time to do something good for myself [Dante's]
Except, of course, for being the last few miles, which makes them special. The last of something is always special, especially when it's the last stretch of distance you need to cover before you can stop praying that the person in the seat next to you is about to die and actually get something done for them; the last period of time where you have to bite the inside of your mouth so you can keep from crying because of how much you hurt.
Madeline doesn't slow down when they hit town, mostly because she doesn't need to, she's barely topping the speed limit as is. She doesn't say anything, either, and that's because she's just trying to stay conscious awake.
She just stops in the middle of the street in front of Dante's, not trusting herself to try to pull in, and turns off the car with shaking, stiff fingers. She takes a deep breath, curling her hands in her lap, and finally looks at Gabriel again.
"We're home," she whispers, raspily, and reaches out to brush her fingers across his arm. He doesn't move, keeping his face pressed to the window (are those tears?) and if he wasn't breathing she wouldn't know he was alive. "I'm going to go get help. You stay here." She undoes her seatbelt, opens her door, and gets across the street without falling over.
She hangs onto the doorknob as she opens the door, and leans on it once it's opened.
She wonders if anyone will recognize her like this. She's...literally coated in blood, it's clotted all over her, crusted to her eyelashes, soaked into every thread of her clothes, there's a rough, twisted bandage that's just as bloody as she is tied around her left forearm, her ankles are cut in more than a dozen places, not all of them shallow, and the bruise on her neck hasn't gotten better.
Could be worse, though, couldn't? It could be, it should be, it would be if she wasn't so -
"H-hello?" Her throat burns with the effort of speaking up, and she's getting dizzy - she grips the doorknob tighter, and tries to remember how Gabriel prayed. Forgive me, Lord, for I am bloody and falling down and shield me from my bruises and the compass-men and oh Lord I think the blood loss has gone to my head.