Colin #2
“I tried to hold it up,” she said, her voice weak and heavy with desperation. “Ellie, me and her…we tried to hold it. But she…she stopped and I-I tried to hold it, I tried so goddamn hard but I-I couldn’t, not alone.”
“You did good,” I told her, leaning over to block the rain from her face, pooling around her eyes and nose. “You did real good, now we need to get this thing off you. But I need you to keep telling me how you’re feeling the whole way, got it?”
“We need to get this thing off the other one!” Carter barked, and I twisted around.
“Then fucking do it, but don’t be stupid about it,” I told him with a scowl. I understood his need to save both girls, but—
“Jake, you and me, each side, lift it up and over, let me know when you get a grip,” Carter called over the sound of the wind and rain.
“Ah!” the girl cried out as I felt the ATV shift.
“Shit,” I hissed, reaching down to grip her shoulders as she flailed to make the pain stop. “Hold on! Just…stay still. Guys? Do you think you could stop moving the thing until you actually lift it?”
“Sorry,” Carter said, but I could hear his frustration. “I’m trying to steady it so we don’t crush the other girl.”
“Well, don’t crush this one in the process,” I said, turning back to the girl. “What’s your name?”
“S-Sarah,” she said, sputtering, and I grabbed Reno, bringing him down. “Cover her face from the rain; she’s going to drown like this.”
He did, and I bent down to turn the light around to check the area where she was pinned.
I grimaced when I saw part of the problem; she wasn’t just crushed under the weight of the ATV, some part of it had snapped off and was buried in her torso.
I ran through the list of things she was going to need, both then and down the road, to ensure she survived.
First was getting her out, except…except the only way to get her out of here in one piece and without worse damage would be to—
I got up, grabbing Carter’s arm before he could call out to Jake; he frowned. “What?”
“You’re going to need to roll it back away from her,” I said, nodding toward the girl who was trying to pick her head up and listen.
“The other girl…” he began, his eyes widening as he realized it would mean crushing the other one.
“Is gone,” I said through a tight jaw and clenched teeth. “She’s gone, and can’t be hurt or injured.”
“You can’t just,” he began, and I could see it in his eyes, the desperation, the fear, the willingness to fight me tooth and nail for what he thought was the right course.
Except we weren’t dealing with a situation where he had better knowledge or authority.
We were dealing with an injury on a living girl and sacrificing the bodily integrity of a dead one.
There was only one choice, and right then, while someone was hurt, I was the one who made the call.
“That one is alive, you hear me? And right now, while there’s someone who’s seriously hurt and I know what to do to cause the least amount of damage, I make the call,” I told him, chest squeezing when I heard the girl gasp.
“And because you want to drag your heels to do what’s necessary, she heard us.
Now lift the thing over the other one, or I’ll dose you with a tranq and Reno and I can help Jake. ”
Carter’s eyes flashed dangerously, and for a moment I thought he might swing at me, and perhaps he thought about it. It was Jake who spoke. “Swallow it, Carter. And suck it up. He’s right, it’s his call.”
It was my second run, and I hadn’t considered I might have to throw my weight around when it wasn’t even fully established what my weight was.
Except right then, Jake was backing me up and Reno was arguing no one’s side.
I could see the calculations in his head; I could see the moment Carter realized he was going to follow the order I’d given him, and that he was going to hate me for it.
That was fine; I would prefer he hated me and followed my orders when necessary than love me and make stupid choices.
“Good, let me get her steady and have my shit ready. When I give the signal…you know what way to lift this thing,” I said in a tight voice.
It didn’t need to be said that the direction to flip it was going to crush the other girl’s body.
Probably not to the point of mangling her, but it wasn’t going to be pretty, and it wasn’t going to be kind.
“Ellie, Ellie!” Sarah was crying out, and Reno winced when her free hand dug into his neck as she tried to use him in her panic to lift up. To his credit, he stayed there, not pushing or fighting her off as I kneeled beside her.
Keeping her calm was…not going to happen, but I needed her to be as still as she could manage. “Sarah, Sarah!”
Her wide eyes found mine, and I hated the pleading I could see in them, the desperate hope that I could save her friend, her sister, whoever it was.
There was no saving I could do, not for the dead.
But I took her hand and forced a serious look onto my face.
“I need you to listen, alright? We’re going to move…
stop, listen, because you listen if you want to make it out of here alive, alright? ”
Harsh and dramatic, but I’d found that reminding someone in the throes of panic of their own mortality and the danger hovering over their heads was a good way to keep them focused on listening.
The idea that she was still in deep shit brought her attention back with a snap, and I nodded.
“This is going to hurt like hell. I’m not going to pretend otherwise, but I need you to stay as still as you can.
You got that? If you move wrong, it could make it so much worse, and I’m not sure I have the stuff to get you through if you end up ripping something, so… can you do that?”
When she nodded, I smiled and looked up to pull Reno closer. “Get the foldable stretcher. We’ll need to move quick after this, got it?”
He nodded and got up, and I smiled down at her, putting a hand on her forehead. “I believe in you. Ready?”
She wasn’t ready, but she was right to say she could do it, and I had been right to believe her.
She gritted her teeth and held still as the two men lifted the huge ATV at my signal, ripping the broken bar out of her torso as I held her face in my hands and let her breathe through the agony that would have made most people scream.
After that, it was time to move, and I was quick, getting an assessment of the damage before giving her something for the pain… and to muddle her brain a little.
“Ellie,” she muttered repeatedly as Reno appeared with the stretcher and we got to work putting her on it.
Getting her to high ground where we could meet the extraction team was going to be a hassle, but we had her, and that’s what mattered most. All I needed to do was make sure she didn’t bleed out, or that she didn’t get worse on the way to where we could safely cart her out.
“They’re watching over her for me,” I told her as she was lifted.
Carter, having taken the other girl’s body out of sight, was trying chest compressions.
There was no way he was going to be able to do them for long enough on his own and I couldn’t spare someone else to stay behind to alternate with him when we had a living, breathing victim who needed to be carefully but quickly carried out of there.
“Signal them,” I said to Reno with a sigh, hoping Carter could hold out long enough, that the girl might have a chance, but I had my priorities.
And a long night ahead of me.
* * *
I was tired, not as bone-tired as I remembered being a few times, but I was tired.
I also knew that my night wasn’t over, and as I sat in my wet clothes at the counter in the kitchen, staring at the beer I’d opened and taken a single drink of before leaving it to sit on the counter.
I knew what was coming next as I listened to Cait talking quietly on the phone.
I guessed it was Xander she was talking to.
He had been out all day and night, apparently dealing with a court date.
I could only imagine how thrilled he was hearing from Cait as he approached the outpost.
I sorted through my feelings as I stared at the bottle, tapping it lightly with my fingers as I let my emotions roll through me.
The girl, Sarah, was going to make it. She was probably already in the safety of the nearest hospital where they were going to repair the damage to what I suspected was her liver, and then get her on the road to recovery.
There was going to be no such easy recovery from the loss of what had turned out to be her older sister.
It had been Sarah, it seemed, who had proposed they go out before Ellie went to college in a few months.
She had also been the one who insisted they stay out longer despite how dark the sky had been getting.
She wasn’t responsible for what had happened, not in the way she thought or would probably believe for years to come.
People made bad decisions every day, and it didn’t cost the lives of them or the people they loved.
And sometimes, just sometimes, it happened like it did today, and while the universe wasn’t malicious, it didn’t care about us either, and we bore the scars of that uncaring universe throughout our lives.
I was happy Sarah had made it, that despite her injury, her chances of surviving were high.
And I was heartbroken for Ellie. Not just for losing a life that had so much potential, but for the harm her absence would bring to her family…
and how much Sarah would blame herself unnecessarily for the years to come.
So there it was, one happy ending tainted by the bitterness of the other ending, and here we were…figuring out how to deal with it.
“No!” I heard a voice boom, and I sighed. Introspection was over; it seemed. Time to face up to the choices I’d made tonight. “Where the fuck is he?”