Eleven
As the semi-automatic coming from in the middle of the intersection came from the lane where the traffic light was red, it had come from the opposite side of the interstate and coming into the intersection crashing side-on into the truck that Erin fought for control over with, the oversized American truck spun out of control, the semi t-boned the entire length of the truck sending it to spiral.
The sound of the semi truck's screeching brakes and weaving tires skidding on the wet tarmac shattered the profound silence that had filled the night. Suddenly, as her car spun out of control towards the oncoming cars, images flashed across Erin and Jay's minds - images of their family and friends from Chicago and everywhere else flashed in their minds. After the colossal blow hit the car, and it seemed like an immense weight was thrown on Erin first; then Jay was thrown sideways and shunted back towards the passenger door, the last thing she saw was a waterfall of glass cascading down on her before everything went black, and the immense force had been lifted off her as she seemed to float away into complete and utter darkness after the side impact with the heavy immense semi had hit her side of the smaller truck.
She had become disorientated before she had sustained a mild concussion to her poor sweet head that had her drifting in and out of her own consciousness she looked to her side to see Jay holding onto the truck door and the roof handle. She was fleetingly aware of the bloody taste in her mouth and the liquid rolling down her face, that mildly tickled her skin after her head had struck the glass window before the side airbag deployed earlier. They continue to spin from the lane of traffic they were into oncoming traffic. After being t-boned it forced the truck to bolt from the lane they were in until they began to spin into the intersection with broken mirrors, glasses and the axle of the vehicle threw across the road as it tore itself apart.
Erin tried to steer the car out of the incoming traffic but realising the steering was broken, they were hit at the front by a smaller car, which spun them around to hit a series of bollards which forced them to roll over in a series of turns. Meanwhile, Jay clung to the rood handle as he braced for the next impact from the car they had just hit, willing and wishing for this to over, glass from the windshield shattered and graced them with glass rain over them as they rolled over again. He curled his body away from the engine as he yelled at Erin to cover her head, as she sat motionless while being thrown around the cockpit of the front of the truck with her legs hitting the steering column and her arms bouncing from the airbags and the steering wheel.
As she became filled with motion in her limbs again she clenched her body again as she gasped for air and at anything, she could hold to brace herself. Erin and Jay were upside down when the truck continued rolling again and again then they were upright again until they upside down on the roof of the truck, where they had been overturned, jammed and pushed into parts of the car with their bodies mashed into the metal and plastic.
He reached for Erin's hand and the tears started to pour from her terrified face, and he looked scared and petrified at this fate as his face turned towards her, it wasn't like a simple bump in a car, they had toppled from side to roof to side to upright again, twice over, three times, and they had lost count the number of times. His hand grabbed at her arm as the instinct to protect them both, he pulled them to the centre of the car with the gear stick crushing underneath the two of them. One of Erin's hands clung to the steering wheel and the other clung to Jay's hand, until her head hit hard against the edge of the wheel, cracking a cut on her forehead open, pouring out blood until the lights she could see in her eyes went out. She was unconscious and it was all gone, the pain began to enrage inside her body, she would flutter her eyes and she could feel the pain everywhere in her body hurting until she couldn't tell what was injured.
The rest was a blur, in Erin's mind, it was filled in the blanks with the truth of what had happened. They finished rolling over and spinning across the enormous intersection in Chicago when they finally landed on the truck's roof. Coming to a profound silent stop after finally hitting the barriers, they both lay their one unconscious and the other barely lucid.
She was barely alive, her eyes were drifting in and out of consciousness, but she was living but barely breathing. He was alive but barely awake.
As he woke from his dazed dizzy feeling after the truck stopped dead, Jay's eyes took in the walls of old Chicago buildings and storefronts on either side. He was barely touched by injuries that he could feel immediately but he knew he wasn't unscathed his brother was an ER doctor. He had remembered from the tours he had served that adrenaline is a major matter when in a crash because when it wears off from the body, the body starts to feel all the pain in the body, so he knew that just because he didn't feel any pain now didn't mean that he wouldn't feel pain soon.
"Erin, Erin, wake up, come on Erin I need you to wake up."
Her soft warm hitched breaths hurled into the icy cold air spiralling as it drifted the warmth away from her dying body. Her head laid against the seat belt adjuster, with the rich liquid inking her brunette hairs, painting a trail of scarlet droplets on her face from a slashed cut on her pretty face. Her skin was in its purest form like Eve had given it to her, pale and porcelain, yet damaged, unperfect, and broken.
A weight lifted her soul and body entwined as she woke lying in a bright white mist, it had been something she had never experienced before, she felt like she was dreaming, yet she could feel something, someone pulling her towards the bright intense light round her.
Surrounding her was a cloudy vapour; clouds of white drifting into the oblivion. She gathered her royal blue dress, as she stood up, looking like she had just finished getting ready for the police gala hours before, she appeared perfect, in her purest form she had ever existed in. The floor on which she had laid on was pearled white, neither warm nor cold, neither inviting nor distressing yet simply there, flat, blank and marbled.
Effortlessly her dress and body moved through the still composed air, she walked towards the marble ground, no walls were in her surrounding, like she stood on a platform shielded by clouds from the weather, yet a belting white light shone directly in front of her, wear a shadow began to form in the distance, a slim figure, with
Erin thought of the last time she had seen her, a decade, over a decade, since the last time she had said 'hello' ; since she said 'goodbye'. A whole decade since she had even seen her face, her beautiful motherly face. She knew something was wrong inside her, inside her body, but seeing her mother figure caused her to cry softly with tears rolling silently down her cheek saturating the top of her strapless dress.
"You look beautiful my darling," Said a loving voice stood far away from her as if she had been another world away.
"Camille?" Erin asked.
"Yes my darling," She smiled
"Is this real?" She had questioned, trying to remember her life, her memories, trying to remember a place that she had never been to before.
"It's as real as you want it to be Erin," Camille whispered, as she held her pale white hand.
"I must be dreaming, because you died, you are the only person I never loved unconditionally and you died, you had cancer,"
"Yet I'm here with you. You wear the necklace I left to you, I am always close to you. But we can stay like this forever if you would like,"
"I can't, I love you but I can't, what about them. I'm not ready to leave them yet," she whispered.
"I know Er, but we're never ready to leave the ones we love, I thought I would have decade with you, with Hank, with Justin, but I had to leave, I was taken before I was ready, but now I understand, it's my job to look after you from here,"
"What happened to me," Erin mumbled as she felt a sharp pain in her head, "I have to go back, I'm not ready yet, I have my family,"
"What family is that baby girl, you're my baby girl, you have always been my daughter whether I adopted you or not," Camille asked.
"Hank, Olive, Daniel… them, him…" She dismissed her foster mother's option,
"I love you too, but I have someone back there that I love too. "
They two of them hugged for what felt to Erin an eternity, she finally managed to say goodbye to his mother, her true mother, but she wasn't ready to stop living yet, she wasn't ready to give up on her life. She had fought everyone in her life, she fought to be alive, to be someone, to have someone and to be loved, she was defeated but she never gave up, she couldn't give up, because she had living to do.
"Look after him…" Camille asked with silver tears forming her chocolate brown eyes.
"I will promise to look after him, He misses you, you know," She promised
"Tell him I miss him too, I'm waiting for him, and so is Justin. We're waiting for when you're both ready," She uttered her last words as Erin thanked her for her motherly love, kissed her cheek and hugged her one last time, her true mother began to fade subtly, like a pure white dove flying away.
She ran as quickly as she could, as fast as she had ever run, she ran for her life - for existence. The more space she covered the more her dress began to tatter and pain etched in her body appeared. Glass carved her skin with scarlet slashes, metal shards ripped her skin from the muscle underneath. She ran collapsing every few steps as she screamed violently with every blow, slash and blunt trauma hitting her petite frame.
Becoming breathless at every step and pace she took, she crawled away from the light, until she saw a truck upside down, sitting unstable on the ground, half pinned against the concrete bollards, and the truck laid at an angle on the pavement and road, which caused it to rock, a semi-auto with a man laid out on the floor, three people were around the collision, surrounding a truck with flames erupting from the belly of the underside of the same the truck that she had driven, smouldering softly as a man running with a fire extinguisher from his car. The GMC Sierra had been Jay's dream truck; they had one together as their car on the job before she had left.
She stood ghost-like painless down upon the body of a woman upside down a GMC truck. Her broken body was slashed, bone exposed, her head bloody. A man in a tuxedo was laying next to her, he had removed his seatbelt, he crawled around on the glassy tarmacked road where the windshield had been, he was barely conscious, but he was crushed up against the long concrete bollards, she was in front of him but she wasn't talking, she didn't look like she was even breathing.
Erin realised as she crouched next to the truck, it was her, she was barely breathing, it was Jay laying there crushed with his leg in the food area, with the dashboard pining his leg down, yet he had managed to free himself slightly so he wasn't totally upside down now. She thought in her mind that she thanked her for letting her hear her voice and see her smile.
She made her realise that there was fight left in her, she had fought for every part of her life, she defended her choice to fight, she chose to fight, she chose to live.
"Fight, goddamn it, Fight!" She screamed before she rapidly inhaled the cold breeze into her deflated lungs.
"Erin! Erin! Erin!" He shouted as he tried to wake her, from her shallow barely breathing state.
Erin opened her eyes briefly and the thought in her head as her eyes struggled to flicker the light in "Why all the pain? … Why so much pain? Why do I hurt everywhere?" She thought couldn't remember what had happened. She struggled to free herself from the uncomfortable position only to be rewarded with more pain as she panicked too. She screamed as she moved her arm away from the steering wheel, that screeched sound into Jay's ear that deafens him with her pain smearing through her body.
"Urgh, ow ow urgh…" Erin groaned in an exhaustive amount of pain.
"Erin where does it hurt?" Jay begged her to answer her question.
"Everywhere, my arm… my head...Jay" She gasped for air "Jay, I don't feel well, my head's spinning, it feels so sore… I feel like I'm gonna be sick" Erin moaned.
"Breathe in, breathe out Erin calm down … in and out, can you see me, I'm here, " jay calmed her down " do you know where your purse bag thing is?"
"It's in the centre console compartment where I left it " Erin muttered.
"Right…" he wiped his eyes as he grabbed the purse, not knowing where his phone has disappeared inside the truck "I'm gonna call an ambulance Erin, Erin !" Jay shouted as Erin fell into an unconscious state again.
Jay noticed that there was the white jagged end of a broken bone cutting through the skin of Erin's name after she had pulled her arm from outside the steering wheel and blood ran freely in thick clotting scarlet rivers blood that oozed out of her arm, as she had released her arm from the constraints of the steering wheel that had become its cage before she has yanked her arm away causing to have a deafening scream.
Then came a blue light and red light flickered on and off, the sound of sirens, approaching. The first responders and passersby rushed over to the truck where Erin was lifeless unconscious and Jay dazed from the bright car light staring at the accident that had unfolded in front of them. A dozen men ran out of the trucks towards the scene of the accident, ambulance 61 drove over to the semi, auto, where a man had been doing CPR on the driver of the truck, 2 more ambulances had arrived from other firehouses.
"Get some cribbing and struts for this thing, I don't want this thing to move!" Casey shouted to the rest of the guys running from the fire trucks from Firehouse 51. They started to put chocks under the car, around, as it brought it to a level height with the pavement so the truck wouldn't rock when they attempted to move them and get them out.
"I want this vehicle stabilized, now!" Severide shouted as the rest of Squad brought the gear from the back of truck Squad 3.
"Hello sir, ma'am, don't move, we're gonna get you out, Jay? Erin?" Casey questioned as he crouched down to the car, laying down to see who was in the car, and what injuries they had sustained in the accident.
"Casey, Casey! You need to get Erin out first, Erin can't breathe properly, she was out of it for a while, until some people found us, and my legs pinned under the dash, I broke myself free from the seat, and the truck rocked so I stopped moving," Jay disclosed.
"What have we got?" Severide questioned his comrade.
"Female with a possible broken arm and concussion, barely conscious, male, leg pinned under the dashboard, conscious and awake," Casey concluded.
The paramedic grabbed the oxygen tank and mask, placing the mask over her mouth and nose, hoping to improve her breathing with 100% oxygen. They had collared her and moved into the truck from the ground to collar Jay. They had brought the hydraulic cutter out to cut open the door, they placed a sheet over the two of them inside the truck. The door was off quickly as they worked as fast as they could to get them to safety and to the hospital for medical help. They lifted the sheet off the pair of them and lifted her as carefully as they could with the collar on her neck and the oxygen mask over her mouth and nose.
"Right let's get her out of here!" A paramedic voiced. The paramedic rushed her from the board to the gurney as they loaded her into the ambulance, the lights flashing rapidly and the sirens sounding.
Erin was loaded into the ambulance non-conscious, her heart rate was going through the roof, and she was looking deathly pale, the paramedic who had helped to get her out with the firefighters from the firehouse 51 had struggled and tugged at her dress, so they pulled her out of the upturned truck. Meanwhile, Casey and Joe worked with Brett to collar Jay properly and get him out on a board in case he had a neck or spine injury. His right leg was still pinned under the dashboard, so they had to get the separator to get the dashboard to release the pressure from his right leg, he followed Erin shortly to the hospital on a gurney in Ambulance 61 with Sylvie Brett in the back with him looking after him as she assessed his injuries, and bandaged the gash on his leg.