A mad thought. No sooner is it set loose than the universe swallows it whole. There is no place for folly in a hull of deformed carbon-fiber alloys, a wreck at the end of the world, or what feels like it. A line abruptly halted.
Again, how it all ends is not on Max’s terms: not his patience wearing thin, not his team falling woefully short, not even the exhilaration of a dusk-night stint around the Nürburgring. No, it falls to ruin with the thrum of a medical chopper’s blades, a protective headset maneuvered over his ringing, red-stained ears by trembling hands that linger even after they’re fitted snug.
There’s a wedding-band on the fourth finger of the left one. GP, then. Max’s body convulses, the violence of it knocking the headset ajar, and noise rushes in once more.
“—the hell’s this,” a medic is demanding, and there’s cautious fiddling at the hip of his racesuit, working its pocket open. A barely perceptible flapping of cloth. GP’s breath catches as Max’s does; in shock, in pain.
“The blood,” GP chokes as if it’s being torn from him, and Max could flinch at how foreign the fear sounds on him. It isn’t becoming, does he know, why is he always having to fret after Max, why is it always like this. “It’s for the blood.”
“Ah,” the medic says uncomprehendingly, because what else can be said, really? “Can’t be helped—he’s lost too much for this.”
She folds the scarlet handkerchief into a hasty square and shoves it between Max’s agony-rigid jaws so he doesn’t bite his tongue and lose that, too.
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