bleed

Gravity took over too quickly. Just one more second and I’d be fine. I can’t handle this. I’m only sixteen. God, this can’t be happening…

Zak knew what this meant for the future. He knew that the future he’d always dreamt about was going to need to take place really fast. Really fast as in all his hopes and dreams, children and first home were going to need to happen within about three hours. He knew this was it. The life he treasured abruptly had but hours to live. Zak was pretty sure that he couldn’t produce a child, or even buy a home in three hours. Everything that was important was gone. Everything he’d dreamt of was now gone because of a fall down the stairs.
Zak’s brain knew what was going to happen even before Sara did.She didn’t realize that he’d even been hurt by her trip down the stairs. She was more concern about getting her breathe back to normal, it wasn’t everyday that a random kid falls down two flights of stairs. As Sara looked into Zak’s all too knowing eyes, she developed a strange way to read his mind,this is the end of things. Sara’s body took over. Maybe it was instinct that made her run down the two flights this guy had just fallen down. Sara met Zak at the bottom of the stairs and held him in her arms. The instinct to just hold someone she’d never said two words to was completely unlike her. Sara didn’t hug, didn’t crave being held, that just never mattered to her. As the normally crowded and bustling staircase of their small town school became suddenly silent it dawned on the couple that they were aware that they were not the only ones aware of his condition.
Sara screamed for help, for someone to get the nurse, get Zak to a hospital, and call his parents. The moment she opened her mouth, everyone in the silent hallway broke into shouts, orders to other’s trying to see who could run to the nurse the fastest,and all at once everyone ran in different directions, all yelling “better reception over here” “I’ll get the nurse” “What’s his mom’s number?”. Sara and her bleeding stranger were left alone as the students all scrambled out of the hallway to perform their unassigned tasks.Half of their peers ran with phones to their ears and the other half circled with phones in hand around Zak.
Looking up into Sara’s bright green eyes Zak saw only her fear surrounded by skin pasty and blanched of the red that clung to her cheeks on a normal day. Her violet hair draped over her face like a curtain as she looked at his leg. It was worse than it looked two flights up. His thigh had caught on the jaggedly broken hand rail as he was running down the stairs to get to class. The edged metal cut through his olive skin like a knife through butter. Sara gagged at the puddle of warm blood she found herself sitting in, though she didn’t sway from it. She felt oddly in place here. Here, with the stranger, with his leg gushing blood. Here in this staircase alone with a boy she’d never known until today.
“I know this is a terrible time for introductions, but I’m Sara.” She was timid, not knowing how he would react to their first words to each other.
“Zak." His voice barely escaped his lips as he winced out his name.
Sara tried to smile back but she was too concerned and her face had forgotten how to form into that shape anymore. She'd never experienced death. No one she knew had ever died and now this stranger was looking at her like she was the one to encourage him to stay conscious or the one to give him permission to slip away into the darkness.