- Blood

Cautiously dad approached the rear of the plane.  The seats in front of the back compartment did not fold down so he had to pull himself into the narrow space between the tops of the seats and the buckled top of the compartment, to where he could get a good look.  He illuminated the penlight and slowly swept the tiny beam across the limp and twisted bodies of his two youngest sons. 

I lay contorted in my seat slumped over in a tangle of limbs on my left side, legs splayed out in unnatural and opposite directions.  My right was leg jutted out the open hatch and disappeared into the dark beyond his sight, while my left leg was pointing straight out in the other direction and bent folded back the knee, causing me to look like I was doing the some kind of grotesque gymnastic split.  The seat belt, which had somehow kept me from getting pulled out of the plane altogether, was pulled up across my chest and my lower body had been compacted into the space in front of the seat by the force of the impact. 

My head and face were awash with blood and lay still in a dark crimson stain on Rick’s leg.  The blood ran across my brother’s lap and soaked into his pants.  A large flap of skin from my forehead had been flayed back, and was draped crudely over my scalp, exposing the glistening tissue underneath.  My eyes were closed.  Dad could not reach me and from where he was had no way to tell if I was even still alive.  But knew it didn’t look good.   

Beside me Rick was slumped against the blood smeared bulkhead of the plane.  He was softly groaning and gurgling and a steady ooze of blood ran from his forehead and over his face.  It had stained the entire front and shoulders of his white t-shirt dark red.  His eyes darted unseeingly around, and he limply lifted his right arm and flopped it down again over my face, splattering our commingled blood across the seat back and bulkhead behind and beside him. 

 Dad reached over the seat for him.

“Ricky..!” Dad said to him loudly, trying to get him to snap out of it. 

Rick only lolled his head and blinked unseeingly into the penlight.  His pupils stayed as wide as saucers even as the beam danced across them.  Dad could immediately see he had suffered a severe head injury…and he was in deep trouble.  The look in Rick’s eyes was one he had seen in the emergency room hundreds of times.  It was not a good look, and made dad very concerned.  Even as he sat there Rick’s brain was swelling in his skull and creating massive pressure which might start killing it at any moment.  Once it was bad enough, the rest of him would follow. 

Dad was seriously worried bout how long he had to live if they didn’t get help very soon. 

He reached out to grab Rick and try to extract him from the cramped space, but it was difficult between his side injury and his frozen shoulder to get any leverage.  Rick had inherited Pappy’s physique and was a stocky kid for his age, so it wasn’t easy to budge him.  Finally, dad adjusted himself to lean on a part of his side that wasn’t broken, and using his bad arm to reach down and grab Rick’s shirt, he reached over the seat back with his good arm toward Rick’s lap, fumbled with the lap belt and popped it loose.  Rick slumped forward.

Dad grabbed him with both hands and with a heave, pulled Rick up to rest his head on dad’s shoulder.  He held it securely there, in an attempt to protect Rick’s neck as much as he could.  Dad then reached under his arms and with a grunt, pulled him the rest of the way over the seat, struggling against his dead weight.  Rick’s limp legs flopped over the seat back and onto the middle seats, and dad gently set him back to rest across the cushions.  For a moment they lay there together motionless, dad panting from the pure physical exertion that the task took.

After a second, he took a deep breath and looked around to get his bearings again, then readjusted himself and cradled Rick in his arms.  He moved him as carefully as he could in the cramped fuselage, working his way out of the plane again, off the wing, and over the tangle of barbed wire.  Once clear of the hazards, he made it over to where Chris sat with Kim, and laid Rick down next to her, pausing to insure Kim was still alive.  She still was.

            He directed Chris to cover Rick with clothes and turned back to the plane.  He paused and took a deep breath.  One more to go, he thought. 
          Again he gingerly stepped through the debris and found his way to the outside of the cargo hatch where I still lay silently.  With my leg firmly pinned under there, he would have to get me out of the plane from the outside.  He pulled out the penlight and examined my leg.  It was stretched out of the hatch and folded under the fuselage at the knee.  The lower leg was completely buried under plane. 

            He wedged his arm and shoulder into the compartment and felt for my head.  His hand brushed against my hair and he traced the side of my face to my neck.  He felt carefully for a pulse.  Through the tips of his fingers he was amazed and gratified when could feel it.  The placement of his hand was awkward, so he couldn’t get a read on how good it was, but at least I was alive.  He worked his arm out of the plane and adjusted himself to consider my leg again.

There wasn’t much blood pooling around the knee, which was odd, but he quickly figured that the pressure from the weight of the plane was pinching whatever was left under there tight like vise, acting as a crude tourniquet.  When he relieved the pressure, however, it would probably open up like a gusher and if was as bad as he expected it to be I would have very little time before I simply bled out. 

How to do this, he thought?