Writing Exercise, otherwise entitled, Wow, she really is a nerd.
So yesterday I wrote a short dialogue-only piece, located here, and when I was done, I thought it might be fun (yes, truly fun, which only goes to show what a dork I really am) to write a 'flushed out' version of it. I wanted to see which style would prove to be the bigger challenge, and at the same time, I thought it might be interesting to see if my interpretation of the dialogue fit the readers' interpretation, since dialogue-only can often lead to more than one perspective. Many of the lines could be read more than one way.
So I took the original fic and 'filled in' description and exposition around the dialogue (the dialogue itself remained exactly the same, down to each emphasis on each word). It grew from 600 words to 3000. I've never worked within a framework like this before. I'm a very linear writer...I start at the beginning and work to the end, rarely skipping ahead (what's behind me is nearly finished to a polished level, and what's before me is only blank page). Therefore, this was quite challenging. I kept getting tripped up by dialogue I was confined to...I prefer the freedom of going with the flow. In the end, I think the dialogue-only version was the more difficult one to write, technically, even though it took me less than 45 minutes. This one took me about 4 hours all told, so was more time-consuming, as I anticipated, but was easier for me to write. I like having as many adjectives as I want at my fingertips. Hmm. I wonder if that makes an ounce of sense. Anyway, here's the longer version, and if you write, I'd love to know if you've tried something like this before in your work...whether you use a framework or ever fill in gaps. If you read, I'm wondering which style you prefer, and which one allows for greater imagery.
*shrugs* Just curious. Maybe I've already bored you to tears. *g*
Title: Triage, Redux
Author: wrldpossibility
Characters: Sara Tancredi/Michael Scofield
Word Count: 3010
Rating: PG
Spoilers: None. Purely vague speculation for S4
Summary: Sara? You'll have to talk me through this...
Author's Note: See above, but basically, this is a 'flushing out' of Triage, the dialogue-only piece I wrote for the pbhiatus_fic challenge. No beta, so bear with me. Oh, and I have to thank in_a_bluemoon for reminding me of the 'just one more day' dialogue that will surface here. *g*
“Are you in the car?!”
She must be. She feels the yielding expanse of the seatback, the startling-soft give of the cushion as Michael sets her down…but her legs are bent at an odd angle, and she shifts, only to bite back a scream as a fresh stab of pain shoots from her abdomen all the way up to her ribcage. She manages to bite out one word. “Go!”
The command seems to take more energy than it should, and she lets her head fall back--it hits the side window pane with a dull thud that she barely registers around the blazing streak of heat that is now burning across her torso. “Lay your head here,” she hears Michael suggest. His voice is foreign…a harsh, urgent sound that she struggles to recognize, that she scrambles to decode, and for one wildly terrifying second, she doubts her own reason--her very decision to allow herself to be placed in this car. It is him, isn’t it? But it is; and even as she tries to add up the number of days they’ve been apart through the swirl of ever-shifting memory and delusion muddling her mind, she knows it hasn‘t even been that long since she‘s seen him. Since she‘s heard the cadence of his voice. It only feels like a lifetime and more.
She senses his hands on her shoulders, and then he’s guiding her down and she thinks she’s falling. She startles, instinctually stiffening, but no…it‘s just that her sense of vertigo is all off. She‘s just laying flat, her head sinking into the solid plane of Michael’s thigh. “I got it,” he says when she tries to rise, stopping her with a firm palm on her back. “I got the wheel…oh shit…tell me again…where--”
Suddenly, images of a man yanking her to him, the barrel of a gun flashing across her line of vision burst into her thoughts, momentarily crowding out Michael and even the ever-pulsing pain, and something akin to a starting pistol goes off in her brain. They haven‘t even left the driveway. “Michael, just go! Go, go!”
He hesitates only an instant, and then she feels the car lurch forward with such power it’s almost as though it’s been jerked out from underneath her. She refuses to cry out as they skid sharply to the right at the end of the drive, but Michael glances at her sharply all the same. “Is it bad?” he demands, his attention dangerously divided between her and the road, and she attempts to shake her head. Her jaw is still too tightly clenched in pain to respond. “Sara! Is it bad?!”
*****
The wet warmth spreads across his legs first, a deceptively pleasant sensation until the accompanying metallic sting of blood hits his nostrils, and then he‘s careening in panic, whipping his head down toward her, away from the road, to try to discern the damage--to discern anything at all, actually--in the dark. One glance at the stains--pitch black in contrast even to the shadowy interior of the sedan--soaking his shirt and pants and the dirty gray upholstery has him reeling. It’s much, much worse than he had previously thought. “Oh my God…where is all this blood coming from? Where?”
His words, or maybe just his tone, has roused her.
“Uh…I think…I think it’s ok,” she says, but she makes no effort to check. Her voice is flat and hollow, and she‘s laying quite still. “Let’s just…Is it bleeding?” she asks, and his gaze snaps back down her hers. Is it bleeding?! He scans her face in the dark…can you gauge shock simply by a person’s level of composure? By their apathy alone? But then she does lift her head, her eyes widening as they fly from the road before them to meet his. “No, don’t look down right now. Don’t--Michael! Corner! You can‘t look now! Don’t…Am I…I don’t think I’m bleeding anymore.”
“Oh God, yes! Yes, you are!” She still seems to only marginally care, and as she sinks back down, the weight of her head on his legs feels entirely too heavy. “Look at me,” he insists. “Look up at me. Sara. Look at my shirt. My jeans. Look at me. How much blood is that? How much?”
“I don’t…I don’t know.” She blinks, and he feels his heart silently breaking.
“Tell me where it’s coming from! Tell me what hurts. No, no…Sara, lay back. Here, let me--”
“Aghhhh! Stop! Stop!”
Her screams fill the car. He nearly retches, and instantly, the word empathy takes on new meaning. “Ok! Ok! Oh my God, Sara. Where did he hit you?” He runs his free hand over her torso, groping, seeking, startled by the strength of his drive to find the source of her pain. “Where?”
She fights his touch, but only half-heartedly. He’s unsure whether her lack of resistance is mental or physical. “St-stop. Please. Don‘t.”
"I have to see. Let me--” She’s pushing his hand away, and he feels his grip slip on the wheel. They lurch dramatically to the right, the tires skidding slightly and then jerking back abruptly as they hit the shoulder of the road. “I have to stop the car! I have to--no, lay back. Please."
She‘s curling into herself, her legs drawing up toward her stomach on the seat. “No, no, no…”
“Shhh.” He’s still trying to access her, but she’s effectively rebuffing him, withdrawing into herself in a way that sends a cold wash of warning to flood his veins. “Please. Show me where.” Her own hands are on her stomach, clenched tightly, and he hears himself practically beg for her cooperation. “Can you reach?” His free hands gropes again. If he can just find the wound… “Can you--”
“Agghhhhhhhhhhhh!”
Michael‘s own chest tightens in response to her cry, his own nerves so frayed, he wonders how he‘s still driving at all. “I‘m stopping!”
Her answer is a breathless pant. “You need to go! Go!”
“We are stopping! He hits the brakes without waiting for her further opinion on the matter, and when she doesn‘t argue, his fear ratchets up another notch.
“It’s my side,” she says slowly. “Uh, along the mid--um--midclavicular line. I think--”
He’s not entirely sure where that is, but at least she‘s cooperating. She‘s talking, and as Michael comes to a stop off the side of the road, he feels marginally more in control of the situation. He‘s sure it‘s an illusion, but all the same, he embraces the feeling as the momentary boost it is. Her head is still in his lap, and now, with both hands free, he cradles her skull, her pale cheekbones nearly glowing against his hands. “Ok. Take a breath. Just…there you go. Ok. Breathe. Just breathe.”
“Michael?” Her inhalations are still sharp and ragged in the now-silent car, and he tries to pace his own breathing to hers. In and out, in and out, inches from her face. “I think I’m still bleeding.”
Oh, Sara. He can only nod to her. “Yes. Ok, yes.” She very still now, and he shifts one hand from her head to move slowly toward her stomach. Even in the dark, he can see that her shirt is soaked with blood, stuck to her skin in clammy heat. “I’m going to look. Ok? I’m going to flip on the dome light. I’m going to see where.” He feels her body stiffen further underneath his legs, but she doesn’t protest, and a fresh stab of tenderness sluices through him. He touches a finger to her temple softly before reaching up to switch on the light. “Close your eyes.”
“Michael…”
“No, I’ve got it now.” The interior of the car is now cast in a yellow glow, and even though the light is weak, Sara blinks rapidly. He reaches for her shirt, lifting the hem, but it’s not enough…all he sees is dark blood and slick skin. Her hands rise to his, whether to stop him or assist him he’s not sure, but either way, they tangle with his, causing both of them to fumble. He curls his fingers around her palm, guiding it firmly downward to the seat. “Put your hand--here, let me have it--just set it down. I’ve got it.” She’s staring up at him, and when her grip suddenly tightens around his fingers--in reflex? In fear?--he’s forced to pry her fingers from his hand. His chest wells to the point of overflowing. “I’ve got you.”
He goes to work on her shirt, his fingers slipping over the buttons at her neckline.
“Michael?”
He looks over at her. Her eyes are closed. “Uh-huh?”
“It’s ruined anyway. Just…tear it off. Just get it off of me.”
“Uh…right. Yes, right.” Of course she is. He needs to just rip it, and he shouldn‘t be wasting so much as a second hesitating, looking down at the soft swell of her breasts beneath the thin, soiled fabric, wishing he could have this moment twice. But he is. He does. He grips the collar of her blouse and tears; it takes more force than he would have imagined, the sound of the cotton ripping and the buttons popping somehow louder than Sara’s soft cries of pain. “Ok.” He presses one hand back to her cheek, drawing her gaze back to his face. He looks her in the eye. “Here. Slide your arm through--” He looks back down her body, bending her arm to rid her of the shirt completely. “I just need to see--”
“Ohhhhh! Agh!”
Instantly, he releases her shoulder. “Ohhhh! I’m sorry!” But at least it’s done now; the shirt is a wadded ball at his feet. “I’ve got it off. I’m so…” Oh God, he sees it. The bullet hole is angry and gaping just below her ribcage. It’s still steadily gushing blood. “Oh shit. Sara? Sara…ok, listen, we need to--”
“We need to go. It‘s fine.”
“No. Sara, it’s not. It’s not!” He’s trying very hard not to panic, but it’s a losing battle. “You’ll have to talk me through this. Are you listening to me?” Her eyes are closed again, and he suddenly feels so alone, he can scarcely breathe. “What do I need to do? Press something to it?” He looks around almost blindly. “I can’t…my hands aren’t clean…damn it…this stupid car, there’s nothing in it! You have to talk me through this!”
“Just…just stop the bleeding for me. My shirt…grab--”
Right. She groans as his weight shifts as he reaches down for it. “Got it. Ok. Should I fold it? Or just--”
“Pack it as tightly as you can…ohhhhh, ow, ow….” He freezes, her moans burrowing under his consciousness like ice. “No, don’t stop! Like that.”
She‘s trying to assist him again, her hands clumsy and impatient, and again, he pushes her away. “Here, get your hands out…I can do it. Sara. I have it. Lay back.”
She‘s still sitting halfway up, trying to study her own wound. Michael can see her stomach muscles flex; the pain must be unbearable. As though just coming to the same conclusion, she looks abruptly dizzy, as though hit by a sudden onslaught of nausea. Her mouth falls open slightly as she splays her hands out over her stomach. “Oh, that’s…that’s a lot of blood. Michael, I’m sorry--”
It is. It’s awful. “Sara. Hush. It's fine.”
*****
She must have closed her eyes for a moment. When she opens them, she’s laying again in Michael’s lap; she feels the force of his hands as he keeps steady pressure on her wound. “Better?” he asks.
“A little.” And it is. At least she thinks it is. “We should keep driving.”
“In a while.” He releases one hand from her shirt, trailing it down her body to softly stroke the bare skin along her belly. Up and down. Up and down. “We’re ok.”
“Michael?”
“Yeah.”
She suddenly feels dreamy. “Keep doing that. That feels…good…”
His fingers still, then resume their rhythmic caress. “Right here?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.” His voice is unnaturally tight and gruff again. “Just close your eyes.”
“I should see if--”
“No,” he immediately protests. “Lay back. I’m watching out. It’s fine. We’re fine.” His hand travels upward, his thumbs rubbing across the uninjured left side of her ribcage. She feels warm and strangely comfortable, and it’s only by degrees that it occurs to her that she’s stretched out in his arms, exposed to him. She turns her head into the curve of his hip and tries very hard not to imagine what he’s seeing as he stares down at her. Or is he even looking? She’s in nothing but a bra, but the thin lace is stained nearly brown with crusted blood, her body radiating fever and sweat, and suddenly, she needs to say what she hopes he‘s feeling. “Michael?”
“Shh--shh.”
She doesn‘t let him deter her. “I was just thinking...this isn’t…uh…this isn’t exactly how I pictured it…uh…my clothes...off...you know?”
His hand stills momentarily on her skin, but when he answers, his voice is rich with mild, if startled, amusement. “Heh. Yeah. I know.” She hears his smile rather than sees it, and she turns her head out of the crease of his damp jeans, looking at him with what she knows is sheepish modesty. His own expression is one of bittersweet longing, and despite everything, it causes her to swallow hard, sucking her bottom lip in between her teeth. She bites down to feel a quick sting. He is looking, then. “Do you want my shirt?” he asks, and his tone takes on a ring of uncertainty. “Are you cold, or…are you--”
“No.” She curls her fingers around his forearm, drawing him back to her bare stomach. “This is good. Your hands are...good.”
He strokes her skin softly. “We need to go soon.”
“I know.”
“Keep your head there. Lay flat. I can drive like that.”
She‘s thankful, because she had no intention of moving. She‘s suddenly very sleepy. “It hurts less now.”
Michael studies her face for a beat before flicking off the dome light. One hand is still pressed flat into her shirt, stanching most of the blood flow from her side. “Just…talk to me. While we drive. Ok?”
His hand feels very heavy. In fact, her entire body feels strangely anchored to the seat cushion, her head like lead against his thigh. “Mmm.”
“Sara?”
“Yeah.”
He‘s shifting in his seat, his free hand shaking her shoulder. She curls up more tightly into him. “Sara, ok? Are you listening to me?”
“Ok.” Her eyes open, but she‘s not sure why they‘re not moving yet. She’s hot…burning hot, and her palms are clammy with sweat. At the same time, she’s cold, already starting to shiver. She wonders why he hasn’t turned on the heat, but in the back of her mind, somewhere quite buried, she’s cataloging her symptoms, and she knows what this is. She suspects what’s happening here. “Just…go,” she tells him. It’s really all she can muster. “I think we need to go now. To maybe hurry.”
Michael releases the handbrake and then she feels the grind of the gears shifting from park to first. The car begins to ease forward. “I’m going…there’s…you’ll feel a--”
Pain rips through her, momentarily rousing her as surely as a bucket of ice water. “Bump, ughhh!”
Immediately, Michael shifts his hand from her wound to her side to steady her. “Oh, oh, here! I can keep a hand here. I can drive with just one--”
“One hand tied behind your back?” She tries to smile, teeth clenched, all the while unsure why she finds this amusing.
“What?”
Suddenly her weak joke seems quite complicated to explain. She mumbles into his leg. “You know…take on the Company with one hand tied behind your back? Like--”
Michael glances down at her. His hips roll slightly forward underneath her head. “Sara. Shhh.”
But she cannot. She has to tell him…what was it she has to tell him? Her sense of logic is no longer cooperating, or maybe it hasn’t been for some time, her thoughts folding in on one another until they seem to form an ever-tightening ball of confused pain and worry and fear. “Michael?” Oh, yes, she knows now. She knows what she intended to say. “Do you remember when we were on the train--to Chicago--and I said…I said…” Wait. What was it?
She‘s struggling, and somehow he knows. Somehow he picks up on her train of thought and carries it. “I know what you said. I know. And Sara? Me, too. Remember?”
Train. Yes. “Yeah. I remember.”
“Good. Good.”
His voice has lowered to a near-whisper, and she thinks to herself that it‘s a gorgeous voice…a dark and deep and sexy voice. She wants to think more about that. She wants to close her eyes more tightly and just think…about him…
“Michael? I’m going to try to sleep.”
“No, no.” He’s shaking her again. “No, Sara, I need you. I need your help. Keep going, ok? Just a little longer.”
Something about his words stir a memory, a recollection of him and her, and a bed in a room…they’re alone then too, and her hand is in his, and he’s telling her the same thing. He’s telling her just one more day. His fingers are teasing hers, sliding, stroking, and he’s wearing her down…he’s rubbing the pads of his fingers over her skin, persuading her, soothing her with such rhythmic precision that she feels like a rock in a tumbler, and yes, she thinks, yes, she can wait. She can wait one more day if he just…keeps doing that. If he just holds onto her, his touch invoking the sensation of velvet wrapped around finely-muscled capability. “Just a little longer?”
His free hand drops momentarily from the wheel to curve over her head, his fingers slipping through her hair. Yes, she thinks again hazily, just like that. Keep doing that. But she knows he can’t. She knows he has to drive. He has to take them away.
“Just a little longer.”
So I took the original fic and 'filled in' description and exposition around the dialogue (the dialogue itself remained exactly the same, down to each emphasis on each word). It grew from 600 words to 3000. I've never worked within a framework like this before. I'm a very linear writer...I start at the beginning and work to the end, rarely skipping ahead (what's behind me is nearly finished to a polished level, and what's before me is only blank page). Therefore, this was quite challenging. I kept getting tripped up by dialogue I was confined to...I prefer the freedom of going with the flow. In the end, I think the dialogue-only version was the more difficult one to write, technically, even though it took me less than 45 minutes. This one took me about 4 hours all told, so was more time-consuming, as I anticipated, but was easier for me to write. I like having as many adjectives as I want at my fingertips. Hmm. I wonder if that makes an ounce of sense. Anyway, here's the longer version, and if you write, I'd love to know if you've tried something like this before in your work...whether you use a framework or ever fill in gaps. If you read, I'm wondering which style you prefer, and which one allows for greater imagery.
*shrugs* Just curious. Maybe I've already bored you to tears. *g*
Title: Triage, Redux
Author: wrldpossibility
Characters: Sara Tancredi/Michael Scofield
Word Count: 3010
Rating: PG
Spoilers: None. Purely vague speculation for S4
Summary: Sara? You'll have to talk me through this...
Author's Note: See above, but basically, this is a 'flushing out' of Triage, the dialogue-only piece I wrote for the pbhiatus_fic challenge. No beta, so bear with me. Oh, and I have to thank in_a_bluemoon for reminding me of the 'just one more day' dialogue that will surface here. *g*
“Are you in the car?!”
She must be. She feels the yielding expanse of the seatback, the startling-soft give of the cushion as Michael sets her down…but her legs are bent at an odd angle, and she shifts, only to bite back a scream as a fresh stab of pain shoots from her abdomen all the way up to her ribcage. She manages to bite out one word. “Go!”
The command seems to take more energy than it should, and she lets her head fall back--it hits the side window pane with a dull thud that she barely registers around the blazing streak of heat that is now burning across her torso. “Lay your head here,” she hears Michael suggest. His voice is foreign…a harsh, urgent sound that she struggles to recognize, that she scrambles to decode, and for one wildly terrifying second, she doubts her own reason--her very decision to allow herself to be placed in this car. It is him, isn’t it? But it is; and even as she tries to add up the number of days they’ve been apart through the swirl of ever-shifting memory and delusion muddling her mind, she knows it hasn‘t even been that long since she‘s seen him. Since she‘s heard the cadence of his voice. It only feels like a lifetime and more.
She senses his hands on her shoulders, and then he’s guiding her down and she thinks she’s falling. She startles, instinctually stiffening, but no…it‘s just that her sense of vertigo is all off. She‘s just laying flat, her head sinking into the solid plane of Michael’s thigh. “I got it,” he says when she tries to rise, stopping her with a firm palm on her back. “I got the wheel…oh shit…tell me again…where--”
Suddenly, images of a man yanking her to him, the barrel of a gun flashing across her line of vision burst into her thoughts, momentarily crowding out Michael and even the ever-pulsing pain, and something akin to a starting pistol goes off in her brain. They haven‘t even left the driveway. “Michael, just go! Go, go!”
He hesitates only an instant, and then she feels the car lurch forward with such power it’s almost as though it’s been jerked out from underneath her. She refuses to cry out as they skid sharply to the right at the end of the drive, but Michael glances at her sharply all the same. “Is it bad?” he demands, his attention dangerously divided between her and the road, and she attempts to shake her head. Her jaw is still too tightly clenched in pain to respond. “Sara! Is it bad?!”
*****
The wet warmth spreads across his legs first, a deceptively pleasant sensation until the accompanying metallic sting of blood hits his nostrils, and then he‘s careening in panic, whipping his head down toward her, away from the road, to try to discern the damage--to discern anything at all, actually--in the dark. One glance at the stains--pitch black in contrast even to the shadowy interior of the sedan--soaking his shirt and pants and the dirty gray upholstery has him reeling. It’s much, much worse than he had previously thought. “Oh my God…where is all this blood coming from? Where?”
His words, or maybe just his tone, has roused her.
“Uh…I think…I think it’s ok,” she says, but she makes no effort to check. Her voice is flat and hollow, and she‘s laying quite still. “Let’s just…Is it bleeding?” she asks, and his gaze snaps back down her hers. Is it bleeding?! He scans her face in the dark…can you gauge shock simply by a person’s level of composure? By their apathy alone? But then she does lift her head, her eyes widening as they fly from the road before them to meet his. “No, don’t look down right now. Don’t--Michael! Corner! You can‘t look now! Don’t…Am I…I don’t think I’m bleeding anymore.”
“Oh God, yes! Yes, you are!” She still seems to only marginally care, and as she sinks back down, the weight of her head on his legs feels entirely too heavy. “Look at me,” he insists. “Look up at me. Sara. Look at my shirt. My jeans. Look at me. How much blood is that? How much?”
“I don’t…I don’t know.” She blinks, and he feels his heart silently breaking.
“Tell me where it’s coming from! Tell me what hurts. No, no…Sara, lay back. Here, let me--”
“Aghhhh! Stop! Stop!”
Her screams fill the car. He nearly retches, and instantly, the word empathy takes on new meaning. “Ok! Ok! Oh my God, Sara. Where did he hit you?” He runs his free hand over her torso, groping, seeking, startled by the strength of his drive to find the source of her pain. “Where?”
She fights his touch, but only half-heartedly. He’s unsure whether her lack of resistance is mental or physical. “St-stop. Please. Don‘t.”
"I have to see. Let me--” She’s pushing his hand away, and he feels his grip slip on the wheel. They lurch dramatically to the right, the tires skidding slightly and then jerking back abruptly as they hit the shoulder of the road. “I have to stop the car! I have to--no, lay back. Please."
She‘s curling into herself, her legs drawing up toward her stomach on the seat. “No, no, no…”
“Shhh.” He’s still trying to access her, but she’s effectively rebuffing him, withdrawing into herself in a way that sends a cold wash of warning to flood his veins. “Please. Show me where.” Her own hands are on her stomach, clenched tightly, and he hears himself practically beg for her cooperation. “Can you reach?” His free hands gropes again. If he can just find the wound… “Can you--”
“Agghhhhhhhhhhhh!”
Michael‘s own chest tightens in response to her cry, his own nerves so frayed, he wonders how he‘s still driving at all. “I‘m stopping!”
Her answer is a breathless pant. “You need to go! Go!”
“We are stopping! He hits the brakes without waiting for her further opinion on the matter, and when she doesn‘t argue, his fear ratchets up another notch.
“It’s my side,” she says slowly. “Uh, along the mid--um--midclavicular line. I think--”
He’s not entirely sure where that is, but at least she‘s cooperating. She‘s talking, and as Michael comes to a stop off the side of the road, he feels marginally more in control of the situation. He‘s sure it‘s an illusion, but all the same, he embraces the feeling as the momentary boost it is. Her head is still in his lap, and now, with both hands free, he cradles her skull, her pale cheekbones nearly glowing against his hands. “Ok. Take a breath. Just…there you go. Ok. Breathe. Just breathe.”
“Michael?” Her inhalations are still sharp and ragged in the now-silent car, and he tries to pace his own breathing to hers. In and out, in and out, inches from her face. “I think I’m still bleeding.”
Oh, Sara. He can only nod to her. “Yes. Ok, yes.” She very still now, and he shifts one hand from her head to move slowly toward her stomach. Even in the dark, he can see that her shirt is soaked with blood, stuck to her skin in clammy heat. “I’m going to look. Ok? I’m going to flip on the dome light. I’m going to see where.” He feels her body stiffen further underneath his legs, but she doesn’t protest, and a fresh stab of tenderness sluices through him. He touches a finger to her temple softly before reaching up to switch on the light. “Close your eyes.”
“Michael…”
“No, I’ve got it now.” The interior of the car is now cast in a yellow glow, and even though the light is weak, Sara blinks rapidly. He reaches for her shirt, lifting the hem, but it’s not enough…all he sees is dark blood and slick skin. Her hands rise to his, whether to stop him or assist him he’s not sure, but either way, they tangle with his, causing both of them to fumble. He curls his fingers around her palm, guiding it firmly downward to the seat. “Put your hand--here, let me have it--just set it down. I’ve got it.” She’s staring up at him, and when her grip suddenly tightens around his fingers--in reflex? In fear?--he’s forced to pry her fingers from his hand. His chest wells to the point of overflowing. “I’ve got you.”
He goes to work on her shirt, his fingers slipping over the buttons at her neckline.
“Michael?”
He looks over at her. Her eyes are closed. “Uh-huh?”
“It’s ruined anyway. Just…tear it off. Just get it off of me.”
“Uh…right. Yes, right.” Of course she is. He needs to just rip it, and he shouldn‘t be wasting so much as a second hesitating, looking down at the soft swell of her breasts beneath the thin, soiled fabric, wishing he could have this moment twice. But he is. He does. He grips the collar of her blouse and tears; it takes more force than he would have imagined, the sound of the cotton ripping and the buttons popping somehow louder than Sara’s soft cries of pain. “Ok.” He presses one hand back to her cheek, drawing her gaze back to his face. He looks her in the eye. “Here. Slide your arm through--” He looks back down her body, bending her arm to rid her of the shirt completely. “I just need to see--”
“Ohhhhh! Agh!”
Instantly, he releases her shoulder. “Ohhhh! I’m sorry!” But at least it’s done now; the shirt is a wadded ball at his feet. “I’ve got it off. I’m so…” Oh God, he sees it. The bullet hole is angry and gaping just below her ribcage. It’s still steadily gushing blood. “Oh shit. Sara? Sara…ok, listen, we need to--”
“We need to go. It‘s fine.”
“No. Sara, it’s not. It’s not!” He’s trying very hard not to panic, but it’s a losing battle. “You’ll have to talk me through this. Are you listening to me?” Her eyes are closed again, and he suddenly feels so alone, he can scarcely breathe. “What do I need to do? Press something to it?” He looks around almost blindly. “I can’t…my hands aren’t clean…damn it…this stupid car, there’s nothing in it! You have to talk me through this!”
“Just…just stop the bleeding for me. My shirt…grab--”
Right. She groans as his weight shifts as he reaches down for it. “Got it. Ok. Should I fold it? Or just--”
“Pack it as tightly as you can…ohhhhh, ow, ow….” He freezes, her moans burrowing under his consciousness like ice. “No, don’t stop! Like that.”
She‘s trying to assist him again, her hands clumsy and impatient, and again, he pushes her away. “Here, get your hands out…I can do it. Sara. I have it. Lay back.”
She‘s still sitting halfway up, trying to study her own wound. Michael can see her stomach muscles flex; the pain must be unbearable. As though just coming to the same conclusion, she looks abruptly dizzy, as though hit by a sudden onslaught of nausea. Her mouth falls open slightly as she splays her hands out over her stomach. “Oh, that’s…that’s a lot of blood. Michael, I’m sorry--”
It is. It’s awful. “Sara. Hush. It's fine.”
*****
She must have closed her eyes for a moment. When she opens them, she’s laying again in Michael’s lap; she feels the force of his hands as he keeps steady pressure on her wound. “Better?” he asks.
“A little.” And it is. At least she thinks it is. “We should keep driving.”
“In a while.” He releases one hand from her shirt, trailing it down her body to softly stroke the bare skin along her belly. Up and down. Up and down. “We’re ok.”
“Michael?”
“Yeah.”
She suddenly feels dreamy. “Keep doing that. That feels…good…”
His fingers still, then resume their rhythmic caress. “Right here?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.” His voice is unnaturally tight and gruff again. “Just close your eyes.”
“I should see if--”
“No,” he immediately protests. “Lay back. I’m watching out. It’s fine. We’re fine.” His hand travels upward, his thumbs rubbing across the uninjured left side of her ribcage. She feels warm and strangely comfortable, and it’s only by degrees that it occurs to her that she’s stretched out in his arms, exposed to him. She turns her head into the curve of his hip and tries very hard not to imagine what he’s seeing as he stares down at her. Or is he even looking? She’s in nothing but a bra, but the thin lace is stained nearly brown with crusted blood, her body radiating fever and sweat, and suddenly, she needs to say what she hopes he‘s feeling. “Michael?”
“Shh--shh.”
She doesn‘t let him deter her. “I was just thinking...this isn’t…uh…this isn’t exactly how I pictured it…uh…my clothes...off...you know?”
His hand stills momentarily on her skin, but when he answers, his voice is rich with mild, if startled, amusement. “Heh. Yeah. I know.” She hears his smile rather than sees it, and she turns her head out of the crease of his damp jeans, looking at him with what she knows is sheepish modesty. His own expression is one of bittersweet longing, and despite everything, it causes her to swallow hard, sucking her bottom lip in between her teeth. She bites down to feel a quick sting. He is looking, then. “Do you want my shirt?” he asks, and his tone takes on a ring of uncertainty. “Are you cold, or…are you--”
“No.” She curls her fingers around his forearm, drawing him back to her bare stomach. “This is good. Your hands are...good.”
He strokes her skin softly. “We need to go soon.”
“I know.”
“Keep your head there. Lay flat. I can drive like that.”
She‘s thankful, because she had no intention of moving. She‘s suddenly very sleepy. “It hurts less now.”
Michael studies her face for a beat before flicking off the dome light. One hand is still pressed flat into her shirt, stanching most of the blood flow from her side. “Just…talk to me. While we drive. Ok?”
His hand feels very heavy. In fact, her entire body feels strangely anchored to the seat cushion, her head like lead against his thigh. “Mmm.”
“Sara?”
“Yeah.”
He‘s shifting in his seat, his free hand shaking her shoulder. She curls up more tightly into him. “Sara, ok? Are you listening to me?”
“Ok.” Her eyes open, but she‘s not sure why they‘re not moving yet. She’s hot…burning hot, and her palms are clammy with sweat. At the same time, she’s cold, already starting to shiver. She wonders why he hasn’t turned on the heat, but in the back of her mind, somewhere quite buried, she’s cataloging her symptoms, and she knows what this is. She suspects what’s happening here. “Just…go,” she tells him. It’s really all she can muster. “I think we need to go now. To maybe hurry.”
Michael releases the handbrake and then she feels the grind of the gears shifting from park to first. The car begins to ease forward. “I’m going…there’s…you’ll feel a--”
Pain rips through her, momentarily rousing her as surely as a bucket of ice water. “Bump, ughhh!”
Immediately, Michael shifts his hand from her wound to her side to steady her. “Oh, oh, here! I can keep a hand here. I can drive with just one--”
“One hand tied behind your back?” She tries to smile, teeth clenched, all the while unsure why she finds this amusing.
“What?”
Suddenly her weak joke seems quite complicated to explain. She mumbles into his leg. “You know…take on the Company with one hand tied behind your back? Like--”
Michael glances down at her. His hips roll slightly forward underneath her head. “Sara. Shhh.”
But she cannot. She has to tell him…what was it she has to tell him? Her sense of logic is no longer cooperating, or maybe it hasn’t been for some time, her thoughts folding in on one another until they seem to form an ever-tightening ball of confused pain and worry and fear. “Michael?” Oh, yes, she knows now. She knows what she intended to say. “Do you remember when we were on the train--to Chicago--and I said…I said…” Wait. What was it?
She‘s struggling, and somehow he knows. Somehow he picks up on her train of thought and carries it. “I know what you said. I know. And Sara? Me, too. Remember?”
Train. Yes. “Yeah. I remember.”
“Good. Good.”
His voice has lowered to a near-whisper, and she thinks to herself that it‘s a gorgeous voice…a dark and deep and sexy voice. She wants to think more about that. She wants to close her eyes more tightly and just think…about him…
“Michael? I’m going to try to sleep.”
“No, no.” He’s shaking her again. “No, Sara, I need you. I need your help. Keep going, ok? Just a little longer.”
Something about his words stir a memory, a recollection of him and her, and a bed in a room…they’re alone then too, and her hand is in his, and he’s telling her the same thing. He’s telling her just one more day. His fingers are teasing hers, sliding, stroking, and he’s wearing her down…he’s rubbing the pads of his fingers over her skin, persuading her, soothing her with such rhythmic precision that she feels like a rock in a tumbler, and yes, she thinks, yes, she can wait. She can wait one more day if he just…keeps doing that. If he just holds onto her, his touch invoking the sensation of velvet wrapped around finely-muscled capability. “Just a little longer?”
His free hand drops momentarily from the wheel to curve over her head, his fingers slipping through her hair. Yes, she thinks again hazily, just like that. Keep doing that. But she knows he can’t. She knows he has to drive. He has to take them away.
“Just a little longer.”