Crash and Burn

3: Obstruction Ahead

I opened my eyes slowly. My ears were ringing and everything was muffled, as if I was hearing it through Tyler's old radio. The first thing I saw was my own blood. My hands lay on my lap and were covered in it. Sharp pieces of glass littered everything around me and stuck out of things at strange angles. Squinting against the bright sun, I turned my head to see Tyler. Taking in the image before me, I was hit by a wave of dizziness.

Tyler's eyes were closed, and blood trickled down the side of his face. His legs had been trapped by the dashboard so I couldn't see them, but his top half was in bad shape. Cuts laced his arms and something was bleeding heavily on his chest.

"Oh god..." I moaned. "Ty..." I shouted with a hoarse voice. "Ty, wake up!" He didn't move. I looked down at my own body again. I suddenly noticed the jagged piece of metal sticking into my abdomen.

"Wake up god dammit!" I panted. The pain was setting in now. I heard sirens in the background and let out a cry as I shifted my arm towards Tyler. I reached my fingers over, fighting against the shooting pain running through my shoulder. I inched my fingers over until they could just grab Tyler's.

"C'mon Ty, wake up." I said, squeezing his hand. "Wake up..." Tears welled in my eyes. Finally, his head moved to the side a little. A sound escaped my lips as he slowly opened his eyes.

"Kira?" He groaned. His breath was short and strained. The sirens were louder now almost deafening. Then, suddenly they stopped. A group of paramedics rushed over and started talking to us. Tyler and I were still, but everything else moved. I don't know why, but I kind of expected everything to stop for a while. It didn't though, only we stopped. I guess it's kind of self-centred to expect the world to wait up on a couple of kids.

We held onto each other's hands tightly as the paramedics worked. Eventually, I was pulled out of the car and forced to drop his hand. I cried out as they got me on a stretcher, the jagged piece of metal still sticking out of my abdomen. I was rushed into an ambulance and the doors closed behind me. A mask was slipped onto my face, and I was forced to breath in stale, artificial tasting air. One paramedic looked after me in the back and another was driving up front. A radio buzzed on in the pocket of the paramedic in the back.

"Left lung punctured, serious lacerations on the chest and arms. Suspected fracture of the femur." I heard someone say on the other end. It sounded like they were talking about Tyler. I strained my ringing ears to hear what else they said.

"BP 56/40 and falling. Heart rate 34 bpm. We're loosing him." My world came crashing down in an instant. I was just with him, and he was okay. What had happened? The paramedic in the back picked up his radio and started talking into it as I tried not to scream.

"Contusions to the right side of the skull. Lacerations on the left shoulder and an embedded foreign object in the abdomen. Suspected internal bleeding. BP 42/31, heart rate 29 bpm. Heart rate dropping, 22 bpm." Said the paramedic beside me. Then, a few minutes later, "Obstruction of the airway. Starting CPR." This is when I got really confused. I was breathing fine. No one was doing CPR. I didn't have much time to wonder about this as I felt the prick of a needle in my arm. Cold liquid seeped through my veins as the man on the other side of the radio came back on.

"We've lost his pulse. Starting heart compressions." He said in a monotone voice. My eyes started to close and all I could do was listen as Tyler suffered. My world slipped away slowly, and the last thing I heard was the man on the other end declaring Ty's time of death as 1:14 PM.