Shattered Glass & Broken Hearts

Red and blue lights cut through the darkness of the Nevada desert sky as Emily Green lay on the ground, eyes wide open, body unmoving. She was well aware of the chaos around her; the loud medical technicians calling for the stretcher to get her to the ambulance, the police barking out orders for passersby to leave the scene. But she wasn’t concerned with any of them. They could all go to Hell as far as she was concerned, in fact. The only person she wanted to hear was a boy about her age, Ronnie.

You’re never gonna hear his voice again, Em. He’s dead. He’s got to be, a dark voice told her in the back of her mind as she tried to turn her head in the rough direction of the car before someone, probably an EMT, stopped her.

“Just keep your head still, sweetheart. We don’t know the extent of your injuries just yet,” the person explained to her before she heard several people counting from one to three before her body was suddenly lifted up off of the ground. Soon enough, she felt herself being placed back on something hard, most likely a brace of some sort as straps were tightened around her legs, torso, and arms to keep her still.

Where’s Ronnie? She wanted to ask as she felt herself being wheeled towards the nearby ambulance. But no one here was a psychic, and she had already determined that she couldn’t speak.

“Have we figured out who she is yet?” The same person who had told her to keep still asked someone else, presumably a second EMT. “Or the boy?”

“No. The cops said that nothing survived the crash except them. Maybe when she comes out of the shock, she’ll be able to tell us more.”

Emily felt a sudden burst of hope explode in her chest when she heard the second voice. He’d said nothing except them had survived. Did that mean Ronnie wasn’t dead after all? Had he somehow pulled through?

She knew she couldn’t get any answers right now. She was too injured and she was too tired to talk even if she could. Right now, all she wanted was to close her eyes and take a nice, long nap. Maybe when she woke up, she’d be able to see Ronnie again. A smile tugged at the corners of her blood-drenched lips in spite of her pain at the thought of seeing those warm brown eyes and confident grin again.

“She’s crashing!”

That was the last thing Emily heard before her vision went completely blank, all feeling leaving her body before she felt a kind of coldness she’d never experienced set in over herself. It was in that moment that she knew she had died.