Under the surface

25.

Fire. Fire is all Ollie saw. After Doohan's reckless move and Aurelia spinning into the barriers, her car exploded into flames. There was no bit of the car still covered by PREMA's red, white or green paint. It was all black. Burnt. Withered.

His immediate first thought was to pull over. Get out of his car and go save the love of husband life, because as much as Ollie didn't want to admit it to her yet, she was. But he may never be able to tell her that after that crash. Then I heard my engineer through my radio.

"Don't even think about getting out the car. Get out of that car and you lose everything. The seat, sponsor money, and any chance of an F1 seat."

"But-" Ollie protested.

"No buts. Pull into the pits."

He reluctantly pulled into the pits, after fighting his deep urge to save Aurelia. He was able to resist that urge, but there was another one he wanted to settle right away.

He stopped in the pits, turned off his engine, and jumped out of the car. The Invicta Virtuosi driver in front of him also hopped out of the car and took off his helmet. Boy did he not know what was about to hit him.

And what hit him... was Ollie's fist.

"What the fuck-" Doohan cried.

Ollie threw another punch. This one knocked Doohan to the ground. Ollie kept punching. Ollie kept shouting at Jack:

"What the fuck my arse! You and your reckless driving may have killed my girlfriend! I am going to kill you too!"

By this time four mechanics managed to pull Ollie off Doohan, and it took another two to make sure Ollie didn't go back at Doohan for seconds.

Ollie did some serious damage. Doohan's face was covered in blood, and looked like roadkill. His nose was definitely broken, and black and blue bruises had already shown on his face. But he looked Ollie straight in the eyes and said:

"That bitch had it coming for her. She doesn't belong here. She can take her little latina ass out of this paddock and go back to Brazil."

Ollie wrestled with the six engineers holding him, desperately trying to get to the Australian F2 driver. Doohan laughed, got up, and walked away. Ollie was beaten.

One skinny, tall, and by the looks of it, very shy statistics analyst, walked up to Ollie and said:

"Umm.. Ollie? Aurelia is being flown to the nearest hospital in a helicopter."

He gave Ollie the name of the hospital and Ollie ran off. Doohan continued to shout at him, calling him a wimp, and wiping all the blood off of his face, but Ollie didn't care. Aurelia was more important.

—
He got to the hospital around 15 minutes after Aurelia did. He still had no news on her condition, but being taken away in a helicopter to the nearest hospital isn't the usual procedure for some cuts and bruises.

He ran to the front desk and told the receptionist Aurelia's name and asked how she was. She typed her name into the computer and said.

"Well, I can't tell you as you aren't family."

Ollie turned to the lady said, "Her father is dead, and her mother is in Brazil. I am her boyfriend, so unless you want to wait about 8 hours for her mother to get here, I am the most family she has."

The lady let him in, and he began to walk into Aurelia's room. Walking through the hospital, he began remembering other crashes like hers.

Grosjean's crash also exploded with flames, but his car was the right side up, so he could get out quickly and only his hands were burnt.

The only other crash he could think of was Niki Lauda's. His car caught on fire. He was upside down, and took ages to get out. He had life-changing scars, ones which impacted his racing career and his life.

He reached her room and knocked to signal to the doctor that she had a visitor. She let him in and he gasped.

She was covered in bandages. Her face was uncovered though. Her face looked mostly fine, she had a slight burn scar on her right cheek, but apart from that he could see no major scarring. He still thought she looked beautiful.

"So, Mr. Oliver, you can she see has minimal scarring across her face, but she has lots of scars across her back, from where the engine caught fire. That was taken an estimate of around 2 to 3 days to heal before she can be discharged, but only until tomorrow morning will she be under anaesthetic. So you can speak with her in the morning."

Ollie didn't like how long it would take for her to be discharged, but he thought the nurse was very kind and respectful, so he didn't want to get annoyed at her. So he asked her to make a bed, so he could sleep over at the hospital. It was already 11 at night, so he was shattered.

He hopped into bed and turned to Aurelia.

"Night, my sweet love..."