“Push the door,” Slade groaned. “This bitch is heavy.”
Trisha used both hands to shove hard on the door that was a good half inch off the ground. It skidded on the grass and dirt to open another foot. She pushed harder and got another inch maybe. The ground inclined higher. Slade groaned and the SUV shifted again. The door dug hard into the earth under it.
Slade crouched next to the opening and put his head inside between the door and the frame.
“Give me your hands and I’ll pull you out.”It was only just over a foot of space, maybe sixteen inches at most. She cursed. “I don’t think I’ll fit.”
“I was kidding about thinking you need a diet. Let’s try, sweet thing. I think you can make it. You women always think you are bigger than you really are. It’s more space than you think. Go out sideways.”
Trisha grasped both of Slade’s hands. He slowly started to pull her toward him with her twisting onto her side. Her knees hung up on the front seats but when she bucked a little, it moved her lower legs. Slade pulled on her again. Her head fit through the tight space as she turned it sideways and then her breasts and back were squeezed. She realized she was stuck. Her breasts were hanging her up.
“This wouldn’t be a problem if you didn’t have such nice boobs,” Slade chuckled. “A flat-chested woman would have slid right through there.”
Trisha shot him a dirty look as she stared at him. “Just pull me out! This isn’t comfy.”
“Take a deep breath and exhale all your air. On the count of three. One. Two. Three.”
Trisha exhaled until her lungs felt as though they were being crushed inside her chest. Slade pulled her free. She gasped in a gulp of air as Slade dragged her a few feet from the SUV.
Slade released her hands before he reached for her again as she lay on the ground. He grabbed her arms just above her elbows and slowly helped her to her feet. He studied her critically before his gaze met hers.
“Can you stand on your own?”
Testing her legs, Trisha nodded. “I’m good.”
He arched an eyebrow. “You wouldn’t say that if you had a mirror. Stay here and let me see if I can get Mouth over there free.”
“His left hand is crushed and his wrist is broken,” Trisha warned. “Try not to touch it or have him put weight on it.”
Trisha looked down since her knee throbbed and saw a tear in her slacks. She bent, fought a moment of dizziness, but it passed. She touched the torn material, stained with blood. She gripped her pants with her fingers and pulled the hole bigger. The material splitting sounded loud to Trisha.
She looked closely at her knee, finding redness and a small laceration that her fingers probed. It was a little bloody but it didn’t need stitches. She straightened to limp around the SUV and knew she would suffer from deep bruising.
The SUV appeared in really bad shape. She assessed the crushed side panels and the dented-down roof. The back of the SUV had taken the worst of it on the crushed roof. There was a large tear near the front driver’s side door and the engine compartment in the front corner had been mangled badly.
She stared at it while Slade opened up the driver’s door. It looked as though they’d smashed into something in the front of the SUV on the way down. Trisha’s guess was a tree, maybe even a few of them from the damage to the entire front section of the vehicle. It was a miracle they were all alive.
She turned her head and stared up the mountain. She couldn’t see the road from where she stood but she could tell where the SUV had rolled before the debris disappeared into dense trees. Broken glass, ripped-off parts of the SUV, and some clothes were scattered in the path of the crash.
She saw her broken suitcase near a tree. It was smashed and torn as if someone had taken an ax to it. She shivered. That could have been her or Slade if either of them had been thrown from the vehicle.
“No!” Bart screamed.
“Be a man,” Slade snarled at him. “You can’t hang there all day. On the count of three I’m going to slice your belt and pull you out. Your ass will fall but I have your head. One. Two—”
“Don’t,” Bart screamed, sounding panicked.
“Three!”
Slade sliced the belt and dragged a howling Bart out of the vehicle. Trisha limped the remaining few feet to the man crying on the ground as Slade released him and stepped back. The look Slade flashed toward Trisha showed pure disgust. Slade shook his head, clenched his teeth, and stormed away.
“You deal with him. I’m going to salvage what we can. It’s going to be dark soon.”
Trisha lowered to her knees to examine the softly crying Bart. Sympathy welled inside her for the kid who was in his early twenties but was acting much younger. She understood how frightened he had to be. Her hands roamed over his body, the only thing she could do without her medical bag. All she had to assess him with was her touch and vision to try to triage him.
She examined his hips and her hands cupped one of his thighs and inched down his leg to his ankle. He didn’t appear to have broken feet or ankles. She wasn’t about to remove his footwear to find out for sure, knowing that if he had broken any bones there the shoe would keep it immobile and control the swelling for the time being. She rose and gripped his other thigh, circling her hand around it high up, and inched her way down.
“Do you want a room?” Slade sighed. “You touch me that way and I hope you have a wedding ring to give me, Doc.”
“I’m checking for more broken bones.” She didn’t even glance over her shoulder at Slade. “So far so good.”
Trisha leaned back and frowned at Bart. “Where does it hurt?”
“My hand.”
She’d explored his stomach and his head until she’d run her hands all over him. “How does your neck and back feel?”
“They are fine. My hand hurts.” Bart cried softly with his arm cradled to his chest.
Trisha turned her head to gaze up at Slade. “He could have internal injuries but I won’t know without getting him to a hospital. The only ones I know of for sure are his wrist and hand. Can you get my suitcase and pick up some of my clothes? I need them.”
A frown marred Slade’s lips. “You want to change clothes? Give me a break, Doc. You can’t be that conceited.”
“You stupid son of a bitch,” Trisha ground out, her anger flaring instantly. “I need to tear up some cloth to bandage his hand. The handle of my suitcase is the kind that extends. I can remove it and use it to splint his entire arm to the end of his fingers.”
Slade blushed a little. “I’m on it. Sorry.” He walked away.
Trisha sighed, allowing her anger to fade. They were all under stress. Slade returned within minutes. He used a knife to slice her nice shirts into strips. Trisha splinted Bart’s broken hand. He fainted when she did it, which was a good thing because Slade seemed really pissed that Bart kept crying. Bart wasn’t doing that for the moment while he was passed out cold.Trisha took advantage of it and bandaged his bleeding hand and secured it to the brace. She carefully assessed it, deciding that if they didn’t get him to a trauma room soon he’d lose the entire hand. She stated that assessment softly to Slade.
“I’ll get right on that.” Slade frowned at her. “Right after I sprout wings to fly us out of here. What do you want me to say? We’re screwed.”
“You could walk up to the road to flag someone down instead of standing there making smartass remarks.”
“What about the two trucks up there that tried to drive us off the road? Oh yeah. They did that and they could still come back to make sure we’re dead. They did go to all that trouble to try to kill us in the first place. They also have guns.”
“You didn’t see them coming down here, right?”
Slade’s expression hardened with anger. “They might be picking up the jerks from the red truck I shot holes in. There’s possibly even more of them coming after us. Maybe they want to make it a party. They might be heading down this way right now. I’ll go check while you stay put.” He spun on his heel and disappeared around the SUV.
Trisha sank down on her butt. Her head hurt and her knee throbbed. She avoided moving her sore shoulder. Every time she stirred her right arm she wanted to wince. She reached up with her left hand to rub her injured shoulder. It wasn’t dislocated and she didn’t feel anything broken. She hoped it was just a strained muscle or just a deep bruise. Bruising in soft tissue could be very painful.
Bart came around. Trisha smiled at him. “How are you feeling?”
“I hurt. I don’t want this job anymore.”
Trisha nodded. “I don’t blame you. Why don’t you try to sit up?”
“I don’t want to. When is the ambulance going to arrive? Did Slade go for help?”
“He went to go make sure those people who ran us off the road aren’t trying to come down here to find us. He’ll be back and we’ll get out of here soon. Don’t worry, Bart. I’m a doctor, remember? You’re doing fine.”
* * * * *
Slade ignored his injuries. Anger helped as he climbed the hillside, every one of his senses on high alert. Gasoline messed with his nose, making it difficult to distinguish smells. Some of it had spilled from the destroyed SUV to leak through the debris he navigated and his gaze darted above for any sign of unnatural movement.