Under the Midnight Stars (18 page)

“I don’t know, but I’m not gonna sit here and wait to find out.” Colt headed back to his truck. If Roger wasn’t at the bar, then Brielle surely wasn’t safe at the bar. Knowing her, she’d march right inside to find her father if he didn’t answer his phone.

“I’m coming with you.” Jack caught up to Colt and climbed into the truck. Colt revved the engine and quickly backed out of the long drive. Then he sped down the dark road toward town.

About halfway to town, Colt rounded a corner and saw two bands of light pointing upwards across the road — headlights.

“It’s an accident!” Jack said anxiously.

“Son of a bitch!” Colt exclaimed as dread engulfed him. He couldn’t breathe. He knew it was Brielle.

“Please don’t be her, please don’t be her,” Jack chanted with fear in his voice.

As they grew closer, they saw Brielle’s car sideways in the ditch. It was engulfed in a thick cloud of dust and a plume of smoke billowed from under the hood. Roger’s truck lay upside down in the field just beyond the ditch.

“Oh God! He drove himself home! No no noooo!” Jack exclaimed in horror. With shaky hands he snatched his cell from his pocket and pressed two on his speed dial.

Colt brought his truck to a screeching halt and jumped out. He sprinted to Brielle’s car and looked in through her shattered window.

Brielle’s motionless body was slumped forward. Blood trickled down the side of her face.

“Oh my God, no! Please no!” Colt said shakily, fearing the worst. With all his strength he tried to open her door, but the huge dent made it impossible to budge. He tried the back door, but it was also stuck. The other two doors were blocked by the ditch. “Shit!” He started to panic.

Jack sprinted to the car with a tire iron in one hand, and a long plywood scrap in the other. “Take this!” He ordered as he tossed the plywood to Colt. Then he smashed the back window of his sister’s car with the tire iron. He climbed through the window, ignoring the crunching of broken glass under his hands and knees, and made his way to his sister’s limp body.

“Please be alive,” he begged anxiously. He carefully placed his cheek to her mouth. “Good girl,” he said shakily with relief.

Jack quickly unbuckled her seatbelt and worked his hand between the door and the seat. “Dammit, I can’t lower the seat back. My hand’s stuck on something sharp.” He winced.

Colt eyed the smoke pluming from under the hood. “You have to hurry!”

With his hand still wedged in between Brielle’s seat and the door, Jack sucked in a deep breath and clenched his jaw. “Ugh!” he moaned in pain.

“What’s going on?” Colt asked anxiously.

Jack shook his head. Within a matter of seconds Brielle’s seat was laid back. As Jack carefully withdrew his hand, he groaned painfully through clenched teeth. He briefly held it up to inspect it. Blood oozed from a large gash on the top of his hand and dripped down his fingers.

“Shit — your hand!” Colt said incredulously as blood pooled from the wound.

Paying no more attention to his gouged hand, Jack reached over and pressed the lever on the side of the passenger’s seat to lay it back. Then he climbed onto the seat. “Give me the board!” he shouted to Colt.

Smoke filled the inside of the car. It was only a matter of time before it ignited.

Colt quickly handed Jack the board then climbed onto the trunk and wedged his body in halfway, eagerly ready to assist Jack.

Coughing as the smoked burned his lungs, Jack carefully, quickly, worked his arms under Brielle’s body while Colt reached in through the broken window to support her neck. Swiftly, Jack slid her onto the board he’d wedged between the seats. He nodded to Colt. “Pull her out!”

With one hand on either side of the board, and Jack supporting her neck, Colt effortlessly withdrew her from the car as he simultaneously shimmied himself from the trunk of the car to his feet.

Flames shot out from under the hood.

“Dammit! It’s lit!” Colt shouted as he held one end of the makeshift stretcher steady, the other supported by the trunk.

Jack climbed out of the back window. As soon as his boots touched the ground he grabbed the other end of the stretcher. Together, they rushed her body to the back of Colt’s truck and carefully set her down, shoving scrap pieces of wood and debris out of the way.

“Brielle, baby,” Colt said shakily, placing both hands on either sides of her bloody face. “Please God,” he whispered, “please don’t let her die. Please don’t take her yet.”

“She’s alive! Come on!” Jack ordered as he sprinted to the upside-down truck with another wooden board in hand. The faint sounds of sirens were quickly approaching.

With trembling hands and a pounding heart, Colt swallowed back his tears and followed Jack’s lead.

Colt sat in the chair and watched as the doctor finished sewing the gash on Jack’s hand. Visions of the accident flooded Colt’s thoughts. He recalled running to the truck, only to find it empty. Roger had been thrown free and somehow the crumpled truck had landed on top of him. When they’d finally lifted the twisted heap from his bloody, unconscious body, he was clinging to life … Colt shook the horrifying image from his mind.

The doctor placed a bandage on Jack’s hand. He was opening his mouth to speak when another doctor entered the room.

Colt and Jack both jumped to their feet, anxious to hear of Roger’s condition.

The doctor shook his head regretfully. “I’m sorry. We did all we could to save him. There was just too much internal trauma.”

In a daze, Jack eased himself back onto the bed. Body trembling, he shook his head and slumped forward, burying his face in his hands as he broke down sobbing. With each sob came a forceful groan… His hat fell to the floor…

Colt clenched his jaw and pursed his lips, trying to suppress his tears as a wave of sorrow flooded through him. He sat next to Jack on the bed and pulled him to his chest, consoling him wholeheartedly, as if he were comforting his own brother.

The doctor who had just stitched Jack’s hand picked up the hat and set it on the chair. Then both doctors exited quietly.

Brielle groggily fluttered her eyes open, squinting at the bright fluorescent light above. She placed a hand up to shield them, but was stopped short by a tug at her arm. Focusing in, she saw the intravenous drip attached to her arm. “Uh.” She started to panic as she glanced at her surroundings, realizing she was in a hospital room.

Colt and Jack were sitting in the two chairs along the opposite wall, both fast asleep with their hats pulled down low over their faces.

Brielle started to cry, not having the faintest idea of what had happened. “Colt? Jack? What happened?” She sucked in a ragged fearful breath.

They immediately sat up and tipped their hats back, staring at her in disbelief. Colt rushed to the right side of her bed, Jack to the other.

“Brielle, thank God you’re awake.” Colt tried to smile, but his eyes reflected only pain. He carefully took her hand in his and kissed the back of it. “You’ve been in an accident.”

“What?” she gasped.

Colt smoothed back the hair on her forehead. “You were unconscious throughout the night. You have two cracked ribs, and had to have stitches on your left thigh. Other than that, and a few bumps and bruises, there isn’t any serious damage.”

“How do you feel?” Jack asked anxiously. He pressed the red button attached to the side of her bed, silently calling the nurse.

Brielle’s throat was parched and every muscle in her body ached. “I feel like I was hit by a truuu…”

Her voice trailed off as she remembered seeing her father’s headlights coming straight for her. Then the lights disappeared as he turned sharply, causing the tail end of his truck to slam into her side of the car before everything went black.

A chill ran down her spine. She tried to sit up but was stopped short by the knife-piercing pain in her side, sucking the air from her lungs.

“Just lay back, Brielle. You have two cracked ribs.” Colt placed a gentle hand on her shoulder to keep her in place.

“I remember!” she exclaimed fearfully. She looked at Jack. “Where’s Dad? I remember he hit me! Where is he? Is he okay?”

Jack pursed his lips together and shook his head. Tears filled his eyes and rolled down his cheeks.

She was confused. “What?” she asked anxiously. “What, Jack? Is he in a coma or something? Paralyzed?”

He looked down, staring into oblivion as his tears hit the bedrail and trickled away.

“Brielle, baby,” Colt whispered, his voice filled with anguish.

She looked at him with dread, frowning. Her tears distorted him out of focus.

Colt cleared his throat in an attempt to suppress his own tears, but they fell anyway. “He didn’t make it. I’m so sorry.”

She shook her head as anguish and despair enveloped her. “Noooo! Ahhh, nooooo!” She covered her face with her hands and began to sob uncontrollably.

She no longer noticed the searing pain in her side, or the nurses who charged in and shooed Colt and Jack aside to read her vitals and inject a sedative into her drip. Or that Jack had broken down all over again, and was sitting in a heap on the floor with his back against the wall, his hat over his face, trying his damndest to hide his tears and his pain. Or that Colt now stood at the foot of the bed, hands in pockets, shedding tears of his own, feeling utterly helpless. All that existed in her broken world was the black hole in her chest where her heart had once been, filled with the devastating ache of emptiness and longing for someone that she loved more than life, but would never see again.

The funeral had come and gone like a blur of a nightmare. Half the town had come to offer their condolences and say good-bye. But it all seemed unreal to Brielle and Jack, as if they had been watching from a distance.

Familiar faces had appeared before them, offering kind words of sorrow. But all of the faces and voices had just blended together in a fog before being whisked away with the whooshing of the wind, as they stared blankly at their father’s wooden casket being lowered into the ground next to their mother’s grave.

Traditionally, after a funeral, friends and family would gather at the home of the deceased to offer their comfort and heartfelt remembrances. But not this time. Brielle and Jack wanted nothing to do with such an event. They simply wanted to go home and long for their departed parents in peace. And that’s just what they did.

Colt drove Brielle and Jack home from the funeral. He pulled up in front of their lonely ranch and followed them inside.

Standing in the foyer, Jack loosened his necktie and unbuttoned the top buttons of his dress shirt. “Well y’all, I’m gonna change outta these clothes and go split that pile of wood I’ve been meaning to split for a while.”

Brielle sniffed and wiped her cheeks dry with the balled-up tissue she’d clenched in the palm of her hand since the funeral. “What? You’re gonna go chop wood?
Now?
”

She didn’t know why it bothered her so much that he healed his pain by being productive. When their mother had died he’d spent every day of the entire month rebuilding the tattered fence surrounding the property. When he had finished, the entire pasture portion of the property, and the long driveway, were lined with new white fence boards. She wished her mother had been able to see it.

“That’s exactly what I’m gonna do, Brielle.” He sighed heavily and trudged up the stairs.

Brielle turned to Colt. “I don’t know how he makes it seem so simple.” She sucked in a ragged breath, trying with all her might to suppress the pain.

He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to his chest. “It isn’t easy for him, Brielle. It’s just his way of dealing with the pain. It helps him to focus on something else.”

She nodded and cried into his chest. “I just need to lie down and sleep,” she whispered, her voice sodden with exhaustion and despair.

Carefully, Colt scooped her into his arms and carried her upstairs to her room. He gently laid her on her queen-sized bed and then lay down facing her. Avoiding her cracked ribs, he gently rested an arm across her hip to caress her back. “Just rest, baby,” he whispered soothingly. “Just rest…”

Brielle closed her heavy eyes for what seemed to be a few seconds. To her surprise, it was dark out when she opened them again. Finding herself alone in her room, she carefully made her way downstairs. Though all was healing nicely, the wound in her left thigh still pained her enough to cause a limp. But limping was better than the wheelchair she had been sent home with for the first couple of days.