The world was spinning, moving all too slow and all too fast at the same time. Darkness lingered on the edges of his vision, moving in and out, threatening to drag him under. He wanted to let it. He was just so tired… Would it be that bad to let it? There was a reason he shouldn’t, but he couldn’t remember. His head was pounding. It was so loud!
The banging he had believed to be his head turned out to be what remained of his car door. Someone was trying to open it. And they were saying something. He could see their mouth moving but couldn’t hear them. It was too loud - the ringing, the banging, the voices. There were so many voices.
It was a woman. She’d gotten the door open. Why was she upside down? “I’m going to get you out of there,” she promised, her face white as a sheet. What was wrong? What had she seen? “What’s your name?”
“Nick.” The pressure of the seatbelt against his chest suddenly dawned on him. He was upside down, not her. He had to get down, get the seatbelt off. But he couldn’t. “I can’t move my right arm,” he mumbled, a wave of nausea hitting him. “What’s happening?”
She didn’t know how to answer him. “You were in a car accident.” After a few moment of wiggling she was in the car, unbuckling the belt and helping him safely down and out. He thought perhaps now would be a good time to sleep. The black tunneling his vision was so inviting but her voice brought him back. “Stay with me, Nick. You need to stay awake until the paramedics arrive.”
A small crowd was forming around him. Parents were shielding the eyes of children, someone could be heard throwing up, others were just staring in horror. The woman who had helped him out was covered in blood. He tried to sit but spots of light filled his vision and he decided to stay laying. “Please tell me what’s going on,” he whimpered. His heart was racing and his breath was doing the same, trying to keep pace.
She just shook her head slowly, throat too dry to talk. She didn’t know how to tell him. There were a number of large, deep cuts across his face, crisscrossing his forehead and trailing across one eye. His whole face and much of the front of his shirt was wet with blood. One arm had a number of rather vicious slashes while the other had large pieces of metal and glass sticking out of it - and through it in some cases. The entire arm had been stained red and blood continued to pool around him on the street.
He began muttering to himself, voice just this side of hysterical. “I just got my liscence 2 months ago. I’m only 16. I can’t die. I can’t leave Ellie!” He was unconscious by the time the ambulance arrived.
When Ellie saw her brother lying in the hospital bed her heart stopped. Were it not for the steady beeping of the machines hooked to his body, she would have thought he was dead. It had been a few days shy of a week since he got here and until now she had been too scared to come see him. Their mom had tried to hide the pictures of him - she was only 9 after all - but she’d seen them left open on the computer.
The news articles had pictures of what he’d looked like right after. All the blood and metal and glass. She’d been told they’d amputated the arm but he looked dead in the pictures. Cutting off his arm wouldn’t make him less dead.
“Nick?” She said it quietly. If he heard her, he didn’t react. His face was almost entirely purple and yellow and green with bruises, his right eye swollen shut. Stitches criss-crossed his face and from this angle she could only see his stump. Tears welled up in her eyes and her voice shook as she whimpered, “Nicky…”
She ran the rest of the way to his side and basically threw herself at his chest for a hug, bawling now. A grunt of pain escaped his lips at the impact and he opened his eyes, glancing down at her for a half a second before staring at the wall. His throat was too dry to speak and he felt the sting of tears in his own eyes, his throat shaking with sobs he refused to let free. He wanted so badly to wrap his arm around her - an arm he no longer had. He should be dead. Why wasn’t he? Why was God making him suffer like this? What about his family? Wouldn’t it be easier for them if he had just kicked the bucket?
It took him several minutes to realize that his sister’s sobs were taking the form of words now. “I was so scared! I thought we lost you! And I know I say you’re stupid and boring and I hate you but I don’t! I don’t hate you…” Nick gave up all pretense of control and began to sob too, reaching as far as he could with his remaining arm. It went just far enough to rest in her hair. He had no idea how he was going to make it through this, but he had to. For her.
Art by @valencock and writing by @60-minuteman because we hate happiness
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