“If you’re so butthurt about it, why the fuck did you marry me? Why go through with it?” I throw myself backward into the far corner of the seat.
Her breath hitches, and she swipes a knuckle under her suddenly watery eyes. “I said yes thinking we’d get married by a JP in some office downtown. And then you spring an actual wedding on me. I thought if I didn’t have to plan it, if I didn’t have to do much more than show up, that I could deal with it.”
“Well, you suck at dealing.”
“You asked me to make it look real. I did my best. I smiled until my cheeks hurt. I danced and cut cake and drank to all the toasts. I did the whole shebang for you. I’d planned on doing all of those things with a man who loved me. All my life, that was my plan. Instead, I did those things with a man who only wants to use me.”
“Use you? Hey, now. That’s not fair. This is a win-win. I told you—”
All of a sudden, a loud bang, shattering glass, and tearing metal combine to pierce my ears as I’m thrown forward.
The world goes black.
Cold water drips onto my nose.
My head thumps as if it’s cracking wide open.
I reach to wipe the wetness from my face, but a sharp stab of pain slices through my shoulder, halting my movements.
A weight bears down on me.
I blink, trying to clear my blurred vision. A mound of white blocks out almost everything except my hand.
I move my fingers. But something isn’t…they’re not right.
They’re wet too. And red.
Shit. Blood. That’s blood.
My feet flail and try to push me into an upright position, intensifying the pain. And my head pounds as my heart rate jacks up. Try as I might, I can’t sit upright.
A siren breaks through my brain fog, along with the thumping of rain on the car.
The car.
Oh, God.
“Jo? You all right?”
Her wedding gown and veil are crumpled all around me.
I push through the pain, bracing one hand against the pavement. My palm stings with the bite of broken glass. I have to get into a better position to check on her.
I manage to roll from my side to my back, glass crunching beneath me. I slump against the car’s ceiling. Jo lies across my slightly bent legs. My trembling hands search the pile of damp fabric. My fingers tangle in wet hair.
Wet. Not damp like her dress.
The blood. And she hasn’t moved a muscle.
Oh, God. No. Please. No.
As carefully as possible, I push away the fabric to find Jo’s face.
Her beautiful eyes are closed. One side of her hair is soaked with blood. It drains over her forehead and along her cheek.
Panic strikes, but something in the back of my mind smothers the urge to jerk her into my arms and shake her awake. Instead, I follow the blood to the side of her neck, where I probe until her pulse beats beneath my middle fingers.
“Sir, don’t move. The ambulance will be here in a minute.” A wide face peers down through the broken window.
“Oh, thank God.” I point to Jo. “My wife—”
The older man nods. “I’m a doctor. You need to listen to me. Don’t move her. She might have a spinal injury.”
I want to fix this, but I’m useless and unwilling to move even one muscle for fear that it might leave Jo permanently damaged.
“Tell them to hurry. She’s bleeding.”
The dark-headed nurse clips the thread near the wound. “Okay, that should do you. The others aren’t bad enough for sutures. Keep your hands clean and use some antibiotic ointment on those until they’ve healed up some. You’ll need to see your regular doctor in seven to ten days to have these removed.”
My palms look like someone tried to kill me using the death by a thousand paper cuts method. Luckily, only three cuts were bad enough to require more than cleaning up and bandaging. Fifteen stitches total probably isn’t bad, considering what could have been.
The woman tosses bloodied gauze into the bio-waste bin.
For the third time, I ask, “So you can’t tell me anything about my wife? Jo…Josephina Jordan?”
She gives a light shake of her head. “I’m sorry. I’ll see if I can find someone who can.”
As the one leaves, another comes into the cube-like room. This one lays the clipboard on the tray next to the head of the bed.
“We need you to fill this out as best you can.” She flips up a page. “Then you’ll need to sign here and down here.”
A splitting headache plagues me, and the words on the paper seem to bleed together. I reach for the pen, but a shard of pain shoots through me.
I point to my shoulder with my other hand. “I don’t know if I can. I’m right-handed.”
She takes the pen and the papers. “I’ll help.”