Hysterical strength was a common urban legend. In moments of distress, someone somewhere overcame their limits to do the insurmountable. Like lifting a car off someone pinned underneath; that was a story I'd heard more times than I could remember.
Scientists could tell you, even in moments of extreme exertion, the most professionally trained of athletes might only harness 80 percent of their theoretical strength. Emphasis on might and theoretical; now let’s focus on the first part. Imagine if you could tap that 80 percent every time you needed it. Not only that; say if you could do it without the drawback of tearing muscle tissue, rupturing ligaments, snapping tendons and breaking bones—how much of a difference would it have made?
When the world staggered and appeared as though time was moving in slow motion I recognized I’d become one of those edge cases. I tore up the embankment heedless of the grass slippery underfoot. There was a car still coming down the highway― no one had put up warning triangles for the accident yet . I saw it before the driver saw me in the fog.
Were I the same person from one month ago, I wouldn’t have made it this far under one second. And neither would I have been able to time it so I could vault over the hood of the speeding car before it collided with me. Thankfully my antics did not cause another casualty from the brief interaction.
The smell of burning rubber and petrol hit me as soon as I had the ground back beneath my feet. Cass’ car had been hit from the passenger’s side on the left while the container rear ended it from the roof, effectively flattening and shearing half of the double cabin. One truck driver was pulling themselves out of the wreckage while the other was still knocked out.
I could not see Cass from where I was but she would have been hard pressed to make it out of her vehicle were she conscious. The airbags had safely deployed which I’d been counting on as I again jumped over the car hood, the engine was starting to smoke and its proximity to the semi’s fuel tank did not bode well. As soon as I was on the other side I checked Cass’s position. The door was mangled from the back, a few more lengths and it would have shorn clean through the cab and killed her before she even knew what happened.
I grit my teeth as I punched straight through the tinted glass to unlock the door’s mechanism. I popped the door lock and tore away the pane of glass. Thanks to the tinting film it didn’t come out in bits and pieces. I saw Cassandra slumped over the wheel’s airbag, blood was weeping from between her hairline and some from the corner of her lips. Telling whether she was still breathing from a cursory glance was difficult from my angle.
I stamped down the fear thats she might have had internal bleeding and repressed my urge to immediately reach for her while I unbuckled her seatbelt. Pulling her out through the window was just asking to cause unforeseen damage if her spine was in a bad place which meant I had to get the door. Rather than running around like a headless chicken to look for a prying bar , I used unfettered human strength.
My muscles grew taut as my fingers found purchase on the door’s interior padding. I didn’t notice the scarlet bar already down two strokes, nor the blue bar flashing more vividly as I grabbed the door and heaved. Mangled metal screamed and groaned, my chest felt hot as I leveraged the muscles in my pectorals―the door had been crushed too badly. It didn’t budge outright but I could hear something tearing inside of it.
I grinned the manic grin of someone who got something going their way―once way or another I was getting my friend’s girlfriend out. By the Jovian moons, I could not bring myself to imagine the sunny knight losing their dame. I wasn’t doing this for myself―but cue the world and fate being a fickle mistress.
The engine burst into flame―something dropped into the pit of my stomach as the blaze blossomed orange in the immediate vicinity. I think that is what spurred me to dig deeper, to ransom Cassandra from the claws of death. One stroke of my blue bar flickered out; the sound of metal crunching over my fingers was oh so sweet to my ears as the door lost its hinges and clanged to the side. I heard Lucas shouting and the clamor of people from the other side.
Despite the escalating heat, there were no two ways about this; I had to keep my cool. Fear and pain were merely distractions so gingerly, I got Cassandra into my arms.
I made sure to support her torso with my upper body while bracing her head against the crook of my neck. It was awkward but I did it, all the while supporting the lower side through the back of her thighs. Cassandra was still warm―but my job wasn’t done yet.
As I made my way down the embankment on the other side, I hadn’t made it far when the fire had started smoking into the double cabin. At that moment, something crossed my mind as I cradled her against my person.
Cassandra had never been so small and yet so vulnerable in her limp form. She didn’t have what I had so, when her car exploded, I was immediately hunched over her giving my back in sacrifice to the wrath of fire.
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Hunched over, that moment felt like eternity. I clenched my jaw hard enough I could hear the grinding of teeth. While much of the mushrooming explosion had bloomed outwards and upwards, the vestiges of flame were still hot enough to lick the skin off my back
I watched two more strokes blink out and one more start declining pixel by pixel until half of it remained. When it did stop, the symbol to the immediate left was pulsing an angry scarlet.
“Sir! sir!” someone was yelling into my whining ears. I drew up my head to face a woman in paramedic's gear. Sirens were wailing seemingly so far and yet so near. Blues and reds flashed in the fog and radio chatter fuzzed and ensued in staccato as the highway patrol directed traffic. Then all sound came back, slamming into me like a wave—I didn't flinch.
“Ambulanz?,” I rasped—The fire must have robbed the nearby air of moisture. I could see the mist rolling back to fill the vacuum. The woman nodded and furtively pulled at the sleeves of my jacket. She was careful enough not to agitate the back of my hands but she had no idea that I could barely feel a thing.
I bet I looked like some rares right then—something sure smelled good despite the smoke. I was just delirious that I welcomed the relief of cold morning air nipping at the raw skin on my back.
I walked towards the embankments on autopilot. A male paramedic came down while another watched from the gurney. He made it as if to take Cassandra from me—I almost wanted to possessively keep her from him for fear she'd slip away if she strayed any further from my hands.
I recognized that I was in shock— the plaintive eyes of the female paramedic who'd come down were enough to cut through the fugue as she whispered reassurances. Then I allowed Cass to be taken and watched her being carted away from me with a rebreather strapped to her face.
They checked her vitals, checked eye dilation—I caught snatches of conversation as they strapped her down. Before they lifted her into the ambulance, they put a neck brace on her. I didn't even realize the female paramedic had also led me into the same ambulance until I sat down on the other side.
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The doors closed, shutting out the shrill sound of sirens to an indistinct pulsing wails. A prick from an IV drip brought my focus to the fore.
“Ouch!” I jumped as I stared balefully at the paramedic—she flicked my forehead.
“What was that for?” I whined soothing the bridge of my brow.
“Seriously?” She gave me a one-arched brow as she looked between her colleagues and me.
“ Of all the things and this is the one you react to? You were not paying attention ” she chastened as her blue eyes bore into me. “ Do you have a diagnosis of hypoesthesia?” she said, taking a diagnostic penlight from her pockets to check my eyes. Shaking my head I flinched away from her prodding and wondered why she even bothered. I wasn't even in pain.
“Quit trying to look so macho, I'm not impressed,” she shook her head. “ When the adrenaline wears off, you'll be in for a world of pain,” she added, riffling for something in medkit. I stole a glance over at Cassandra—I would have thought she was sleeping if not for the neck brace and the bandage wrapped around her head. Thankfully she no longer seemed to be bleeding internally or otherwise.
“Don't worry about her, she's safe for now—” the paramedic added, flicking a syringe before unceremoniously grabbing my arm and pricking me with it. I hissed at the jab as morphine hit my system. I couldn’t help but peek at the stat bar at the corner of my eye, stat bar , I think I would roll with that―the sixth scarlet stroke was refilling at a snail's pace.
I sighed tiredly as I surrendered myself to the paramedic’s ministrations. She had to cut my hoodie and shirt open to tend to the burns on my back, frowning when I didn’t as much as wince away from her but she thought nothing of it.
Though I’d never looked at a woman since my last relationship, I thought she looked pretty in her uniform, bright as the neon jacket was. She kept flicking the fringe away from her face as she worked; she had salt and pepper hair in a bob.
It made her look mature despite her youth and dimples would show whenever she pursed her lips. I think she had the most dextrous hands I’ve ever seen at work as she delicately applied aloe cream―I almost moaned in relief. By the time she was getting to wrapping the dressing around my chest I think I was too drowsy to be embarrassed about being self conscious.
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“Hey, handsome—” I felt tapping on my cheeks. “ Wake up—” I blinked and met the blue irises of the unnamed paramedic.
“You'll have to give me a name else I might start calling you hey pretty,” I murmured trying to acclimate to the new scene of gurney wheels rattling across the pavement. I missed the flush on the paramedic's cheeks as she sputtered before rolling her eyes exasperatedly. Cass was already half-way through the ER's sliding doors when the haze finally evaporated from my head—I was coming to hate drugs.
“...lotte,”
“Whuh?” I mumbled, worrying my lip to get rid of the dryness.
“ I said my name is Charlotte, but you can call me Lotte—Now shall we go?”
“Ah, sorry,” I said, stumbling after her. I hissed as my back smarted; it felt like fire ants had a baby with an itch I couldn't scratch. Holding my IV drip while holding the remnants of my clothes was becoming cumbersome.
“Haha, serves you right—,” she giggled walking ahead of me so she could sign me in. I was carrying the remnants of my clothing in my hands, guess there was no wearing those now. A police officer standing at the door gave me a look—and shook his head wrly before calling on his walkie talkie.
“ Ah…I'm I going to be booked for indecent exposure am I?” I asked referring to my state of undress. The officer barely gave us another passing glance as he returned to acting non-chalant.
“ Nah—,” Lotte refuted with a wave of her hand. “ On second thought,” she said, looking from her jacket to mine.
“ Hold on—wait at the reception desk while I get you something to cover up. Wouldn't want you catching a cold would we?” She winked as she broke away heading to heaven knew where.
I was left by myself at the front-desk, subjected to ogling from a bevy of nurses on duty who'd seen me come in. The ER was still receiving casualties—our ambulance must have been the first to arrive.
Others were pulling up right outside and getting people wheeled in and and away to whichever part of the hospital tended to them. They were mostly minor to moderate injuries—I was wondering what happened to the other truck driver when something buzzed in the hoodie's kangaroo pockets.
' Crap—forgot Lu's phone,’ I swore, fumbling to retrieve it. It was an unknown number but I just picked it right up.
“Hello?”
“Bruv! What the hell man—what were you thinking?! Fuck!”
I had to hold the phone at arm's length with the speaker muffled as a slew of expletives spewed forth.
“Are you done?” I groaned. Now everyone was giving me all kind of looks, the nurses at the front deck were giving me looks of second hand embarrassment.
“I just—can't with you,” Lucas grumbled. “ How am I supposed to live with myself If I lost two people on the same day?”
“You know I'm sturdier than that,” I winced, feeling the throb of phantom pain on my back. “ K! We don't know that…guess what?!”
“What?” I said, walking to one of the seats. I lowered my voice to almost a whisper when the head nurse gave me the stink-eye.
“You're all over TV you fool!”
“ Ah,”
“Yeah—ah!” he aped. “ I'm on my way—whatever you do, do not start lifting cars; also you might wanna find someplace to hole up or prepare yourself to be mobbed—driving. See you there,”
The line dropped. I swore he'd almost spat out the last part of the call. He was angry at something but what? I needed to get the paperwork done so I could go see Cass. So many things to think about and I didn't have a spare brain for a sounding board. Then I remembered something and I froze—the ship!
‘Gah!’ I wanted to claw my hair out—or get a haircut. I'd singed some hair at the back of my head. ’ One thing at a time Ryan’ I exhaled, recentering myself. ’ Lu said something about me being on TV—again. I could feel a headache coming; I should have dug my heels in and refused to go on that vacation.
“Hey,” Lotte said, rousing me from my funk.
“Hey,” I replied, drawing up to meet her. If she noticed my morose expression she didn't show it. Either way, she'd come back with a trenchcoat in hand—I gave her a one arched brow. “Lost and Found had this, it's laundered—”she shrugged as if it explained everything. Now I was going to look like some vigilante with a trenchcoat—I know we had mild summers but it was still summer!
Regardless, I let her put the trench coat on me, noticing how stiff my palm was where I'd punched the glass. She’d slapped two Band-Aids on it. Lotte noticed what I was doing and chuckled saying, “ Maybe I was wrong after all…Smallville—”
I rolled my eyes at the appellation and let her drag me to the front desk where she talked to some colleagues. She wrote down my details as I gave them my ID, sneaking glances at me while she did. I didn't know whether she meant that to be flirtatious or she was just curious but I thought it was the latter.
“ So, mister Ryan O'ciaran,” I suppressed a grimace. I didn't like my birth name much, also Kieran started as a joke and somewhere along the line it just stuck. “ We've got everything out of the way—I've been told here that you made a call so I think we've covered all the bases—the nurses will take over from here ta-ta,” she said bowing out.
She left me with an exuberant star-struck nurse who was barely out of her residency. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?