“Meadow! Meadow, are you okay?” I heard Brecken yelling at me, felt his hands on my face turning to look at him, but my ears were ringing so loudly I couldn’t comprehend what he was asking me enough to answer him. All I could see was the wild, frantic look in his eyes and a line of dripping blood oozing from under his hairline on his forehead.
“You’re hurt!” I rasped, dazed.
“Are you? Sissy, are you hurt?”
“Um, I don’t think so,” I told him, taking a few deep breaths and feeling no pain in my chest. The belt was tight over my shoulder, digging in like a vice on my skin, which hurt.
“Can you release my belt for me? The pressure is digging in pretty bad.” Breck rushed to disengage the belt, and it was then I realised that tiny pieces of glass were strewn all over me.
“What? Where did that come from?” Bewildered as to why the glass was on me.
Brecken simply quirked a brow and pointed to my left, then his expression changed to one of horror.
“Oh fuck me! Meadow!” Alarmed at his sudden swap in mood, I twisted in my seat but stopped when a shooting pain radiated at my arm.
“Ouch, that hurts.” Reaching out, I traced my hand down my arm, then abruptly stopped when I felt something that was not supposed to be there.
Gaping at my brother, I asked the question I already knew the answer to, though.
“Is that a tree branch sticking out of my arm?” Once again, my fingers sought out the area, complete disbelief and shock overwhelming me.
“It’s more like a twig at the end of a branch, which is good. What isn’t good is we’ve gotta get it out.”
“You are not pulling it out, Brecken Wolf, so you can forget that right now,” I ordered, the adrenaline pumping through my body during the accident now seeping out and pain replacing it.
“Damn, this is not good, not good at all,” I mumbled, sitting as still as possible.
“Ya reckon? The truck’s front end has a tree embedded in it and you are impaled to a tree twig. How can anything be worse than that?” Pulling out his phone from his pocket, Breck held it up for me to see.
“Cops, ambos or SES?”
“Whoever can get here the fastest and get this so-called twig out of my arm.”
“SES and ambos it is,” Brecken nodded, looking down at his phone.
“Good, then please find my phone for me so I can ring Luca. I promised him that I would always tell him when I am hurt.”
“Why?” Breck held his phone mid-air, his expression confused. “You two have a deal or something, and why?”
“Never mind,” I muttered. There was no way I was telling my brother about Luca’s meltdown about my knees, no way in hell.
“Well, whatever the reason, your boyfriend is going to kick my arse if anything is left of it after Lennie gets done with me,” he muttered worriedly.
“Hey, none of this was your fault, Wolfie,” I stressed, using the childhood nickname Spring and I bestowed on him to annoy him and stuck well into our teen years.
“I know, but that doesn’t stop the guilt. You have a stick in your arm, sissy, and it is going to take a while to get over that.” Brecken turned away from me, putting the phone to his ear, and gave his attention to calling for help.
Timidly, I twisted my head down and took a tentative glance down, and my stomach rolled at the sight. The branch, which was indeed more of a twig, penetrated through the wing of my upper arm and underneath, I knew for sure they were going to hurt coming out.
“Oh, that is so gross.”
Luca is going to lose his shit.
By the time I reached the hospital’s car park, my heart was in my throat, precisely two hours after I received a call from Meadow. Her first words, ‘don’t freak out’, not the best way for her to start because that was what I did. As Meadow relayed what had happened, my freak out turned into a full-blown panic attack. She and Brecken had been to a stock buy and were driving back home when they hit a tree after swerving to avoid a small mob of kangaroos. As a consequence, one of the tree branches smashed through the passenger side window, and a small branch, or as Meadow described, a twig punctured her arm and became lodged in it.
She called me from the cab of the truck, still trapped at the arm, still bleeding, and from the hitch in her voice, she was scared. The call played in my mind the entire trip from Warrnambool, fucking with my mind and increasing my level of worry.
“What do you mean, don’t freak out? If you say that to me, then I am going to freak out, baby.”
“Luca, calm down, really it’s nothing. It’s just that you told me if I ever worried about something or got hurt, you wanted to know from me.”
The work site was clearing slowly, the workers clocking off for the day early as it was Friday. Last night I’d stayed here to get an early start so I could drive back home to Meadow so I could help her unload her purchases from the market she attended today. Unfortunately, a few problems came up pushing back my arrival home. Now, all I wanted was to click my fingers and get back to my girlfriend.
“Hurt? Did something happen? Did you lift heavy furniture, fuck Meadow, did something fall on your foot?” All kinds of scenarios flew out of my mouth, firing them at her down the phone.
“Luca, don’t be silly. Brecken does all the heavy lifting, and you know that,” Meadow laughed, but it sounded more like a painful hiss than her sweet and adorable giggle.
“Meadow, don’t fuck with me,
