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nearly enough Rael.
    Then, with a jolt, he came to life, coughing and spitting out a horrifying amount of blood. “Zack,” he gasped, the sound forcing itself through the liquid in his throat.
    “Yeah,” I said, my voice cracking with relief.
    “I’m fucked up, man.”
    “I know. Me too.”
    “I can’t really breathe.”
    “Just take it easy, man. Don’t panic.”
    “It’s hard,” he wheezed.
    “I can’t find my cell phone,” I said. “Where’s yours?”
    “On my belt.”
    “Do you think you can pass it to me?”
    A strained, wet sob. “Zack.”
    “Yeah.”
    “I can’t move my arms.”
    “It’s okay,” I said idiotically. “I’ll try to reach it.”
    “I can’t move my fucking arms, Zack. I’m fucking paralyzed.”
    “You’re not paralyzed,” I said, feeling around for the release on my seat belt. “You’re just pinned by the car.”
    “I can’t feel a fucking thing!” he shouted, his head writhing from side to side. “I can’t feel my legs! I can’t fucking move.” He started to scream, but he was coughing up gobs of blood and the sound kept getting forced back down his throat and he started to bang his head against the steering wheel.
    “Rael!” I screamed, my torso trembling in agony as the wind from my voice brushed past the raw edges of a thousand wounded muscles. “Calm down!” But by then he’d passed out again.
    I don’t know how long it took for me to get out of my seat belt. It might have been five minutes, it might have been a half hour. When I finally hit the clasp right, I fell headfirst onto the car roof, and when I rolled over, I vomited. As I lay there, involuntarily contorted into a ball, gagging on the stench of my own vomit, the temptation to go to sleep and let someone else sort out this mess was so great that I actually closed my eyes and took a little nap. Someone would find us, and take us out properly, on stretchers, with those yellow boards to immobilize our necks, and say comforting things to us in the ambulance as they hooked up our morphine drips. It might be a trick getting Rael out, but they’d use the Jaws of Life if they had to, right? I mean, this was clearly a job for the professionals, and I was supremely unqualified, would probably do more harm than good.
    “Zack!”
    “Yeah.”
    “Wake up, man.”
    I rolled over and sat up, the torn steel of the roof slicing painfully into both of my knees, and I had to fight the powerful urge to flee the claustrophobic confines of the ruined car. I crawled over to Rael, whose face, I now saw, was bloodied and swollen, and his chest, fuck, his chest was a mess, and I had to just look away, because if I looked at his broken body any more, I would just collapse into a weeping mess.
    “Jesus, Rael,” I said.
    “I know,” he said, his voice frighteningly calm, almost detached. “It’s okay. I can’t feel anything.”
    At some point I managed to reach around to where I thought his waist should be, my trembling fingers seeking out his cell phone. His sweater was soaked with blood and the heat was emanating from him in waves. It took the ambulance forever to show up, and in that time Rael drifted in and out of consciousness, and I did my best to support his suspended head by sitting cross-legged under him, placing my shoulder under his head like a table. I think I prayed a little.
    “Tell Tamara I’m sorry,” Rael said.
    “Tell her yourself.”
    “Come on, Zack,” he said. “Don’t waste my time. Just tell her I love her, and I’m sorry. Will you do that for me?”
    “You want me to call her right now?”
    “No. I don’t want her to hear me like this.”
    “Okay. I’ll tell her.” I was pretty sure he couldn’t see the tears that had started to run down my face. He coughed up some more blood, which landed with a heavy thud, like it was something more solid than just blood.
    “Zack.”
    “Yeah.”
    “I can feel myself dying. I can actually feel it.”
    “Just hang in there,” I said.