he wedged a slimline torch between his teeth, and then he twisted through the gap between the driver and passenger seats, reaching for her legs. He held himself in place with one hand and dragged her torn skirt high up her thighs with the other. He pointed his torch down into the darkness at her feet, studying closely.
‘I felt it break,’ she said matter-of-factly—and softly, given how close his face was to hers—amazed that she could be calm at all. Still, what else could she do? Freaking out hadn’t helped her earlier.
‘It hasn’t broken the skin, though,’ he mumbled around the torch, sliding her dress modestly back into position. ‘That’s a good thing.’
He wasn’t going to lie, or play down what was happening to her. She appreciated that.
‘At least I can manage to break my leg the right way.’ She winced. ‘Wayne would be pleased.’ One of very few things her dominating ex would have appreciated—or possibly noticed—about her.
Sam was eight-tenths silhouette, since the glow-stick was behind him on the dash but suddenly the front of the car was full of the smell of oil and leather, rescue gear and sweat, and good, honest man.
‘Are you going to give me painkillers?’ she said, to dislodge the inappropriate thought, and because everything was really starting to hurt now that the car was more stable and the pressure points had shifted.
‘Not without knowing for sure you’re not allergic. And not with the pain in your chest; you have enough respiratory issues without me compounding it with medication.’
‘I hate pain,’ she said.
His chuckle was totally out of place in this situation, but it warmed her and gave her strength. ‘With the endorphins you’ll have racing through your system you’ll barely feel it,’ he said, before twisting away to rifle in his bag again. When he returned he had a small bottle with him. ‘But this will help take the edge off.’
She glanced sideways at the bottle. It didn’t look very medical. She lifted her curious eyes to him in mute question rather than waste more breath on a pointless question.
‘Green Ant Juice,’ he said. ‘It’s a natural painkiller. Aboriginal communities have used it for centuries.’
‘What makes it juicy?’
His pause was telling. ‘Better not to ask.’
Oh. ‘Will it taste like ants?’
The rummaging continued. He resurfaced with an empty syringe. ‘Have you tasted them?’
‘I’ve smelled them.’ The nasty, acrid scent of squashed ants.
Again the flash of white teeth in the mirror. ‘Your choice. You prefer the pain?’
For answer, she opened her mouth like a young bird, and he syringed a shot of the sticky syrup into it. ‘Good girl.’
His warm thumb gently wiped away a dribble of the not-quite-lemony juice that had caught on the corner of her lips. Her pulse picked up in response. Or it could have been the analgesic surging into her system.
Either way, it felt good.
The gentle touch was so caring and sweet, while being businesslike, that it brought tears back to her eyes. When was the last time someone had taken genuine care of her? Had just been there for her when it all went wrong? Her parents believed that prevention was infinitely better than the cure, and Wayne would have just rolled his eyes and scolded her for over-reacting.
As Sam withdrew his ungloved left hand her eyes were tear-free enough to notice that his ring finger was bare and uniformly tanned. Yeah, because that’s always important to know in life or death situations. She shook her head at her own subconscious. Her shoulder bit and she winced visibly.
‘I’m going to have a look at your arm, Aimee. Just keep very still.’
She did—not that she could feel a thing; her arm had been wedged back there for so long it wasn’t even bothering her, although obviously it was really bothering Sam. She heard and felt him changing positions, getting closer to her driver’s door.
‘Do you remember how the accident happened?’ he asked, making conversation while he fiddled around behind her.
She shook her head. ‘I was driving the A10. One minute everything was fine.’ She filled her strained lungs again. ‘The next I was sliding and then …’ She shuddered. ‘I remember the impact.’ Breath. ‘Then I passed out for a bit.’ Breath. ‘Then I woke up here in this tree. Stuck.’
Her strained respiration seemed unnaturally loud in the silence that followed. When he finally did speak he said, ‘Looks like an oil patch on the asphalt. A local passing through slid on it, too, but managed to stop before the edge. He saw your tail-lights down here and called it in.’
Thank goodness he did. I might have been out here for days. Aimee lifted her chin to see better in the mirror what he was doing behind her. ‘Sam, don’t worry about whether it’s going to hurt. Just do whatever you have to do. I’m a rip-the-Bandaid-off kind of girl, despite what I said earlier about pain.’
She felt his pause more than heard it. ‘You can’t feel this?’
The worry in his voice spiked her heart into a rapid flutter. ‘I can’t feel anything.’
When he spoke again, his voice was more carefully moderated. ‘Your arm is wedged back here. I think it’s dislocated. I’ve freed it up a little bit, and I’m going to try to push it forward, but this will go one of two ways. Either you won’t feel a thing even once it’s free—’
Meaning she might have damaged something permanently.
‘—or the sensation is going to come back as soon as it’s free. And if that happens it’s going to hurt like hell.’
She felt a tug, but no pain. It was like having a numb tooth yanked. So far so good. ‘Won’t the ant juice help?’
‘It won’t have taken full effect—’
That was as far as he got. With a nasty crack her arm came free, and he pushed it forward back into the front seat where it belonged. The pain burst like white light behind her eyes, and came from her throat in an agonised retch as full sensation returned—arm burning, shoulder screaming.
His hands were at her hair instantly, stroking it back, soothing. ‘That’s the worst of it, Aimee. It’s all done now,’ he murmured, over and over. ‘All done …’
She rocked where she sat, holding her breath, damming back the tears, sucking the pain in, wanting so badly to be as brave as Sam was in coming down here for her. Then, as the ant juice and her own adrenaline kicked in, the rocking slowed and her body eased back in the seat, not fighting the restraint of the seatbelt as much.
‘Better?’ That voice again, warm and low just behind her. She lifted her eyes to the crooked rearview mirror, reached for it slowly with her good arm, missed and tried again through a slight fogginess. She adjusted it and found his eyes.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered, knowing it would never be enough,
