That Night Three Months Ago
THAT NIGHT
Three months ago…
Kevin opened his eyes and waited for his blurred vision to refocus.
The smell of burnt rubber hung in the air.
His body was stiff from the impact and as he looked around, he noticed that everything was upside down.
The car had flipped and was now lying on its roof.
He was the only one in there, because despite the fact that he always harped on about it like a nagging mother, he was the only one who ever wore a seatbelt.
He needed to find the rest of them. The details were fuzzy, but he remembered the force flinging Perry through the windshield.
There was blood everywhere, but the only pain he felt was a burn down his forearm so it couldn’t have possibly come from him.
He unclipped the seatbelt and allowed his body to collapse against the crumpled roof.
The window was broken, so he climbed through, carefully crawling around the shards of shattered glass on the street.
Once he was out, he struggled to get to his feet.
He was dizzy and disoriented. He looked around, but the only light came from the headlights of Clayton’s car and it didn’t do much to aid his search.
A strained groan took his eyes to the back of the car, where he saw Clayton lying in the middle of the road.
“Fuck!”
Kevin immediately raced towards him and as he got closer, the sight he encountered brought him to an abrupt halt.
Shock made him freeze for a few seconds.
Clayton’s legs were completely mangled from the knees down, jagged pieces of broken bone had ripped straight through his jeans.
He dropped to his knees beside Clayton, frantic and panicked.
“Oh, God…Clay…Oh, God…I’m gonna…I’m gonna get help. ”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone.
The screen was cracked but it still worked.
His trembling fingers punched in 911 and the rest was a blur.
His sentences were broken and unstructured as he spoke to the operator.
All he remembered telling her was their location before he hung up again.
“Clay,” he said, shifting around him so he could hook his hands under Clayton’s arms, “I’m gonna try and get you off the road, okay?”
All he got in response was another pain-filled groan.
He didn’t know if it was a good idea to move him, but it was dark and they’d hit something in the road.
It could happen to another driver and he wasn’t going to take a risk by leaving Clayton lying there while he searched for Perry and Shandré.
He lifted Clayton’s upper body, and very carefully and very slowly, he dragged his body to side of the road.
“Clay.” He tapped his cheek until his eyes fluttered opened. “I need to find Perry and I need you to stay awake, so just focus on something and keep talking.”
“I’m okay, Kev.”
Kevin looked down at his legs and his stomach turned over. “You’re not. You’re losing a lot of blood and I need you to do something to stay awake. Sing or something.”
“Okay,” he replied weakly.
“Just keep singing until I get back.”
He stood up as Clayton began singing Bridge Over Troubled Waters.
It was the worst song he could’ve chosen, but Kevin didn’t care.
He walked down the side of the road, but he only made it ten feet before he fell to the ground.
The mixed smell of burnt rubber and blood, the sight of Clayton’s mangled legs, he couldn’t take it.
He threw up, choking on beer and bile as it hurtled out his throat.
Clayton’s voice was getting softer and weaker.
“Sing, Clayton!” he shouted before hurling more vomit onto the sand.
Clayton carried on singing, but over that he heard a strangled gasp in the distance. He froze, trying to hear over his ragged breathing.
“Perry!” he shouted, standing up again. “Perry, where are you, man?”
“I’m here, Kev.”
Kevin followed the faint sound of his voice through the tall grass until he eventually spotted him. Again, the sight of his best friend made him stop dead in his tracks. A steady stream of blood oozed out of the open wound on the side of his head.
“Fuck!” Kevin ran both his hands through his hair, clasping them at the back of his head.
He didn’t know what to do. He was utterly helpless. Two working hands, so eager to assist. Two working legs, ready to run miles to find help. Yet he didn’t have one fucking clue what to do.
“Perry,” he said, his voice shaking with fear and panic, “help is on the way.”
He crouched down beside him and carefully lifted his head onto his lap.
Whipping off his T-shirt, he used it to cover the wound, hoping it would stop the bleeding.
But the red flow was relentless, instantly seeping through the material.
The smell was nauseating and he felt more bile rise up from his empty stomach.
“Where’s my girl, Kev?” Perry was so weak, it was barely a whisper.
He looked around in a vain attempt to find Shandré, feeling even more helpless when his eyes couldn’t find anything in the dark. “I don’t know.”
“You have to find her.”
Kevin reached out and took his bloodied hand, squeezing it tightly. “I’m not leaving you.”
“Please…please go find her…She could be…she could be hurt.”
“Perry…Fuck!” He gritted his teeth, angry tears stinging his eyes. He didn’t know what to do. He was the only one with the power to do anything and yet he was powerless to do anything at all. “I don’t…I don’t know where she is.”
He took a second and tried to listen for Clayton’s voice and when he didn’t hear it, he shouted again. “Clayton, you’re not singing!”
He waited and only focused on Perry again when he heard Clayton’s voice again. “Help is on the way,” he told Perry reassuringly. “And then we’re gonna find her.”
Four hours went by and the paramedics still hadn’t arrived. And now his fucking phone was broken because it said it had only been six minutes. A few more seconds ticked by and it felt like another hour. It was then that he realized his perception of time was completely distorted.
His friends were dying around him and he couldn’t do anything to save them. Perry’s breathing became sharper and more staggered, his eyelids taking longer to open each time he blinked.
“Tell me what we’re gonna do in Florida,” Kevin said, tightening his grip around Perry’s hand.
Perry faintly squeezed his hand back. “We’re gonna…we’re gonna see Ariel…and…” He stopped, as if talking about it reminded him of their conversation from earlier that night and that reminded him of something else. “Where’s my girl, Kev?”
Kevin shut his eyes, but the tears came rolling down his cheeks regardless. “I don’t know! I promise…I promise…I’m gonna find her as soon as the paramedics get here.”
Perry’s fingers loosened around his and his shallow breathing began to slow, almost inaudible. His eyes drifted closed and Kevin tapped his cheek to wake him up again. “C’mon. Just keep your eyes open.” He didn’t open his eyes. He didn’t even stir when Kevin tapped his cheek again. “Perry—”
He was cut off by the wailing siren of the ambulance and he exhaled a breath of relief. “They’re here, Perry. You’re gonna be fine.”
Two vans came squealing down the road, red lights flashing in the darkness, and they stopped beside Clayton’s overturned car.
“We’re here!” Kevin shouted when three men and one woman jumped out of the vans. He threw his hand in the air to wave them over and two men ran through the tall grass towards him.
One man knelt down beside Perry while the other looked over at him. “Are you Kevin?”
He nodded.
“You said there were four of you.”
He didn’t remember saying that on the call, but now that Perry was in safe hands, he stood up and ran with the other man to the spot where he’d left Clayton.
Clayton was still singing incoherently as the paramedic knelt down beside him to check him. “You’re gonna be okay, Clay.”
Kevin looked to the other side of the road where he saw a flashlight flicking across the ground as one of them searched for Shandré. He felt someone tugging his arm and that was the last thing he remembered before he was blinded by a penlight.
“What’s your name?” a woman asked.
Kevin looked at the unfamiliar face with confusion.
His forearm was already wrapped in a white bandage and there more people on the scene—cops and more medics.
He was sitting at the back of another ambulance van, but didn’t know how he got there, couldn’t account for a single moment since he’d last seen Clayton.
His perception of time was still distorted because he didn’t know if it’d been ten minutes or an hour.
“It’s Kevin,” he responded wearily. “Kevin Shepard.”
She continued asking him basic questions to determine if he had a concussion.
Words left his mouth as an automatic response, but he put no thought into what he was saying.
He was tired and his throat was dry—the aftermath of shock and trauma.
Behind her, he saw them load Clayton into one of the vans.
Two cops appeared out of nowhere and also started firing questions at him.
They kept asking him what they’d hit, what could have made the car flip like that.
“I don’t know” was apparently not an adequate response, because they kept asking the same thing in different ways.
“Was it a rock?” one of the cops asked. “A pothole? Maybe some kind of animal?”
Kevin gritted his teeth. He was too drained to shout, but he was becoming more frustrated. “For the hundredth time…I. Don’t. Know. It could’ve been anything…It was dark. I-I don’t remember. I didn’t see—”
He stopped talking when he spotted the other medic, his heart instantly sinking into his stomach. Perry was on gurney, but there was a black body bag around him and a man was zipping it up. That couldn’t be right. He was talking right before they arrived.
Kevin immediately stood up and a firm hand tried to push him back down.
“Sir, you shouldn’t be—”
He didn’t know which one of them it was, but he shoved the hand away and headed towards the gurney, ignoring the protests behind him. His steps quickened without him even realizing it.
“Hey, wait.” It was a frantic whisper, but he managed to find his voice through the anxiety gushing through him. “Wait!” He grabbed the man’s hand to stop him. “Wait…What…what are you doing?”
Pitiful eyes were cast upon him. The man pulled his hand out of Kevin’s and zipped up the bag. “He’s gone.”
“No. No…He’s not gone.”
“He’s gone,” the paramedic’s tone was filled with compassion, but still firm enough to sound certain.
“He’s not! He was just talking to me.”
The paramedic slowly unzipped the top half of the bag and the stillness of his best friend was haunting. “We tried to resuscitate him,” he said softly. “But…he didn’t make it.”
“No!” Waves of anguish and despair were crashing over him and he was drowning in it.
His voice was trembling, shaking so much it didn’t sound like his own.
“You can do…CPR or something…they do that…I’ve seen them do that…
you can do that. He was talking…I was just with him.
We’re gonna go to Florida…Please…do something… anything.”
His eyes caught sight of another gurney carrying a black body bag, but his brain wasn’t processing anything at that moment.
“Kevin…” The man placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “We tried everything. There’s nothing more we can do.”
Those words broke him, utterly destroyed everything inside him.
There was no panic, no helplessness. There was no fear, no desperation.
There was nothing…nothing but emptiness.
He gasped for air, trying to fill his body with something that felt normal, but all he felt was that emptiness.
The tears were ceaseless now, running down his cheeks and dripping onto Perry’s bloodied face.
He waited for a reaction. A person usually flinches when water hits their face, but Perry remained unmoving.
Drop after drop and he didn’t move. Kevin’s hand went to Perry’s chest, his fingers curling over the dog-tag chain.
Saint Christopher. The guider of the travelers.
He was supposed to protect them and now Perry was lying dead in front of him.
Kevin didn’t know how long he stood there.
Fifteen years’ worth of memories flashed through his mind.
Spying from the treehouse and walking to the Barber Shop.
Playing with Batman figurines and torturing his sister.
The casual arm around his shoulder and the attempted kisses whenever he was drunk.
Vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce. From kindergarten to college—it was all gone now.
Another man came to stand behind him and patted him lightly on the shoulder. “It’s time.”
Kevin shook his head. He wasn’t ready to say goodbye. “No, please…not yet. Just a few more minutes.”
The few minutes they chose to give him felt like mere seconds. One paramedic slowly started pushing the gurney while the other placed his hand firmly on Kevin’s chest to stop him from going after it.
“Please,” Kevin pleaded. “Don’t take him away.”
They ignored him and carried on pushing.
His fingers tightened around Perry’s chain.
“No. Wait.” He tried to lunge forward but the other man kept him restrained.
“Just wait!” And as the gurney moved further away, the chain snapped off Perry’s neck, the last reminder of his best friend dangling from his weak hand.
“Stop! Please! Just wait!” They wouldn’t listen.
“Perry!” he shouted, like if he yelled it loud enough, he would wake up.
He was becoming more frantic now. It was all too final and he’d had no time to prepare.
“Get off me!” he shouted, shoving the other man to get out his grip.
“Perry!” The arms around his waist tightened, but he still continued to wriggle.
“Get off me! Perry! Let me go!” At this point, he didn’t know why he was still fighting, but he felt like he needed to fight.
Fight the inevitable. Fight the finality.
Fight for the friend who couldn’t fight anymore.
They had already closed the doors to the van and when the paramedic finally let him go, he didn’t have the strength to stand.
He collapsed, falling knees first onto the tarmac.
Everything around him became a blur—the cop cars to his right, the medic standing on his left.
All he saw were the red lights of the van carrying his best friend getting further and further away until it eventually faded into the darkness.
“PERRY!”
His desperate cries echoed through the night, but the one person it was meant for couldn’t hear it.