Helltown by Jeremy Bates Read Free Book Online Page B

filled with guilt. He had invited her on this trip. She had wanted to spend the weekend studying, but he’d insisted they needed a break from school, he’d wanted her to finally meet his friends, and now here she was, lying on the damp earth, bloody and broken.
    Her eyes fluttered open.
    “Jenny!” he said. “Thank God! Are you okay?”
    “Okay…”
    “You hit your head.”
    “Hurts…”
    “It’s just a little—”
    The rest of the sentence died on his lips.
    He could smell gasoline.
           

     
    Gas? Jenny thought slowly. What was Steve talking about? Were people camping nearby?
    “We have to move away from the car,” Steve was telling her now, though it remained difficult to hear him through the ringing in her ears. “I’m going to carry you.”
    “I can…okay…”
    Steve helped her to her feet. Pain flared in the left side of her head. She almost toppled over, but Steve caught her in his arms.
    “Let me carry you,” he insisted.
    “No, I…” She couldn’t find the right word. “Just…dizzy.”
    Jenny allowed him to lead her away from the wreckage. Without warning her trembling legs gave out beneath her. She dropped to her knees. Steve was saying something to her, though the words seemed suddenly far away. Her vision blurred, darkened—and then she was floating above her body, which was lying on the operation table in the cadaver lab, nude and lifeless. Nine fellow students were gathered around the table, everyone wearing brown lab coats and dishwashing gloves to protect against formaldehyde. Nobody seemed shocked or saddened that Jenny was the cadaver today. Professor Booth was giving some sort of eulogy in Latin that she couldn’t understand. She wanted to tell them she wasn’t dead, but she couldn’t speak, only hover, insubstantial, like a ghost.
    Belinda Collins stepped to the table. She was one of the gunners in the class, ambitious to a fault. Ever since Jenny scored higher than her on their first assignment, Belinda had done her best to make life miserable for Jenny, and Jenny knew she would be thrilled to be performing the dissection.
    Belinda raised her scalpel to make the first incision. Jenny squeezed her eyes shut against the anticipated pain. She felt nothing. Surprised, she opened her eyes again. The cadaver lab had disappeared, replaced by a cold night filled with nacreous fog and towering trees.
    “Jen? Jen!” Steve said. “Can you hear me?” He was cradling her head in his lap.
    “Where…?” she said, disorientated. Then she remembered with a punch of dread: the hearse, the accident. “Jeff? Mandy?”
    “Mandy’s fine. Jeff’s…okay. I have to go help get him out of the car. Are you going to be all right for a couple minutes?”
    She tried to sit up. It took all her strength, but she managed. She saw the upside-down BMW for the first time. Mandy and Cherry stood on one side of it, Noah and Austin on the other. Everyone was speaking and gesturing wildly.
    “Where’s Jeff?” she asked.
    “He’s still inside the car,” Steve said. “I’ll be right back—” He frowned.
    “What?” she said.
    “How do you feel?”
    “Pummeled.”
    “How many fingers am I holding up?”
    “Two. Steve, what’s wrong?”
    “Nothing. You hit your head though. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”
    Yet the concern that had appeared on his face a few moments ago was still there. She suddenly wondered whether she’d been disfigured somehow. She touched her lips, her nose. “What’s wrong with me, Steve?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Steve!”
    “Nothing—it’s just your eyes. One’s dilated a bit more than the other. Probably nothing more than a mild TBI. It’s not a big deal.”
    Jenny went cold. A traumatic brain injury. If it was indeed mild, she had nothing to worry about. But Steve had no way of knowing whether it was mild or not. It could very easily be moderate or severe. She could have intracranial hemorrhage or brain herniation, both of which could lead