GABRIELLA
Imanaged to get his door open and breathed a sigh of relief. At least I could get him out of the car before the smoke became a real problem.
“Hey,” I said, offering him a reassuring smile and keeping my tone gentle. “My name is Gabriella. What’s your name?”
“Nicholas.”
“Nicholas. I have a cousin named Nicholas. Listen to me, Nicholas.” I spoke slowly and deliberately. I recalled reading somewhere that using someone’s name when they were in shock could help ground them. “You were just in a car crash. I’m going to help you get out of this car because there’s a lot of smoke. Do you think you can move? Are you hurt anywhere else besides your head?”
He shook his head and fumbled to unbuckle his seatbelt. “No… no, I think I’m okay. But my dad. Oh God. Dad? Dad!”
“Hey,” I said, grabbing Nicholas’s shoulder. “Let’s get you out first, like your dad would want, and then we’ll get him out next, okay?”
Nicholas cooperated. He stumbled out of the open door and had to lean on me for support. By now, other people had hurried over to offer a helping hand. Nobody announced themselves as a nurse or doctor, which meant I was still on my own in that regard.
A woman in a yellow coat stepped forward and helped Nicholas to the curb, where she handed him her bottle of water.
A man with a burly build and thick beard came to my aid. “How do we get the next guy out?”
I looked up at the truck. Flames were now licking out from under the hood. “We’re going to have to drag him out, over the console and out the passenger door.” I’d never had emergency training. I didn’t know what I was doing. And yet I knew if we left the man in the car, everything would go to hell in a handbasket. “We have to do this right now.”
He nodded.
I climbed in through the passenger seat and unbuckled the man’s seatbelt. The burly stranger stepped onto the hood and peeled back the broken windshield. With his help, I was able to drag the unconscious man out of his seat. I never could have done it alone. He got caught up on the console. I prayed that he didn’t have internal bleeding or a spinal or neck injury. We could be causing harm by dragging him out but the fire would be worse than any damage we did.
What if he didn’t have medical insurance? Don’t think about that. That’s not the most pressing issue right now.
The smoke pouring in through the smashed driver’s side window would kill him if we didn’t move him.
I began choking on it. It filled my lungs, and as I seized the man once more, my palms stared to burn. His clothes were hot. The console was hot. The leather seats were hot.
“Shit,” I cursed. “Shit! Pull, dammit!”
I coughed harder. The stranger pulling from outside the car began coughing, too.
Then the man gave way and came free. We got him up over the console and dragged him out the passenger door. I hit the pavement hard, landing on my back with the man’s torso hanging out the door on top of me. The burly stranger reached down, gathered him up over his shoulder, and offered me a hand. He pulled me to my feet, wrapped an arm around me, and hurried both me and the unconscious man away from the blaze as the heat from the flames rippled through the air.
Up on the sidewalk with the unconscious man’s son, I coughed so hard, black spots filled my vision and I almost passed out.
An older woman with wide, terrified eyes rushed to my side and offered me a water bottle. I drained half of it, coughed some more, and finished the rest. She supplied more to the young passenger and the man who had helped me get his father out of the car.
Finally, someone came over yelling that they were a nurse. The crowd cleared a path for her, and she dropped to her knees beside the unconscious driver.
I looked around, my eyes burning. “Where’s the driver of the pickup truck?”
The nurse, who was working on the driver of the sedan, looked up at me with worried eyes. “I didn’t see anyone else.”
My stomach dropped.
Had he been sitting in the burning truck this whole time? Should we have gone to him first? Had he already inhaled too much smoke?
Was it too late?
The burly stranger who’d helped me began barking orders at men standing on the sidelines. “You! With me. And you, yes, I’m pointing at you. Get your ass out here. We need all the able-bodied men we can find!”
I hurried after him toward the truck. “I can help.”
“Atta girl,” he said. He had a voice as thick as his arms, and dark brown watery eyes. They were probably burning from all this smoke, too. “You sure you’re up for this?”