Page 79 of Campus Fake

“There’s been an accident.” My voice came out too loud but I couldn’t seem to regulate it. “An intersection in Dunridge… we’re—” I looked around for a street sign but nothing registered. Everything beyond a few feet of Sam’s window was smeared and indistinct, like trying to read through water. I’d taken this road hundreds of times, but my brain couldn’t focus, couldn’t find the names among the worry clawing at me as I stared at Sam’s unconscious form. “Two vehicles. One flipped. I need you to hurry. Please.”

The operator was asking me something but I’d stopped hearing her.

A thick line of blood ran from Sam’s hairline down the side of her face. The sight of it emptied every rational thought from my head like someone had pulled a plug.

“Sam. No… Sam.”

I reached in and fumbled with her seatbelt. My fingers weren’t cooperating. They were too big, clumsy and shaking so hard that it took me three tries to press the release. I caught her weight as she dropped and pulled her through the window as carefully as I could, one arm under her shoulders and one behind her head, and then I was sitting on the pavement holding her against my chest.

She was breathing, but it wasn’t a relief because she still wasn’t waking up and her skin was too pale against the bright red blood on her face and in her hair.

“Sam. Baby, come on.” I brushed the hair from her face, my hand leaving a smear of her blood across her cheek. “I need you to wake up. You’ve got to fight. You have to fight for me, Sam, please.” My voice was thick, and the panic was shredding my chest apart.

The 911 operator was still talking from the phone on the ground beside me, but I couldn’t process a word of it.

Then there were voices. I glanced up and other cars had stopped. A man and a woman were running toward us from a nearby house. The woman dropped to her knees beside us.

“What can we do to help?”

I shook my head. For the first time in my life I couldn’t formulate a plan. On the ice, I read the play and I reacted. I was so fucking good at that. But there was no play to read here and no save to make and my hands—the same hands I trusted with everything—were shaking against the woman I loved more than I’d ever known was possible and I couldn’t make them stop.

How did I fix this?

How did I save the one person who mattered more than anyone else in the world?

The man jogged toward the other car. The woman stayed, her hand on my arm, saying things I nodded at and immediately forgot.

All I could see was Sam.

The blood.

Her closed eyes.

Her faint breathing.

“Sam. I need you to open your eyes.” My voice had gone quiet and I barely recognized it. “Open your eyes for me. Please.”

Sirens sounded in the distance and then grew louder until finally red and blue lights were washing across the pavement. After that, everything blurred together. Voices. Hands. Someone crouching in front of me, and then someone else trying to pull my attention away from Sam.

“Sir—sir, I need to take a look at you.”

“I’m fine. Help her.”

“My partner’s going to take her. I need you to let me check you out.”

I didn’t let go of Sam’s hand until the other EMT told me they needed space to work. I made myself release her fingers, but it was one of the hardest things I’d ever done.

The EMT in front of me was shining a light in my eyes. Asking me questions. Did I lose consciousness? Did I know what day it was? Could I tell him where I was? I answered on autopilot while I watched them work on Sam over his shoulder. They put a collar around her neck. Then a backboard. Then they were lifting her onto a stretcher, and I tried to stand but the EMT put a hand on my chest.

“Hold on. You’ve got glass in your hands and your shoulder might be dislocated. We need to⁠—”

“It’s not dislocated.” I’d played through a dislocated shoulder before. This wasn’t that. “I’ll get checked out at the hospital. Right now I need to be with her.”

He looked at me for a second, then nodded.

They were loading Sam into the ambulance. I climbed in after her, and nobody stopped me. The inside was bright and it smelled faintly like antiseptic. But my entire focus was on the monitor connected to Sam that was beeping—each beep proof that her heart was still beating. I collapsed on the seat and grabbed her hand, ignoring the slight sting in my palm. My pain didn’t matter right now. The only thing that mattered was her.

The EMT was working on Sam, checking things, calling out numbers to her partner. I caught fragments. Stable. Reactive. Good sign. I held on to those words with a death grip.