Page 18 of The Firefighter's Fate

CONNOR

I’m driving Eric home when we come across the crash. It’s on one of the winding roads just outside Crystal River, out in the middle of fucking nowhere. It’s empty out here. It’s guaranteed there’s no one else around for miles.

The crash is easy to comprehend when we get closer - a pickup truck has clearly spun wildly around a corner. Maybe the driver was going too fast, or he suddenly lost control as he turned. It doesn’t matter - whatever happened, the vehicle is now completely flipped on its side. That’s what matters now.

And it looks bad.

Real bad.

“Fuck,” I whisper when I see the remains.

Eric straightens up in the passenger seat next to me to get a better look as I start to slow my car.

“Can you see anyone?” he asks as we roll closer to the crash.

“No.”

I park next to the upturned vehicle and immediately get out. So does Eric. We rush to the accident – our firefighter’s instinct has hit us.

We run to danger, not away from it.

Eric is already on his phone calling for an ambulance when I reach the driver’s side of the flipped car.

And then we see him.

I’m guessing the man is around our age. Scruffy black hair and a three-day stubble. He’s half-conscious, eyes slowly opening and closing as he lies upturned in the driver’s seat. He’s been shredded up by the glass of his broken windscreen. There’s bright red blood everywhere, so much of it leaking from him. There’s an obvious wound to his head. More blood dampening his hair.

Fuck.

This really does not look good.

“Help me pull him out, Eric.”

I turn to my friend. His phone is in his hand by his side. He’s staring past me at the broken man. And he’s not responding to me.

He looks frozen.

Shattered.

Shocked.

“Eric?”

My friend doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t even move.

“Help me, Eric. Do your job, goddamnit!”

I’m yelling now.

And it works. Eric snaps back to reality and glances at me before he’s crouching down beside my hands and starts helping to pull the man out of the wreckage.

Together, we carry the injured man to the side of the road where we collapse in the dirt and wait for help.

The ambulance gets here real quick.

I get up from the side of the road to greet them. I tell the paramedics what we saw in detail as they treat the wounded driver. It’s kind of darkly funny to be in this situation speaking to these guys... I know these paramedics personally – it’s a privilege of being a firefighter that you get familiar with all the other emergency service personnel in the area.

“We’ll take him to hospital,” Jacob, the paramedic, tells me. “He should be okay. He’s lucky you guys were there to pull him out. He’d be in a hell of a lot worse place if it weren’t for you two.”

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