Autopiløt

pt. 17

While I waited for the ambulance to arrive, with Tyler in my arms, I managed to call Josh and ask him to come help me. He said he'd be over as soon as he could and actually beat the ambulance to my third floor apartment.

"Tyler, everything is going to be okay, I love you. You're going to be okay," I whispered to him over and over until I heard Josh banging on my door. "Just come in!" I yelled.

Josh walked in and a look of horror crossed his face at the sight of Tyler pale and bloody in my arms. He immediately shut the door behind him and took off his brown leather jacket to wrap around Tyler.

"I know he's probably in shock right now but I don't want to move him after he fell out of my arms."

Josh looked up at me for a second then quickly back down to his best friend, whose eyes were closing. "Yeah I understand but we have to try and keep him semi-conscious, I'm afraid he lost too much blood," Josh's voice shook as he said it.

"Tyler, baby, you have to stay awake okay. You have to."

His head moved slightly and I craned my neck around to see his eyes open slightly. I cradled him in my arms like an infant and a small pool of thick red blood formed around us. Just as my concern mounted, a paramedic burst through my front door.

"Okay my name is Todd I need you to tell me everything you know so that we can take care of your friend here," the paramedic said as he gently evaluated Tyler and put him on a stretcher.

"I came home and found him like this, his wounds appear to be self inflicted but when I tried talking to him he was unresponsive. I'm afraid he's lost too much blood," Josh and I followed Todd out of my apartment and into the elevator. Once we were downstairs I got in the back of the ambulance with Tyler while Josh followed on his bike.

When we were in the back of the truck, Todd put an oxygen mask on Tyler while he checked his blood pressure and got him hooked up to a heart monitor.

"His heart rate is low. Do you know when he did this?"

"No, I wasn't home for a couple hours but when I came back Tyler was sitting in my kitchen and he already had blood all over him and pooling on his shirt, so I guess a while ago."

"Can you show me where the lacerations are?" Todd asked.

I nodded and pulled Tyler's shirt up to reveal the red, jagged cuts. They were so deep the pearls of white fat were peeking through, but not deep enough that you could see his intestines.

The paramedics face turned a little ghostly has he told me that Tyler would definitely need stitches, and that he'd be weak for a while from all the blood loss. "If he did this to himself, he has balls. These cuts are deep," Todd said as he laid bandages on Tyler's wounds to keep him from losing any more blood.

Tyler's eyes flickered open a little and he gazed at me, a smile spreading on his pale face. Then all at once the heart monitor started beeping faster and faster as Todd scrambled to steady Tyler's pulse. My own heart quickened until the monitor slowed down again to an even speed.

"We need to hurry. He's lost much more blood than I initially thought," just as Todd was explaining, we pulled into the hospital and darted for the front doors, the siren from the ambulance dying down.

Todd took Tyler back into surgery so they could close him up and make sure he didn't puncture anything while Josh and I sat in the waiting room. A fresh flow of tears sprang in my eyes as Tyler was being wheeled back to surgery and his hand reached out for me. I turned around and buried my head in Josh's chest as he led me back to a chair. We sat there for hours, just waiting. Josh held me and let me stain his red flannel shirt with my tears. Occasionally he'd pat my hair and tell me everything was going to be okay, the same thing I had been doing for Tyler a few hours earlier. Josh called Tyler's parents along with Mark and all Tyler's other friends and told them that there had been an accident and Tyler was in the hospital. They frantically tried to make plans to come see him but Josh told them it'd be too long of a drive and everything would be over by the time they got here anyway so they agreed to settle for hourly updates. What Josh didn't tell them, though, is that Tyler's "accident" was self inflicted, and I didn't think he planned to.