Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
BEATRICE
We hit the median with a slam-crunch that sends a tremor through my bones. For a moment, I’m glued to the car door. Then, just as quickly, the rebound sends me sliding in the other direction, testing the integrity of my seat belt.
It tightens across my hips, lifting Bean higher into my curled arms before relaxing its grip as the car ka-chugs to a stop.
I suck in a breath and hold it, afraid to believe it’s over until one second…two… three passes without another blow.
Silence rushes in, strained and buzzing, broken only by the hiss of something from under the hood and the howl of more horns on the highway behind us. My hands are still locked around my belly, ensuring I’m in the perfect position when Bean gives me a real “one-two” punch, proving she’s fine.
Pissed, but fine.
She’s fine. Thank goodness, she’s fine.
Relief floods through me with enough force to make my vision blur. “I know, I know,” I gasp out. “But you’re okay. We’re all okay.”
We are all okay…
Right?
Realizing Clover hasn’t said a word since impact, I jerk my gaze toward the driver’s side.
What I see makes my heart lurch into my throat.
My sweet roomie is slumped against the driver’s side door, her head tilted at an odd angle, her eyes squeezed shut. The window beside her is shattered. A few jagged chunks still cling to the frame, but most of the safety glass is scattered across her lap like giant, plastic gemstones.
She clearly took the worst of the impact, and then some.
“Clover?” My voice is high and thin, thready over the steady hissing from the hood. “Clover, can you hear me? Are you awake? Clover?”
“I’m awake.” Her eyes slit open, but she looks confused and in obvious pain. “Are you okay? Is the baby—”
“We’re fine. Completely fine,” I rush to assure her, tears pricking at the backs of my eyes as I spot what looks like blood running down her throat from a wound I can’t see from here. “But it looks like you’ve been roughed up some, honey. Can you tell me where it hurts?”
She tries to move, and her face crumples, a whimper escaping the back of her throat.
“My leg. Something’s definitely wrong with my leg.
And my wrist. No, above my wrist.” She shifts again, her eyes flaring wider with a gasp.
“And my hip. Shit, Bea, I’m really messed up, and I don’t think I can get out. This door is fucked.”
“It’s okay. I’ll help you out on my side.
I can still open my door.” I reach for the handle, relief spasming through my clenched ribs when it opens with a small shove.
“We can both crawl out this way.” I turn back to her, fumbling with my seat belt.
My hands are shaking from the adrenaline rush, but finally, the buckle gives, and I reach for her.
“Can you put your arm around my shoulders, maybe? Then, I can reach around your waist and—”
Clover cuts me off with a yelp like a wounded animal. “No. I can’t. I can’t, Bea, I can’t.” She sags back against the door, breath coming in shallow gasps, sweat breaking out on her upper lip. “I can’t go that way. My hip and leg won’t let me go that way. I have to get out on my side.”
I nod. “Okay, just a second, and I’ll—”
“But the door won’t open, I know it won’t,” she breaks in, tears shining in her eyes as she grows frantic. “And you have to get out of here. You and the baby. Get out of here. Leave me. Right now, Bea. Before the car explodes or something.”
“The car’s not going to explode, and I’m not leaving you,” I insist, even as I cast a quick glance at the hissing hood.
The hissing, smoking hood…
I don’t think a fire in the engine is going to reach the gas tank and cause an explosion anytime soon, but what the hell do I know about cars?
Virtually nothing.
I spent the years I was supposed to be learning how to operate a vehicle in a tour van, then a tour bus, letting other people do the driving.
I didn’t even get my driver’s license until several months after I moved to New Orleans, and finally got sick of calling a cab every time I wanted to hit the bigger grocery store a few miles from the apartment.
Story of your life, a voice in my head mutters as I swing my legs out the door. Always letting someone else do the driving.
Yeah, well, not anymore. Now, I go where I want, when I want, and I get there under my own power, a fact I prove by ignoring Clover’s repeated pleas to get to safety as I stumble around the back of the car.
My boot catches on a chunk of debris, and I almost go down, but I catch myself on Mr. Higgins’ trunk, my palms flat against the warm metal as I scan the scene.
Holy hell…
All four lanes are at a complete standstill, and I can see at least one other fender bender on the far side of the highway. Cars are stopped at weird angles, hazard lights are flashing, but the giant pick-up that hit us barely has a scratch on it.
I stare at it, stunned, as the driver backs farther away from Clover’s side of the car. The truck’s front grill and bumper are dented, but no serious damage has been done.
At least to this dickweed…
“No, wait,” I mutter as the man inside—a guy in a ball cap that I can’t see clearly through the tinted glass—shifts into drive and starts to pull forward. “No, you can’t! You can’t run away! Don’t you dare run away!”
But he’s already laying on the gas, picking up speed as he weaves through the few cars stopped in front of us, and blasts off down the highway.
“Someone get his plate!” I scream, jabbing a finger at the truck. “Get his plate number! His plate! Please!”
“On it!” a man in a business suit shouts from maybe ten yards ahead. I spot him, phone in hand, jogging after the guy in the truck, then a woman in scrubs moving toward us from farther away, tracking a path along the shoulder by the median.
A helper is coming.
A helper is coming, and another helper is filming the piece of human garbage who hurt Clover and is now running from the scene.
But the smoke from the hood is coming faster now, and the smell of burning plastic and engine parts or whatever’s cooking in there is awful. There’s no time to waste being grateful or pissed off.
We have to get Clover out of the car.
I stumble around to the driver’s side, waving for the nurse to join me as I reach the window. “My friend is hurt and trapped! Please. I need help getting her out!”
The woman nods and jogs faster.
I turn back to Clover. “Hold on, babes. A woman’s coming, a nurse. We’ll have you out in no time.”
I hope…
The damage is worse up close. The door is crumpled like a sheet of paper someone wadded in a fist, the window frame is bent, and shattered glass is everywhere.
Meanwhile, Clover looks even paler than she did before. But thankfully, the cut on her cheek—the source of the blood I saw—doesn’t seem too deep. Still, she’s probably going to need stitches.
Tiny, fine, perfectly executed stitches to make sure this doesn’t leave a mark on her. I refuse to let that fucker leave a mark on her.
“I’ll call Charlotte as soon as you’re headed to the hospital,” I assure her as I tug on the door handle, giving it a good yank, just in case.
But it doesn’t budge so much as a centimeter.
Mr. Higgins’ driver’s side is never opening again.
“She’ll use her NOLA connections to make sure you get the best doctors possible, okay? ”
“Okay,” Clover whimpers, flinching as something pops under the hood with enough force to make the entire car shudder.
That’s it, no time to wait for help.
Clover is getting out of there.
Now.
“All right, honey. Let’s do this. We’ll take you through the window, okay?
Slow and easy.” Heart racing, I lean in through the shattered frame, careful of the glass clinging to the edges, and reach for her seat belt.
Despite the Voice of Doom softly calculating our chances of dying in a violent explosion in my head, my hands are suddenly steady.
I free her in seconds, and Clover slumps forward, gasping.
“I know, I know,” I murmur in a soothing voice. “I’m sorry. Almost there. Can you boost yourself up a little bit? Just so I can get my hands under your arms?”
She braces her right hand—the good one—on the console, but only manages to lift herself an inch before she sags back into the seat with a sharp cry, shaking.
“It’s my leg,” she says, breathless. “My leg and hip. They hurt so bad, Bea. Every time I try to move them.”
“Try again, just one more time,” I say calmly, ignoring the now black smoke pouring faster from the hood.
Thank goodness the wind is blowing in the opposite direction, or neither of us would be able to breathe right now.
“Just use your arm and try not to move your leg. If you can push up a tiny bit higher, I can get you.”
We try again. The instant I have a decent angle, I shoot both hands under her armpits, pushing through and up until I’ve got a solid grip on both arms.
“Okay, good!” I say with a grunt. “So good. Now, can you push with your good leg? You push, I’ll pull, and we’ll—”
“You can’t lift me. You’re pregnant. What if it hurts the—”
“Bean is fine. I’m fine,” I cut in. “You are not fine, however, and that smoke is scaring me, Clover. And I’m not leaving you, so you can just stop with that shit. Now—more moving, less talking.”
“Okay, okay,” she says, shifting her right leg until her boot presses against the console.
I pull.
She pushes.
We both cry out, a primal sound that reminds me of the childbirth video I stupidly watched early on in my pregnancy, before I realized that was basically a form of self-harm at that point in my journey toward motherhood.
Clover is thin—all lanky limbs and sharp elbows—but she’s nearly a foot taller than my five-foot-nothing, and I’m six months pregnant.
My center of gravity is down in my knees, my hip joints are way too loose to offer any help stabilizing my core, and Bean chooses this moment to tickle my ribs with her toes.