When I opened my eyes, trying to recover from the blinding pain and sudden loss of hearing, I was lying flat on my back, surrounded by broken glass, metal, and chunks of burning wood. I was also now inside the surf shop.
The scene around me was exactly what anyone would expect after a car bombing; the entire store front had been ripped off (or blown in, I suppose) and was completely unrecognizable. I suspected the connected shops had also suffered indescribable damage. Most of the shop’s merchandise had also been knocked over, crushed, or was in the process of burning. The room was quickly filling with smoke, mostly billowing into the building from the charred, twisted remains of the Civic.
I tried to climb to my feet, knocked instantly back down by a red-hot sensation running through my right leg. I lowered my hand and upon review, it was covered in thick, crimson blood. More than anything, I was terrified I would look down to see my leg had been sheared off by a chunk of rogue car or building.
Peaking only from one eye, I glanced at my leg to see it luckily was still attached, but had been compromised by a triangular sliver of window glass about the size of my palm. Surprisingly, there was little pain when I didn’t try to stand on it.
As I got enough nerve to examine the wound with both eyes open, Gabe appeared at the store front, out of breathe and with an expression of utter shock on his face. He dashed into the remains of the shop, climbing over debris, and knelt down at my side, seemingly not fazed by my recent wound. Had we switched places, I would have surely been screaming and crying at the sight of a shard of glass sticking out of his leg.
“What happened?” he asked, exasperated, but still calm. Gabe was almost always calm.
I winced again as his knuckle accidentally brushed against the shard of glass. “What do you think happened? Our car just blew up!” I screamed.
A flaming surf board fell from the wall, crashing against the floor as Gabe simply asked, “How?” However, before I could answer, he was positioning himself behind me and hooking his hands under my arms in order to drag me to a safer location.
As I slid across the floor, fighting the intense urge to throw up, I tried my best to answer what I felt to be Gabe’s ridiculous question. “My best guess is your brother! Ford came back, asked to borrow the car for an hour or two before we left; he said he was coming with us. He got in, turned the key, and then… Well, look around.”
We came to a stop on the opposite side of the curtain where I noticed our apartment was amazingly untouched by the explosion. Nothing seemed out of place, aside from the fact the entire room had been a mess before the bomb went off. Gabe immediately ran towards the bathroom, returning with a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a package of unopened bandages.
“No,” he said confidently. “Geet wouldn’t have done this. He’s cold, yeah, but he wouldn’t have killed Ford.”
He lifted my leg, propping it up on the coffee table as I let out an excruciated scream.
“Open your eyes, Gabe,” I growled through clenched teeth. “The car was ours. Your brother, or whoever it was, was not aiming for Ford. That bomb was meant for one, if not both of us.”
He unscrewed the lid from the bottle of alcohol and carelessly threw it across the room. I couldn’t help but imagine I was in some kind of war movie as he warned, “This is going to hurt.” The burning building around us might as well have been the trenches of some World War II battlefield. We’d stormed the beaches of Normandy, and I was likely going to lose my leg as a result.
I closed my eyes as tight as I could, as if this would actually help with the pain, and he immediately began to pour the alcohol onto my leg. I writhed in agony, trying desperately not to move too much, but couldn’t shake the thought of what was coming next. As I grabbed my own thigh with both hands to steady it, Gabe swiftly wrapped his bare hand around the glass and tugged as hard as he could. The shard came free a lot easier than I expected, but with the new gash in my leg also came large amounts of blood pouring, and for a brief moment at the beginning, spraying out.
“Shit,” Gabe murmured under his breathe.
“No,” I argued. “Not shit. Make it stop.”
He tore the bandages from the box and applied pressure to the wound with both hands. On the bright side, the need to vomit had passed, but unfortunately had been replaced by a strong urge to pass out.
From the other side of the curtain, I could hear the beginnings of muffled shouts of both horror and confusion. The initial blast had likely caused everyone in the area to take shelter, but now several minutes had passed and people were starting to get curious. Whether anyone had braved the destruction and entered the surf shop, I hadn’t a clue.
Gabe continued to hold both hands against the wound until finally deciding to wrap the entire lower half of my leg in gauze. The burning pain from the alcohol was beginning to wear off, but the stabbing pain of the wound itself had also started to takre over. My leg was numb, and a small part of my mind still wondered if I did make it through the trauma, would I be able to keep the leg? I was by no means a doctor, but I’d heard stories of spreading infection leading to the unavoidable reality of amputation.
I leaned my head back against the floor and closed my eyes, unaware of my own actions until Gabe shook me by the shoulder, smearing my own blood all over my shirt.
“Stay with me,” he urged. “We aren’t out of the woods yet. Stay awake, Jamie.”
The voices outside were drawing closer, and I thought I could hear sirens in the distance. The sound of sirens still made me nervous, just as they had any time a fire truck or ambulance passed me on the street. No matter what the situation, I always had a fear in the back of my mind they—the cops, Harrison, whoever—were coming for me. All things considered, I would have thought the police and fire departments would have arrived instantly, right after the explosion, but it wasn’t everyday a bomb went off in Behler, California.
Another fiery blast rang through my ears, presumably coming from the still-burning car outside, and several people let out cries of terror. The apocalypse was happening mere feet away, yet all I wanted to do was sleep.
“Talk to me!” Gabe demanded, sounding a little more panall things icked than he probably intended. I wasn’t aware of my own condition exactly, but I could feel my eyes rolling into the back of my head. The room around us was hazy. The lights flickered and went out completely with the next bang, the darkness begging me to just close my eyes and sleep it all off. When I woke up, or rather if I woke up, it would all be over.
“Jamie!”
I half-opened my eyes for just a second, saying, “This is all our fault,” before giving up and passing out cold.
(Ann “Oakley” Ellis)
Old Habits Page 6