Familiar voices drifted through his subconscious waking him up. White hot pain coursed through his entire body making him miserable. Johnny checked the desire to open his eyes, knowing he wouldn't be able to see anything anyway. With nothing left to do, he used his other senses to fill in the gaps.

The acrid smell of burnt wiring and gasoline still assaulted his senses. Twitching his good fingers, he found they were wet. He was still bleeding. Rather than dwell on that bit of bad information, he moved on to what else he could figure out. More voices joined the distant chatter, but no matter how hard he tried he couldn't decipher what they were saying. Suddenly, a hand touched him and he froze.

Carefully, gentle hands tugged his eyelids upward. Johnny waited with baited breath for his eyes to react to the light. Instead, his world remained in darkness. The hands moved to his right eye and then moved to check the left again. Fear started to trickle through Johnny, what if he was never going to see again? He couldn't be a paramedic if he was blind.

Subconsciously, he felt the hands move to check his pulse and blood pressure. "Johnny?" The unknown hands pulled his bloody arm away from his stomach. "Johnny can you hear me?"

Finally, he was able to pinpoint who the voice belonged to. Craig Brice.

"Brice?" Inwardly, he cringed at how weak his voice sounded. Without his vision, he couldn't see how much blood he'd lost, he could accurately guess it was a bit more than what was deemed safe. Medically, he wondered how long he could stay awake before he fell unconscious, again.

"That's right. Johnny can you open your eyes for me?" Obediently, he flicked open his eyes, hoping he'd be able to see something. Even vague shadows would be great at this point. Unfortunately, all his lifeless eyes picked up was suffocating darkness. "That's good. That's real good."

Oh no… he thought I must really be bad off to get free praise from Brice. Hopelessly, he wished he could see what was going on around him.

"Johnny, how are you doing?" Brice genuinely sounded worried. "What do you remember?"

"I…" Johnny sputtered and stopped. A sharp splice of pain shot through him.

"It's alright, take your time."

"I was headed to work and got hit." Then he remembered the other driver. "The other man, how is he?"

Brice rummaged around and pressed what Johnny assumed was a bandage against his stomach. Johnny groaned as more pain shot through him, making it hard to draw in air.

"Don't worry about the other driver, he's in good hands. Right now we just need to get you patched up. What else do you remember?" Brice had shifted so he could hold pressure against Johnny's stomach with one hand and check out his pinned arm with the other.

"-woke up sometime after the truck ran into me. I couldn't see." Johnny fell silent waiting for Brice's reaction.

Brice wasn't stupid, once he'd checked his eyes he would have guessed something was going on, but didn't say anything. It seemed to Johnny like he was still deciding how to deal with it.

"Define, 'can't see'." Brice's calm voice answered him as he continued to check Johnny out.

Exasperated, Johnny opened his mouth to answer. Was Brice really going to make him spell it all out for him? "Just that. I can't see anything. Everything is completely black. I haven't been able to see a thing since I woke up earlier."

"How's your head?"

Johnny answered truthfully, "It hurts."

Brice tipped Johnny's head forward and palpated the lump at the back of his head. After a moment of feeling the growing lump, Brice pressed his head back against the headrest. "You've taken quite the hit back there. Are you hurting anywhere else?"

"I'll be honest, everything hurts right now. Brice?"

"Ya?"

"How bad is it?" Johnny could feel Brice tense at his question.

"Better off than you should be. Don't worry, we'll have you patched up and shipped to Rampart as fast as we can." Suddenly, Johnny's eyelids started drifting shut. "Johnny?"

His body felt like he was floating in thick mud. His paramedic training told him it was a bad idea to fall asleep with his injuries, but he couldn't seem to force his eyes open. His muddled mind heard Brice talking to him, but he pushed the sounds aside as he sank into darkness. He was just so tired...