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It’s amazing the physical power you have when adrenaline takes over. I can barely walk the distance to get to him after those bastards leave, but somehow—some way—I have to get to him. It’s our only option at survival.
Wrapping a shirt I find in the truck around his head, I drag him by his arms to his truck, a path of blood trailing behind us, but I can’t get him inside. I’m exhausted and I can barely put one foot in front of the other. Falling to my knees beside him, I cradle his head in my hands. The shirt I wrapped around his head is soaked in blood. “I’m so sorry,” I tell him. “Just hold on. Breathe and hold on. I’ll be right back.”
I wait for something. Some sort of acknowledgment, anything, but what I get is nothing. No moan, no reaction, only erratic breaths.
I lay my hand on his chest, wiping tears away with the other. “I’m gonna go get help. You stay here, okay? Don’t move.” And then I think, how stupid that sounds. If he could move…. Oh God, I don’t have time for this.
He looks at me then for the first time, but it’s clear there’s no one there. He doesn’t see me, doesn’t react, just stares into the space I occupy. Blinking slowly, he moans. His pupils are bothblown. He tries to lift his head, a gurgled sound seeping from his lips but then goes limp.
“Fuck.” Without waiting any longer, I run up to the main road, covered in both our blood, still naked, and flag down a truck driver “Help me, please! My boyfriend! He’s hurt.”
The trucker opens the door, a cell phone in hand. His eyes widen when he gets a good look at the state I’m in, and he immediately hands me the flannel shirt he’s wearing. “Darlin’, what’s going on?”
“My boyfriend!” I point down the road, the shirt in my hand. “He’s hurt! Please, I need you to call 911. It’s bad. He’s barely breathing.”
“Okay,okay.” He nods, averting his eyes from my body and tapping the screen on his phone.
The next few minutes are a blur. No, the excruciating twenty minutes or so it takes for the paramedics and then the helicopter to arrive, that’s a blur. I do manage to get the shirt on over my body, but I don’t remember much else.
Is it a dream? Is this entire nightmare actually happening? Am I dead and don’t know it? ’Cause that’s what it feels like. Like I’m out of my body watching this happen.
Troopers stop traffic in both directions for the helicopter to land in the middle of the road. Once the ambulance arrives, Grayson fades fast. There’s no movement from him, no response to pain, nothing but ragged shallow breathing. They intubate him immediately as they wait to load him into the helicopter.
At first, they’re not going to let me on the Life Flight with Grayson, absolute hysterics convince them otherwise. I refuse to leave him. “No. You’re not leaving without me. I won’t get in your way. I won’t touch anything. Just, please, let me go with you!”
The paramedic sighs, as if he can’t believe I’m slowing them down for this. “You have to stay out of the way so we can save his life.”
“I will. I promise.”
On the flight, two paramedics tend to Grayson, giving him medicine, blood. I don’t know what they’re doing but it’s a lot of things into an IV and movement around him. The one next to me asks some questions. “Ma’am, are you okay?” His eyes rake over my body, and I’m so ashamed at what I must look like, but also, I don’t care. “Are you hurt?”
Blinking slowly, I shake my head, because I don’t know. Am I okay? I don’t know. I don’t… care. I mean, how could I be okay looking at Grayson, strapped to a back board, a neck collar on, tube down his throat and an IV in his arm delivering what they tell me is pain medication?
“It’s okay. We’re getting help,” I tell him, reaching for his hand.
He doesn’t grip it. He’s unconscious now.
The paramedic across from me dips his head to catch my eyesight. “Can you tell us what happened to him?”
I look up at him. It takes me a minute to try and put into words some sort of explanation. “He’s hurt… a bat….” My words tremble out of me, as if I’m freezing, my body convulsing in waves. I’m not cold, but I can’t stop from shaking. Curling into myself, I hold the blanket they wrap around me.
“A bat?” he looks at Grayson, and then me. “What do you mean a bat? He was hit with the bat?”
I’m still trying to wrap my mind around what happened, let alone explain it. I nod. “Hit… his… head….” I can’t get the rest out. Drawing in a breath, I try but can’t. I can’t speak. I can barely breathe. My eyes drop to Grayson, and it’s hard to recognize him. He doesn’t even look like himself. Deep purple around his eyes, dirt caked to him, his face is swelling, his body, lifeless. It’s a horrifying image to take in, yet, I can’t look away. I’m frozen.
“How long has he been out?” the other one near his head asks.
“A while.” I have no idea how much time it’s been sinceShane’s final blow, to now, or when anything happened. Time hadn’t been on my mind. Grayson had been.
The paramedic drags his eyes to the shirt I’m wearing. “Did he do this to you?”
I shake my head, gasping. “No. Shane Larson did.” And then I remember, all their faces, their names, and everything they did to me, and him. It flashes like a scene from a movie, replaying, over and over again.
“ETA fifteen-minutes,” I hear the pilot tell them.
And then it happens. The stillness. The quiet. Grayson’s heart stops beating.
I stare at the incessant alarm of the heart monitor telling me it’s over, unwilling to accept it. “Do something! Get him back!” I plead, frantically grasping at him.