Based on the Gayle Forman novel/movie If I Stay
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"God, this song sucks," your younger sister said, reaching for the radio dial, to the protest of everyone else in the car. Your mother slapped her hand away. Her hatred for the song only seemed to fuel everyone else's love for it, especially her own son's.
He was wiggling along in the seat next to you, his voice growing louder at his mother's eye rolls. "I was following the pack, all swallowed in their coats with scarves of red tied 'round their throats!"
He was seven. It was Christmas Eve. You were on your way to visit your grandparents, who owned a house in Maine. It had been a while since you'd spent Christmas like this, the way you always did growing up, and your heart was feeling warmer than it had in a long time.
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You woke up lying in snow.
It wasn't too cold. Even though you weren't wearing a jacket, you didn't feel those beginning stings of frostbite. It even felt kind of nice.
Everything around you was white. It was snowing so heavily that you couldn't see more than a few feet ahead of you, and that was kind of nice, too. Peaceful. You could have stayed there for hours.
The sound of sirens pierced through your perfect little world, and you found yourself attracted in their direction, like some uncontrollable form of curiosity. They weren't far away, and as you walked closer, you could see blue and red lights reflecting off the snow.
There was shouting. You could only make out a few words here and there --- boy, blood, shard, pulse. You kept moving towards it, until the scene unfolded in front of you.
There were ambulances and cop cars scattered everywhere. So many flashing lights, so many people in uniform. A semi-truck stood diagonally across the road, and a sedan was crumpled like a tin can, laying down in a ditch not far away. In the center of all this, there were bodies. Four of them.
You didn't know what possessed you to walk straight into it, or why no one even tried to stop you, but you went right for the first body you saw, and fell to your knees at the sight.
Your body was laying there, your position so calm and graceful you wouldn't think anything was wrong if it weren't for the red snow beneath your head. You reached out to touch your own cheek, but you could barely feel your skin beneath your fingertips, and then the EMT's were taking your body away from you.
It sank in.
With shaky hands, you pushed yourself up and starting running to the other bodies. You yelled at the people around you, begging them to tell you how your family was, but they didn't respond. They couldn't hear you. All you could do was watch.
The EMTs were shouting out your nephew's heart rate as they loaded him into the ambulance, and you knew enough to recognize that they were good. Not great, not what they should be, but a good sign. Your sister's wasn't nearly as healthy, and you found yourself screaming at the paramedics to do something, to help her faster, but they couldn't hear you, and you knew that they were doing the best they could, anyway.
You turned back to your mother in time to watch them zip up her body bag.
---
You stood at the foot of the hospital bed, looking at yourself.
You had bandaged wrapped around your head, and an oxygen mask strapped tightly to your face. All sorts of tubes and wires were connected to you, and the deeps from the machines were jarring against the silence.
