TWIN:
Pain...all I could feel was explosive pain everywhere. But that was good, right? If everything hurt, that meant I wasn't paralyzed at least. I could hear a man crying...he was saying over and over how me and my brother just rolled in to the road and he didn't have time to hit his breaks...brother?
Right...brother...there's two of me.
I opened my eyes to see the nice lady crying with both of us in her lap, wailing inconsolably, trying to clean the blood off faces as if to help her see who was who...but that wouldn't help.
We were identical.
Except...our injuries weren't the same anymore. With extraordinary pain, I tilted my head to the side to see that my brother was so much worse off. Each breath he took sounded like it hurt to draw in and push out. My brows tilted in pain at his pain, then, pushing away all the pain, I raised my arm and touched his shoulder, croaking a ragged "I love you..." before I couldn't take it anymore and faded back out of consciousness.
GRACE:
My boy...my sweet, precious, broken Dorian was carted away in the back of an ambulance, clinging tightly to his twin who was clinging to him as well. The EMT's said that both of them were tightly clamped over their brothers' worst wound and separating them before getting them to the hospital could cause one or both of them to bleed out. I couldn't tell who was who, though. None of us could. The wreck had done a number on their clothes, so neither of the neighbor boys could pick out which one of them was wearing their clothes.
Alex was shattered, laying heavily on the legs of both of the boys and I allowed him to be the one to ride with them in the ambulance as I couldn't stand the sight of the boys, broken and twisted around each other.
Maxwell offered to follow behind them, taking from me the burden of calling Vince and Jim to tell them which hospital we'd be at and a brief explanation of what had happened...I could hear my son from five feet away...the cry that ripped through him...Thalia offered to get Micky from play group and keep an eye on him until we returned...for better or worse.
Once, I had thought that nothing would hurt quite as bad as telling Jim I just couldn't love him back like that...then, I thought nothing would hurt so bad as when we entered Dorian's hospital room to see him broken and bruised, clinging to my son...then a few hours later when he was sobbing, freshly abused, then again when he'd wake up screaming and crying, his whole body locked in a night terror...all the things that I could never have dreamed in my very worst nightmares...nothing hurt quite so bad as this...
I could hardly breathe, to the point that Maxwell was driving one handed with his right arm slung around my shoulder, stroking my hair and shushing, murmuring random words of comfort in to my scalp at every red light, telling me that one of them had regained consciousness long enough to declare love for his brother and surely, that was our Dorian, ever the forgiving soul, but nothing could console me.
Not knowing which boy was my son made me feel like a failure of a mother and wishing that the boy in slightly better condition was my Dorian made me feel like a failure of a person and I told Maxwell as much, but he'd hear nothing of it, telling me that any mother would have the same wishes. God I hoped he was right...and I hoped that I'd see my boy smile his wounded smile at me again.
RAFE:
Vince and I were sitting at the lunch table that Alex and I usually sat at, tense as bow strings, and just pushing food around our trays with the cheap plastic forks given to us, both of us watching for Alex and Dillon to show up. "Babe, you have got to stop looking at the doors like you're trying to set them on fire with your mind. Dillon will know something is up when he gets here if you keep glaring." I said, sliding my hand over the table to tangle my fingers in his, trying to give a comforting smile.
