Novel the third, excerpt the first

Chapter: 1, by default
Current word count: 921
Excerpt length: 336
Editing performed: zero, including spellcheck

By the time the ambulance reached the scene of the accident, a small-but-growing crowd had already begun to gather at the edge of the pool of blood that surrounded the the front end of the car. Jim Waters, who was driving the ambulance, reached out and gave a knob on the dashboard two quick twists, making the siren burp at the crowd as a warning. A few people glanced over their shoulders and began to shuffle out of the way, but the majority of the onlookers just continued staring at the scene unfolding in front of them.

The car had jumped the curb and come to a stop a few feet from the facade of an office building, barely avoiding crushing the man who still lay partially under it. Despite his encounter with the heavy Cadillac, Tommy Davis was awake and aware of where he was. In fact, if he had had enough breath, he would have been cursing.

“You’ll be ok,” the elderly man who was kneeling creakily next to him said. Davis didn’t know his name; introductions were low on the list of priorities at the moment. All he knew was that out of all the people who had been on the street when the car came screeching to a stop on top of him, only this man had come forward to help instead of stare. “I’ve seen worse than this in the war. It’s just your leg, son.”

The good samaritan was a veteran of the Korean War, and though he had, in fact, seen worse, he wasn’t about to tell the man on the ground that most of those guys hadn’t made it home to their wives. Instead, he pressed his folded jacket harder against the split-open skin of the man’s leg and prayed for help to get there quickly.

Davis wasn’t stupid; he knew there was something he wasn’t being told. A wave of pain rolled through his body and he gritted his teeth, trying to stay conscious.