“Get Peter out,” I whispered. “Ow. Ow, hey!” I exclaimed when Jenks dragged me across the seat and away from Peter. His arms went around me in a cradle, and with me getting Peter’s blood all over him, he carried me to a clear space on the cold pavement.

“Up,” I whispered, cold and light-headed. “Don’t lay me down. Don’t hit the button before you get him out. You hear me, Jenks. Get him out!”

He nodded, and I asked, “Where’s the truck driver?” remembering not to call him Nick.

“Some lady in a lab coat is looking at him.”

Fumbling, I pulled my half of the inertia-dampening charm from around my neck. I slipped it to Jenks, and he replaced it with the remote to ignite the NOS. Palming it, I watched him nudge the amulet through the nearby road grate, destroying half the evidence that we were committing insurance fraud. David would have kittens.

“Wait until I get back before hitting that, will you?” he muttered, his eyes darting to my closed grip. Not waiting for an answer, he loped to the truck shouting for two men in the crowd to help him, and a woman descended upon me.

“Get off!” I exclaimed, pushing, and the narrow-faced woman in a purple lab coat fell away. How had she gotten there so fast? The coming ambulance wasn’t even a noise yet.

“I’m Dr. Lynch,” she said tightly, frowning at the blood I’d left on her lab coat. “Just what I need. You look like you’re a worse PITA patient than me.”

“PITA?” I asked, slapping at her when she took my shoulders and tried to lay me down.

She pulled back, frowning. “Pain in the ass,” she explained. “I need to take your blood pressure and pulse supine, but after that you can sit up until you pass out, for all I care.”

I tried to see around her to Jenks, but he was inside the truck with Peter. “Deal,” I said.

Her eyes went to my leg, wet from the calf down. “Think you can put pressure on that?”

I nodded, starting to feel sick. This was going to hurt. Holding my breath against the wash of pain, I let her take my shoulders and ease me down. Knee bent, I clamped my hand to the part of my leg that hurt the most, making it hurt more. While she took her God-given sweet time, I listened to the sounds of panic and stared at the darkening sky framed by the bridge’s cables, holding my ribs and trying not to look like they hurt lest she wanted to poke them too. I thought of my pain amulet, praying it had eased Peter when nothing else had. I deserved to hurt.

She muttered at me to hold still when I turned my head to look at the passing traffic. A black convertible was parked just inside the closed northbound lane. Hers?

I jerked at the ugly ripping sound and the sudden draft on my leg. “Hey!” I shouted, putting my hurt palms against the pavement and levering myself up. I held my breath as my sight grayed at the pain, then got mad when I realized she had cut my jeans up the seam to my knee. “Damn it, those were fifty bucks!” I exclaimed, and she gave me a cold look.