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I think I manage not to swear in the slow-motion time warp of impending pain, though there is definitely some hissing and grunting. Possibly a girly screech.
I absently wonder what it sounds like in real time.
Next thing I know, I’m on my back, bike on top of me, a pungent fog of sage swirling between me and the blinding sun in a cloudless blue sky. I wait for the pain to register.
“Grace!”
Noah’s voice. Bike clattering to the ground. Rapid footsteps. A shadow briefly obscuring the sun.
“Are you okay?”
I think I’m okay...I hear the ticking of my rear wheel as it spins.
The sun blinds me again, and I try to inhale but can’t. Pain shoots through my torso, towing panic.
“Talk to me.” Noah moves to my side, his voice calm, steady. “Where does it hurt?”
His eyes meet mine, and he sees the panic there. A warm hand settles on my arm, soothing me.
“It’s going to be okay,” he says. “Looks like you got the wind knocked out of you. I’m going to lift your bike off, okay? Let go of the bar.”
Bar? I blink against the pain and panic and realize I’m holding my bike, the top tube resting in my hands and across my chest.
“Let go,” he says. “I have it.”
I obey, and he sets my bike down next to his, off the trail, as I flounder for air. Again his helmet shades my watering eyes. He still has his sunglasses on—those goofy, high-contrast yellow-lensed jobs. Concern etches his face.
His warm hand on my forehead feels fabulous. I close my eyes and count, praying I can breathe again before I pass out.
“Just a spasm of the diaphragm,” he says, voice calm. He gently moves my arms—looking for wounds, I assume. I don’t really care why he’s touching me. It’s a balm for my panic, and finally I can inhale.
He smiles at the sound and congratulates me with a soft touch on my shoulder. “There you go. How’s your head? Any pain?”
I move a little, and a hot knife slices up my leg. “Calf,” I say.
He moves to my leg and takes a look, then takes off his helmet and backpack and starts rummaging. The pain levels off until he moves my leg again.
I suck in. “Warn me, will you?”
“Sorry,” he says, and after that he talks me through everything. That lovely, sword-bearing bush has torn a gash across my right calf, but it’s not deep enough to need stitches. He cleans it and pulls it back together with butterfly Band-Aids, then systematically rinses the pedal gouges on my shin and all the spots where my skin has been sanded away. I’m stinging in so many places as he rinses my wounds that I can’t localize the pain.
Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.
“Almost done,” he says. “Hang in there.” He finishes up the water torture and starts applying Band-Aids and ointment to all my abrasions, taking the stinging to a new level.
“You using lemon juice?” I say through my teeth, pulling my head up to see how far we have to go.
His hands pull back momentarily. “Antibiotic. Sorry. It stings.”
“Well,” I say, “I think lemon juice would be an improvement. It has great disinfecting properties.”
One eyebrow ticks up, softening the worry lines in his forehead.
I lay my head back. “That’s why there’s less sickness in the summer.”
“How so?”
I brace myself as he resumes his doctoring. “All that lemonade.”
