Rain fell amongst the dust. Bits of concrete hung precariously above. Lights, red and blue, shone in rotation. Images, blurry and indistinct, moved across the man's vision. His thoughts were slow, sluggish, as if he were just waking up. He couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing. Nor could he hear anything except distant murmurs. Those small sounds seemed to reach him through a long tunnel.
His vision, as blurry as it was, lost more focus. The shapes in front of him became blobs of grey.
The man was tired.
He felt as if lead filled his whole being. He just wanted to lay down and sleep.
He closed his eyes, and the world grew dark.
He wanted to sleep, but something nagged at him. There was something... something he had to do? Someone he...?
The thought was fleeting, but it wouldn’t leave him, like a fly trying to land on his face. He couldn’t swat it away. He was so tired his arms wouldn’t respond.
He just wanted to sleep, but that feeling wouldn’t leave him alone.
He wanted to sleep, but the world shook. The murmurs grew louder. Insistent. Urgent.
His eyes opened but all he saw were undefined shapes. Suddenly, a white light shone in one eye, then the other.
“...hear me?”
The noises formed a word or two. The man didn’t know what they meant. He tried to focus on it. He tried to find the one who spoke. The blurry shapes in front of him remained unclear.
“...can you hear me, sir?”
The tunnel of sound both echoed and muted those words.
The meaning escaped his exhausted mind.
“...please blink... you understand me?”
Blink? The man wanted to ask why, but it was such a small thing. He could blink for... who? Did it matter? He blinked.
The world darkened and brightened like a shutter. He blinked more than once. His eyes fluttered. He was so tired. And now his eyes ached. And now that he could feel that ache, he could feel another, but he didn’t know where that one was.
The nagging feeling grabbed his attention again. He ached. He was tired. Someone was talking to him. But he needed to... do something. He wanted to sleep.
“Sir, you’re hurt, but we can’t move you just yet.”
Hurt? What did they mean?
Sound was coming back. The murmurs became louder and other sounds joined in. A strange screaming noise repeated without end. The shapes in front of the man came slowly into focus and he realized that there were people in front... no, above.
The man was laying down.
So, why was he so tired? He was already resting, wasn’t he?
There was a smell in the air. Like burnt toast? Or a campfire?
The person... the man who spoke to him was leaning down to him.
“I’m going to put this on your face,” The man told him, showing him a small mask thing. The man lying down recognized it from somewhere. He couldn’t quite place it. “It’s to help you breathe easier.”
That’s what it was.
It was one of those resuscitation masks he had seen in those medical TV shows. The man talking placed it gently on his face, covering his mouth and nose. He couldn’t help but wonder why he needed one though. Although, it did bring back memories of watching... what was the name of it again? He was watching it with... with...
That insistent feeling, that nagging thought, came back.
Who...?
There was someone... Someone he...
The thought was just out of reach. It felt important. He felt like he needed to remember. There was someone he spent time with. Their face was hard to remember. He... he was with them... recently? They were sitting. They were laughing. She was smiling.
She...?
“There. You should be able to breathe easier now.” The man was saying to him. Someone else was moving around but he couldn’t tell what they were doing. That weird whirring scream was distracting.
But now he could breathe properly. Which was odd. Was he not breathing well before?
He sucked in a breath and the world cleared up. He could now see the men hovering above him. He could hear the siren piercing the air. The red and blue lights were probably from an ambulance. There was the sound of water being sprayed too.
He then remembered who he watched TV shows with. Who he spent time with. Who he was... eating lunch with. He was laughing with his...
“...wife...”
The man croaked out that one word. One word and realization filled him, at the same time pain blossomed in his chest.
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The world spun. The woman floated. The rain poured down and left a cool feeling on her cheek. It contrasted with the heat. The unfamiliar heat. The heat left her feeling sick. Nausea turned her stomach as the world spun endlessly.
Pain accompanied the heat. They went hand in hand and bloomed across her body. The pain had been with her for what felt like an eternity. Or was it just a single moment?
She looked up at the sky. Dark clouds obscured everything. She watched as grey wisps roiled and twisted. They coalesced and parted endlessly.
The world stretched. She didn’t know how much time had passed. All she knew was rain, heat, pain and nausea. And a gloomy sky. The rain forced her to blink. Each blink stretched into the next. It was as if the world had slowed down. She couldn’t tell if seconds or years passed between raindrops.
The world stopped for an endless moment. The woman didn’t know where she was or how she had gotten there. Nothing made sense. Just as time seemed to have stopped, so too did her thoughts. She couldn’t seem to work through a fog filled with the four sensations that had been her companions in this place. Strangely, she had been getting used to it. The pain wasn’t fading in the least, but she had been able to just stare into the sky in this oddly peaceful place.
A whirring sound could be heard. It pierced through her silent world and grew louder and louder. It grated on her ears, adding to her list of pains. Time passed some more, and she found herself getting used to that too. The peace of her cloudy painful world reasserted itself.
The peace, as turbulent as this one was, eventually shattered when someone touched her.
The pain flared up and spread across her in waves.
She would have screamed but all that came out was a groan.
Her eyes searched for the one responsible and she saw a figure... or three figures. Spinning. Overlapping. Moving in sync. The sight turned her stomach. She would have thrown up, but nothing came. Instead, the pain and nausea gripped her like a vice.
“...Miss...”
Time seemed to be flowing faster now. The pain pulsed faster as well.
“...we’re going to get you some help, Miss...” A voice had been calling out to her. She looked back at the confusing figure. The spinning overlapping image was still turning her stomach, but at least it had slowed down a little. She could make some sense of what she was seeing.
It was a man in uniform. He looked to be older than her. Perhaps around his forties. All three of him.
The sight of him gave her pause. Something seemed to be jogging her memory. The man in uniform made her think of someone else. But the memory wouldn’t come loose. The pain chased the thought away.
The man moved away from her sight and eternity seemed to fall back into place.
The woman didn’t know if she had wanted him to stay. He promised to bring help, but it was difficult to focus on caring. Her hands were full... even though she couldn’t feel her hands. She couldn’t move and she wondered why.
What happened?
Eternity collapsed again when the man returned with others. The sight of them seemed to be less divided this time. The overlapping images had grown closer together.
They were crouching around her and laying something down beside her.
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The woman watched them work and felt her memory being jogged again. Something felt missing. There was a new sensation joining the pain. There was an ache that the woman couldn’t understand. She searched the faces of the people around her but couldn’t find what she was looking for. All she felt was a yearning. A yearning ache to see someone...
Once again pain chased the thought away when one of the men touched her briefly.
“We need to move you to this stretcher. Then we can get you to the hospital.” The first man said. “But it's going to hurt a little getting you on the stretcher.”
“It might be better to wait till we know it's safe to move her.” One of the other men said.
The first man listened. There was a tightness to his face, an urgency. He looked at her again before nodding.
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The man was screaming. Or at least he tried to. What came out were growls and groans. Something was wrong. Horribly wrong. All this pain came out of nowhere. It was the worst he had ever felt. It filled his mind and chased away all thoughts of his wife.
The men hunched around him were doing something, saying something, but all of it passed him by. He couldn’t see past the pain enough to care what they were up to.
Time seemed to stretch on with this horrible feeling. It felt like he had spent days with this pain, but the men were still there so it must have only been minutes.
He couldn’t move the right side of his body, but now he could feel it, and it burned. There was a god-awful feeling somewhere past his chest. His left side didn’t feel much better, but he could feel his hand scrabbling at the ground. There was a numbness at his fingertips and his hands felt cold.
He was thrashing his head because of the pain. He couldn’t fully register what his eyes were seeing. The room he was lying in was open to the outside. A big hole with rubble and broken furniture had torn open the large room, allowing rain to pour in.
The man was feeling exhausted again. He couldn’t keep up with the agony. It was still there, a constant companion, but he couldn’t scream anymore. So, he tried to find distraction in his surroundings. He finally took stock and saw a place that reminded him of the last time he saw his wife. They were eating at a café. He remembered her laughing at something he said. There was something that had caught his attention outside, his wife had gotten up to look and then... Nothing.
The man turned his head to the left and saw the hole in the wall. Rain was splattering the floor and on an overturned vehicle that was lodged into the side of the hole. As he was watching, a lump of the ceiling fell and hit the car will a dull thump. Smoke tendrils were rising from the engine and burnt-out portions of the car's body.
People were moving around outside. An ambulance had pulled up as close to the café as was possible. The emergency lights were revolving around, casting their red and blue lights on everything. The grating screaming noise he had been hearing was the siren. A firetruck could be seen also but the hole in the wall was blocking most of it.
Police, firemen and ambulance personnel were moving in and out of the rubble.
Two men were carrying a stretcher out from the ruined café. Others were crowding around others lying on the wet and dusty floor.
It took a moment for the seriousness of the situation to register to his exhausted mind, and the pain wasn’t helping either, but the unmoving bodies around him made him panic.
Where was his wife? She was with him at the café. He tried to focus on each person lying around. There was a man with blood streaming down the side of his head not far from him. He seemed to be alive. Near him was a woman but he couldn’t see her upper half as she was blocked by the man. He felt his heart leap before he noticed that she wore different shoes than his wife.
His eyes kept searching even as the pain throbbed throughout his body. His vision was turning blurry again and his exhaustion threatened to make him pass out. He kept searching for his wife, however. He couldn’t let the pain win just yet. He needed to know where she was. He needed to know if she was okay.
He couldn’t find her in the building, so he looked outside. The men carrying the stretcher were picking their way through other bodies... people strewn about outside. The person in the stretcher was covered by a cloth from head to toe. For a moment, the man wondered if that was his wife, but a hand poking out from the cloth looked too hairy to be his wife.
The others lying outside had some ambulance personnel checking over them like him. He searched for her face among them. His hope was waning along with his ability to stay awake. He continued to drag his eyes to each person. His sight wandered across someone being attended by three paramedics. Their bodies were blocking the person's identity. He willed them to move so he could see, so he could make sure.
Frustration built up before he thought of looking elsewhere, but just as he flicked his eyes away, the paramedics finally moved. The man looked back... and his eyes widened in shock.
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More time passed by for the woman. Only, this time the men around her were in view and working to make her comfortable. They examined her body to determine the extent of the damage. And according to the thrums of pain shooting up and down her body from their tentative touches, she was very damaged. The men stayed calm and professional, but she could see the way they looked at her.
It was bad.
Time felt like it was stretching again. Though, this time with the men present, she couldn’t tell if they helped her remain sane. It was aggravating not knowing what was happening and not being able to speak and to ask questions.
She zoned out and waited for something to happen, and her pain was her eternal companion.
Hours seemed to go by before the men finally addressed her again.
“Miss? We believe we can move you now.” The first man spoke to her again. “But you’ll need to brace yourself. This could hurt a lot.”
This could hurt? Any more than it already did? If she could speak, she would have been screaming the entire time.
Some moments more flew by... or dragged by before he told her, “Okay, we’ll need to roll you onto your side to get the stretcher under you. Blink three times to let me know you’re ready.”
Some small measure of trepidation filled her now that something was happening, but she couldn’t just stay here, lying in the rain. She blinked three times.
The men moved into position and carefully pushed her.
It hurt.
It hurt so damn much.
She wanted to scream, but all she could do was grit her teeth until her gums felt numb. Her eyes watered and she wanted to throw up, but they managed to roll her onto her side.
The world swam before her watery eyes, and she felt something butt up against her back and hip. That must have been the stretcher. The man in front of her, bracing her from falling onto her front, moved aside and she was able to see behind him.
The sight was confusing to her. There was a building, A tall building, with a jagged hole in the side. A white van was on its side beside the hole. The van had dents, scrapes and burn marks all over it. The building itself was a mess. Bits and pieces of it were all over the floor.
Her mind had trouble understanding what had happened. Her eyes looked inside the building and she saw people, police, paramedics and firefighters, moving around. Broken bits of rubble littered the floor. A light bulb was flickering behind a counter. The ceiling was caved in and spilling onto the ground floor. It looked like someone was trapped and some paramedics were trying to free him–
Shock and fear took hold of her.
Her eyes widened as far as they could go. The world stood still when she noticed the man staring straight at her. She recognized him. Even with a breathing mask covering his mouth and nose. Her mind struggled to process the sight, but she knew...
That was her husband.
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The man's eyes locked onto his wife. There was blood on her. Her arm looked... wrong. He couldn’t see her legs since the paramedic was covering those from view. The skin on one side of her face looked... burnt.
They were trying to put her on a stretcher.
Her face was bruised, and her hair was matted down from the rain or from her blood. He couldn’t tell. There was pain in the way she looked at him. There was fear like he had never seen on her face before. His heart clutched tightly at the sight.
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The woman noticed that a large block with a metal pole had collapsed on top of him. His chest and lower half were underneath. Her mind screamed louder at the sight, more so than for her own pain.
No, no, no, no...!
That one word repeated over and over, following her despair.
She begged for the metal to not have pierced him. She begged but didn’t know who she was begging to. Did God care? Would he listen?
She didn’t care about her own pain, just please save him!
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Their eyes couldn’t look away from the other. The world didn’t move as they silently yearned for each other. They didn’t dare to blink, in case the moment ended.
As they stared, a calm settled over them. It was strange. Their pains felt distant now. The people around them faded away into the background. The calm left a quiet hush in place of the rain and the sirens.
But it was a sad, heartbreaking calm.
They knew. They both knew.
Either one, or both, would die.
It hurt. Their time together was too brief. They wanted more. They needed more. But their thread was being cut short.
He wanted to hold her hand one last time.
She wanted to lie beside him before the end.
He tried to move his hand. He tried to reach out to her, but the spell was broken. Time moved forward once again.
She was gently rolled over onto her back. She tried to keep him within her sight. The pain she felt meant nothing. She needed to see him.
The men lifted her up.
They felt the worst agony when they could no longer look into each other's eyes.
She was carried into an ambulance.
He watched her go. A piece of himself was tearing away.
She felt empty. A terrible hole was forming in her chest. It dwarfed any physical pain she felt.
He still reached out. His hand scrabbled against the ground, shifting the loose debris. He ached to hold her. His vision was fading, and his thoughts were scattered, but he needed to feel her.
She was strapped in place. Secured inside the ambulance. Someone was hovering over her, but she didn’t care. They weren’t him. She wanted him next to her. She wanted to have his warmth.
She was cold. She was tired.
He was losing sight; his eyes became heavy.
She couldn’t remember where she was. Everything was melting away.
He couldn’t see the ambulance. He didn’t know why he was holding out his hand. He only knew that he needed to. He dragged his hand further with a singular focus. Everything else fell away.
The café was gone. The people were gone. The concrete, the bricks, the rubble. Gone. The need to hold … someone, remained.
Her eyes had closed. She couldn’t see the walls, the ceiling nor the person looking after her. She only felt the ambulance bed in which she lay. The straps across her body also faded. She didn’t even feel the vehicle driving away.
She was floating again. Floating in a white space. Light burned everything away.
All he could feel was his hand. All he could think of was holding onto something.
Her mind wandered thoughtlessly, floating endlessly through a blinding white space. She couldn’t recall why she was there nor how she got there. It was peaceful, but also lonely. There was an ache... a need. For what, she couldn’t remember, but she could feel her hand reach for something.
He thought of nothing. Nothing except to reach out for her. He couldn’t see anything for the brightness around him. He needed to reach out before his last thought faded.
Time seemed to slip by, and her thoughts had slowed until she felt something fill her hand. Someone was holding her. The quiet peace, the lonely empty peace was now warm. She didn’t need to see who was holding her hand. She knew. She knew it was someone who loved her.
She didn’t feel lonely anymore.
He found her. Through the white expanse he found her. He held on and felt relief. He could finally relax. He could finally stop thinking. He found her and that was the only thing that mattered.
The two held on. They clutched tightly with not a single thought of letting go.
The two floated through the white void and their last thoughts fell away. The light grew dim and even their bodies burned away, before finally everything went dark, and all that was left of the two was threads of light entwined. They were tied together. Forever bound.