For The Love of Daphne by Patrick Councilor
Niles couldn't see two inches in front of himself. He was completely in the darkness just this side of consciousness and all alone. His breathing was out of control and he couldn't feel his right leg at all. He was at heaven's gate and he knew it. He lay there listening to the thundering of his heart.
"How much to you love me?" Daphne's voice whispered through the naked tree branches that stretched out above his body in the dim lighting of the moon.
"Daphne, there is no way to measure a source that is endless." He said, but the words were slurred in his mouth.
"Do one thing for me," her voice sounded like the breath of an angel in the wind.
"Anything," he tried to say. "I love you so." Tears ran down the sides of his head.
"Hold on. Hold on for me. Hold on just as tight as you can. I adore you."
"I will. I will hold on." He couldn't even understand the noises he made himself as he tried to speak to her.
"Please hold on my love," were her last words he heard as her voice blended back into the wind that wisped through the tree limbs that guarded his body.
There were soft horns. Were they trumpets? Were they trumpets when entering the gate? The horns became louder. Then they stopped. There were voices. Niles couldn't quite make them out, but there were voices. There was a dim, distant light that ran across him, then again and then a steady light. "There!" a voice called out. "Over there! Let's get a line down there! Get the board!"
Buckles. He suddenly heard buckles as if he had just been woken up. "He's alive! He's pinned, but he's alive!"
"What do you need? The jaws?" a more distant voice called.
"No, three more men down her and we should be able to lift this car off of him! At least enough to slide him out!"
"Remember your promise to me", the wind carried Daphne's voice again.
"I know."
"What?" the man next to him who was usually yelling back up the hill asked. "Buddy, did you say something? Can you speak? We're going to get you outta here, okay? You just hang tight and don't fall asleep on me." He yelled up the hill again, "He's going into shock! Get down here!" The sounds of buckles in the distance were becoming louder. Then the man wasn't yelling anymore. "He's lost a lot of blood. Hey buddy. My name is John. We're going to take care of you okay. I need you to work with me though okay. Can you feel this? Can you feel where I am touching you? Blink twice if you can feel this."
"Alright, let's get this hunk of tin off of him," another ordered.
The voices and the sounds faded.
"His pupils aren't responding," a voice said. Niles could tell he was moving through rough terrain as he was strapped to a board. This neck was stabilized in a neck brace. "Blood pressure low and a rapid heart rate."
"Medivac?"
"No, by the time it gets out here and they load him, we will be arriving. Let's load him up and truck him."
"I'll ride along", Niles recognized the voice to be the first man on the scene.
"Find his type and get a bag hung ASAP."
He was being passed along like a serving tray of hors d'oeuvres at one of his five star banquet parties. He was transferred to a gurney and slid into the back of an ambulance.
"Ready for an 'E-ticket' ride to the hospital?" John said. "Hold on." Within that split second, the sirens blared so loud and they took off like a shot. John placed an oxygen mask on him. "You're going to be okay pal," John shouted over the siren. "I didn't catch your name. What's your name?"
It was all a blur to Niles.