Dare Me to Live

Chapter 15 (Part two)

I lost all sense of direction, screaming as we flipped over and over down the steep incline. The sounds of metal ripping apart tore at my ear drums. I was flung back and forth like a ragdoll, until the car crashed into a tree with a sickening crunch and came to an abrupt stop.

I stayed very still, afraid to move, to blink, to breathe. Dust and debris settled around me; my seatbelt cut into my chest and hips. I wiggled my fingers and toes, a sense of relief flooding over me as I felt them move, even as it was followed by a wave of flaming pain. My face was wet, though if it was tears or blood I couldn't tell.

I coughed and a searing sensation went through my ribs; my lungs felt like I was inhaling razors.

Turning my head slowly, agonizingly to the left, I braced myself to check on Danny. He wasn't there.

Panic gripped me in steely claws.

"Danny!" I cried hoarsely. "Danny!"

"Da—Dash..."

His voice came from my right. I looked out my shattered window and saw Danny crumpled on the ground a few feet away. He was lying on his stomach, cheek pressed into the dirt, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth. One of his legs was bent at an odd angle.

Over his right shoulder, smoke rose from the trees where the other car lay wrecked, out of sight.

"Are you all right?" I asked. My fingers fumbled for the button to release the seat-belt, and more pain rushed in to fill the places it had dug in as it snapped back into place.

"Yeah," he rasped. "You?"

"Stay still," I said. "I'm coming."

"No," he coughed, spitting blood onto the ground. "Wait until the medics arrive."

I ignored him, pulling the latch for the door. The car had stopped against the tree mid-roll so the passenger side was angled towards the sky. I shoved upwards against the door even as my shoulder shrieked with the effort. Swinging my right leg out, I made to stand up, only to have my left leg collapse beneath my weight. I screamed, tears welling in my eyes; someone was driving a white hot knife into my left hip. I fell back and cried out again as gravity pulled the car door shut, hitting me hard in the chest and pinning me half in, half out of the car.

I gritted my teeth, my jaw nearly breaking from the effort not to sob, as pain such as I had never felt in my life radiated through my back.

"I think my hip is broken," I whispered, tears streaming down my face.

"Which one?" asked Danny.

"The left."

I saw him smile ever so slightly, but the effort it cost him seemed almost too much to bear. "Good, cuz I think my right leg is broken."

At the top of the hill, I could just make out the flattened guard rail, illuminated in the light of the dying sun. It was the only clue to what had happened; both destroyed cars were out of sight from the road. If no one stopped to look at the broken barrier, it could be hours before anyone found us.

Looking back at the blood dripping from Danny's head and his ashen face, I knew with a sickening jolt that he might not have hours. He needed to get to a hospital now. I could feel my phone in my back left pocket, but I was too weak to push the door off me again.

I felt dizzy and nauseous, and I swallowed hard to keep from throwing up.

"I'm scared," I said. All around us the shadows cast by the trees were creeping towards us. The sun had nearly disappeared behind the rock face.