Free Fool's Experiments by Edward M Lerner

the counter with his ladle. Cutlery and plates clattered in and out of the oversized dishwasher.
    Perhaps the clinking and clanging was too suggestive, or perhaps the flickering candle flame was. Maybe it was the so long foregone company of an attractive woman. Maybe Doug had only been out in the sun too long today without a hat.
    Whatever the cause, Doug found his mind slipping into a familiar memory. Light flickered there, too, but its source was a short-circuited turn signal that refused to respond to its control. The darkness there crowded in on him.
    Flickering, flickering...
     
    The rental car was mangled, its bent frame preventing the doors from opening. Judging from the razor-sharp fragments covering occupants and vehicle interior alike, its windshield had been replaced with cheap, nonautomotive glass. At least Doug didn't think the stuff mandated by law could shatter like this. Whatever mishap had necessitated replacing the windshield must have also deployed the air bags; they had not been replaced.
    After applying his belt as a tourniquet, the two of them tried not to look at, or think about, Doug's mangled right arm. The injury—like the meandering bastard, presumably blind drunk, who had veered from his lane and driven them off the deserted road—was too much to handle just yet. Once the tourniquet stopped his bleeding, they tried to crawl out the now-glassless front window. The effort had gained them only assorted new cuts and abrasions.
    "Holly?"
    "Hmm?" she finally answered. Her attention seemed focused on the tree that grew from the center of the engine compartment.
    "We'll be okay. Honest."
    She had hair and eyes as dark as the night. Eyes that most evenings he could get lost in. By the green flickering of the turn signal that would not stop, her skin looked unhealthy. "I know." Tension in her voice belied the words.
    "I love you."
    She took forever to answer. "I love you, too."
    "See if I ever do Florida again." He had followed the spring-break tradition twice before: never-ending parties down the coast. In his junior year he had met Holly and, to his amazement, the mob scene at Lauderdale did not appeal to her. He had begged her all winter to come with him, and in time worn her down. Now this.
    "Uh-huh."
    He worried about her being so quiet, but she seemed okay. No visible wounds, anyway. Maybe, he decided, she was going into shock. He huddled against her as best he could to share his warmth. Trapped behind the steering wheel, his right forearm shredded, he couldn't even comfort her by squeezing her hand.
    In other circumstances he might have remembered to loosen the tourniquet occasionally. Might. It was impossible to think about himself, though, as Holly withdrew into herself. She fell silent. As Doug kept a helpless vigil, her face grew ever paler.
    She died of internal bleeding as the first hint of dawn appeared in the eastern sky.
    His last coherent thought, losing consciousness himself as help at last arrived, was one of biting irony. As the highway patrolmen urged him to hold on, they spoke urgently of freeing him from the wreckage by applying the Jaws of Life.
    "Doug? Doug! Are you okay?"
    He returned to the present with a start. It took him a moment to recognize his companion. "Um, yeah. Yes, sure. I'm fine."
    Cheryl laid a hand over his. "All of a sudden, you were gone. What were you thinking about?"
    Doug couldn't tell her; he just couldn't. He hunted desperately for another topic. One other subject was on his mind. It, too, was bad—but not as personal as Holly's death. "Cherner," he mumbled. "Cherner and Friedman."
    "Bob Cherner? The chief technology officer at Neurotronics?"
    "Yeah. Do you know him?"
    "Only by reputation. He's supposed to be good." She looked at him strangely. "What about him?" Her touch felt fire hot. Following his gaze to their overlapped hands, she pulled hers back hastily.
    "He's been institutionalized." Doug's skin remained warm from her touch. "Remember the night of