Chapter Text
Richard
It came out of nowhere. One minute he was driving along as he had been all day, the next he was flying. He tried to brace himself against the inside of the car, but the car was rolling, and when it finally came to a stop he was almost thrown out of his seat, the only thing stopping him from falling to the other side of the car was his seatbelt.
He took one deep, shaky breath. Then another. He started reciting times tables in his head, his daughter’s birthdays, his location, what had happened in the days leading up to now. He didn’t think he had hit his head. He was okay. He was okay!
Then the pain hit. His neck was incredibly sore and a throbbing agony radiated down from his right shoulder. He tried to move his right hand, and it wouldn’t. He could feel the panic rising in his chest as he forced his sore neck to look down at his right arm dangling limply. He swallowed back the nausea when he realised that his shoulder was swollen and misshapen. It was a disgusting sight, but also a welcome one. Dislocated. If he had dislocated his shoulder then it wasn’t permanent. He hadn’t damaged his spinal cord and paralysed himself.
Trembling with agony, he reached across his body with his left arm, down into the car, and cradled his right arm against his chest. He looked around as much as he could without straining his neck. The only thing keeping him in place was the seatbelt, and the steering wheel was preventing him from pulling his knees up and out of the footwell. If he took off the seatbelt he would fall through the car onto the passenger side door, currently pressed against the ground, possibly injuring himself further. He wasn’t getting out of this without help.
Then he looked through the window, and a worried looking James May was there.
“Are you alright?” The other man asked, and Richard would have laughed at the absurdity of the question if he hadn’t been in quite so much pain.
“I didn’t hit my head, but I wrenched my neck and dislocated my shoulder.” He explained shortly.
“Can you get out of the car?” The moment the stupid question left James’ lips Richard felt something inside him snap, if course he couldn’t get out of the car, and he was yelling at James to the same effect, until suddenly the doctor was there, peering through the window and shining an irritating light in his eyes.
“I didn’t hit my head.” Richard snapped, as they fitted a c collar around his neck. The pain in his neck receded, just a little, as the plastic collar took over the job of holding his head up.
“It looks like you’ve dislocated your shoulder. Can you keep holding it where it is for now? We need to get you out of the car as quickly as possible, we don’t know why it flipped and we don’t want it to explode.” The doctor was explaining.
“Well that makes me feel loads better.” Richard knew he was being bad tempered, but he was in pain, suddenly exhausted, scared and more than a little embarrassed. He spaced out a bit for the next moment, vaguely hearing the doctor say something about ‘shock’ and when he was present again. He could no longer see James through the windscreen. There was a researcher below him, crouched awkwardly on the passenger side door, and supporting some of his weight.
“Let us do all the work. When you get to the ground we’ll put you down feet first and you can walk from there, but don’t put any additional strain on yourself while we’re getting you out.” The explanation was clear and fast, and Richard nodded, tensing his jaw in anticipation of the pain that would erupt from the movement.
To his embarrassment he found himself vocalising his pain a bit as his seatbelt was removed and he was lifted, but soon enough he was on his feet on the ground, and Andy was there, placing a hand on his back to guide him to a spot about ten meters away where a couple of chairs had been set up, and some crew members were hurriedly erecting some kind of tent to keep the sun off.
“You really scared me for a minute there, mate.” Andy said. Now he was out of the car, Richard could think a little more clearly.
“I still don’t know what the hell happened. I was just driving along and then the car was in the air. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t my fault this time.” Richard explained.
“We’ll get to the bottom of it. Don’t worry.” Andy was now depositing him in the chair, and then the doctor arrived again. Richard endured the familiar routine of a neural exam.
“You’re in mild shock, so it’s important you stay warm and stay hydrated. I’m going to give you a shot of painkiller. It will take the edge off having your shoulder relocated, but you won’t be able to drive for six hours afterwards. Not that you should be driving at all with that shoulder injury, but I’ll leave it up to Mr Wilman here to make that call. I suggest you do your best to sleep it off.” The doctor was no nonsense, but Richard could feel his anxiety rising again. He had to be able to drive. If he couldn’t drive they couldn’t finish the special.
“Sharp scratch.” Said the doctor as he injected something into Richard’s arm. A pleasant haziness quickly filled his world before.
Agony. Richard knew he had yelled, but bloody hell, that hurt. He found himself gasping in pain.
“I thought you said that would take the edge off.” He fumed.
“It did. Without the shot, that would have been a lot worse.” Richard wasn’t sure it was possible for that pain to be a lot worse, but not wanting to look like a wimp, he just nodded.
“Can I rest on the floor, if I’m supposed to be sleeping it off?” He asked quietly. “If I fall asleep in this chair it’s going to tip over with me in it.”
A groundsheet, and a small pile of sleeping bags and rucksacks were assembled and Andy and the doctor helped move him onto it. They pretended they couldn’t tell how badly Richard needed their support and Richard pretended he didn’t register the concerned looks that were exchanged above his head.
A little while later James came over, and they had a short conversation, Richard feeling stoned and vulnerable. Jeremy was coming back he gathered, but the painkiller must be stronger than he thought because he dropped asleep mid conversation.
James
Jeremy had pulled far ahead with his camera crew, the Land Rover, against all expectation, was the most functional of the three cars after their high altitude adventure. So it was Richard and James driving along in their little convoy with the camera crew around. Richard was driving slightly ahead, to some grumbles from James. After all Top Gear tradition was that if a car went wrong, the others travelled on without them and in James’ opinion his little Suzuki was far less likely to go wrong than Richard’s Toyota.
It turned out to be a good stroke of luck, for James at least, because something did go wrong with the Toyota, something went spectacularly wrong. There was a loud popping sound, and then the back right wheel of the car was lifting up off the ground, somersaulting the car over it’s bonnet and then bringing it to roll a few times before, finally, coming to rest on it’s right hand side. Luckily the angle of the explosion meant it only scraped against the hired Range Rover used by the camera crew.
This wasn’t a clutch going, or a problem with a wheel. This was unusual. If James didn’t know better he might have assumed the car had been booby trapped, or that a bomb of some sort had been attached beneath it. But he had helped mend the car himself when the clutch had gone a few days ago, and since then they had been in this remote desert and barely seen another human being. Whatever had gone wrong must have been to do with the car itself.
James braked suddenly, as did the rest of their convoy, and the moment the engine was off, he was out and running towards the downed car. The crash had been spectacular, and between the array of go-pros and the camera car, the moment itself would have been captured. Whether the footage would be used in the special as a particularly exciting hiccup on their adventure, or submitted to an enquiry he wouldn’t know until he found out if Richard was okay.
Thank God Richard had thought to put a roll cage on his car! At the time James had dismissed it as posturing, they were unlikely to roll the car in the desert, but now he was incredibly grateful. It meant that when the car had flipped it kept rolling, rather than landing the entire weight of the open car on Hammond’s head.
James walked around the car quickly, until he was looking through the windscreen at Hammond, who was awake. White-faced, and from the look of it in a lot of pain but awake. Richard’s body was tilted slightly sideways. The car was resting on it’s right-hand side doors and as it was a left-hand drive car, Richard was suspended in his seat a few feet above the ground, pinned in by his seatbelt and clutching his shoulder.
“Are you alright?” James asked. It felt fatuous. Richard’s car had just half exploded and flipped, and without knowing what happened they would need to get him away from the car as quickly as possible in case there was a risk of it exploding. He was clearly in some pain and looked as if he might be going into shock, and all James could thing to ask was ‘are you alright?’ But Richard was nodding.
“I didn’t hit my head.” Richard started, knowing that that was the thing everyone was most afraid of, the thing he was most afraid of, another head injury. “But I wrenched my neck and I think I dislocated my shoulder.”
“Can you get out of the car?”
“Yes James, of course I can get out of the car with a dislocated shoulder when I’m still fucking pinned in here! If I could get out of the car on my own I would have gotten out of the car on my own!” The outburst of temper wasn’t pleasant to deal with but at least it didn’t seem like Richard had a concussion.
Thankfully more people had arrived while they had had their little exchange, and the doctor was now half climbing the car to speak to Richard and put a neck brace around him to shine a little torch in his eyes which seemed to make Richard even more irritated than he was. But the doctor took no notice and quickly began issuing instructions. They luckily travelled with a large crew which meant they had more than enough people, even with someone clambering into the passenger seat to support Richard from below.
“You’ve been incredibly lucky from the looks of things, but we want to get you away from the car as quickly as possible. It sounds like you’ve wrenched your neck quite badly, and your right shoulder is probably dislocated, so while we’re pulling you out the car it’s really important that you relax your muscles and let us do all the work. When you get to the ground we’ll put you down feet first and you can walk from there, but don’t put any additional strain on yourself while we’re getting you out.” The explanation was clear and fast, and Richard nodded, tensing his jaw in anticipation of the pain that would erupt from the movement.
To his credit he almost managed the whole extraction without crying out, it was just the first movement that had him grunting in pain, and from that point onwards he was stoic. Allowing Andy, to guide him straight over to a camp chair that had been put some distance away for him, a couple of younger researchers hurriedly erecting parts of a tent over the top so that the sun didn’t make him ill while he was being treated.
Through the whole event James had felt quite useless, he was glad that Hammond was okay, of course, but he hadn’t been much help. Instead he wandered over to the car, ignoring the cautionary calls of the production crew, to see if he could see what had gone so terribly wrong. It became obvious quite quickly.
“The rear differential exploded, no wonder it somersaulted the car. The good news is, the car isn’t going to explode.” The people around him were looking at him in some bafflement, so he decided to wander away, he nearly went to sit with Richard, to offer him some moral support, but Richard was having his strained neck gently palpated by the doctor, and was glaring murderously out at the rest of the convoy. It was probably painful, and Richard was probably angry about his car. Either way, James decided discretion was the better part of valour and that he would go over when Richard was no longer being examined and, hopefully, in a slightly better mood.
It had been less than ten minutes since the car had briefly decided it would rather be a bird than a car; when James suddenly realised, that he hadn’t heard from Jeremy, which most likely meant that no one had told him. He squared his shoulders and made his way back to his Suzuki, so that he could have the dubious honour of sharing the news. He pulled up the radio.
“Clarkson.” He called.
“May! Still miles behind.” The gloat in Clarkson’s voice held a warm familiarity.
“There’s been a bit of an accident. The rear differential exploded on the Toyota Landcruiser and flipped the car. Richard seems okay but a bit battered. You might want to come back and join us."
The next time Jeremy came on the radio there was no background engine noise. He must have stopped the vehicle.
"I’m sorry… did you say it flipped the car” Jeremy’s voice was tight with anxiety.
“It was pretty spectacular, the way it somersaulted over its nose and rolled for a bit. All I can say is thank God Richard installed a roll cage when we were doing mods.” James explained. He knew he was scaring the other man just a little, but, well, Richard was okay and Jeremy deserved it for leaving them behind on death road.
“But Richard’s okay? What does a bit battered mean?”
“He’s dislocated his shoulder.” At that moment a loud cry of pain came from across the camp where the doctor had just relocated Richard’s shoulder. “As you might have heard, the doctor has just relocated his shoulder, and he wrenched his neck. He said no head trauma, and he’s so worried about reinjuring his head I don’t think he’d lie about that, but the doctor’s still checking him over.”
Jeremy swore for a while before. “Alright, I’m coming back, try to make sure he doesn’t use up yet another one of his nine lives before I get there.”
James frowned. “What the hell do you think I can do to stop him?” He retorted, but there was no reply. He looked over at Richard, who still had a face like thunder, but now had his arm in a sling and he was half lying on the ground, leaning back against a pile of baggage that had been placed there just for the purpose. James got out of his Suzuki and came over to him. Richard looked up.
“I still have no idea what the fuck happened.” He said, sounding exhausted.
“The rear differential exploded and flipped the car.” James offered up, helpfully. “They’re fixing it now.”
“How the hell do you know that?” Richard asked.
“Once you were being looked after by the doctor, I had a look at the underside of the car, it was pretty obvious. There’s nothing you could have done to prevent it. Frankly, you’re lucky you weren’t killed.” James said.
“I think I’d be luckier if it had happened to someone else.” Richard grumbled. “Why does it always have to be me?”
“Jeremy’s a lot taller than you, and doesn’t have a roll cage on his car, so if it had been him he probably would have hurt his head quite badly, same with the Suzuki really. The fact that you decided to do a little posturing and put a roll cage on saved your life. Having said that… I’m under strict instructions from Jeremy to make sure you don’t use up yet another one of your nine lives before he gets here.”
“Are you really.” Richard sounded amused. “Well you’re in luck, because right now, moving around anywhere sounds like torture, and I won’t be able to drive for at least six hours because of the painkiller the doctor gave me.”
“Will you be able to drive anyway, with your arm in a sling? How will you change gear?” James asked.
“James?” Richard responded, sounding stoned and spaced out.
“Yes.”
“Shut up.”