A split-second before the impact she’d seen the truck speeding toward them. The headlights were off, and her alarm bells were on. She had reached up and hugged her arms around herself as the impact happened around her. She was thrown toward the driver’s side of the car and then thrust back into the side curtain airbag which had deployed.

That was when she had blacked out, flopping uncontrollably around the back of the car, only restrained by her seatbelt. The result was that she had hurt her right ankle and arm, as well as slammed the right side of her head into the back of the front seat or something… she wasn’t sure what.

In addition to having a hard time walking, she had a terrible headache and every once in a while, her vision would go double.

“Cory, I have to slow down. I think I have a concussion. My head is pounding, and I can’t see well… even with my glasses.”

Cory stopped and turned back toward her. He pulled out his phone and turned on the flashlight. He shined it in her eyes as she winced. “I’m not sure. I need to get a better look at your eyes. Do you have any painkillers in here?” he asked, pointing to her purse.

She fished out a couple of ibuprofens and dry-swallowed them. “I can’t keep this up,” she said.

“Hopefully we only need to go two blocks, Jen. I might have friends there.”

“And if you don’t?”

“I’ll figure something out. I won’t let them hurt you.”

Jenny struggled to stand up again, this time allowing Cory to give her some support. She closed her eyes and let him lead her away.

The pain was immense as she limped along with him. Stepping on her right ankle sent a stabbing pain up her leg but having him holding her arm over his shoulder kept a constant throb there, too.

“A hundred steps,” she muttered to herself. “Ninety-nine, ninety-eight…” She decided to count it out… She concentrated on counting down the steps. Two minutes later she hit zero and started over, her head starting to spin.

“What are you doing?” Cory asked.

She told him.

“Six-hundred-fifty-seven,” he replied.

She went back to counting but used his number as a starting point.

It took ten minutes, but she hit zero. She looked around as they walked. She started counting up.

“What number are you on?” he asked her.

“Forty-eight… I am on the way back up.”

“Sorry, I didn’t adjust my calculation for your hurt ankle.”

He led her into a seedy looking bar. The “open” light was not lit, but the door was unlocked. It was darker inside than it had been outside, lit only by a few neon lights advertising beer. Oddly, she thought, it didn’t have the stale smoke smell she expected.

As her eyes started to adjust, she noticed that there were half a dozen people scattered around. She closed her eyes to try to get them to adjust some more.

“FireFly? Is that you?” a woman’s voice rang out from behind the bar.

“Marj, I’m glad to see you,” he said.

As Jenny opened her eyes again, she felt a strong woman all but lifting her off Cory. “Shit, you get jumped? I need to call the police,” she said as she helped Jenny to a chair.

“No… no cops. We just need a little help,” Cory said quietly.

One of the other people in the bar moved over to the door and peered out before closing and locking it. Another came over and started looking at Jenny’s ankle. He had started toward Cory first, but he had waived him off to check Jenny first.

“It’s ok,” he said, his voice friendly, but as rough as a bucket of coarse gravel. “I was a medic for twenty years. I’m a friend of FireFly… Cory. I just want to get a look at it.”

He glanced up at her as he knelt in front of her. He had a couple of nasty scars under his eye, one slicing across his sharp nose. His short sleeve shirt showed off well-muscled arms, sleeved with tattoos.

“My name is Mike, or you can call me Aqua. I’d need an x-ray to confirm, but I think you rolled it pretty hard,” he said, moving up to look at her shoulder. “That’s a hell of a bruise, young lady…”

“Jenny… my name is Jenny…”

“That’s a hell of a bruise, Jenny.” He held a finger in front of her face, “Follow my finger with your eyes. Don’t move your head.” She did as instructed.

He turned back to the guys sitting at the table he’d been at a minute before, “Clear the pool table, then help me get Jenny up there.”

Without hesitation they did as they were asked. She felt the chair she was in tip back and they gently slipped her from it to the table and arranged her. One of the guys grabbed his jacket and folded it up to use as a pillow.

The woman that was talking with Cory came over and hopped up on the pool table next to her. Even in the dim room, Jenny could see her bright eyes peering down at her. “Cory told me what happened, Jenny. You’re safe here. These guys will make sure, ok?”

Jenny nodded. She didn’t know why, but she trusted this woman, Marj. She was in control. The few patrons of the bar that were still here looked rough. Both the men and the women… bikers maybe. Of the four men, three had beards. Two of them looked like they could be in ZZ Top. There were three women, Marj, and two that had been sitting with the guys. She wouldn’t have wanted to get in a fight with any of them.

“Jenny,” Cory said as he hopped up onto the pool table on the opposite side of her from Marj, “these are friends of mine. They’ll help us get to the field.” He winced as Mike… Aqua… squeezed his knee.

One of the women had walked into the back… maybe the kitchen… and returned a few moments later with a big bag. She handed it to Mike and then knelt beside him to offer her help. She deftly opened the bag and pulled out some alcohol wipes and started cleaning up Cory’s knee. Mike followed that up by turning on his flashlight and looking it over. He reached into the bag, without looking, and pulled out a pair of forceps. He started digging around in Cory’s knee as he winced.

Jenny thought she was going to throw up when he pulled a jagged piece of metal from her friend’s knee. How could he walk on that, much less carry her? she thought. She shook her head and looked away as Mike pulled out a needle and thread and began to stitch up the wound.

As she lay back, the spinning in her head slowed. She wanted to get up, but she didn’t want to let the spinning take control again.

***

“What is this place?” Jenny asked Mike.

“The Vulgar Parrot. It belongs to Marj and her husband, Pete “Parrot” Alger. A lot of the guys from the squad have hung out here over the years, including FireFly. I served with him as a Medic. Amanda, the woman that was helping me, is my wife. She’s also a trauma nurse. The other woman over there is Mary. She’s an attorney. The guy next to her is her husband, Stutz. The other two guys at the table are Ringo and Doozie.”

“How long have you known Cory?” she asked.

“Nine years… when he joined the team. He’s a great guy. He cares a lot for you.”

“He come by to talk about me or something?” she asked.

“Nothing like that. He stops in and hangs around with us a couple times a year. A few years back he mentioned the woman he was guarding. You, obviously. Then he told a couple of us about you going with him when he told his parents. That was really big for him, you know.”

“So, you guys know?” she asked.

Dirk thought about the house he had spent almost a year living in after he made his transformation from Terry Gates to Dirk Bryce. He’d lived in the same house he was on his way to now, but it had been changed over the last thirty years. It still looked the same outside, but it was like an iceberg… only a small portion of it was now visible above ground.

Up ahead he saw a traffic light blink yellow, then red. They had been approaching at high speed and the light changed so quickly that there had been no time to stop or even slow. He barely registered the glint of light from the darkened truck speeding toward them on the side street before it slammed into the driver’s side of the car.

Time slowed for Dirk. He watched the side curtain airbag on the other side of the car neatly unfold as it inflated. Glass from the side windows hung suspended in the air. The driver’s head slammed into the bag, it hardly providing any protection from the grill of the truck clawing its way through the door of the car. He could feel his side of the car lift off the ground from the force of the impact.

Time sped back up again, and Dirk could hear the tearing and crushing of the metal. It seemed to scream out in pain as the car folded around the massive grill. The car slammed back down into the road and flipped over onto its side, sliding, and then onto its roof. He hung limply in the seatbelt. He could still hear sounds around him, but as his vision faded, the sounds became tinny and dull, like he was listening to them through a pair of cans and a string… the string starting to sag. The sound fading away.

Then there was nothing.

***

Cory was watching the route. He knew their destination, and that they were taking a circuitous route to get there. They had turned north, heading toward Little Creek Base… where he’d been stationed. He knew the roads well in this area. They turned west, skirting the base along its southern boundary, businesses across the street. They left the base behind, heading for Norfolk. This was an area he knew well… the bars that the teams hung out in between deployments were scattered along the road.

There was little traffic, despite this being a commercial district loaded with bars. They sped along, unconcerned with police or pursuit. Suddenly, a large pickup truck veered across the road.

“Look out,” Cory screamed as the dually’s front bumper slammed into them, almost head-on. He was thrown into the airbag as it exploded out of the dash, decelerating him as he stretched toward the dashboard of the car. Less like a pillow and more like being slapped with a sheet of plywood, it did what it was supposed to do… it saved his life in the initial impact.

The car wheeled around, spinning from the collision with the heavy pickup truck. As it came to rest, Cory looked around. Blood oozed from the head of the driver, his eyes staring lifelessly to the side. The other rear passenger, also on the driver’s side didn’t look much better.

He turned to Jenny. She was folded over in the seat, a trickle of blood coming from her nose. Her glasses were gone, and she had a nasty bruise forming on the side of her head.

“Jenny, can you hear me?” he asked.

She moaned weakly in response.

Cory reached for the latch of his door. He pulled it, but nothing happened. He slammed his shoulder into the door as he held the latch, but it was jammed shut. After a few seconds trying to open the door, he gave up and pushed the remaining glass from the window and crawled out into the early morning air. His whole side of the car was twisted and torn.

Rushing to the back door, he grabbed the handle and pulled. It was just as stuck as the front. He looked around, trying to see if there was anything he could use to lever it open. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a man running toward him, gun drawn. He started to hear the shouts… these weren’t police. Cory made a quick decision.

“My girlfriend!” he yelled, the man closing distance, “we’ve got to save her. Help me.”

The gunman was only few feet away, still holding the gun. “Help me. She’s trapped.” The gunman hesitated for just a moment, but the moment was all he needed. Cory reached out and grabbed the hand the other man held the gun in. He pulled it toward him as hard as he could, using the man’s momentum to propel him toward the side of the car. At the last moment, Cory pushed the other man’s head down, slamming him into the pillar between the doors, knocking him unconscious.

He grabbed his gun, popping his head up over the roof of the wrecked car and saw two more men moving toward him. He ducked back down, moved around near the rear of the car, and popped back up. Three shots. One of the men went down.

Cory dived toward the front of the car and saw the foot of the other gunman. He shot into his ankle, and then hit him with a head shot when he collapsed on the ground. He jumped up and moved around the vehicle. Their fourth man was unconscious behind the wheel of the truck. There was an empty van next to the truck.

Off in the distance Cory could hear sirens approaching.

“Jenny, we have to go. Can you help me?” he said, grabbing the door once again.

She grabbed the door handle and pulled it to release the door while Cory pulled on it with everything he had. A moment later the door creaked and then swung open. Jenny grabbed the bag she had on the floor at her feet and rolled out of the car.

“Carissa Knight. She was fantastic to work with.”

“I bet,” Amy said. She stood and watched the images flash up on the wall as Jack went back and forth, culling the slides down to just a few from each set. “It looks like the two of you really connected.”

“Do I detect jealousy, my queen?”

“Of course not… who am I kidding. Yes. Should I be jealous? In a few of those, the look she is giving you… I’m sure she is a professional and everything, but those look like the eyes of a woman that is in love with the person she is looking at… and you are the person she is looking at.”

“I’m almost done here. Any thoughts on dinner?” Jack asked, changing the subject.

“I was thinking of Smitty’s. How about if I go grab it while you finish up.”

“That would be wonderful,” Jack replied.

He’d been grateful that Carissa hadn’t come up again, but he had known that the conversation was going to take place. He owed it to his wife to tell her what had happened. But he wasn’t ready for that quite yet.

***

As he rolled out of bed on Tuesday morning, he looked out over the bay and stood in the sun shining through the floor-to-ceiling windows. After a couple of days of editing and making contact sheets, he really enjoyed being in the sun. It was like a recharge.

He turned and looked at his wife, still asleep. He couldn’t help but smile at her as he watched her. He leaned over and kissed her forehead and then slipped into a pair of gym shorts and a t-shirt so he could go downstairs and make breakfast.

He and Amy had a busy day planned. He needed to spend a little time in the darkroom while she went into work for a half-day. Then, they were going to get everything packed for their trip. After dinner with the family and a little party for Amy, they were flying out to Vancouver for the cruise. He was looking forward to the time with his wife.

“I’ll take two scrambled, and a little bacon if there is any available,” Amy said, silently slipping up behind him and wrapping her arms around him as she kissed the back of his neck.

“You keep doing that and everything will be burned,” he laughed. “But that’s ok with me…”

“We wouldn’t want that,” Amy said as she dropped a few pieces of bread into the toaster.

They finished making breakfast together, then sat down across from each other in the breakfast nook. She watched him as he took a drink of his orange juice.

“So, are you going to tell me what’s on your mind?” she asked after a few minutes.

“This isn’t going to be easy,” he said quietly.

“Something going on between you and that model?”

“No… but things were a little dicey.”

Amy stared at him. She was on the verge of tears with her husband telling her he “almost” cheated on her.

“Amy, I promised you that I wouldn’t keep secrets from you. I love you. Only you. Always.”