Come on, Dani. Be my hero. I’ll make it worth your while.
I believed in her. If anyone could make it out alive, it would be scrappy Dani Malone, a woman who wasn’t afraid to be brave in a world that had, very recently, tried to claim her. There really was no better advocate. If Dani made it out of this parking garage, I knew she’d be tirelessly campaigning for my release, using that mouth of hers for good, not evil.
I dozed on and off, and each time I awakened, I could feel my deterioration. Weakness was setting in. I was cold. I was hot. I was in pain. I was not. The ‘not’ part came later as numbness set in. It was then I started really considering my fate. I was slowly dying. It wasn’t the way I’d thought it would be. So sad. So lonely. The unfairness of it all. I wanted to live, but the decision was no longer up to me.
It was after one of these wakeups that the anger set in, and I raged at the world, screaming at the top of my lungs to be saved.
But no one ever came.
12
Dani: To the Rescue
Like a soldier evading capture, I zigzagged my way to the hole in the ground, expecting at any moment that I’d be struck down by enemy fire. But there was no chase. No bullets ringing out through the night. No voices calling me back. The reality was that no one even saw me bolt past the barriers. Maybe I wanted the intervention, someone to talk some sense into me. But no. Jeremy had tried that, and it hadn’t worked.
Arriving at the opening in the ground that I’d escaped from earlier in the day, I stood there a moment contemplating my decision. I was willingly going back into a place of death and destruction—for him.
This wasn’t me at all. I was sensible—usually—and smart. I did not lean on men to set my world straight. So why now? Why him? Why was I risking everything to give a man I barely knew a chance at life? And RJ Contreras, of all people. He wasn’t exactly known as a salt-of-the-earth kind of guy. RJ had a reputation that preceded him, one that would have pursed my mother’s lips like she’d chewed and gagged down an entire lemon piece by piece.
My mother. The things I’d done today… Oh, man, she could never know. I’d never hear the end of it, in life or death. I could almost hear her speaking at my funeral. Dani got her dumbness from her father’s side of the family.
Disappointing my mother in death seemed an acceptable way to go, so I dropped to my knees and prepared to insert myself back into the earth. First things first. I pushed the two water containers through the hole I’d climbed out of earlier and watched them slide down the dirt slope, fortunately staying intact on the way down. Easing the straps off my shoulders, I tried the same easy-does-it approach with the backpack only to discover that you can’t shove a monstrously overstuffed bag through a narrow hole. After heaving and ho-ing to no avail, I tried a new approach. Getting back to my feet, I sat down heavily on the bag, my full weight enough to tip the scales and send the backpack through the hole. I didn’t have time to celebrate because as my bag went through, so did I. Unlike the graceful descent the water jugs took, mine was a tumble for the comic books. Caught up in a dirt avalanche, I somersaulted head over foot all the way to the ground, landing with a thud at the bottom of a debris pile as a meteor shower of concrete and hell rained down on me.
Stunned, I took the briefest moment to gather my wits before grabbing my flashlight and directing the light upward.
I gasped. Instead of a small opening in the ground, the narrow portal was now a cavernous crater, steep and unstable. There was no ridge to climb anymore, no way for me to get out on my own. The next time I would see the light of day would be with the rescue unit, just like RJ.
I rose to my feet, shaking the dust from my hair and tried not to dwell on my own personal survival statistics because I knew they were decreasing with every passing minute. And it didn’t help that it was so dark. Even with the flashlight leading the way, I was turned around, unsure which direction to go.
“RJ?” I called out.
No answer. I called again and again. Nothing. He couldn’t be…? No. I refused to believe that RJ had succumbed to his injuries because everything I knew about that man said he wasn’t going to let go without a fight. Unless he had already fought… and lost.
At that very moment, the silhouette of my mangled car came into view, illuminated by the beam of my flashlight, and I saw RJ right where I’d left him, only now he was slumped over, his head hanging limply and pressed into the ground.
“RJ?” I whispered, falling to my knees and lifting his heavy head with my hands. He was hot to the touch. “It’s me.”
He wasn’t just sleeping; RJ was semiconscious. I shook his head from side to side, calling his name, but when that didn’t wake him, I took to slapping his whiskered face.
“Wake up, RJ! Come on. Wake up.”
I felt him jerk in my hands, his head bobbing around as he blinked into the bright light. “Dani?”
“Yes, it’s me. I was so worried,” I said, refraining from kissing him in relief as my fingers slid over his face. “You don’t look good. You’re burning up.”
RJ pawed at his sweat-drenched shirt, seeming confused. Then without warning, he grasped the bottom hem of the shirt and pulled it right over his head.
“Oh!” I rocked back in surprise. “Okay. We’re taking the shirt off.”
“Hot,” he mumbled, the one-word sentence appearing to be his only means of coherent speech.
“Yes, you are,” I said, then stopped myself, knowing how that might have sounded. “I meant temperature-wise, not… um… never mind.”
Thankfully, RJ was too miserable to follow along with the train wreck that was my mind. I placed the back of my hand to his forehead. “You have a fever. How long have you been feeling like this?”
RJ held up random fingers—for no apparent reason.
“Okay,” I answered, a hint of a smile passing over my lips. “Let’s try this a different way.”
Nursing my injured arm, I gingerly pulled the heaving backpack off my shoulders and dropped it to the ground. Reaching inside, I pulled out a tin cup and poured some of the jug water into it before dumping it over his head.
RJ instantly revived, shaking the water droplets from his long hair. “The fuck?”
His head shot up, and he settled his gaze on me.
I waved. “Hey there. I’m back.”
He blinked, wiping the liquid from his eyes. The dust mixed with water created a sort of paste on his face.
Reaching into my backpack, I pulled out a lantern and a pack of batteries. While RJ watched wordlessly, I popped the batteries into the compartment and flicked the switch, illuminating the space around us.
“There. That’s better.”
RJ’s eyes blinked rapidly, as if his fever-ravaged brain tried desperately to catch up. I had a cure for that too. From the first aid kit, I scored a sample packet of Tylenol and tore it open.
“Here, take these,” I said, handing him the two tiny pills while pressing the cup of water to his lips. “Drink up.”
RJ was as obedient as one of my little first graders. The only difference between them being that RJ actually knew how to swallow a pill. I refilled the cup three times before he’d had his fill. And while I took a drink for myself, I noticed him staring.