Author's Note: (It might just be true that I like Carnival of Thrills a bit too much. This is exhibit… D? in the prosecution's case.)

This one started out as: what if Bo had attempted the Leap for Life stunt on his own, and what if he had failed? It got turned over in my mind a half a hundred times, and bounced off of Mirthless Laughter and HazzardHusker (thanks to you both for your patience) a half a hundred more until it settled into this:

What if the carnival went to Hazzard before it went to Cedar City? What if the sequence of those two shows was reversed, so the Dukes never saw another driver crash while attempting the stunt? How would that change the way the plot line proceeded?

The answer that came through this story seemed to be, some things stayed exactly the same, but a lot of them changed. Luke was still opposed to Bo doing the jump, but he didn't get the support of the rest of the family in trying to talk him out of it. Zimbra did show up, but he did not enter the story line at the usual place because this was only the third attempt to complete the jump, not the fourth. Luke and Bo did not make up (heck, Luke wasn't even in the right place to be made up with) and Bo attempted the jump on his own, impaired General and all.

And that's where our story picks up, so I'll stop blabbering and leave it to tell itself from here…

"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places."
— Ernest Hemingway

1. Sedated

Roar and rumble, vibrating from his toes to his helmet, adrenalin coursing through until every part of him wants to take flight, heart quickening to match the rhythm of the General's engine. Breath trying to stay slow and steady but suddenly shallow as he sees that slender thumb come up in the distance through the curve of the windshield, and she's beautiful when the wind blows her hair into a halo around her face. But there's no room for those kinds of distracting thoughts, so he clears his mind and reaches a hand out the window into the bright-hot sunshine, and lifts his own thumb to mirror hers.

Just him (and the butterflies swooping across his belly) in the car, nothing to hear but the growl of the engine as he presses his foot down on the accelerator but doesn't let up on the clutch, not yet. One more, deep, steadying breath of air that tastes of exhaust and grease, does more to sicken him than settle him down. Focusing on the ramp, black and white with its centerline red arrow, feeling his body and the General's engine become one again. Relaxing because this is easy, this is nothing at all, he can jump higher and farther than he's being asked to now. Hell, he's the best driver in three counties and—

Right foot down, left foot up and the wind gusts through his open windows like the bass drum at a Fourth of July parade, trees and cars on either side of him moving too fast to think about, red arrow the only thing that matters now. Fingers tight around the steering wheel, growl and snarl, gust and blow and sputter (sputter?), zebra stripes and the memory of Diane's kisses, the promise of more, clank and rattle, momentum changing as he starts to ascend, soon he'll be flying, (sputter? hesitation?) pale blue of the sky with thin clouds whiter than Boss Hogg's coat, restraints tight around his body, (sputter? cough? wheeze—) smell of gasoline, too-late-now, lift and float, tipping too soon, heat and smoke, the scream of bending metal, impact, ouch-ouch-ouch, flame (flame?) and heat, not-looking, not-looking, but the pavement's got to be coming up to meet him and the General awfully quick. A terrible rending cry that might be him or might be the General and there's nothing to see anyway. The smoke's too thick. (Smoke?)

"Is he all right?" Diane's voice in a near shriek carrying through the PA system over the tinkle of breaking glass, and, "Bo! Bo! Bo!" a lot closer, not amplified. "Release your restraints." Real or just a memory, an instruction learned by rote?

Screaming, like the engine of an airplane, hiss and it's like trying to breathe in quicksand. His lungs hurt, his chest, his hand and ow-ow-ow everything else, but he thinks he has managed to unbuckle his restraints.

"Are you okay?"

"Can you hear me?"

"Can you move?"

A cacophony coming at him too thick and fast to answer. Hard to know what he is, where he is, what he can do when his head's ringing and everything is the smell of burning and gasoline, and this is what it's like to die—

"Bo," one voice, louder than all the rest, and yet somehow gentle. Kinder than it's been in days, not calling him an idiot or insinuating nasty things about his girlfriend. "You're going to be all right." Luke, close and safe and strong. "It's going to be okay."

Just that and he knows it's all right now to let go and let the darkness close in and overtake him.

Damn the Carnival of Thrills for coming to Hazzard, damn Diane Benson for her predatory ways, damn Bo for being so easily swayed—

(No, not that last one. There's no room for that anymore.)

You need to count ten, Jesse always used to tell him. You need to control yourself, you need to take a step back.

Maybe he hadn't understood it as a ten-year-old who didn't know his own strength. Didn't know about anything except wounded pride and his own misery, the unjustness of a world that left him without mother, father or brother, that let a little brat like Hughie Hogg have both money and parents and still be a miserable wretch. Took a lot of years and a few nasty drill instructors to set him straight on all of that.

He's got to take a step back from the twitchers and criers, from the pacers and from Jesse and Daisy who have been doing a little bit of all those things and are now sitting in the brightly colored and oddly shaped, hard-plastic chairs. Luke's arms folded across his chest and trying to look away from the waves of anxiety that roll through the large room like an endless ocean of freshly shed tears. He wonders, as he looks up at the round clock that he'd swear is broken or at least running very slow, where the new fathers are, whether they keep the families expecting good news away from those that have brought in kin that's broken, bleeding, unconscious.

(Enough of that.)

Tri-County never has been much of a hospital, heck, he saw field hospitals erected next to rice paddies that were more substantial. Still, it could play the game better, could look a lot less like a children's playroom with thick orange carpet and mustard-yellow walls, nurse's desks in shades of rust and brown. White is a perfectly reasonable color for a medical waiting room, clean and antiseptic and at least then he wouldn't have to worry about what manner of germs are lurking in the yellow drapes that don't quite match the walls, just waiting to infect Bo, to get into his wounds and—

God, he'd looked awful. Blood from his leg, white of bone jutting through ragged skin. Ashen and breathing shallowly like something inside of him hurt even through the veils of unconsciousness. Parts of him at strange angles to other parts and the paramedics had been efficient if not exactly kind. They'd resisted Luke's presence, both as they loaded Bo onto the stretcher and as they'd tried to close the ambulance doors with him on the outside, but he'd been immovable, solid and insistent, which had gotten him a ride to the hospital alongside Bo. Not that it had mattered. His cousin was out, stayed out from the moment Luke and one of the carnival's crewmen pulled him from the cockpit of the still-smoking General, right up until he was driven up to the glass doors of the emergency room, unheard sirens whistling overhead, then wheeled through and right on past the limits of where Luke could go. A trio of security guards managed what the paramedics before them had failed to do, and Bo got taken into the depths of the hospital, where Luke couldn't follow.

(He should have been in the car with Bo. Bo shouldn't ever have been in the car at all.)

His hands had gone up in surrender, keeping him from being thrown out of the hospital altogether, and the most sympathetic of the security guards had pointed a gruff finger at the admittance desk, turning Luke loose on the unsuspecting workers there. Two women, each looking as prim and defenseless as the next, but they'd held their ground well enough, insisting that they couldn't even talk to him until he'd filled out this form and that one and ten others besides. Over there, sir, not standing in front of our desk.

Somewhere along the line, Jesse and Daisy had made it here. Could have been five minutes after Luke was handed the forms, or five hours. (Probably a lot closer to the former; they would have had to find the jeep and get disentangled from the traffic of carnival-goers disappointedly heading home, but they wouldn't have wasted any time getting here.) Jesse had asked him what was happening, gotten a shrug of an answer and handed the clipboards of blank forms. He'd glowered at Luke and set to work filling them out. Daisy had gripped Luke's arm, dropped her head onto his chest and started to cry. He might have patted her back once or twice out of a lifetime habit, but he can't swear now that he actually comforted her any. Consolation and kindness came later, when Cooter showed up and took her into his arms.

Jesse's been up to the desk a few times since, asking for updates (and getting none), but otherwise there's been a whole lot of nothing but ugly walls to look at, ugly thoughts to think.

Eventually Doc Petticord moseys out through the doors – the man is old, but it seems to Luke like he could move faster all the same – and makes a beeline for Jesse. Luke moves to intercept, as though he can spare his uncle the knowledge of Bo's condition. Hell, Jesse's an old man with a tricky heart, and Luke knows what Bo looked like when he was pulled from the wreckage of the General, when he was wheeled in here after the ambulance ride. The blood, the strange angles of his body, the ashen face, the damned eyes that wouldn't open or even move under the lids. The man who raised Bo as his own doesn't need to know about all of that.

But Jesse's pretty spry for an old guy and Luke had been standing too far behind his kin to make up the ground, so they all meet in the middle for this little conference. Doc Petticord, who does weekly shifts here at the hospital (and it shouldn't be such a shock to see him), kind of ushers him and Jesse toward a quiet corner, and this gives Daisy time to join them, too. Great, the girl will be sobbing at the first word to come out of the Doc's mouth.

Then again, she manages to be quiet and attentive as the doctor, whose body seems far too frail to manage the enormity of Bo's injuries, explains one broken part of their cousin after another. It's Luke whose ears and brain aren't quite in sync with one another as his own thoughts intermingle with the Doc's words.

Introchanteric-fracture-to-the-femur (lifetime of pain), pair-of-subtrochanteric-fractures (wheelchair), internal-bleeding, threat-of-pulmonary-embolism (oh, God), compound-fracture-of-the-tibia (so much blood), surgery-possible-now-that-he's-stabilized, with-your-permission-of-course (invasion leads to infection), sternal-bruising (heart and lungs under fragile ribs), Bennett-fracture-to-left-thumb (won't even be able to propel himself in that wheelchair), concussion-bruising-helmet-saved-him (for what? A lifetime of misery and pain?). You-can-see-him-before-surgery (yes and no screaming simultaneously in his brain – the urge to see that he's alive competing with the dread of seeing, all over again, just how badly banged up he is), one-at-a-time-for-a-minute-or-two-each (standard procedure when the patient is considered too weak to handle a whole lot of stimulation).

"I'll just wait here," Cooter says, and it's only then that Luke notices that he's been hovering on the fringes of this ghastly discussion about everything that's wrong with Bo.

Jesse nods at him vaguely like it's a great idea instead of a necessity when Bo's bad enough off that only immediate family is allowed to see him anyway. "I'll go first," their uncle says, and he sounds almost as shaky as Luke feels.

Maybe he should offer some form of comfort to the man who has loved Bo since he was a screaming, red-faced infant. Except Luke's pretty sure he doesn't have any to give.

The old man trundles off in his best overalls, the ones he usually wears to church but broke out a day early so he could go to the Hazzard Fairgrounds and watch his nephew become a local star. At least that was the plan and Daisy put on a pretty dress, too.

"You go see him next," he urges Daisy as soon as Jesse's out of sight. He'd like to say he's being chivalrous, but he kind of reckons that what he's feeling is closer to cowardice.

Somewhere in those days between that joke of a road race that the carnival set up to scout a new stunt driver and the day of the carnival, someone got the Dukes three tickets to sit in the stands and watch Bo jump those thirty-two cars. Luke was so busy being angry and trying to drill sense into Bo that he didn't pay attention to whether those tickets were bought by Daisy or sent by Bo and the carnival.

Daisy looks up at him, wet-eyed, and it's only now that he realizes that those were probably the first words he's spoken to her since this morning. Back when Bo was still whole, still an idiot that Luke was mad at, back when he was refusing to attend the carnival with his kin.

It was a damn-fool stunt, he'd been saying that since the notion of it got introduced back on Tuesday morning and his mind hadn't changed about that any. He sure as hell wasn't going to just sit in the stands (even if they did have VIP tickets near the front) and watch the jump happen. Jesse barked at him to quit acting like a sore-headed brat but in the end, there was nothing the old man could do about his refusal to go to the fairgrounds with the rest of his family. They'd fixed their hair and smoothed their clothes and then Jesse and Daisy had walked out the front door. After that there was nothing but the fading echo of Dixie's motor as they drove away.

Jesse comes back down the mustard-yellow hallway, looking at Luke and nodding, like he's releasing him to go next. Raises one white eyebrow when Daisy takes a step forward first, wraps one arm around those heavy shoulders, buries her head in the folds of his neck, then lets him go to take her own trip down the hall.

"How is he?" Luke asks, even if he doesn't want to know. Even if he already knows far too much.

"Sedated," Jesse answers him quietly. Cautiously, testing Luke's waters to see if they're boiling or ice cold, and either can kill a man that's fool enough to submerge himself in them. "I appreciate," Jesse says and it's rough around the edges in the way that his uncle used to be when they were all a lot younger. Back when he seemed big and immovable, then Lavinia died and he became this other thing for a while. Tired, old, easily provoked to emotion and that's what he sounds like now. Like death has snuck up behind him and stolen another member of his family right out from under his watchful eyes. "That you was there when he needed you."

But he wasn't, and that's the thing. He'd known he couldn't be a spectator to the jump; that much had been clear in his head from the moment he'd understood that he wasn't going to be able to talk Bo out of attempting it. And some part of him had been reciting the mantra of letting the fool learn his lesson the hard way, but he hadn't meant it – at least that's what he's been telling himself when he's not obsessing about the blood, the brokenness, the damned idiocy—

(No, too late for that.)

Luke folds his arms across his chest, like he can protect himself with that little, like his brain will take the hint and stop thinking, but it's just like Bo. It won't shut up no matter how many times he tells it to.

"Luke," Jesse says, but he must know it's fruitless; he quits right there.

The idiocy, both his and Bo's. He knew that, after Jesse and Daisy left. Knew it and knew he'd been avoiding it all along. Knew that Bo wouldn't listen to him, especially not if he kept pointing out exactly how unlikely the whole scenario was – unlikely that Diane really loved him, unlikely that he could succeed at the jump when there was something wrong with the setup of a carnival looking for a last-minute stunt driver – but there were things Bo wouldn't do, even as angry as he was. So Luke had jumped into Jesse's pickup, checked his watch and tried to time himself perfectly.

The pickup – with him in it – was going to have to be the kind of deterrent that Luke's words hadn't managed to be. Bo would yell at him, he'd punch him in the face, sure, but he wouldn't deliberately ram him with the General (and even if he was mad enough at Luke to consider it, he'd never hit the pickup for fear of Jesse's wrath and a tanned hide) just to get his way. A last minute blockade, but it would take good timing to get it right – if Luke came through the access road onto the fairgrounds too early, Bo would spot him and have him removed. And if he arrived too late…

"Looks like it's your turn," Jesse finally says in some sort of acknowledgement that he started a sentence that never got finished.

"Yes, sir," he mumbles. He'd swear there are rocks tied to his legs, but he manages to lift one, then the other and somehow plods forward. Passes by Daisy as she returns to the safety of their uncle's arms. He tries not to look at her, fails, sees the tears that he already knows are going to be streaking her cheeks. Boulders chained to his legs and the carpet is so thick that it wants to swallow him up, but one-foot-in-front-of-the-other, he marches like the young Marine he once was. Going towards what a smart man would run from.

He arrived at the fairgrounds too late, that's the long and short of it. Or the carnival ran early – Bo was supposed to jump at one and Luke was sure it was still a few minutes before the hour when he skidded through the opening in the chain link fence, sliding over loose dirt as he turned toward the runway and the ramp that had been built in the middle of the arena. Saw an orange flash in front of him, the zero-one on the side of the car he and his cousin had built together blurring with movement until it was more of a big, black, gaping stripe racing from the edge of the fairgrounds toward the middle. Screamed Bo's name though he knew he'd never be heard, found traction for the pickup's tires and rumbled in the general direction of the ramp. Squinted through the dust and grit and glare on the windshield, saw the General climb, hesitate, lose some of its engine power but careen off the end of the ramp anyway. Burst into flames and by then Luke was running, no idea where he'd left the pickup, if it was still running, maybe in gear, but that wasn't important. All that mattered was getting to Bo, getting him free of the flames and twisted metal, getting him to safety.

And here Bo lies on something rigid that's a cross between a bed and a gurney. Doesn't look terribly comfortable, but Jesse's right – Bo's sedated beyond the pain, beyond response to words or touch or anything at all, beyond the point where he looks alive.

"The rod will stabilize that thigh bone," Doc Petticord informs him from where he's checking Bo's IV flow next to the bed-gurney. "Then we can set the—"

Luke lifts a hand to make him stop talking, and the old doctor nods his grizzled head in acknowledgement of what Luke doesn't quite say. "I'll leave you alone for a minute," he says. "But only that long. Then we've got to get to work."

Luke nods and looks away from the frailty of Doc's body, from the hair that he doesn't even see fit to comb and how can this man operate on Bo when he can hardly take care of his own basic needs?

(Don't, his Aunt Lavinia nags inside his head. Go judging a man by his dungarees. Dirty and ragged just means he's hard-working, clean and tidy means he's getting ready to visit the house of the Lord. One's as good as the other.)

"Bo," he mumbles when the squeak of Doc's shoes disappears into the hallway. Takes the last few steps toward his cousin (entire mountains bolted to his legs, but at least there's nothing but tile on the floor in here), reaches out a hand like he means to touch him. Stops himself, his cousin is broken in far too many places for touching to be wise. "I'm sorry," he adds. For talking too much and listening too little, for hitting Bo back when his cousin was already hurting enough to hit him first, for letting him leave home without chasing after him, for not stopping the jump in time. For failing him in every way possible.

Through the blur of wetness in his eyes, Luke can see the faint bowed smudge of lipstick on Bo's cheek. Daisy kissed him there, doesn't seem to have done him any harm. Luke's fingers trace the spot. Cool skin, smooth, soft. Too easy to bruise so he backs away, breaks contact.

"I'll make it right, Bo," he whispers, though he knows that's not possible anymore. "I'll fix it."

He turns on his heel, walks out of the room. Turns right instead of left at the door, walks away from the waiting room where Jesse and Daisy are probably sitting, telling each other it'll be okay when of course it won't. It never can be. Makes his way down the length of the ugly hallway, pushes through the emergency door. No alarm sounds when the glass door swings open in front of him, so he just keeps on going until he's out in the back edge of the parking lot where there are only one or two cars and otherwise nothingness in front of him.

No-no-no-no-no…

"There he is," swims down at him from somewhere, but no. There he's not, there he doesn't want to be.

Pain. Everywhere at once, but mostly when he breathes. If only he could not breathe, but then holding onto his breath hurts worse and besides, he lacks the concentration or energy to remember not to breathe. About all he can do is exist as quietly as possible.

"Bo? Bo? Open your eyes, boy."

No, not now. Maybe later, maybe when enough time has gone by that the pain has passed or at least lessened. When his head doesn't throb and his heart doesn't beat too hard against his ribs. When those thoughts that are trying to find themselves in his head are nothing more important than the insistent droning in the gaps between the voices. When he doesn't have to worry about what it means that his nose is filled with the smell of ammonia and bleach.

"Daisy, get the doc."

No-no-no-no-no-no. Because the pain is bad, it's awful. But it's not the reason he's been fighting against consciousness, not when there's been this other thing underneath it all. This sense that something very, very bad has happened, that he's lost more than he can bear to comprehend.

"Bo?"

He's moaning. He just realizes this and yet he's known it all along. Those sounds between his uncle's pleas for him to open his eyes, to wake up and come back to them, have been his own groans and whimpers. He's hurt worse than he ever has been before. The General's hurt; he knows that, too. He can feel it all happening again, the loss of power, the hesitation. He can see it, too, the blue sky overhead, knowing that he's got a longer jump to complete than he has momentum for. Knowing he's going to fail, seeing that blue sky turn into shiny metal below him, the ground below that, brown dirt. He can feel the heat, hear the screams.

"Luke—"

Luke's voice telling him he was going to be all right.

"There he is, he's coming around now." That's Jesse.

"Can you open your eyes, Bo?" comes that other voice, thin and worn with age. Doc Petticord.

No, opening his eyes would mean giving up the relative safety of sleep, or at least rest. The comfort of darkness, where he is not hurt and hospitalized, the General is not dead, where he hasn't disappointed all of Hazzard, where he hasn't let down—

"Diane?" he mumbles.

"Oh, sweetie," that's Daisy, a squeeze of his right hand in fingers so narrow yet strong that they've got to be hers. The hands of a farm girl.

"Open your eyes, Bo," Doc Petticord commands, and disobeying isn't getting him anywhere at this point. His memories are unwinding like a ball of yarn rolling down a hill. There's no stopping them now, as they unspool to the end. "That's good," the doc informs him when he gives in and does as he's been told. Leans close and there's the mixed smells of wood smoke and liverwurst as the narrow frame of the doctor fills the whole of his vision. Staring into his eyes, shining a light at him so brightly that Bo closes his eyes against the invasion. "Keep them open," comes the instruction, not mean but firm. Doc Petticord never has tolerated nonsense and like Uncle Jesse, he's one of the elders in the community that has license to threaten to whip anyone of any age who sasses or otherwise defies him.

"Luke," he moans again as he opens his eyes. That's the last of it – the series of memories he doesn't want to have ends with Luke's voice telling him it'll be all right.

Doc and his blinding light back up half a step. "What's your name, boy?" the old-timer snaps. Has that sound to it like the doc's asked this question before and gotten an unsatisfactory answer. Like any minute now he's going to be sent to stand in the corner and he's pretty sure he can't even sit up. Can't even be sure that he's in a room with corners to begin with. (But definitely hospital. Something, somewhere is beeping and there's the hushed sound of voices in the distance.)

"Bo," he answers back, the sound thick and heavy in his own ears. "Regard. Duke," he adds when the doc hesitates like he's waiting for more.

"What's today's date?"

"September 13, 1980?" he guesses. At least that's the last date he remembers it being. The nod from Doc Petticord seems to confirm his accuracy. Which means he can't have been sleeping for as long as it seems. Still Saturday and it's been a long one. Far too long and he'd just as soon go back to sleep now and wake up whenever all of his parts stop hurting.

"And where do you live?"

Well. That's a tough one. Up until a couple of days ago he lived with his uncle and two cousins in the farmhouse he grew up in. Since then he's kind of floated around the Hazzard Fairgrounds, mostly sleeping in Diane's recreational vehicle, but with one of his own to retreat to, if he needed private space.

He tries to decide what the right answer might be, looks over the doc's shoulder to see Jesse nodding at him. The farm it is, then.

"Old Mill Road," he says, hearing his voice slur sloppily over the words. "In Hazzard."

"Good job, boy," the old doc says, patting his hand. Funny, he can't remember Daisy letting go of it, but it's definitely the doctor's dry palm touching him now. "We'll want to keep a very close eye on him through the night," Petticord tells Jesse. Or Daisy, Bo can't be sure, but he's smart enough to know it's not him that's being spoken to. He closes his eyes. Hears words like concussion, traction, rehabilitation. Metal rod (oh, Lord) for stability, going to take time. "Are you listening to me, boy?" comes through loud and clear. Bo opens his eyes long enough to shrug. Or try to, anyway, there's a pull and pain in his left arm when he does it. More pain shoots up his arm when he tries to lift that hand so he quits. Besides, he got a good enough look by tipping his head. White cast from his elbow to his fingers. There's that annoying sound again – his own moans. He closes his eyes.

"I reckon he's had enough for now," Jesse asserts on his behalf. If he could move, he'd hug the man in gratitude.

"You may be right, Jesse," the doctor agrees. A number of thanks are uttered, along with goodbyes and see-you-soons. Bo doesn't pay too much attention through that part, just lets himself float on the sound of the voices as they drift away across the room. Jesse's, the doc's, Daisy's – he wonders, idly, where Diane is and figures that she's been kept out by hospital rules. Only immediate family, which means that Cooter can't visit him either. Just Jesse, Daisy and Luke.

"Luke?" he says, though he knows Luke's not here. He's just too tired to form it into the full question, where's Luke?

"Luke'll be here later," Jesse assures him from very close. Must be sitting right next to his ear. Or standing, hard to know when he didn't ever take a look around the room to see if there was a chair. Oh, well, he can get around to figuring exactly where he is and what's really wrong with him later. "You just get some rest."