“You caused this!” I scream the words at Chase who is hollering into his headset as I bolt out of the garage and collect a marshal to dispatch me to the scene of Elliott’s accident.

“You can’t go down there. No one is allowed,” the dithering marshal tries.

“Give me the fucking bike then.” I snatch at him in an attempt to obtain the keys.

“OK, OK. Jump on the back.” I don’t think he knows who I am, but he can see how upset I am and that he’ll probably be safer to take me where he shouldn’t than to allow me to ride his moped in my current mental condition.

The 50cc engine cannot go quick enough. We tootle around to Elliott no faster than a Sunday afternoon stroll. As we creep up to the crash site, I see him for the first time. He’s been flung clear of the car and his body lies limp on the AstroTurf. That should never happen; his harness mustn’t have been connected properly. Only the middle of his vehicle remains intact and it’s strewn discarded to his side. The medical car is already there and they’re speaking to Elliott, but I can’t make out whether he’s talking back.

He isn’t moving.

Shit!

Why didn’t I insist on securing him into the cockpit today?

Is he dead?

“Stop,” I shout to my nervous driver, hopping off and running down the gravel path next to the mesh fence. A crowd of spectators have gathered. “Let me through,” I scream, pushing past them. Thankfully, my uniform allows a parting of their sea and I have a free path until I reach the marshal at the gate to the track.

“Sorry, no one is allowed in.” He shakes his head.

“Let me in. That’s my partner in that car.”

“No, I’m sorry, I’m not allowed. Orders have come over the radio. No one is to be let in.”

I am a big man, but I am not violent. This is the exception. I grab this dick by his stupid orange boiler suit and pull him into my face so he’s hanging off his tip toes.

“I said let me fucking through. That is my partner in there.” I can’t see myself, but I can feel the heat emanating from my cheeks. The disgust in my eyes lasers into his.

He hesitates when I drop him. “Let him through you twat.” Some drunk joins in. Somehow in the chaos of the moment, I have the time to consider his female clothing and nylon fuchsia wig and draw the conclusion that he must be here for a bachelor party.

His mates, dressed equally as humorously, also then join in.

And then, so does the rest of the crowd.

I give the marshal another shake to reinforce my position and he speaks into his radio. “What’s your name?”

“Kyle Beaumont.”

He nods, keys the lock and I’m onto the circuit.

“Let me through.” I push the guys clearing the track out of my way and kneel next to Elliott. “El, it’s Kyle, are you OK?”

He doesn’t answer.

Fuck. It’s taken me a good ten minutes to get here with all the commotion, and he’s still not come around. I look at Bern, the race day medic. The pain in my heart is about to erupt from my eyes. They choke with fear filled tears. “Elliott, speak to me.” I’m screaming at him. “Speak, move, do something.”

“Keep talking to him Kyle, but let us work now, you need to back out of the way. He has a pulse, please don’t think the worst, just let him hear your voice,” Bern says in his accented English.

All I can think about when the ambulance arrives is that 'he has a pulse.' He’s alive. My Elliott will marry me. I scream this rhetoric at Elliott over the cacophony going on around me. I don’t hear it. I’m in a daze, entirely focused on reviving the man who lies at the side of the track.

‘What happened to his harness?’ I think over and over again. Ideas of what Elliott went through to end up tossed to the side of the track flash through my mind, I push them to one side, only for them to be replaced by another vivid image of Elliott on his way to lying smashed to pieces like the fiberglass in the circuit.