“There are more important things than blood—”
With a guttural sound of frustration, he stormed down the driveway toward his truck.
“Come back!” she ordered.
He didn’t slow.
“Dylan,” Sebastian called.
He didn’t slow.
She jogged downhill, but her brother was pulling away when she reached the road. He peeled out and sped away.
Anguish slid down the back of her legs, weakening them. “Slow down!” He was upset and driving much too fast. “Slow down!” she yelled.
His truck disappeared around the bend.
“Dylan!” she couldn’t stop herself from screaming, even though she knew he couldn’t hear.
His engine growled. A horn blared. Brakes screeched. Then she heard the sickening noise of crunching metal.
Quiet.
She opened her mouth, but no voice or breath emerged. To the bottom of her soul there was nothing, nothing but immobilizing fear.
Sebastian was beside her, hurrying her to his car. She was in the passenger seat. He was driving them around the curve. Dylan’s blue truck had rammed into a tree. Another car, a sedan, had pulled onto the opposite side of the road.
Leah was out of Sebastian’s Mercedes before it had come to a stop and running the way she always did in her anxiety dreams many times before. Leaden legs. Too slow.
The grandfatherly driver of the sedan was also rushing toward Dylan, but Leah dashed past the older man and got there first. Dylan’s window was down.
He looked fine. No blood. Unharmed.
Relief hit her like a visceral thing.
But then Dylan, who was leaning back against his headrest, rolled his face toward her, and she saw panic in his dark eyes. He made a high-pitched rasping sound that told her he was fighting to get air. “Can’t . . . breathe.” The words were barely audible.
She tried to jerk open his door, but the impact had warped it. “Sebastian!”
“I’m here.”
“He can’t breathe.”
Sebastian leaned inside the truck. “Can you move your hands and feet?”
Dylan gave a desperate nod.
Sebastian reached in, hooked his arms around Dylan’s upper body, and pulled him through the opening. Leah caught his legs. They lay Dylan on a flat stretch of earth and dropped to their knees beside him.
“Leah,” Dylan wheezed, looking at her the way he had when he was little and scared.
“It’s okay,” she told him, though she was dying inside. She wrapped her hand around his. “You’re going to be fine.”
Sebastian rested his ear on Dylan’s chest. Then, gently, he probed Dylan’s throat. “Injury to the larynx. It’s preventing airflow down the trachea.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” the driver of the sedan said. “He was in my lane. I honked and he swerved—”
“Call 9-1-1,” Sebastian told him.
The man blanched. He fumbled for his phone.
“I need a straw,” Sebastian said.
“There’s one, ah . . .” The man pushed a shaking hand to his temple. “In my car. I stopped at 7-Eleven earlier.”
Sebastian sprinted to the man’s car.
Dylan was trying to say her name, she could tell by reading his lips. But no sound was coming out now. She squeezed his hand. He was struggling for air, like a fish in the bottom of a boat, and the sight of it was the very worst thing she’d ever seen. She wrestled down the sob that wanted to rise.
“I love you,” she told him. “So much. Everything’s going to be all right.”
Dylan’s lips were beginning to turn blue.
Frantic, she looked up for Sebastian. He was reaching into the trunk of his Mercedes. The stranger was talking to 9-1-1 dispatch.
God! she begged silently. God, please. Please!
Sebastian ran to them, knelt on Dylan’s other side. With one hand, he flicked open a Swiss Army knife. With his other, he felt the area just below Dylan’s Adam’s apple. “Dylan, I’m going to open an airway into your lungs.” Then with full assurance and zero hesitation, he slid the knife through the skin of Dylan’s throat. Instantly, blood rose to meet the blade. He twisted the knife just enough to open the incision he’d made, pulled a wide red straw from his jacket pocket, and inserted it into the hole.
She heard air pulling through the straw, urgent and deep.
Dylan relaxed slightly.
“That’s it.” Sebastian used his fingers to close the hole around the straw. “Take it easy and breathe.”
The whistling, beautiful sound of an exhale. Inhale. Exhale.
“Good job.” Sebastian looked straight into Dylan’s eyes. “Did your throat ram into the steering wheel when your truck hit the tree?”
Dylan gave a slight nod.
“Your lungs are getting the air they need,” Sebastian said. “You’re going to be okay. Do you hear me, Dylan?”
Another nod.
Leah was too terrified to believe what Sebastian had just said, that Dylan was going to be okay. And much too terrified to believe that he wasn’t.
Dylan’s focus flicked to her. Brown curls fell against the bright autumn leaves blanketing the ground.
“I’m here,” Leah said to the boy she’d loved since the day he was born. The one who was more important to her than her own wants, her own desires, her own life. “I’m here, sweetheart.”
Sebastian tightened his hold on the skin around the straw, doing his best to create a seal.
He loved Leah. And Leah loved Dylan. He’d once lost what he’d loved, so he would move mountains and oceans with his bare hands to ensure that she did not endure the same pain.
He’d perforated the cartilaginous rings of the trachea. The pressure he was exerting on the wound would mitigate the loss of blood. Even so, he could feel it running down the sides of Dylan’s neck.
“I performed a tracheotomy,” he explained to Dylan, “which means that the straw is functioning as your windpipe, allowing oxygen in and out. The straw will tide us over until we get you to the hospital. There’s a trip in an ambulance in your near future. And a hospital stay. I’m sorry to tell you that hospital food is just as bad as its reputation would lead you to believe.”
This situation had stripped years off Dylan. Though he was trying to appear brave, he looked young and defenseless.
Leah’s concentration remained trained on her brother. She probably wasn’t aware that tears were wetting her face and turning her lashes spiky.
It was too late, much too late, to protect himself from her. From now on, for the rest of his life, there would be no hiding from the things she made him feel.
A siren’s blare started small and grew in volume.
“You can look forward to a few days off of school for this,” Sebastian told Dylan. “This is a tough way to cut class. But congratulations. You managed it.”
Dylan tried to smile. The straw made a gurgle and Sebastian adjusted the angle of it so Dylan would continue to receive plenty of clean air.
The paramedics arrived. Sebastian gave swift instructions. They brought over tape and Sebastian used it to secure the straw so that there was no leakage around it and no possibility of dislodging it.
He helped the paramedics move Dylan onto the stretcher. Blood smeared bright against the boy’s sweatshirt.