would be thrilled to be performing the dissection.
Belinda raised her scalpel to make the first incision. Jenny squeezed her eyes shut against the anticipated pain. She felt nothing. Surprised, she opened her eyes again. The cadaver lab had disappeared, replaced by a cold night filled with nacreous fog and towering trees.
“Jen? Jen!” Steve said. “Can you hear me?” He was cradling her head in his lap.
“Where…?” she said, disorientated. Then she remembered with a punch of dread: the hearse, the accident. “Jeff? Mandy?”
“Mandy’s fine. Jeff’s…okay. I have to go help get him out of the car. Are you going to be all right for a couple minutes?”
She tried to sit up. It took all her strength, but she managed. She saw the upside-down BMW for the first time. Mandy and Cherry stood on one side of it, Noah and Austin on the other. Everyone was speaking and gesturing wildly.
“Where’s Jeff?” she asked.
“He’s still inside the car,” Steve said. “I’ll be right back—” He frowned.
“What?” she said.
“How do you feel?”
“Pummeled.”
“How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Two. Steve, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing. You hit your head though. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”
Yet the concern that had appeared on his face a few moments ago was still there. She suddenly wondered whether she’d been disfigured somehow. She touched her lips, her nose. “What’s wrong with me, Steve?”
“Nothing.”
“Steve!”
“Nothing—it’s just your eyes. One’s dilated a bit more than the other. Probably nothing more than a mild TBI. It’s not a big deal.”
Jenny went cold. A traumatic brain injury. If it was indeed mild, she had nothing to worry about. But Steve had no way of knowing whether it was mild or not. It could very easily be moderate or severe. She could have intracranial hemorrhage or brain herniation, both of which could lead to disability or even death. She’d need a CT scan to determine the true extent of her injury.
Noah and Austin, she noticed, had started working to get Jeff out of the BMW. Jenny said, “Go help them.”
Steve glanced at the car, then back to her. “You’re not going to pass out again, are you?”
“No.”
“Because you can’t pass out—”
“I know! Now go. I’m fine.”
He hesitated, nodded, and hurried off.
Steve reached Noah and Austin just as they were easing Jeff out of the mangled cab and onto the ground. Bloody lacerations raked Jeff’s face in a dozen places. Several of them appeared deep enough to require stitches. A chunk of glass was embedded in his left cheek like a grisly jewel.
“We have to move him farther away from the car,” Steve said.
Noah shook his head. “I don’t think we should move him anywhere.”
“Can’t you smell the gas?”
Noah and Austin raised their noses and sniffed, like prairie dogs trying to catch wind of prey.
“Shit, you’re right!” Austin said. He eyed the car apprehensively. “You think it might explode?”
“No,” Steve said simply. He didn’t know much about cars, but he was pretty sure you’d have to shove a torch into the gas tank for something as dramatic as an explosion to happen. But the fact they could smell gas meant the seam between the fuel tank and the rest of the fuel system had been broken, or the fuel lines had been sheared. Either way, gas was leaking from somewhere, and an electrical spark could turn it into a full-out blaze.
He faced Mandy, who had come around the vehicle. She was knuckling her mouth and staring at Jeff, her complexion bloodless. “Mandy, give us a hand moving him,” he told her.
She didn’t respond.
“Mandy!”
She blinked, pulled her eyes away from Jeff. “What?”
“We need help moving Jeff.”
Abruptly flames whooshed to life in the BMW’s engine.
“It’s gonna blow!” Austin cried hysterically. “Grab him!”
Steve took Jeff’s arms, Noah and Austin his legs, and they dragged Jeff twenty feet from the burning wreckage to where Steve had brought Jenny—only now she was on her side, eyes closed, limbs askew.
“Jen!” Steve dropped Jeff’s arms and dashed over to her. “Jen? Jen!” He turned to the others. “We have to get her and Jeff to the hospital. Now!”
“Do you know where it is?” Noah asked.
“Someone in town can tell us.” He scooped Jenny into his arms and stood. “You guys carry Jeff.”
Noah and Cherry grasped Jeff’s legs, Austin and Mandy, his arms. On the count of three they lifted him off the ground. However, they only made it a few steps this time when Jeff’s eyes flailed open and he screamed.
“Set him down!” Steve ordered.
They rested Jeff on his back. He continued