Page 57 of All I Have Left
EVIE
I t’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 both blown. 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 since Shane’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.
They quickly push me back out of the way while one begins chest compressions and the other disconnects the tube attached to the ventilator.
They connect a bag to it like they had in the ambulance waiting for the life-flight to arrive and begin pumping careful, long breathes into it every three-to-five seconds.
After two minutes, they check his pulse. Nothing.
They trade positions, their movements precise, and continue with the chest compressions. Very little’s said between the two paramedics assisting him. I try to judge their faces, an indication of the outcome but get nothing. They’re focused, and while I appreciate it, it does nothing for my nerves.
“It can’t end this way,” I cry. “It just fucking can’t!” We’d been separated for too long for the selfishness of a select few to take away what we had.
They can’t win.
I hear voices, the radio in the flight crackling to life, “Inbound, twenty-one-year-old male, severe head injury. Working code in progress, successfully intubated prior to arrest, GCS 3, ETA eight minutes.”
I have no idea what any of that means, other than they need to hurry the fuck up. All I can focus on is the way he looks lying there. Lifeless. A machine and two paramedics keeping him alive.
They airlift us to a trauma center in Birmingham and the second we land, it’s a swarm of doctors around the helicopter, all waiting for Grayson. He’s not moving, a man beside him holding up an IV, another doing chest compressions and one squeezing the bag attached to his mouth.
I hear the paramedic yelling to the doctors as they push him away from me, “Code in progress. Twenty-one-year-old male, blunt force trauma to the left temple with a baseball bat. Roughly ninety minutes from injury onset. GCS at scene, 7. Girlfriend says he was able to say her name and move immediately after. Slurred speech with responding to pain, vomiting. Intubated and started IV on scene. HR 132 on scene, BP was 190/82, O2 sat prior to intubation was 86%, RR 40-50’s initially, dropped to teens prior to intubating.
Working progress for fifteen minutes, initial rhythm PEA.
CPR immediately and has received four doses of Epi total.
Two units packed RBC’s, one liter of LR IV bolus.
Left AC 20-gauge PIV, right AC 16-gauge PIV.
Gave him Fentanyl 150 mcg. Time’s two. RSI meds: Roc and Ketamine. ”
As they rattle off his condition and everything they did to keep him alive, I think how’d this happen? How’d we go from being at the lake this morning to at a trauma center? Nausea roots inside me and I fight the urge to vomit. It rolls through in waves, taking turns with anger, fear, shock.
“Where are you taking him?” I ask as they lay me on a gurney, two women standing next to me, my view of Grayson disappearing, a team of doctors rushing him across the roof top.
“He’s getting the best possible care,” a nurse tells me, handing me a blanket.
“Please,” I beg. “Don’t let him die! He can’t die!”
“Sweetie, breathe.” The one beside me rubs my back, her face inches from mine. “Just breathe.” She soothes, her hands running continuously over my back. “You need to take care of you, and we take care of him.”
I heave for a breath, strangled gasps leaving my lips. Gripping the edge of the gurney, I try so hard to pull myself together, but I can’t.
I want to die with him.