The Bull Prince | Max Verstappen

SEQUEL - Chapter 25

Instead of showing the scene of the accident, all the fans got to see were the scared expressions on other drivers' faces, the shaken look on Christian Horner's face or the ghost-white-turned Toto Wolf. Both team principals knew about the secret Joanna was hiding under her heart and that the man who fathered the child was just a few meters away, hanging in his seatbelts.

They saw as Charles Leclerc climbed out of the car only to stumble into his teammate's arms and Daniel Ricciardo, who bit his lip in deep worry before they moved the camera to Lewis Hamilton, who frantically watched as James tried to reach out to Joanna.

The radios were transmitted for everybody to hear, the desperate pleads from GP and James for their drivers to say something, anything, but the radios stayed silent. The medical car reached them before the world got an answer to the question nobody dared to ask out loud.

Are they still alive?

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Opening her eyes for the first time, they felt so heavy that she couldn't stop them from falling shut again. Having her eyes closed Joanna took a swallowed breath. Nothing seemed to hurt, but the colours she had seen for a brief moment as she had managed to open her eyes weren't what she normally would see after a crash. The colour was dark, black. Rubber, something in the back of her mind reminded her.

Trying again to open her eyes, this time she managed to hold them open for a moment longer. Confused as to why her vision was so broken, Joanna thought about doing her rituals, making sure every limb was where it belonged, but her arms weren't listening to her body. Everything was so heavy, and she was tired. Opening her eyes again, Joanna noticed that the visor of her helmet was broken, which caused the strange pictures from before, but the dark colour remained. She was buried under tyres.

Tyres. Everything came back. Joanna suddenly remembered the panic in her chest as Max was moving past her, a hard but clear move and she suddenly lost all control of her car. She remembered her thoughts, that she would die now, due to the car not slowing down, but there was nothing she could do. All Joanna remembered doing was pulling her hands from the steering wheel and trying to relax which was totally contrary to what her body wanted to do, but Joanna knew that if her body was already limb, she wouldn't get as hurt as if she would brace herself.

Remembering what must have happened, Joanna tried to see if there was a Red Bull stuck anywhere near her only for her eyes to fall on a Red Bull not too far away from her in the exact frame for her to look at even though she was so totally restricted in her movements due to the tyres all over her.

"Max." Joanna managed to mutter as she saw the Dutchman hanging in the seatbelts which was never a good sign. He should be awake. Max should look back at her and give her a somewhat reassuring smile, telling her that everything would be alright. He should already be on his way over to her, only to make an inappropriate joke while helping Joanna out of the car, but the Dutchman wasn't moving.

Joanna weakly tried to call out to him again, but the Dutchman wasn't hearing her, which caused the Austrian to allow her head to roll back against her seat. She was so tired but Joanna knew that she needed to stay awake. She needed to see if Max was alright, but all she could do until someone would finally come to help them was lean back and try to not damage herself further. But why was nobody coming to help them? She couldn't smell fire, so this couldn't be the case.

The Austrian Mercedes driver was hanging after her own thoughts as she noticed a voice. She knew that voice, James. He was talking to her, she could hear him in her earpieces, but there was no way she would ever reach the button she needed to press so she could talk back to him and even though he was panicked, it was good to hear his voice, promising that people would come and get her as soon as possible. Reassuring that things would be alright again, that she would be alright.