"Mommy, Phillip won't stop poking me!"
"She's a liar!"
Pam looked back to see the two children in the back seat. Cece's curly brown-blonde hair hanging in her face and Philip's Popsicle from earlier smudged all over his new shirt.
"You guys, stop! We'll be at grandma's house in five minutes, just behave until then please!" Pam groaned and turned back around. The Halpert's were headed for a quick visit with grandma before going on vacation. Cece and Philip had been begging Jim and Pam for months to go to Disney World, and they had finally cracked. The family was going to celebrate Phillip's sixth birthday.
Jim took his eyes off the road for a split second to smile at Pam in the passenger seat. When he turned to her, suddenly her expression filled with horror.
"Jim!" Pam screamed.
Before Jim could look back at the road the force of impact knocked the air out of him. The last thing he heard before going black was Cece crying in the back seat.
Sometime later Jim fluttered his eyelids and became aware of what was going on. The first thing he noticed was the large, black car staring him right in the face. The Halpert's windshield was completely shattered, making it harder to see the details of what had happened.
Sirens went off somewhere in the distance.
"H..help" Jim tried to yell out, tried to make someone hear him.
Before he could try again, his car door was being cut open next to him. The loud noise of the buzz saw made his ears ring. The door fell to the ground with a large crash. Jim's ears started to ring again.
"We've got to get him out! Check the other doors!" The EMT barked orders at his team. Jim could just barely hear him.
He could feel the man's hands grab him and start to pull him out of the car. "P..please," Jim muttered so quietly he was unsure if he had even made a sound. "I'm gonna get you out, you're gonna be fine." The EMT spoke quickly and loudly. Jim was placed onto a gurney and crowded by a horde of unfamiliar faces.
When his hearing started to come back, Jim could make out voices of other men in the distance. Things like, "I can't get the door open!" and, "Don't bother, they're gone."
Jim lifted his head to see what was happening, and his heart broke.
A larger male was carrying a small figure, wrapped in a 'Cars' blanket, in his hands. The man placed the figure on a white sheet on the pavement.
"No." Jim's voices scratched as he tried to get up.
"Sir, you need to lie down," A woman said to him, but he did not listen. Jim carefully moved himself over to the figure, not wanting to believe what his eyes were seeing. He collapsed next to it. His hand shaking, Jim slowly moved the blanket out of the way.
"Oh, god no." Tears started to flood his eyes so much that he could barely see. Blackness started to flood his vision again.
When he woke up, he was in the hospital. Jim looked around at the sterile, white walls. There were a few gaudy watercolor paintings of flowers on the wall. It reminded him of Pam, and how much she hated paintings like that.
The door to the room creaked open and a nurse walked in. "Mr. Halpert, you're awake. We were worried there for a second." She smiled at him and went to look at his chart.
"Where is Pam?" Jim said, realizing just how much it hurt his throat to speak.
"Oh." The nurse looked him in the eyes and sighed. "Mr. Halpert, I'm sorry. The wreck completely demolished your car. Drunk driver ran a stop light. You were the only survivor."
Two hospital workers walked down the hallway leading to the morgue, pushing gurneys with them.
"Shame," one of them said, "I hate seeing kids down here."