Page 11 of Maggie

Wylder

Wylder groaned and forced his eyes open. Every part of his body hurt. He spit glass from his mouth and gazed at the damage through hazy eyes. The car’s windshield had shattered, the passenger roof was caved in, and acrid smoke rolled into the cabin from the engine bay. Essentially, a metal bubble had formed around his driver’s seat and he could see where the airbag deployed. Shattered glass scattered everywhere. Blood dripped down his face where pieces of windshield lodged in his hair.

He closed his eyes and moaned in pain. His head fell against the headrest. Tears filled his eyes. The taste and smell of iron filled his senses. Nothing seemed real. This was a nightmare. It had to be a nightmare. Maybe, if he sat still long enough, he would wake and this would all be a horrible dream.

“Sir, sir!” someone’s male voice shouted from outside the window. “Are you okay?”

Okay. Was he okay? He opened his eyes and tried to shift his body in the driver’s seat of the wrecked car. He felt the grit of bone against bone as his right elbow tried to bend. His arm was broken and he could feel it. He struggled with his seatbelt one-handed but he couldn’t release the buckle. Despite the restraint, he tried to lift his hips to readjust. He couldn’t, though. For some reason, he couldn’t seem to move enough to stand up. He didn’t know why. Maybe it was because of that damn seatbelt.

“Help, I’m in here,” he rasped.

“Hang on! I’m going to break your door so we can get to you!”

“Okay,” Wylder whispered. A broken door wouldn’t matter. The car was obviously totaled.

He leaned his head back, closed his eyes again, and drew slow, measured breaths. His pain began to fade, and he knew shock must be setting in.

Someone pried open the door. A blast of cool air hit him and the metal screeched as it opened. He heard a grunt as the person shoved the door much wider than its hinges were intended to go. The loud crack and groan of the protesting metal as it broke would haunt Wylder’s memories forever.

Sweat rolled over Wylder’s skin. He felt hot.

Unsure why he couldn’t stand and uncaring because of the shock, Wylder decided to wait for help. Someone would help. He would rest his eyes while he waited.

“Can you stand?” a voice asked.

“I can’t get my seatbelt. Maybe if you can cut it.” Wylder didn’t open his eyes.

“Okay, hold on.”

Wylder felt the man sawing through the seatbelt but he was too out of it to watch.

The man made a noise of success as he cut the belt free.

“It’s off. Can you stand now?”

Wylder opened his eyes and tried again. He only shifted a little, unable to stand.

“I can’t stand. I don’t know why.”

“Okay. Wait there. Help is on the way. If I need to pull you out, is it okay?” the voice asked.

“Yeah. Do what you have to do,” Wylder said. He didn’t understand why they would want to move him or why they needed permission, but whatever they needed to do. He wanted to go to sleep. Maybe if he went to sleep, he would wake up and this would have been a dream.

He waited in silence with his eyes closed, oblivious to the world outside.

“Sir. Sir,” a female voice called through the other side of the wreckage. Wylder opened his eyes and tried to focus on her through the shattered window. “Do you want a blanket?”

“No. Thank you. It’s burning up in here,” he rasped. He licked his lips, which felt much too dry. Pain racked his body as he coughed from the lingering smoke. From the shouting he could hear outside the car, he could tell the fire was out, though the smoke stayed.

At least half an hour passed as the people on scene waited for an ambulance and firefighters to pull Wylder from the car. The engine repeatedly caught fire, but the bystanders used a fire extinguisher to snuff the flames. Wylder closed his eyes, leaned his head back, and waited. He tried to imagine himself anywhere else.

Wylder held his broken arm against himself with his good arm when the firefighters finally pulled him from the car. He screamed in pain as they moved him. They laid his broken body out on the stretcher. Quiet tears rolled down his cheeks, and he winced every time the stretcher hit a bump as they loaded him into the ambulance.

He answered their questions the best that he could. One image he remembered clearly, without a doubt, was the grill from the other man’s truck suddenly appearing in front of him in his lane from around a turn. He’d had a split second to shut his eyes, turn his head, brace for impact, and try to steer his car left, as far from the path of the oncoming truck as he could get.

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