. An ugly sound came out of me, chilling.
“Don’t move. I called the ambulance. I don’t think you’re supposed to move.” His eyes went to Peter beside me, and he turned away. I heard the sound of retching.
“Peter,” I whispered, my chest hurting. I couldn’t breathe deeply, so keeping my breaths shallow, I struggled with my seat belt. It came undone, and while people shouted and gathered like ants on a caterpillar, I pulled my foot free. Nothing hurt yet. I was sure that would change.
“Peter,” I said again, touching his face. His eyes were closed but he was breathing. Blood seeped from a ragged cut over his eye. I undid his seat belt, and his eyelids fluttered.
“Rachel?” he said, his face scrunching up in hurt. “Am I dead yet?”
“No, sweetheart,” I said, touching his face. Sometimes the transition from living to dead goes in a heartbeat, but not with this much damage, and not with the sun still up. He was going to take a long nap to wake hungry and whole. I managed a smile for him, taking my pain amulet off and draping it over him. My chest hurt, but I didn’t feel anything, numb inside and out.
Peter looked so white, his blood pooling in his lap. “Listen,” I said, adjusting his coat with my red fingers so I couldn’t see the wreckage of his chest. “Your legs look okay, and your arms. You have a cut above your eye. I think your chest is crushed. In about a week you can take me dancing.”
“Out,” he whispered. “Get out and blow up the truck. Damn it, I can’t even die right. I didn’t want to burn.” He started crying, the tears making a clear track down his bloodied face. “I didn’t want to have to burn….”
I didn’t think he was going to survive this even if the ambulance got to him in time. “I’m not going to burn you. I promise.” I’m going to be sick. That’s all there is to it.
“I’m scared,” he whimpered, his breath gurgling from his lungs filling with blood. I prayed he wouldn’t start coughing.
Broken chips of safety glass sliding, I pulled myself closer, gently holding his shattered body to me. “The sun is shining,” I said, eyes clenching shut as memories of my dad flooded back. “Just like you wanted. Can you feel it? It won’t be long. I’ll be here.”
“Thank you,” he said, the words terrifyingly liquid. “Thank you for trying to turn the lights on. That makes me feel as if I was worth saving.”
My throat closed. “You are worth saving,” I said, tears spilling over as I rocked him gently. He tried to breathe, the sound ugly. It was pain given a voice, and it struck through me. His body shuddered, and I held him closer though I was sure it hurt him. Tears fell, hot as they landed on my arm. There was noise all around us, but no one could touch us. We were forever set apart. 
His body suddenly realized it was dying, and with an adrenaline-induced strength, it struggled to remain alive. Clutching his head to my chest, I held him firmly against the massive tremor I knew was coming. I sobbed when it shook him as if he were trying to dislodge his body from his soul. I hated this. I hated it. I had lived it before. Why did I have to live it again?
Peter stopped moving and went still.
Rocking him now for me, not him, I shook with sobs that hurt my ribs. Please, please let this have been the right thing to do.
But it didn’t feel right.
Thirty-four
“R achel!” Jenks cried, and I realized he was with me. His hands were warm and clean, not sticky like mine—and after struggling with the door to the truck, he reached inside the window to unlatch it. I let my grip on Peter loosen as it opened. My leg, twisted behind me, felt kind of cold, and I looked at, going woozy. There was a dark, wet stain on my jeans, and my brand-new running shoe now had a red stripe. Maybe my leg was hurt more than I thought?
“Get Peter out,” I whispered. “Ow. Ow, hey!” I exclaimed when Jenks dragged me across the seat and away from Peter. His arms went around me in a cradle, and with me getting Peter’s blood all over him, he carried me to a clear space on the cold pavement.
“Up,” I whispered, cold and light-headed. “Don’t lay me down. Don’t hit the button before you get him out. You hear me, Jenks. Get him out!”
He nodded, and I asked, “Where’s the truck driver?” remembering not to call him Nick.
“Some lady in a lab coat is looking at him.”
Fumbling, I pulled my half of the inertia-dampening charm from around my neck. I slipped it to Jenks, and he replaced it with the remote to ignite the NOS. Palming it, I watched him nudge the amulet through the nearby road grate, destroying half the evidence that we were committing insurance fraud. David would have kittens.
“Wait until I get back before hitting that, will you?” he muttered, his eyes darting to my closed grip. Not waiting for an answer, he loped to the truck shouting for two men in the crowd to help him, and a woman descended upon me.
“Get off!” I exclaimed, pushing, and the narrow-faced woman in a purple lab coat fell away. How had she gotten there so fast? The coming ambulance wasn’t even a noise yet.
“I’m Dr. Lynch,” she said tightly, frowning at the blood I’d left on her lab coat. “Just what I need. You look like you’re a worse PITA patient than me.”
“PITA?” I asked, slapping at her when she took my shoulders and tried to lay me down.
She pulled back, frowning. “Pain in the ass,” she explained. “I need to take your blood pressure and pulse supine, but after that you can sit up until you pass out, for all I care.”
I tried to see around her to Jenks, but he was inside the truck with Peter. “Deal,” I said.
Her eyes went to my leg, wet from the calf down. “Think you can put pressure on that?”
I nodded, starting to feel sick. This was going to hurt. Holding my breath against the wash of pain, I let her take my shoulders and ease me down. Knee bent, I clamped my hand to the part of my leg that hurt the most, making it hurt more. While she took her God-given sweet time, I listened to the sounds of panic and stared at the darkening sky framed by the bridge’s cables, holding my ribs and trying not to look like they hurt lest she wanted to poke them too. I thought of my pain amulet, praying it had eased Peter when nothing else had. I deserved to hurt.She muttered at me to hold still when I turned my head to look at the passing traffic. A black convertible was parked just inside the closed northbound lane. Hers?
I jerked at the ugly ripping sound and the sudden draft on my leg. “Hey!” I shouted, putting my hurt palms against the pavement and levering myself up. I held my breath as my sight grayed at the pain, then got mad when I realized she had cut my jeans up the seam to my knee. “Damn it, those were fifty bucks!” I exclaimed, and she gave me a cold look.