Page 8 of The Mountain Man's Virgin
“What happened?” Tania murmured. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that she was sitting up in her seat.
“We rolled,” I groaned as I tried to open the door again.
Tania moved to unclick her seatbelt and screamed out in pain.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. What do I do? I wasn’t trained in first aid. I had always intended on taking a CPR course but had always prioritized my school work over any elective courses.
“What hurts?” I asked.
“My leg. I think my ankle is broken.”
“Can you move your toes?”
Tania took a minute and grimaced, “Yes.”
“Ok. That’s good.” At least I thought that was good. She could feel that her ankle hurt, and she could move her toes. That meant she wasn’t paralyzed.
“Oh. My god. No, no, no,” Tania screamed when she realized that Avery was unconscious.
“Montana is out too, but they’re both alive,” I said, looking around to try to find my phone to call for help.
“How long have we been here?” Tania screamed, fear settling into her voice.
“I don’t know. I can’t find my phone.” Now I was starting to panic.
Tania fumbled around in the front seat and found her phone - it had been plugged in, charging.
“What time is it?” I asked anxiously.
“2:42,”
I breathed a sigh of relief. I remember marveling at how the sun seemed to set earlier in the mountains, and that was at 2:30, so we had only crashed about ten minutes ago. I don’t know why, but it felt like it had happened hours earlier. I realized that if we had been unconscious for hours we likely would’ve been frozen.
“Wake UP!” Tania screamed, jostling Avery by the shoulder.
“Don’t do that. Don’t move her too much.”
“What do we do? What do we do?” Tania was either coming out of shock or going deeper, I couldn’t tell.
“Call 911. I’ll try to find their coats, or a blanket to try to keep them warm.
“There’s no service!” Tania screamed, tossing her phone onto the dashboard amongst the chunks of glass. “We’re going to freeze here. We’re all going to die!”
“We’re not going to die. Stay calm.” I crawled into the back of the SUV. Luckily, we had tossed our coats onto the pile of suitcases and I only had to shove a couple cases to the side to find them. I pulled out one coat at a time by their sleeves, shaking out the glass shards. I passed the first two to Tania. As I tucked Madison’s coat around her, she opened her eyes and looked at me confusedly.
“What… what’s going on?” she said, trying to move.
“We’ve been in an accident. I’m going for help.” I hadn’t realized that was the plan, but if it kept snowing the car was going to be covered in no time. We couldn’t just sit here waiting for someone to come and rescue us. In my whole life, I had never played a damsel in distress and I wasn’t about to start now. I have always been the hero of my own story.
“No. You should stay,” Tania screamed, “Someone will find us.” Her panic seemed to be growing by the second.
“I’m just going to hike up the embankment and flag down a car. We can’t be that far from the road. If we just wait here and the snow builds up, then we’re going to be in trouble.”
“You’re bleeding!” Madison exclaimed, and pointed at my arm.
I looked down at my left arm and saw that blood had soaked through my sweater.
“My arm is ok. It must be cut from the glass,” I said, pulling up my sleeve to look. There were several cuts up my arm that had been bleeding, but it looked like they were all crusting up. “I’m going to be fine. Stay here. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
