After the first hour, she couldn’t feel her toes, and her hands were freezing. Abby flexed her fingers, shaking out one hand, then the other, switching her grip on the handlebars, trying to cheer herself up by telling herself that, as hard going as she found it, it was probably even worse for Sebastian, who was pushing through the mud on his skinny, road-bike tires. She thought about Morgan, imagining the teenager sitting in the waiting room with Kayla and Andy beside her, or in a generic exam room, talking to a sympathetic someone in a white coat. She pictured Morgan relieved and happy. She hoped that, unlike every other teenage girl Abby had ever known, Morgan would be able to keep a secret. And she wondered, again, if she’d done the right thing.
They’d been riding for close to two hours when they came to the trailhead at the eighteenth mile. Abby saw a single-story building on the side of the trail, with smoke coming out of its chimney and the scent of a wood-burning fire in the air. Abby wondered what the building was and if Sebastian would want to go in, take a break, and warm up. Maybe he’s come to his senses and he’s ready for the sag wagon, she thought, shivering, as she coasted to a stop. Maybe he’s already called Jasper. Maybe Jasper’s already on his way.
Wishful thinking. “Hey,” Sebastian shouted, struggling to make himself heard over the sounds of the storm. “I checked the map, and there’s a road we can take for the next five miles.” He held out his phone, pinching and enlarging the map so she could see what he’d found, as the wind whipped at their faces. “It’s a little longer, but at least it’ll get us out of the mud.”
Out of the mud sounded excellent. “Let’s do it.” Abby let him lead, following his blinking taillight off the path and onto a side street. As soon as his tire touched the pavement, Sebastian was off like a shot, pedaling, as Lizzie would have said, like his ass was on fire and his hair was catching. Like anything could be on fire today, Abby thought. Her teeth were chattering. She was soaked right down to her bra, and her shoes were so wet she imagined turning them upside down and watching water cascading out. Macho jerk, she thought. Selfish idiot. Stupid, stubborn…
It was only by chance that she’d looked up, mid-insult, and had her eyes on Sebastian, not on the road or her phone, in its waterproof case, at the exact instant that Sebastian went down. One minute he was pedaling, his feet moving so quickly that they were almost a blur. In the very next instant, his bike went skidding out from under him, and then he was airborne, flying headfirst over the handlebars, his body finally hitting the road with a sickening thud.
Abby swallowed a scream and rode to him as fast as she could. She reached him as he was getting dazedly to his feet. Shit, she thought. Shit shit shit. In all her years of riding, she’d seen only one bad injury: a woman who’d gotten her tire stuck in the ruts of train tracks, and had gone over her handlebars, just like Sebastian. She’d broken her collarbone. That had been bad. This looked worse.
“Are you okay?” she called. Sebastian had gotten to his feet but didn’t seem to have heard her. His bike was lying on the road behind him, the back wheel still spinning. Both of his knees were bleeding. His fancy rain jacket was torn, and he was covered in grit and shivering, with water dripping from his hair and his face.
Abby got off her bike and grabbed Sebastian’s shoulders, looking him over, standing on her tiptoes to inspect his helmet, running her fingers over its segments to see if any of them were cracked. “Does anything hurt? Did you hit your head?”
He gave her an annoyed scowl, but she saw his lips were blue and could hear his teeth chatter. “I’m fine. Let me get my bike.”
“I’ll get your bike. You sit.” She led him to the guardrail by the side of the road, quickly checking for poison ivy before she made him sit down, and trotted back onto the pavement, thanking God for an absence of traffic while she collected his handlebar bag and his pump and both water bottles, all scattered on the pavement, then his bike, which appeared undamaged. She wheeled it over to the guardrail, wincing as thunder boomed overhead.
“What happened?” she shouted.
“Don’t know. Must’ve hit something. Branch. Or something.”
Sebastian didn’t sound good. His teeth were still chattering, his knees were both streaming blood, and his face was alarmingly pale. Abby pulled out her phone and called Jasper.
“Hey there.”
“Hey, Jasper. Sebastian’s having some mechanical difficulties.” She didn’t want to alarm anyone else in the van, in case she was on speaker—especially not her mom—and mechanical difficulties sounded a lot less dire than went headfirst over his bike into the road. “There was a little bit of a wipeout, though, so I’m going to call an ambulance…”
“No.” Sebastian grabbed her arm. His teeth were still chattering. “No ambulance. I’m fine.”
“You have to get checked out.” Abby blinked rainwater out of her eyes. “Company policy.”
“You. Take me.”
She gave him a careful look, examining his pupils, trying to see if they were the same size. “I don’t have a car.”
“Sag wagon.”
She shook her head. “Jasper’s all the way in Seneca Falls. That’s going to take too long.”
“Uber, then.”
Abby thought. It was possible that a rideshare made sense. Certainly, it would get them to the hospital faster than waiting for Jasper. Assuming she could even get an Uber here, in the ass end of nowhere. “Okay. Jasper, I’ll call you back.” She ended the call and looked at Sebastian, trying to figure out what to do first.
“Let me see your helmet.” His hands, she saw, were shaking, and it took him a few tries to unclip the straps. “Do you think you passed out when you fell?”
“No.”
“No, you don’t think so, or no, you didn’t?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Does your head hurt?”
“No.”
“Any dizziness? Nausea?”
“No.” He pulled in a breath, looking genuinely contrite. “I just feel stupid.”
You should. “Don’t worry about it.”
“It’s my fault.” He sounded truly sorry. More than sorry. He sounded wretched. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made you ride in the rain.”
Facts, thought Abby. She ran to her bike and pulled the first aid kit out of her handlebar bag, removing what she’d need: gauze, rubbing alcohol, Neosporin, Band-Aids. “Let me see your knees.”
Sebastian looked down at his legs, then immediately jerked his head up, squeezing his eyes shut. “Eugh,” he said, and planted both of his hands on the guardrail like he was trying to keep steady.
“What?” Shit. “Are you dizzy? Do you feel like you’re going to throw up?” Maybe he’d gotten hurt worse than she’d suspected.
“No. It’s blood,” Sebastian said, his voice faint. He’d wrapped his arms around himself and had tucked his hands into his armpits. “I get sick if I look at blood.”
Awesome, Abby thought. This day just kept getting better. “Okay. Don’t look. Just keep your eyes closed.” Except she was worried that if he tried to stay perched on the guardrail with his eyes shut, he’d end up falling backward into the culvert, and she’d have to go pull him out, and wouldn’t that just be the cherry on top of the day’s mud-and-misery sundae? “Can you stand up? Good. Hold my arm. Come with me.” She led him, hobbling, down the street, to where a tree in the middle of an empty lot gave some shelter from the wind and rain. It probably made an excellent target for the lightning, too, but Abby couldn’t worry about too many things at once. When they arrived, she put her hand on his shoulder, half-coaxing, half-pushing him down onto the wet grass. “Put your head between your legs. Take deep breaths.” She could see him shivering, could hear his inhalations, but at least he wasn’t arguing. His eyes were squeezed shut, and his lips were pressed together so tightly that they’d all but disappeared.
“Deep breaths,” Abby repeated, crouching down to inspect the wounds, which seemed to be lots of long but shallow scratches. “In for a count of four, hold for a count of four, blow out for a count of four. I’m going to clean your knees off, then bandage them. And then I’ll see about getting us an Uber. Okay? You just keep breathing, and keep your eyes shut.” She squirted off the bulk of the grit with her water bottle, then tore open an alcohol-soaked gauze pad. “Little sting,” she murmured, before swiping his knee. She saw him flinch, heard a tiny moan as she worked. She tried to be quick and as gentle as possible as she cleaned the scrapes.
“It’s not everyone’s blood. Not blood in general. Just my own,” Sebastian said. His eyes were still shut, face still pale as skim milk.