The wreckage

His head slung into the seat in front of him
Cracking his nose on impact. He jolted awake with force. The seat stung his nose on initial impact and he could feel warmth run down his left nostril... He could see from his left eye: blood. As he got his bearings he could see the little girl screaming but she produced no sound. He was still slightly unconscious of his surroundings and it left him deaf at first but he quickly felt the sound come back until the little girls voice rang out through his whole mind and the mother trying her best to comfort and coerce her to feel better yet all of what her mother was telling her was a lie. He knew it was a lie because she was just as frightened and hysterical as the little girl was. He still had no idea what was going on. He knew something wasn't right but he had so many questions. His mind was racing now. He wanted to know how long he'd been asleep. He wanted to know why his heart felt like racing 300 miles per hour and yet staying at a simple metronomic beat of 1 beat every two minutes. Must be the Ambien and Ritalin combo he thought. The plane shook with a thunderous roar. He had no concept of turbulence anymore. It sure didn't feel like normal turbulence that's for sure although He's been on so many planes before, he couldn't tell the difference from turbulence and a disaster if he tried as it was anyways. His messy raven haired bangs smacked him square in the face as the plane jolted him around. He attempted to sneak a peek out of his window... And then he saw it... Smoke. Now he knew. He finally grasped what was happening. He couldn't believe what was happening but yet he knew. His first reaction was to scream, cry, and curse all at once but what would that help. He quickly turned to the lady and little girl next to him. "What happened? What did the pilots say? Do you know anything!?" The women looked up at him as her daughter sobbed into her bosom. "You really don't know do you!?" She shrieked. "This plane is going down! The pilots already told us to brace ourselves!! They said that's all we could do!! It's like they aren't even trying to save us!!" She yelled. As he tried to absorb all of this he just shook his head and asked "how far is the pilot's cabin?" He felt terrible he didn't even remember what part of the plain he was on but he was still shaky. Blood was now pouring from his nose that he didn't tend to at all. He wore the Crimson as if it was the latest fashion statement. He finally cupped his hand over his nose when the little girl looked up and screamed at his appearance. The last thing he wanted to do was shake her up any more. He had to act quick but how? He took one more look out of the window and what he saw was his answer to how he would solve this problem; the ground that was thousands of feet down from the plane was now swiftly getting closer and closer. He quickly grabbed the women and little girl and looked at them both. He turned to the women first and told her directly "no matter what, no matter what you hear, you hold onto your daughter and don't you ever let go. Don't you ever let go. You hold her even if you think it is safe. Just don't let go." Then he turned to the little girl and he took his index finger and wiped her cheeks one at a time and said ever so softly and calmly you could barely even hear over the screams of the other passengers "you stay with your mommy, you stay right in her arms no matter what okay? Can you promise me that?" The little girl looked up at him and shook her head yes. "Good." He said "you're going to be okay-" the little girl cut him off just then and with two bulging dark brown eyes looked up and asked "do you promise we will?" Just before he could answer he felt it. He felt the seismic vibration. The tip of the plane had finally came down low enough to make impact with the earth. He quickly grabbed both the mother and the little girl in his arms and said "I promise." All of a sudden the waves seemed to hit harder then everything went pitch black.

When he came to he felt seeing pain. His vision was still completely misconstrued. As his eyes focused he could tell only make out figures and shapes. He had no idea where he was. As his eyes focused he could see that he was laying down because all he could see were clouds. He wondered how long he'd been outside. He wondered if the plane crash had in fact all just been a simulation. A dream maybe? Perhaps that's all it was: just a dream. He tried to move his arms. He couldn't. He was still frozen? Jeez usually the pills wear off by now. It wasn't the pills. It was only his right arm that he couldn't move. Confused, he turned to see that he was pinned under what looked like a lump or some dark gray mass but as his vision returned clearer he realized that it was no random mass but a seat turned over from some other aisle of the now ripped apart plane. He realized now that in fact this plane was no longer a plane but 3 deprecate chunks of metal spattered about. He was inside what he could only make out was the body. It was gutted and thrown everywhere And the bottom or the top (he couldn't really tell) was completely ripped open which explained why he could see clouds instead of a floor or roof of a plane. He tried at first to break free of his right arm restraint but when moving even a little felt a sharp pain reverberate through his entire body. He immediately winced and whined in pain. He'd never felt a pain in his life like this before. He slowly rose his head up and looked passed his chest to his stomach and there he saw it: a sharp metallic rod of some sort was sticking up. It took him a little while to realize that this rid was actually sticking up not around him or close by him but through him. The rod had pierced right through his heart, his tattoo heart of course. It pierced clean through splitting the heart in half and separating his wife's name. His heart was broken. It cut clean through his tattoo. He couldn't believe the accuracy of where he got hit. All of a sudden all of his thoughts got interrupted by a sudden spat of blood spewing out of his mouth. He felt light headed and sick to the stomach but a lot of that had to do with the shrapnel jutting out from his appendix. Shit. His appendix. That's when it hit him, the blood, the severe pain, the pressure in his gut, his appendix had burst, had popped really. I mean he has a piece of metal pipe sticking out of it. He couldn't believe it. He actually wakes up maybe the only survivor of a plane crash just to find out he is dying anyways. Oh my god, the plane crash. He just remembered what he had said to the little girl right before the crash. Where are they? He thought to himself. Where is she? Where's her mom? He looked around as well as he could from where he lay but he couldn't see anything. Except seats turned over and cushion everywhere, glasses and bottles and bags of peanuts and things strewn everywhere along with window shards and what he only hoped was his own blood spattered about (of course he knew better but a man can hope) still, he saw no bodies. He didn't see anyone else. He couldn't move without blacking out that was for sure and if he blacked out then he may never awake again and he didn't know that for sure but he could sure feel it. He could feel the blood flow getting heavier and he could feel his breaths getting heavier and harder to push out. His arms were empty and one was pinned underneath a piece of seat. He had no little girl or women in his arms and that hurt him worse than the metal rod sticking out of his side. He promised that little girl her safety and now she could be anywhere, thrown out around in the wreckage or even worse... But he couldn't bring himself to think about that. Instead, he reached in to his left pocket with his free hand and pulled out his cell phone. He began to turn it on and go immediately to his contacts. He felt his heartbeat slow even more now and he felt woozy and heavy. He couldn't feel his whole bottom half now. His toes were so cold yet he knew he was still wearing shoes. He wondered if he made it to Chicago. He wondered where the plane had crash landed. He wondered if his wife would even answer the phone. He wasn't dumb. He wasn't naive. He knew there was a festering distance between Cara and himself. He didn't have any idea why or for what reason all he knew was that it was happening. He knew the air around her was different no matter how real the smile she gave him. No matter how many times she told him she loved him he knew that it just simply was not true in the slightest. He knew it wasn't as true as when it was true. He knew all of this but yet sometimes it is better to keep the light off and know there's monster in the room than to turn the light on and actually look at it face to face. As he scrolled to her name he felt himself "go under" and his eyes roll back and then came the vile taste of blood out of his mouth once again. He coughed and hacked and writhed as each heavy cough made his stomach churn with pain. He couldn't believe the pain level. The metal rod wasn't even that large but it was deep enough to make every little movement hurt like hell. He hurriedly clicked the phone icon next to her name and pressed "voice call" and as he put the phone up to his ear he could feel a much worse pain in his chest. An unexplainable pain. He could only explain it as the absolute worst pain he'd ever feel in his life. He would rather have ten million rods sticking out of him then do what he was about to do. He listened for the different "brrriiinnnggss" of the phone and after about five or so it went to voicemail. Cara was out to dinner with Michael. Haley was home with a baby sitter, an 18 year old neighbor girl who lived close by that would go on to be wooed by Michael's future advances on her and who would be the mistress to Michael. Ironically Cara had no idea about this nor would she ever find about all of the dozens of other women in michael's life.

As he raised the phone up to his ear he could hear Cara's voice on the other end but it wasn't her, it was simply just her voicemail. She was put to dinner. She was too busy asking about how Michaels day was then to answer her phone for him. He felt the tears stream down his face now and he automatically felt his voice start to shake. He cleared his throat best he could and continued with leaving his last message: "h-h-Haley, it's me, your father, I just I wanted to tell you that I love you baby girl and in so proud of you. You're so smart and incredible and I love you so much. You mean the world to me. You be good for your mom okay?
Cara, I just want to tell you that you are my everything. I love you more than anything else in this world. You have no idea just what you truly mean to me and I am sorry if I did anything to hurt you or to cause you any confusion of heartache. Maybe this is my punishment, I don't know. I just wish you all of my love and you will always be my one and only. Also I just want you to know that I hope you find happiness. That's all I ever wanted. That's all I still want. I know I promised I'd never say this but I don't have much time. My plane crashed, I don't know where I am or what actually happened but it crashed and now... I don't think I'm gonna
Make
It.
I feel so cold. I feel so numb. I have so many convictions but I can barely speak anymore. I can feel my eyes going black. I'm So sorry. I love you... Goodbye."

The time is now 7:45 p.m.
A plane headed for Chicago, Illinois crashed outside the outskirts in a filed somewhere in Chicago. 107 passengers were on that plane. 105 of them died that day except for a miraculous 2; a little girl and her mother. They were saved by being ejected from their seats by a man neither of them knew. They ended up on the lowest hanging branch of an oak tree nearby. Their seatbelt that the man next to them tied around them caught them on the tree and saved their lives. Although both were unconscious, the mother held her daughter so tight and the daughter clutched her mother just as tight that they both stayed in each other's arms.
The police found a man pinned down underneath a pile of chairs that had been skewed about from the crash. He lay motionless and cold inside the gutted body of the plane. His eyes ajar. His arms spread out as if he was being crucified on a cross for all the world to see and to judge all of his convictions. In his left hand he held a cell phone. The last call, made to his family. No one would ever know that this man was a hero, that this man stopped all 107 passengers from dying. That this man stopped a little girl, who would eventually go on to have a family and be a successful Doctor of oncology, from dying that day. He changed lives. He saved lives. He wasn't a good person. He had his flaws and faults. He loved his family, his wife and daughter more than any other thing though and he made sure they knew this each and every day. He was a hero. He was a voice. He was a father. He was a husband. He was just another one of the 105 passengers that will be remembered on that terrible day.