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~16~
“... was pretty sure he wouldn’t still be alive ...”
Paige had been doingsixty-five. The Escalade had been going about forty-five. Witnesses driving behind either car would report it was the Escalade that had actually caused the accident. The SUV had crossed the centerline. When the driver regained consciousness, she would later tell police she'd been texting.
Didn’t really matter much to Paige and Parker. Doing over sixty and being the smaller car, they didn’t fare very well. The Escalade had slammed into the front corner of the Cutlass. Parker had tried to pull Paige towards him, but the seatbelt had prevented her from moving.
Because of their speed, inertia lifted the end of the Cutlass clear off the ground – while at the same time, their car started rebounding off the large SUV. Put together, it caused enough torque to send the Cutlass into a spin. It rolled once, twice, a third time before slamming onto its top and sliding down the highway. It skidded to a stop almost three hundred feet past the initial point of impact.
Parker had blacked out some time after the first roll. He came to, hanging upside from his seat. He didn’t know how long he'd been out. He glanced around. Paige was pressed against the windshield under him. She'd been thrown out of her seatbelt somehow.
Groaning, Parker struggled to reach for the clasp to undo his seatbelt. His whole body hurt, and he thought his shoulder might be broken – he couldn’t move his right arm. He dropped down onto the roof of the car and let out another groan.
“Paige,” he managed to say, his voice thick. His ears were ringing. He looked at her, but she didn't respond.
“Paige,” he said again, shaking her shoulder. She didn’t open her eyes. She didn’t move.
“Paige!” he yelled, real panic unfurling in his chest.
He kicked out the driver’s side window and grabbed her by the arm, attempting to drag her. He knew it was probably a bad idea to move her, she could have a head or neck injury, but he could smell gas all around them. He pulled harder, hooking his left arm under her armpit and yanking, but she didn’t budge. He crawled over her – one of her feet was caught in the metal wreckage that was her door. Swallowing, he yanked on her leg till her foot came free of it’s shoe. Her foot didn’t look right, but he tried not to think about it. As he dragged her free of the car, he saw that blood was running out of her other shoe. Something had pierced clean through the sole, so he took it off, as well, leaving her in her socks.
The going was slow with only one usable arm, and his left one at that, but he managed to pull her around and stretch her out along side the embankment they'd landed next to. Thank god they hadn’t gone any farther, or they would’ve rolled all the way down about twenty feet. Parker was pretty sure they wouldn’t still be alive after something like that.
“Paige,” he whispered, coughing roughly as he knelt next to her. Her eyes weren’t exactly closed, they were just open in little slits. He could just barely see her irises. And they weren’t moving.
“Paige! Answer me!” he screamed, gripping one of her hands tightly. He heard sirens in the distance.
“Goddammit, you answer me!” he shouted.
She still didn’t move.
He didn’t know how long he knelt there like that, screaming at her. Hands pulled him away and two paramedics fell on Paige. Another set of paramedics struggled with Parker, trying to get him to one of a pair of ambulances, but he fought against them, demanding to know what was going on with Paige. He saw one of her paramedics start to do chest compressions, and watched the other one say “no pulse”.
Parker leaned over the embankment and vomited.
