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There were 23 seconds left.
23 seconds until what? 23 seconds to…
Live? No, because Charlie would be fine, at the end of it all. He had to be fine. He would be fine, he would make a full recovery, and weeks later they would be back to solving crime in the world where there weren't consequences for bringing a baby brother with on a stakeout.
Or perhaps he would die.
No one, not Don or Alan, or even Charlie himself, knew which would happen, though secretly they all knew fate was leaning towards the latter option. Bullet wounds do look so nasty after all.
So maybe it was 23 seconds to live. But assuming Charlie did survive (because anything else was too horrible to imagine, let alone live through), what was this time for?
Perhaps it was 23 seconds to speak. 23 seconds for Charlie to say his final piece before passing on, or passing out, depending on what sort of mood God was in that day. Not that Charlie had ever been particularly religious, but Don prayed for him right then, and so did Alan, even though neither had ever been much good at it.
But Charlie was only lying there, pale and bleeding and not talking, not saying any last words, famous or no. Even though Don was speaking to him, trying to keep him talking, keep him awake, keep him breathing, it didn't seem to be working. It didn't look like any of those things would be happening much longer, but to Don, that was an impossibility. So he kept talking.
19 seconds. 19 breaths left to say nothing of importance, but in which every word mattered more than a thousand ever had before.
Those 19 seconds would be a time of family. Don, Alan, and Charlie were there, side by side, even though they weren't saying anything aside from the horribly usual, "It will all be okay (we hope)," and, "The ambulance is coming (we've only just begun to be a family again)," and in a certain brother's case, "Hold on, Chuck (I need you)."
15 seconds to hold on.
Hold on, while Don and Alan's world was kicked off of its axis as if by a petulant child on a rampage. That was life really; building up your little toy blocks in the hope that they won't be knocked over by that kid over in the corner who sniffs glue.
But that's getting off track. Those 15 seconds weren't about that. That period of time was about everything going wrong, when it had all been going so well. It was about lost opportunities, words never said between brothers, and fathers and sons. It was about family, and how that is both a wonderful and fragile thing.
Perhaps it was sentimental, but after all, there were only 12 seconds left. Sentimentality didn't rank very high on their list of concerns. The blood drenching Charlie's side was a much more worrisome to the two men kneeling beside him, heads bent almost as if in prayer.
10 seconds to wipe away the red.
9 seconds to put pressure on the wound.
8 seconds to save a life.
And then…
7 seconds left. 7 more breaths for Charlie to take, 7 more tears to drop down someone's face. Lucky number seven.
What is there to do in seven seconds? You can't even sing happy birthday in that amount of time.
Not that Don or Alan were in the mood for birthday jingles at that moment, but if you can't even sing a dinky little song in the time you have left with your brother, with your son, what can you do. What can you possibly do? There were only seven seconds left to answer that question.
6 seconds to call out his name. To cry, "Chuck!", to whisper, "Charlie," and to barely notice the teary tracks running down their faces, because the only thing they can see is Charlie, his eyes fluttering, his pulse weak, his blood draining from his body almost as rapidly as his strength.
5 seconds. 5 second warning. What will they do? What's left to be done?
How will they use this time?
4 seconds to lift him onto the stretcher. The paramedics crowded in and it felt claustrophobic and tight, but for one little second there was hope. If only a second could last longer. If only 23 seconds had ever been enough.
3 seconds to hold his hand and demand to be in the ambulance with him. They felt every bump of the ride. They felt their heart stop every time Charlie's breath flickered off. On. Off. On. Like a dying light bulb. Flickering. Weak.
2 seconds to say their goodbyes (just in case).
1 second…
1 second to say a life time of words, to articulate them into beautiful prose so that Charlie could truly understand the emotion they felt, the relationship they had. It wasn't perfect (far from it), but it worked and it was theirs, and Charlie should know that.
There was 1 second to the usual, "I love you," and, "it'll all be fine."
Was it really going to be fine? How could they know, when they've only seen 23 seconds of the whole story? A snapshot, one frame of thousands. They hope, they pray that it will be fine, but who ever really knows these things.
1 second. A blink of an eye. 1 second to say…
"Charlie."
23 seconds are gone.
Would you have done anything differently?