Page 81 of Whatever Lola Wants

Lola sent her a little finger wave as Ginger shut the door, then set her bag at her feet. “Okay,” she told the driver. “Let’s go.”

She put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb. “Hot date, huh?”

“Yeah,” Lola murmured as they approached the intersection. Remembering her seatbelt, she reached for it. “Hot date.”

And the world exploded.

Something slammed into the car, the screaming crunch of metal on metal and the oddly musical sound of glass breaking hitting her ears as her body jolted. She felt oddly weightless for half a heartbeat as she was flung sideways, then her head slammed into something, and pain erupted with a sickening intensity. There was a brilliant burst of light and a kaleidoscope of whirling color, then everything went mercifully black.

“Lola? Lola, can you hear me? Oh, God. Someone call an ambulance!”

The voice was distant and tinny, barely penetrating the blackness that lay over her mind like a blanket. Lola struggled to surface, then wished she hadn’t; pain was a living, breathing thing, and it had teeth. She moaned, and the sound of her own voice snapped her into full consciousness.

“Lola, can you hear me? Can you open your eyes?”

Lola kept her eyes shut, knowing somehow that opening them would only bring more agony. “What…what happened?”

“Oh, thank God.” The voice—Ginger, it’s Ginger talking to me—sobbed with relief, and a shaking hand touched the top of her head. “The car got hit—asshole truck driver ran a red light.”

“Where—?”

“You’re still in the car, on the seat. I can’t move you.”

Lola tried to nod her head, then stopped when the pain went super nova. “Fuck. Am I hurt bad?”

“I don’t know.” Ginger sounded hoarse. “You have to stay still until they can check you out.”

Every inch of her throbbed, but the pain in her head was the most insistent. Lola lifted a shaking hand to her forehead, frowning when her fingers encountered a wet warmth.

“Am I bleeding?” she managed and fought her eyes open.

She was right; it hurt more with her eyes open. Gritting her teeth, she blinked and tried to focus on the hand in front of her face. Red. Wet. Definitely bleeding. But her vision was blurry, her hand waving in and out of focus, and nausea was threatening now. She closed her eyes again.

“Lot of blood,” she murmured and tried to swallow the bile rising in her throat.

“Yeah,” Ginger said and Lola heard the worry in her voice. “Head wounds bleed a lot, so it probably looks worse than it is.”

“How bad does it look?”

“Like you’ve been in a knife fight and lost,” Ginger said bluntly.

“Okay, then.”

She lay with her eyes closed, drifting with the pain. The EMTs arrived in a dizzying flash of light and sound, and placed a protective collar around her neck. She could move her arms and legs, wiggle her fingers and toes, but they put her on a backboard anyway—she had to grit her teeth against the burst of agony when they rolled her battered body onto it—before putting her on a gurney and loading her into the ambulance.

Lola licked her lips. “Where’s my friend?” she asked hoarsely, and the EMT monitoring her vitals glanced down at her.

“The blonde?” Lola murmured an affirmative, and the EMT, a Black woman with competent hands and kind eyes, looked out the open doors of the ambulance. “Hey, Mike! That blonde still talking to the cops?”

She must have gotten an affirmative answer, because she nodded and looked down at her. “She’s talking to the cops. You need her, sweetie?”

“I need her to get Simon.” Lola struggled to stay awake. Darkness was pressing at the edges of her vision again, promising oblivion and an absence of pain, but she fought it back. “She has my phone, his number…there. Need…Simon.”

“Okay, honey.” The EMT laid a hand on her arm, her dark eyes filled with sympathy. “We’ll tell her. You just relax.”

Lola closed her eyes as the EMT shouted once more for Mike, then let the darkness come and take the pain away.

Simon leaned back against the bar and frowned at the clock on the wall. She was late.

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