Page 11 of We Drank the Dawn

A hulking UPS truck.

“Okay. I’m grabbing my keys now. Where are you?”

I glanced around me. “Um, I’m…I’m at…” Confusion muddied my brain. I knew where I was but the words weren’t coming for some reason.

The intersection up ahead was still green.

When Sarah spoke again, her voice came through a tunnel—distant and hollow sounding. “Peter, listen to me. You sound confused. Are you having aura?”

“Yeah…I think so.”

Panic sliced her voice. “Pull over! Turn on your emergency lights.”

Lifting my hand felt like dragging it through wet concrete. I hit my flashers.

I scanned the road, looking for somewhere to go. There was no shoulder, nothing.

My lips fumbled around the words. “I’m trying. There’s…nowhere.”

“Just stop right where you are then!”

I glanced in my rearview. The traffic behind me was moving too fast for me to just suddenly stop.

“Are you stopping?”

I thought I answered her, but I wasn’t sure.

“Talk to me!” Her voice came out like a terrified screech. “Peter?!”

I wanted to tell her I was okay, but my lips stopped moving. My heart raced. And there was a strange smell I couldn’t put my finger on…

“Peter!”

I lifted my toe to brake on the street, at least I thought I did, but my body stopped taking commands as a lifting sensation swirled upward through my chest and head and the last thing I remembered was barreling through a red light.

FOUR

Sarah

Tears streaked my face as I hurried through the bowels of the emergency room, my phone’s incessant rings drowning in the plethora of hospital sounds. They’d brought Peter through the trauma bay in an ambulance and he’d already been triaged.

My chest, tight with fear, threatened to crack as the nurse pulled back the curtain around his bed, allowing me to step inside. A sob, ugly and uncontrolled, ripped through my throat at the sight of him. I slapped a hand over my mouth. My husband’s beautiful face and neck were black and blue, his lips cut and swollen. Bandages wound around his head and left arm and were wrapped around his torso. A nasty abrasion spanned over the breadth of his chest and long diagonal bruising created a clear picture of exactly where his seatbelt caught him.

Thank goodness he was wearing it.

From everything the officer relayed to me before my frantic drive across town, a truck t-boned Peter’s car right in the middle of the intersection. The impact occurred on the back door of the driver’s side. This turned him to face oncoming traffic and another vehicle hit Peter’s front bumper, but they had decelerated enough that the second impact didn’t have nearly as much force as the first. None of the other drivers were seriously injured—just Peter.

I breathed his name and rushed forward, falling into the chair beside his bed.

His dark lashes caressed the tops of his cheeks.

“Is he in pain?” I whispered to the nurse.

“Not right now.” She approached the computer and clacked her fingers over the keyboard. “He’s on fentanyl and a sedative. The best thing he can do right now is stay as still as possible and sleep while we wait on his CT scan. We’ve got orders to move him to radiology in five to ten minutes.”

“Wait. Why did he get sedated?” I glanced up as her gaze cut away.

“I’m going to get Dr. Abrams for you. It might be best to direct all your questions to him.”