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“For fuck’s sake,” I mutter at the old man’s hesitation. “This guy is a paramedic, sir. You are hurt. Let him help.”

Henry still shows an ID card, holding it close to the man’s face so he can see it. The man doesn’t stop panting, his eyes rolling, but then he squeezes them shut.

“I’m sorry,” the man says. “I’m confused. I thought I was dreaming and then…” He trails off. “Help me. Please. M-my leg. Something’s wrong with it.”

“Stay where you are,” Henry says. “Don’t try to—”

And before Henry can even finish, the man tries to push himself out of the vehicle … and starts to scream, a piercing primal screech that has me falling back.

Henry’s mouth moves, but the man’s scream of agony drowns him out. He has to shout for me to make out what he’s saying, and it’s what I’d expect, reassurances that everything will be okay, that we will get him out, that Henry can treat his injuries.

If the man even registers Henry’s words, he gives no sign of it. He just keeps screaming and flailing and then screaming more. Henry continues trying to calm him, but after a few moments, he motions me aside to where I can hear him.

“I don’t have any sedatives,” he says. “His leg is trapped, and it’s bleeding.”

“Just tell me what to do.”

A strained smile. “More pantomiming than telling, I think. Poor guy.”

We return to the car, and I have to focus on blocking those terrible screams. They undulate, ear-piercingly loud and then dropping to whimpers. When the whimpers come, Henry tries to talk to the man, who starts to respond, tears in his eyes as he babbles apologies. But then he moves and starts screaming again.

Unfortunately, the trapped leg is his right one. Henry tries going around to come in the passenger door, but that won’t open.

Henry returns and has me shine the light so he can see what’s happened. It takes some maneuvering, but soon even I can make out the problem. Something has sliced into the man’s calf and it’s bleeding profusely, keeping us from seeing what it is. It’s entered from the right side, and there’s not enough room for Henry to get in past the man for a closer look.

The screams have fallen away, the man breathing deeply, his eyes rolling.

“Sir?” Henry says. “May I ask your name?”

He’s trying to calm the man and check his response, but the guy just keeps breathing hard, as if in shock.

Henry looks at me. “He seems calm. Can you squeeze in and see what we’re dealing with?”

“I’ll try.”

We switch spots. I wedge between the console and the floor—and the man erupts, screaming and flailing as if the pain and panic strikes in waves and he becomes a wild, animal thing struggling to free himself by any means necessary.

Henry gets the man restrained, and I manage to fight past the deflated airbag. All I can really do, though, is confirm that a piece of something pins the man’s calf. I reach down to feel the object. Metal. Sharp. I have no idea what it is—no idea what could come loose in that area—but I can’t easily pull it out.

I tell Henry what I saw. He asks a few questions.

“Okay, so pulling it out wouldn’t be a problem,” he says. “It’s not piercing anything that’d make him bleed worse. We do need to get him out of there, though.”

“The crowbar?”

“Right. Yes.” He looks around. “Shit. Where is it?”

“You had it when we came out of the forest,” I say. “You must have dropped it before you ran onto the road or when we dove out of the way. Do you remember?”

His face screws up for a second. Then, “Damn it, no. It all happened so fast.”

“Okay, well, we know roughly where it is. On the edge of the forest.”

We both jog back to the spot where we exited the woods. Or to what we each think is the spot, except we end up about fifteen feet apart. We look at each other, and I motion for him to check where he is and I’ll check where I am.

There’s no sign of the crowbar, and the more I walk, the less certain I am of where we came out of the forest. Everything really did happen so fast. I didn’t get a good look even at how far we were from the accident.

Henry threw me down to the ground on the dirt shoulder. There should be scuff marks, but I can’t find them, and I sure as hell can’t see a crowbar, and the man is screaming again, screaming in so much pain, and I can’t think—