Eyes of Death

         Kiera's shift ended at 2 p.m., two hours too late. Two hours worth of memories she could not erase. Memories that she would relive, as always, in her dreams. This night it was a drunken teen trying to impress his buddies with the brand new sports car his mom and dad had given him for his birthday a week earlier. Kiera knew she shouldn't let it affect her this way, but his eyes haunted her. Broken, torn, and mangled bodies she'd seen so many times in the Trauma Center of St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center, and though she tried to distance herself, it was always the young who managed to so effectively tear through her emotional barrier and rip away at her heart.
         This night it was 17-year-old Nathan Adams, the star of his high school basketball team, an honor role student--a good kid. With tousled brown, nearly shoulder length hair, deep brown eyes, the slightest bit of freckles, a strong angular jaw, an athletic build, and a brilliant, quick smile, he was the high school heartthrob.
         Kiera had seen him before this night. Not two months earlier, Nathan was brought in by paramedics during a basketball game after an overzealous and oversized guard from the opposing team decided the only way to keep Nathan from scoring was to knock him out of the game--and he did--with his elbow; a blow to the head that left Nathan momentarily unconscious and with a slight concussion. Kiera remembered his face, she remembered faces well, an attribute which three years of trauma nursing was slowly turning from an asset into an instrument of daily and nightly torture. She also remembered his warm smile, his easy going attitude and his quick wit--he was infectious. He had made her laugh that night. A rare thing these days.
         But the Nathan she saw tonight, the Nathan found thrown from the wreckage of his once shiny new Camaro, could hardly be recognized as that same young man. His brown hair and part of his face were plastered with blood from a deep gash above his right eye. His body was broken and torn, with bone protruding through the skin in several places. Internal and external bleeding had caused severe blood loss, lending him a ghostly pallor. The trauma team fought against time to save him, to restore the blood that he was losing faster than they could replace--to give him time...time to repair a shredded artery, time to find and stop the internal bleeding, but there was no time for that...
         There was only time for recognition. As Kiera rushed to replace a nearly emptied bag with yet another unit of blood, Nathan regained consciousness. When he opened his eyes, she knew him. She knew him for all she remembered he was; the good looking high school athlete, a good kid who had everything going for him and the kid who had made her laugh. And she knew him now for all that he would never be. She recognized it in his eyes. A look she had become all too familiar with, but could never accept--a distant look. Much the same as someone who appears to be listening intently during a conversation, but in their eyes you can see that they are a million miles away. Only, in the eyes of the dying it's not their thoughts that appear to be slipping away into the distance, but their souls--and in the depths of Nathan's brown eyes, Kiera could see him drifting away.
         By rights she knew he should already be dead; his injuries were massive and from her experience--most often fatal. And how had he regained consciousness? But then he spoke and she knew. Not much more than a whisper, he was so weak, but she heard. Like a broken record, the words continue to play over and over in her mind, "My brother, is he okay?"
         He had hung on and he had fought his way back to consciousness because he had to know whether his 15-year-old kid brother, who he had taken with him without his parent's knowledge, was going to be okay. And for that brief moment, as Kiera looked into those haunted brown eyes, time stood still. All around her the chaotic, yet perfectly orchestrated life-saving dance went on, while the monitors beeped, and the smell of blood assaulted her senses, but now it was all in slow motion as the realization sunk in of what his question meant--that one of the three passengers was Nathan's brother. And his question "Is he okay?"
         "Kid was lucky; he was thrown from the car. The other three..." the paramedic paused, closed his eyes, and shook his head. Running his fingers through his thick black hair, he looked upward as if some divine intervention could change what had happened and he would never have to finish that sentence. His hand came to rest on the back of his neck and he looked straight at Kiera, "The impact had to have killed them."
         "What do you mean, 'had to have killed them'?"
         "Kiera," and the look in his eyes told her she should leave it at that, but he knew she wouldn't, "the car caught on fire. It burned before anyone could get to them, but the impact...they couldn't have survived that."
         She realized he was trying to convince himself as much as her, and she knew from experience the images that were now seared into his memory: the smashed and torn vehicle, the smell of burning oil, rubber, gasoline...and bodies, and the burning remains of three young teens, just out to have a good time. One bad decision and they paid for it with their lives. It was too much; he needed to know they didn't suffer--they weren't trapped in that burning vehicle, unable to escape. He needed to know that it wouldn't have made any difference, even if by some miracle he had arrived at the scene immediately after the crash.
         "Daniel, look at me," and he did, "they died on impact." She said it with certainty, for Daniel and for herself. She squeezed his arm and he nodded his head and breathed a sigh as if the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders. As they looked into each other's eyes, Kiera knew they both believed...they believed because they had to, because it was the only way to remain sane--the only way to continue with this life they had chosen. Distance, walls and self-deception--tools of the trade.
         And then those three whispered words closed the distance, tore down the walls, and shredded her meager attempts at self-deception, "Is he okay?"
         And those words brought her back...Kiera was staring into Nathan's eyes as the earlier conversation with Daniel replayed in her mind. Fear, pain, anger, and sorrow gripped her like a vise that was inexorably closing around her. She couldn't breathe, she couldn't think, she couldn't find...the words. But she knew there was only one answer to his question.
         She closed her eyes against the image of three helpless teens trapped in a smashed, burning vehicle, fearing he would see the truth there, as her lips spoke the lie, "He's fine, Nathan, he's okay." Even as she spoke the words, Kiera knew they weren't good enough. She needed to make him believe; she could not allow his last thoughts in this world to be that he had killed his kid brother...of how his brother had died. She touched his face, leaned in close, and looked him in the eyes, "Did you hear me Nathan? Your brother is okay, and he says he loves you." She wiped away the tears that began rolling down his cheek. That was all he could manage--a barely perceptible nod of his head and the tears.
         "Hang in there Nathan, don't let go, okay."
         "Please Nathan," she added in a whisper as she saw him slipping farther back into the depths of those deep brown eyes. She felt herself falling in, drowning in those once bright pools of brown, being dragged to the very edge of life and death--and then he was gone. Kiera was left standing there, staring into the eyes of death. She willed herself away from the edge, back toward life, but she felt a cold numbness grip her in the chest, icy fingers spreading outwards, and she knew death had touched her this night and young Nathan Adams had taken a little piece of her soul with him to the other side.
         She felt something warm on her face, and realized it was her tears.

         A tapping noise at her window made Kiera jump. She looked up to see Daniel peering in; the soft glow of a full moon illuminating the concern on his face. She was sitting in her silver Honda, still in the parking lot of the hospital, the engine gently humming.
         Kiera couldn't remember starting the car. She had no idea how long she had sat there, paralyzed by the memory of the evenings senseless tragedy and overcome by a torrent of grief that had been threatening to consume her since losing her fiance, Scott, almost a year earlier.
         Kiera wiped at her eyes and rolled down the window. A brisk Autumn wind caressed and cooled her wet cheaks as it whipped her long chocolate tresses aroung her face. Fallen leaves--a mosaic of brilliant crimsons, oranges, and golds in the afternoon sun, now muted in the darkness--swirled in tiny tornados about the parking lot.
         "Hey, are you ok?" Daniel asked, his smokey grey eyes betraying a tenderness that few other than Kiera knew he possessed. To most Daniel seemed an indomitable figure carved from stone; his intense, steely demeaner magnified by his dark hair and sharply angled features.
         Despite his hardness, Kiera found him beautiful. Since Scott's death, he had appointed himself her personal guardian, worrying over her constantly. In certain ways, however, he was an enigma even to her.
         Daniel and Scott had been best friends; they came from the same small town and had grown up together. When his parents died in a plane crash while on a mission in Guatemala, a devastated 17 year old Daniel was welcomed into Scott's family and they had become like brothers.
         That's why Kiera couldn't understand his reaction to Scott's mysterious death. There were so many unanswered questions, and like an insidious poison, they permeated her every waking moment and seeped into her dreams at night. She knew Daniel was as torn apart by Scott's death as she, but whenever she tried to discuss her concerns with him about the sketchy details given them so far, he brushed her off, seemingly satisfied the police were doing all they could to find the answers.
         As mystified and upset as she was by his behavior, Kiera still tried not to read too much into it; she had dealt with enough family members who had lost loved ones during her time in trauma, that she knew everyone reacted to grief in their own way. She also knew that Daniel wore his mask of stoicism like a shield--a protective disguise; but Kiera could read between the lines, his body language, the softness in his eyes revealed a depth of emotion that he could not hide from her. Perhaps, too, his reaction was an attempt to protect her, to prevent his own concerns from making hers worse, and to help her to move on.


Please note: this is a work in progress, will add more as it is written. Thanks.