Working Stiff(23)
She. Was. Married.
The asphalt swung right in front of his car, and the other cars and trucks took the turn in formation.
Casimir drove around the curve, staying in his lane. Even through the car’s high-end suspension, the asphalt jittered the tires. The other cars flew with him.
Slam.
Cars spun outside the windshield, flying through the air, and the asphalt and the Earth flipped overhead.
Metal and glass and cutting, breaking pain sliced his chest and head.
Not again.
Dear God, not again.
Burning. The scent of fire and smoking gasoline.
Darkness closed around him.
CRASH
Rox was watching Cash’s dark silver Mercedes Maybach, one lane over and two cars ahead of her, when the red beat-up sedan swerved into him, sending his car spinning and then flying.
She pulled her steering wheel hard, jumping onto the shoulder of the road and jamming her foot into the brakes.
The semi-truck in the next lane barely moved when Cash’s Maybach slammed into it, but his car tumbled sideways, and then it flipped end over end above the packed traffic.
Rox’s car slid to a stop, gravel clattering under the wheels and over the metal.
Cars squealed all around her, fountaining off to the sides to avoid crashing into the twisting metal ahead.
“Phone Chick!” Rox yelled. While the phone intoned, Yes, Your Imperial Majesty, she screamed over it, “Call nine-one-one! Call nine-one-one!”
Cash’s crushed car rocked to the side, almost rolling again, but it slapped back down on its tires. Fire reached around the crumpled hood.
Rox fell out of her car and ran.
She dodged between the stopped cars. One woman was shouting into her steering wheel, and another wide-eyed woman was holding her phone to her ear, pointing ahead across the hood of her car.
Steam billowed from the wadded hood of Cash’s Mercedes. White airbags filled the windows but deflated as she got closer.
She slammed against the hot metal of the door, burning her palms. “Cash! Answer me! Cash!”
Jerking on the door handle did nothing. The car was smashed shut as tightly as if the whole thing had been welded by raining hellfire.
“Cash! Please!” Screaming hurt Rox’s throat. Rubber burned acrid black smoke that scalded her nose and chest when she breathed it in to scream at him again.
The deflating airbags slid down the windows.
On the other side of the median, police cars slid sideways and stopped, blockading the cars. Traffic stopped. The cars ahead of them continued, leaving the road empty. Sirens wailed in the far distance.
Rox pulled her hand up into her sleeve and started knocking the shattered glass out of the window. Cubes of safety glass clinked on the pavement around her feet. “Cash! Can you hear me! Are you all right?”
She shoved the limp airbag aside.
Inside, the gray upholstery and airbags were splashed with scarlet.
Cash was slumped in his seatbelt, unconscious, covered in blood.
“Cash!”
HOSPITAL
Rox sat in the hard plastic chair in the waiting room, breathing in the hospital sanitizer fumes and the fear sweat of the mother sitting next to her, and replied to the dozens of texts pinging into her phone.
She typed, over and over again, I don’t know. I’m at the hospital. I’ll text or call when I know anything.
She thumbed that text into her phone at least two dozen times before she got too shaky and typed to everyone, I cannot reply to individual texts right now. I will do a mass text with all information about Cash when I find out anything, and sent the text to everyone in her work contact folder.
And then she sat and waited.
The desk had taken her information, that she was waiting for Cash van Amsberg, his license plate number and car, and where the wreck was.
The television overhead played local news, which had helicopter footage of the wreckage playing every fifteen minutes. After the firefighters had used the Jaws of Life to rip Cash’s car apart and lifted him into the ambulance, the red junker car that had caused the pile-up had exploded. The fireball had rocked the helicopter hovering above, jarring the video.
The guy in the other car had walked away, shaky and bruised. A breathalyzer test on the scene had come up negative. He chanted how sorry he was, over and over, while his hands shook.
Rox watched the video again.
A woman in a suit walked out of the desk area, and a male nurse wearing scrubs pointed at Rox.
Fear blossomed. This was it. She might have to write a mass text saying that he was dead.
The woman walked over, the sunlight shining on her glossy black hair and dark skin. “You’re waiting for the man who was pulled out of the gray Mercedes Maybach?”
Couldn’t be too many of those around. “Is he okay?”
The woman recited Cash’s license plate.