Page 38 of The Do-Over
ROB
The first thing Rob was aware of was the pain.
It felt as if someone had driven an iron spike through his head. He hadn’t yet managed to open his eyes, and now he squeezed them more tightly shut, hoping that he could sink back into oblivion.
Had the pain been what had brought him back to consciousness?
No. There was something else…the sound of someone yelling.
I wish they’d shut up. People are trying to sleep!
There was a loud banging, right overhead. It reminded Rob of the way his father used to beat two pans together over his head to wake him up when he was a child. That was a long time ago…who was doing it now?
He forced his eyes open.
No.
He wasn’t in his bed. He hadn’t been sleeping. No one was trying to wake him up. That’s not what this was.
The pieces fell into place slowly, agonizingly.
This was a car. He was in a car.
But it was all wrong. The windshield was cracked, and the steering column was far too close, compressing him against the back of the seat. The passenger seat was full of glass. Had he had a passenger? He wasn’t sure. There was no one there now, certainly.
He took a deep breath.
The car had crashed. He had been driving, and…what had happened? He couldn’t seem to piece it together properly.
Well, he’d gone off the road. That much was obvious by the way the car was tilted. He was clearly in a ditch now. The driver’s-side door was above him. It would be hard to climb out.
“Hello?” The shouter was still yelling. “Is someone in there? Are you all right? Hang on, I’m coming down.”
He should probably answer them, whoever they were, but it was hard to find words. His head was pounding.
“Are you injured?”
Am I injured?
He knew how to assess himself for injuries. He’d been doing it all his life. It had been important to check, after every time his father had beat him, that nothing was broken, that he wasn’t hurt badly enough to need medical intervention. He’d always needed to be able to answer for himself whether he could recover at home, or whether he needed to come up with some excuse for a broken rib or wrist and take himself to a doctor.
He forced himself to move, even though all he wanted was to close his eyes and sink back into the darkness. He wiggled his fingers and toes, and that was fine. He rotated his ankles and wrists. He couldn’t move his legs, but that was because of the way he was pinned by the steering column, not because of injury. There was no pain there, and his feet had moved easily enough—he was all right.
Carefully, he unfastened his seatbelt.
He reached up and tried to open the door above his head, but it wouldn’t budge more than a few inches. What was going on?
“Hang on,” the voice called. “The snow’s got you wedged in, but it’s all right. I’m going to dig you out. You just hang tight, okay?”
“Okay,” Rob said. He cleared his throat, surprised by how husky his voice sounded. How long had he been unconscious?
Above him, he heard the sound of scraping. “This car’s going to be a junker, I’m afraid,” said the voice, and now he could tell that it belonged to a woman. “I hope you have insurance.”
“I do,” he managed.
A glove appeared on his window, wiping the snow away. “Are you hurt?” she asked.
Her voice trailed away on the last word.
