A hand on my shoulder jerked me from her position by the car. My body was taking on the stance of a dead person with rigor mortis, the joints in my arms and legs refusing to take motion.
Eyebrows furrowed and breathing accelerating, the rest of my body started to seize up. Starting with the muscles all up my legs, making guidance by the rescue personnel close to useless.
Moving from my legs to my chest, I could feel a weight holding her down, an almost supernatural grip to my soul, keeping me in place. The shoulders were next, biceps, forearms. My only connection to the human world was a tight grip on the left shoulder, trying to tug me along, away from all the hectic things happening.
Feeling the grip change position on my shoulder, I knew they could sense my inability to move. After everything else stopped working, my ears remained. Picking up conversations about the crash, about the reasoning, about me. At that current point in time, they were talking incessantly about what appeared to be nothing but senseless babble.
Another set of sirens cleared the haze in my head and made things clear again. They weren’t talking about random stuff. No. They were talking about conditions that I was going through. Listing names off with silences after each one, like they were checking me off on a long list.
“Hypovolemic, Cardiogenic?” The listing continued until they reached a conclusion that seemed sound.
Breaking through the blurred vision, a person in red bent down before me, trying to look me directly in the eye.
“Alice, I’m going to need you to come with me.”
His voice was firm, formal, and familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
My confusion seemed to be mirrored on my face. Frustration building up. Worry taking hold. My breathing began to speed and then I saw concern on the man's face.
Standing up to his full height, he called to a co-worker of his and together the two men lifted me up and carried me over to the emergency tents that had been set up to treat various people involved at the scene.
With my eyes still frantically searching for an answer to the paralysis, the men lay me down on the stretcher. Moving to drape a blanket around my shoulders, a medical team was then called on.
As the team was working on her, I could feel my eyes droop.
The constant beeping from the heart rate machine was like an abstract lullaby to my tired ears. If anything, I was confused. Nothing had happened to make me be this way. I wasn’t in the accident; I was only a witness to the whole thing.
The beeping of the monitors continued, and like all parents aspired for their babies to fall asleep easily and without stress, I fulfilled my parents wishes and drifted off to sleep.
Somewhere at the back of my mind, I knew there was something I needed to stay awake for; some reason why falling asleep was a bad idea. However, despite this, the lull of sleep called to me and yearned for my presence, and at the time, it didn’t seem like too bad an idea.
It was as I fell into the nurturing arms of darkness and all things in the dreamworld, that I remembered the boy. The boy in the car.
~*~
Gentle pressure squeezing my hand brought me back to the present. As I slowly began to open my eyes, I looked up into the blye eyes of the same man who I recognised at the accident. I still couldn't place him!
The man before me saw the creses in my brow, and reached down to smooth them away.
Feeling the light callouses on the man’s fingers as he ran his fingertips along my brow, a small smile curved the sides of my mouth.
YOU ARE READING
The Story of Jackson
Teen FictionSome would think that I had a pretty ordinary life, with an average job volunteering at the local hospital just because I could, an average school, normal family life, and normal academic records. But when you think about it in more detail, I am not...
