Page 3 of I'll Be There
Beside—then behind—them, the Suburban spun a full three-sixty, then launched into the ditch, front first. The nose caught, and the vehicle flipped.
It landed with a spectacular, horrifying crunch, upside down.
The semi kept going, now in the fast line, oblivious.
Conner’s hands viced the wheel, his heart in his mouth.
Jed’s other hand had found its way to the dash, and now he breathed out hard. “Good reflexes.”
“We’d better see if someone’s hurt,” Reuben said, already unbuckling.
Pete, too, unbuckled and opened his door, getting out into the mud of the ditch.
He and Reuben jogged over to the overturned Suburban.
Jed unbuckled. “You okay?”
Conner’s breath released, finally, over a washboard of what-ifs and could-have-beens. “Uh huh.”
Pete was running back to their truck. “We need a knife—the driver’s belt is jammed.” He stuck his head in. “It’s a teenager. He’s pretty scared, but he seems okay.”
“Glove box,” Conner said. Jed opened it and found Conner’s Yarborough and handed it, still sheathed, to Pete. He ran back through the torrent as Conner grabbed his phone.
Not necessary, because he heard sirens peeling from across the highway. And, in a moment, he spied cherries through the fog.
Some other driver, seeing the catastrophe, had called 911.
Conner got out and ran to the wreck, following Jed. Pete and Reuben had already released the driver, catching him and pulling him out of the smashed driver’s window.
No more than seventeen, maybe, he seemed unscathed, just shaking. Until— “My brother!” He shook off Pete’s hands on him and scrambled back to the car.
Reuben stopped him. “We got him.” He fell to his knees and peered into the car. When he sucked in a breath and glanced back at Conner, a hollowness rushed through Conner, scraping him out.
No.
Conner couldn’t place why the ground suddenly rushed up at him, his legs buckling. In a second, he’d collapsed in the drenched grass, the smells of gasoline, mud, and the cry of the siren a knife, separating now from yesterday.
He could almost taste it, the coppery rush of blood in his mouth, the rank odor of rubber burning.
Hear his parents’ screams.
“Conner—?” Jed crouched beside him, put a hand on his shoulder.
“I’m fine.” Conner jerked away. “I slipped.” He didn’t look at Jed as he climbed to his feet.
Reuben broke the window as Pete returned from the truck holding a sleeping bag from Conner’s go bag. He draped it over the glass and crawled into the Suburban.
The teenager had collapsed too, a hand to his head as if unable to move.
The rain poured down, drenching all of them, a ghoulish mist rising from the forest beyond the road.
Pete emerged, pulling the victim out by the shoulders, lifting him onto the sleeping bag.
Jed crouched in front of the distraught teenage driver, put his hands on his shoulders. “Breathe.”
Even Conner had to look away at the crumpled body of a fifteen-year-old kid.
Pete was working on him anyway, giving him CPR, breathing for him.
