"Did you get that advertisement in on time? I kept meaning to ask you but it kept slipping my mind," Max asked as Detta walked in.
She scrunched her face, trying to remember what month it was, let alone what day. "Yeah. I remember bringing it in when I mailed my column."
"How's that going? You seem the worse for wear since your last trip to San Francisco," he asked, noticing the bags under her eyes and her constant yawning.
"Hey, looks like the girl does own a pair of pants!" Maria called after Detta when she noticed her torn jeans.
Detta laughed. "Might as well take a picture cause this doesn't happen often. I just couldn't be bothered tonight."
"That's obvious. Your shirt's falling off," Maria said, pointing to Detta's cut-off t-shirt that she had torn the neck out of. The wide collar had managed to get halfway down her arm.
She shrugged and lifted it back up while throwing herself into the chair in the back office.
"So?" came Max's voice from the doorway.
"Huh? Oh, sorry. All this girly shit has got me drained. I never thought writing an article could be so exhausting but I guess when you pour for hours over something, forcing yourself to get through it, it just take a lot out of you. It's much easier to write something you know is you instead of pretending to be someone else entirely."
"You look pleased though." Through the exhaustion he noticed a slight glimmer in her eye.
She smiled and tossed him the paper. "Take a look at the third editorial."
Max flipped through the pages until he reached the right one and scanned the page. Detta watched as his eyes widened and moved furiously over the words. When he was done, he looked up at her. "Scathing. But it's anonymous?" He raised an eyebrow.
"Looks like I'm channeling someone, huh?" she said, a devious smile spreading across her face.
"I'd be careful. Words are a very powerful thing."
Detta shook her head. "The man's too thick to catch on so soon. Besides, it's only in the west coast edition. Unless someone enlightens him about it, it'll be months before anything happens. Besides, I was careful enough to leave identifying details out."
"Blackmailing, hush money, sexism…"
"All in a very general context," she smirked.
"Just be careful. You never know what some of these guys will do."
Detta had to be shaken awake when everyone was ready to leave for the night. "I have the prototype ready. I just need some words…" she mumbled groggily as Max ushered her out.
"Go home. Get some sleep. Come back tomorrow when you've rested."
She woke up enough to amble over to her car in the nearly empty parking lot and get in. The pier seemed to clear out much faster than the Boardwalk, probably because everything closed that much sooner on her end. She threw her bag onto the passenger seat and buckled her seatbelt. She heard an engine in the not-so-distance and shook her head, thinking it was the boys again. Headlights appeared in her window and she turned to look, expecting to see four bikes coming at her. It took her a moment to realize it was a set of headlights, not two separate ones and they were barreling at her, connected to what looked like a pick-up truck.
Detta's heart jumped into her throat and her hands fumbled with the seatbelt as the lights got closer and the engine got louder. She couldn't make out a face behind the wheel or even tell what type of truck it was; the headlights washed everything out. Just before the truck hit, she managed to scramble to the passenger seat but she didn't make it out of the car. The truck his with such force that it slammed the car over, rolling onto the roof. Detta screamed over the squealing tires and lurched again when the truck came rocketing back, plowing into the car a second time.
She just continued to scream and had no way out, not knowing if the truck was going to come back or not. The driver's side door was embedded on the steering wheel and the car balanced in a precarious position somewhere between its side and the roof, the front end keeping it in place. She continued to scream, hoping someone, anyone, would see the wreck and know that there was someone alive inside.
Then she heard it: her name over her screams. She stopped to listen, trying to hear over her erratic breathing.
"Detta! You in there?"
The voice sounded muffled, not distant but as if it were screaming through glass.
"I'm here! I'm in here! Get me out!"
Suddenly a face appeared in the jilted windshield. It was Max.
"There's help on the way, ok? Just hang on. Do you know who that was?"
She was sobbing, blood and tears mixing together. "No. I don't know anyone here! I'm upside-fucking-down! Get me out!" She started squirming violently and the car started to rock.
"Detta, stop!" Max banged on the windshield. "Stop!" She stopped and looked at his upturned face. "You could trap yourself further. I'm going to go—"
"Don't leave me!" she wailed, her voice resounding back to her off of crumpled vinyl and shattered glass.
"Ok," he sat down on the ground, "I won't go anywhere. I'll stay right here." He leaned down onto his arm so he could stay within her sight.
She could hear the ambulance sirens in the distance. They couldn't get there fast enough. The blood was rushing to her head and her nose started to bleed. She coughed and sputtered, trying to catch her breath. Her head was throbbing and she felt a sharp pain in her leg.
"Everybody away from the car, now!"
Everybody? Who else is here?
Detta looked at Max as he looked away, his face littered with a mixture of contempt and concern. It proved for a rather unusual look.
"Is she awake?" asked the new voice.
"Yes. Her name's Detta," a now out of sight Max replied. All she could see was feet.
Then a police officer crouched down and his upside down head came into view. "Detta, you're going to be ok. The fire department's on their way, we're going to get you out of here." She nodded solemnly. "Where are you hurt?"
Detta released a sob before speaking. "My leg hurts, my head. I can't stop my nose…" she coughed, slopping away blood from her face.
"Can you feel your legs? Wiggle your toes?"
She nodded. She could hear commotion, more sirens, and the officer looked away before standing up, leaving only his feet in sight.
"We're going to need the cutters!"
"Shit, look at the door!"
The foreign voices kept flooding her ears as more and more people arrived. A fireman crouched into her line of sight.
"We're going to have to cut away the door, darling, ok? Hang in there."
"We can't get to her on the other side?"
"Window's crushed against the ground and we don't wanna flip the car with her in it."
"Don't pull her out 'til we get to her!"
"What do we look like?"
An argument between a paramedic and a fireman perhaps? She didn't know nor did she care. She just wanted out. She heard a crunching sound, much like a thick piece of aluminum, as they started to crack into the door.
"Sweetheart, I'm going to need you to look the other way and close your eyes. We need to light up a torch."
Detta didn't need to be told twice. As soon as she did, she could feel sparks from the flames hitting metal as they tried to melt the door away. The car rocked as they tugged and minutes later, the door fell clattering to the ground, the sound of nails on a chalkboard as it was dragged away. She looked towards the now gaping hole and there stood two paramedics.
"Hey there, Detta. We're going to help you, ok? Where are you hurt?" asked the first as he reached in and clasped a brace around her neck.
She rehashed where her pain was and they looked her over quickly, shining their flashlights where their eyes alone couldn't see. "Can you work with us? Help us get you out?"
She nodded and slowly started to pull herself out of her entrapment. The medics kept telling her to go slowly and take it easy. When she finally made it to the door, one of the medics wrapped his arms around her chest and pulled her the rest of the way while the other held her head. They quickly placed her on a backboard, strapped her in and put her on a gurney. She couldn't see anywhere but straight up, her head fastened tightly in an immobilizer. Max's face appeared over her.
"I'll follow the ambulance, ok?"
Detta tried to nod but couldn't and then Max was shunted from view by a man with a penlight, shining it into her eyes. The medics spouted jargon she couldn't understand. She must have looked frightening, blood covering her face from her bloodied nose and head wound. Her body lurched as she was pushed into the ambulance, the medics and a police officer following her in. The doors slammed shut and the bus drove away.
"Detta, can you remember anything that happened?" the officer asked.
"She's steady."
"I remember everything."
"What happened?"
"Bleeding's controlled. Doesn't seem to be any internal damage."
"Docs'll have to look at her."
"The parking lot was pretty empty. I didn't notice anything unusual. Got in my car, buckled my seat belt."
"There was a truck?"
Detta, again, tried to nod but failed. "Yes. I think. I didn't notice it until it was coming at me. I tried to get out of the car but couldn't."
"Lucky you didn't. You would have been crushed. Did you get a make or model of the truck?"
She tried to shake her head. "No. The headlights washed everything out. I couldn't even see the driver. But you might want to start on trucks with front end damage and go from there."
The officer gave her a humoring smile. "You said you tried to get out. Is that how you ended up in the passenger seat?"
Detta swallowed hard. "Yes."
"Out of the way!" the medic yelled as he pushed towards to back of the bus. The ambulance had stopped and she could hear voices as the doors opened.
"Stats!" one of them yelled.
At that point, Detta stopped paying attention. Everyone around her was speaking a language she couldn't understand. The doctors asked her the same questions everyone else had and her story started to become a muscle memory. She just wanted to be in her own bed.
"I need your permission to release your information to…" the nurse trailed off and pointed the clipboard towards a window in the trauma room.
Detta looked up from the gash on her leg towards the window. Outside was Max who, by the looks of it, had called Maria who was standing next to him. But, clumped behind them were…the boys? No, couldn't be. Why?
"My boss. Max. I don't have anyone else you could talk to. Just him."
Detta watched as the nurse walked out of the room to a worried-looking Max and took him aside. She watched as all heads turned to follow him but Marko's, slumped in a chair, returned to look at her much sooner than the rest. Detta gave him a small smile but winced as the nurse tended to her wound.
"You're lucky, you know. No broken bones, just a few scratches."
"I'd say that looks a little more severe than a scratch," she said, motioning towards her thigh and bringing her hand up to touch the butterfly at her temple.
"Be thankful this is the worst of it," the nurse continued.
The other nurse walked back in, followed by Max and Maria. Detta leaned back a bit, attempting to look behind them but there was no one else there. The boys were gone.
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