Tears of joy welled up in my eyes. It was almost unbelievable that he survived. I could still hear his screaming echoing in my head. The wailing of the siren of the ambulance still ringing in my ears. People rushing to get to him; thank goodness they got there fast. I just couldn’t bring myself to think about what would have happened if…

“Hey, how’s Haz doing?” Tish asked, snapping me out of the flashbacks I was having just a moment ago. Maxx was not far behind her, carrying a clear plastic bag containing what seemed like a few bottles of mineral water. I was so engaged in my own thoughts that I didn’t even realize they were back from the ground floor.

“Hm… He’s okay. The doctor said he’s doing well,” I answered quite shortly. On the contrary, what the doctor actually said was that it would take some time before Haz could be fully recovered. The wound was so deep and he had lost quite a huge amount of blood; but I was just too tired to even talk much.

“Here,” Maxx passed me one of the bottles from the plastic bag he was carrying. I took it and placed it down beside me. I didn’t feel like consuming anything at that moment. “Sue, are you okay? You seem a bit distracted.” He and Tish both took a seat each beside me. I just stared into space, continuing my ignorance of the doctors, nurses and other people passing by us in the hallway. Maxx and Tish were both focusing on me but in absolute silence, as if they were expecting me to start telling them something. Under their gaze, though I know they didn’t mean to make me feel bad, all of the sudden I was overcame by an emotion of pure guilt; and I cupped my hands as my face fell slowly into it.

“I was the one who was behind the wheel. Do you know how hard it feels? To suddenly lose control of the car, to be the reason why all of this happened, to be the cause of why Haz is… He’s… I – I’m just…” I stuttered with sobs. I couldn’t get a hold of myself. For the umpteenth time, tears quickly started streaming down my cheeks. I would’ve thought there weren’t enough tears left for me to cry, if I hadn’t known any better. Tish moved forward and put her arms around me as she tried to comfort me while I was sobbing almost frantically.

“Hey, shh… Stop it. Look, we understand. We were there too. But you really have to stop putting the blame on yourself.” I slowly nodded; only half-heartedly. I opened my mouth, about to say something in expressing my disagreement but Maxx was ahead of me.

“Nobody is to be blame, Sue. If it was going to happen, it would have happened anyway; whether or not it was you behind that wheel,” he said with a hint of seriousness in his voice. I took in a deep breath and sighed. There was no use saying anything in protestation to Maxx, because I knew he wouldn’t have tolerated it anyway; for he was always known as a man of his own words. I suppose they were right anyway, but I just couldn’t get it off my mind. No matter how hard I tried pushing it aside…

I remembered clearly how the car had automatically spun its self around and hit the divider of the road with a hard crash. Then, just as if things couldn’t have gotten any worst, another car, a silver sedan, ran into us and slamming the left side of our car harder against the divider, producing a second loud crash. Haz was in the front passenger seat and he was screaming in agony.

Someone in the back was fumbling with the door, trying to open it. I turned around and saw it was Tish. She finally managed to get the door open, quickly got out and immediately took out her mobile phone. She dialed a number. It was visible that she had some minor injuries, but otherwise she looked fine. I turned to look at Maxx in the rear seat. Blood was trickling down from his forehead; he must’ve had hit the interior of the car real hard. I opened my mouth to ask…

“I’m okay, I’m fine…” He said to me without a chance for me to voice out the question.

“Aaarrrggghhh!!! Umph… Urgghh…” Haz’s screaming went piercing through our ears. My head quickly snapped in his direction. His breaths alternately came in short gasps and heavily.

“Haz! Haz! Are you…?” I stopped in mid-question. Oh – my – god. His shirt was all wet and full of blood. When I looked at his left side, my heart skipped a beat. I almost panicked. A sharp piece of window glass, about a few inches long had stabbed in through his skin somewhere right above the chest.

“Is everyone alright?” Tish’s wondering voice came in through the window on my side. Her eyes widened in shock after seeing Haz’s critical condition. “Hang on, the ambulance will be here any minute. Just – just hang on…” she added, with a slight stutter. We tried to keep ourselves calm while waiting for the ambulance, which arrived about less than fifteen minutes later. Everything was in such a rush. Then…

“Ehem. Excuse me?” The pieces of memory vanished as we were back sitting in the hallway. A nurse had come up to us. “You are allowed to see your friend now,” she said to us with a sincere smile.

“Oh, thank you,” Maxx simply thanked her. As we stepped into the patient’s room, there was a kind of a light sensation. It felt like a huge burden had just been lifted up off my chest as I was also feeling glad and totally relieved to see that Haz had regained consciousness. Resting on the white bed, white, blood stained bandage wrapped across his chest, over his left shoulder, around the middle of his back, to the front and back around. Though he looked terrible, his expression was anything but. He lifted up his eyes and gave a quick scan through all the three of us. We too were definitely not looking our best, what with the bandages and wounds here and there.

“Hey, you guys look horrible,” Haz commented us with a weak smile. We laughed at his joke. It was nice to know that even in the worst of times, he could still make us laugh.


~Okaay. This turned out to be really longgg. Haha. Sorry ;p~