Chapter 199 Worst Case Scenario
Watching the race from the pit box was always thrilling for Andrea, but watching Case lead them majority of the race at Talladega Superspeedway had her sitting on the edge of her seat. With him at the head of the pack, there was little chance of him crashing, and chances were anything else that happened would be behind him.
There was always a chance something could go wrong. She’d seen the car leading the race wreck before over silly things like oil on the track or just cutting a corner too tight. Of course, there was always the risk of another car spinning him out, too, but she trusted Charlie and knew he’d never to anything to jeopardize the safety of either one of them.
But accidents happened….
When Charlie first hit Case in the bumper, Andrea saw it and held her breath, praying that Case would figure out how to straighten it out before he lost control. But that’s not what happened. The next thing she knew, Case was flying through the air, his car rotating over and over, right to left. It landed on another car and then bounced onto the track and kept rolling.
Over and over and over….
Disintegrating as it went….
Until there was hardly anything left of it….
When it finally came to a stop on the edge of the racetrack, there was hardly anything left of it. The car didn’t even look like a car; it just looked like a random pile of metal pieces stacked on top of each other.
She had tears streaming down her cheeks, standing there with her hands over her mouth, praying that the car would stop. How could he be okay from that?
After the car stopped flipping, the entire world seemed to freeze for several seconds as she processed what had happened. It all seemed like a bad dream, and she was hoping she’d wake up in a second.
Then, in a rush, everything came back to life, and Andrea found herself screaming his name, even though she knew he was too far away to hear and her radio didn’t have the capability to speak to him.
“Case! Case!” was all she could think to say. Her hands were shaking, and she wanted to run down off of the pit box and to him.
But Brad’s hand was on her shoulder, and she knew that wouldn’t be safe and wouldn’t do any good anyway. The crew chief was much more calm than she was, at least on the exterior. In a voice that seemed like he was just asking for a check on the radio, Brad was saying, “Case? You got me, brother? Case, come in. Case?”
He wasn’t answering, and Andrea immediately assumed the worse. Her knees felt weak, and her legs were shaking. What if he never answered? What if he couldn’t answer? What if he was paralyzed—or worse—what if Case was dead?
“Take some deep breaths, Andrea. He probably just blacked out when he went flipping. That can happen when a person pulls too many Gs.”
She heard Brad’s voice but wasn’t quite processing what he was saying. Gs? What were Gs? Gravity—Case had lost contact with gravity when he’d gone up into the air. Like a pilot in a fighter jet, he’d had gravitational forces pulling on his body. That made sense. But the car was in such horrible shape. “Where’s Charlie?” she asked, not because she even cared at the moment if he was okay—he’d caused this after all—but because she wanted to know if he had any information about what was happening on the track.
“He’s out of his car. We don’t have him on the radio,” Brad said, his voice still calm. It seemed like a thousand people were talking on the radio all at once. Andrea couldn’t process any of it. None of the voices were Case, and no one else mattered unless they could see him, and none of them could. Not even the spotter.
The car was still upside down. There were tons of other wrecked cars, too, and for all she knew other drivers might need help, but Case was still in his car. The emergency workers had gone to him first. An ambulance was parked next to the remains of his car. From here, she couldn’t see anything.
A second ambulance was working its way down the track now. The red lights were a warning to the other drivers, people like Charlie, who were out of their cars. “Bill Frisk is in pretty bad shape,” she heard Brad say to one of the technicians sitting on his other side.
“Case’s car landed right on top of his,” the other guy said.
Andrea could tell the other ambulance was headed to Frisk’s car, which wasn’t too far away from Case’s. It seemed like it should be since Case had spun so many times. Her eyes flickered to the other car for a moment. The top of it was caved in but the roll cage seemed to be intact. Hopefully, Bill would be okay.
She watched in dread as the worst sign imaginable that something was very wrong took form in front of her eyes. “The black screens…” she muttered. She’d only seen them used once before, and that was when a driver had died during a race. The track crew brought out large black screens to surround the area where Case’s car had landed to give him some privacy as the safety workers extracted him from the car.
“It’s protocol for when there’s a bad wreck like this,” Brad said. But his calm demeanor was beginning to break now, too. She could see it in his eyes.
“A bad wreck like this… when there’s… a body?” The words coming out of her mouth seemed foreign to her. Maybe it was Bill….
“Not necessarily. Just when there’s a bad wreck and they don’t want any speculation or prying eyes.”
An official from NASCAR came over to the pit box. “Brad,” he shouted, and Brad came over to the ladder. “They sent me to tell you, you need to go ahead and head to the hospital. They’re sending him by helicopter as soon as they get him out.”
“Is he alive then?” Andrea asked, no longer able to keep the question in.
The official looked at her, wide eyed, and said, “I don’t know.”
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