(content warning: physical trauma)
The windshield spiderwebs, then vanishes behind the airbag—bloated, collapsing, useless. The hit wasn’t to the front; it came from the side.
Long left curve, dusk, wet autumn leaves. Headlights: red truck, grill level with my window. Force and motion and spin. Then the ditch. Driver side window shattered to blue-green crystals.
Checking around me, reaching my my seatbelt.
Something yellow in my thigh. Straight, sharp. Snapped off.
Bone.
Red floods over it, pumping down between my legs into the gray upholstery.
Femoral. The word flashes, then crumples under pain, my thigh a hollow drum slammed by my heartbeat. Each beat another fountain.
Tourniquet. Belt. My right hand claws for the buckle. Fingers close, then slip. They don’t grip. They won’t.
Spit rises. I think I’ll vomit. I don’t. Just the feeling — of what?
More red. Too much. Thirst gnaws at me. No time. I press both hands into the wound, thumbs digging for the artery. Pain detonates up my spine. Nearly blacked out. Should wake me. Instead, I’m cold.
Broken window. Rain blowing in. But not this cold, not this fast. Shivering, chest hammering, breath shallow and fast.
The thought slips. Just pain now in my leg, my chest, my skull. I look down: arms painted red to the elbows, skin pale as ash.
I’m pressing. And it hurts.
I’m pressing. And it hurts.
It isn’t working. My hands are numb. The blood thins.
Edges of vision bleaching, as if an iris closes on the camera of my mind.
What’s left of me is scattered—pulse here, shiver there—no longer whole.