He blinked for only a second. He could remember only one breath passing in that instant before he opened his eyes again. Sharp, cold air dried his eyes, forcing him to blink before he could see. Disorientation clouded his judgement. Had he dreamed it? It had been so long since Brody had had a dream that he couldn’t be sure what it felt like any more. Bright light filled his vision. It took a few more breaths before his eyes adjusted. Sky. He could see the clouds of different shades of grey rolling and tuning over each over as he stared. His hearing strained. Voices. No, one voice. A man, fast paced, fluent French, panicked and high pitched. What was he saying? Emergency. Not moving. Accident. Car crash. Brody frowned. A burning hot pain shot across the skin above his eye. He tried to lift a hand to touch the skin there, to investigate why it burned, but he couldn’t move his left hand. He wriggled his fingers. On both hands they moved. It wasn’t a dream. There was too much detail. Too much pain.

He opened his mouth and tried to call to the urgent voice several meters away. His words caught in a bubble of air in his throat and he coughed. He could taste blood and it repulsed him. Turning his head he coughed again, trying to dislodge the air that held back his words, and his eyes took in the scene of what had happened. In an instant he remembered. He and Ten had been driving, too fast, and a truck had pulled out… “Ten,” he croaked, the syllable grating like barbed wire against his throat as he strained his neck to look for her, for the car. Somehow he had ended up outside it, on the ground several meters away from the shiny black and metal mess that was once a car. His car. He didn’t care. “Ten,” he called again, louder and yet more strained than before. There was no answer. The voice that had been the only thing he could hear fell silent for a moment, and then burst into a more hurried string of orders. He told whoever it was on the other end of his phone to hurry, that the man - he, Brody - was moving.

Brody had barely noticed he moved at all. The arms that had been so useless before seemed to break through whatever shock or muscle stubbornness that had held to them before because he had shaded his eyes with one hand from the glaring brightness of the risen sun in the sky. He had stared at the wrecked car for about a minute, his dazed, blurred eyes trying to pick his best friend from the wreckage. He couldn’t, but soon enough he could hear the far away screaming of sirens in the still of the morning. He had to make sure she was ok before they got here, whoever they were. Using what strength he had he pushed down against the cold, damp, sticky feeling tarmac and tied to turn himself over onto his knees.

The pain that shot through him was unlike anything he had felt before. Blistering, murderously sharp, it started in his hip and shot like lightening down both his legs and up through his body, collapsing his arms under his weight. The sound was wrenched from his lungs before he could control it, before he could recognise the familiar voice. His cry of pain was the last thing that filled his senses.

***

Sharp, sterile pain stabbed the inside of his elbow. He could feel the warm fluid travelling up his arm and into his chest. The air that filled his nostrils was colder than the air that touched his skin. Mumbled voices drifted through his mind as he forced his eyes open again. The sky was gone and in its place was a clinical white surface a few feet above him. They were moving, his centre of gravity twitching with the motion that led him to believe that he as in an ambulance. Another prick to his arm. His eyelids fell heavy, the voices distant.

***

A heavy, dead weight on his chest woke him. Pins and needles swarmed his right arm as the nerves in his body began to woke up. He couldn’t move it, the muscles feeling tight and sore and he felt his breathing becoming shorter with fear. Opening his eyes he glared at the ceiling. The white and black speckled tiles came into focus faster than he anticipated and he blinked to make sure it wasn’t a trick of the light. More voices killed any chance of silence, but these ones were familiar.

“Get- Stop it!”
“Sshh!”
“Momma! Sian bit me!”
“I did not!”
“Shut up!”
“Mum!”

Brody let his eyes flicker closed again, a half felt relief flooding his body when he put names and faces to the voices. His sisters Sian, Isolde and his mother. For the first time he managed to move a limb - the arm that remained free of the pins and needles - and lifted his hand to his face. He was mildly surprised to find a hard plastic oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. That explained the strange temperature difference between what he breathed and what he felt. He pulled it from his face, the tightness of it against his skin suddenly obvious and irritating. It was then that the voices in the room fell silent. A second later the weight on his chest and arm vanished and he felt the blood rush to his fingertips. Confused, he craned his head to see what had happened and spotted Morgan struggling against their mother’s grip, flailing towards the bed.

“Momma, noooo…” she whined, her bottom lip sticking out and already quivering before Taffy had her settled against her hip.

“Love?” his mother’s voice took his attention and he finally looked at his mum, her blue eyes bloodshot and strained.

“Shit,” Brody replied, answering the question he expected to follow.

“Watch your mouth,” followed, but not from his mother. Sian was wagging a skinny finger at him.

“Shiiiittahh!” squealed Morgan, kicking now to wriggle free. Brody tried to laugh, but the pain and discomfort that tightened in every part of him below his ribs stopped him short. He held a hand out to the youngest of his sisters who gladly climbed back to where she had obviously been lying across his arm and chest before he woke up.

“How ar-”

“Where’s Ten?” he cut off his mother’s question, the words voicing the thought before he realised it had formed. His sister curling into the side of him as he wrapped his arm around her had no stilling effect on his conscious need to know that his best friend was ok. His mother looked at him, the sadness in her eyes badly hidden as she sighed.

“Love, she hasn’t woken up yet. She’s not looking good.”

He clenched his jaw, ignoring the jab of pain he felt when Morgan moved to settle herself. If Ten was hurt, if any harm came to her at all he’d never forgive himself. She was his best friend despite everything he had said to her in the car, before the crash. He hadn’t meant to be so vicious to her but she was so damn stubborn that he had to be for her own good. She hadn’t been happy since she had come to live with them and he hated that he had promised she’d be better with him. He had failed her, broken his promise to be there for her. She had to wake up. And if she didn’t…

Morgan’s tiny hand pushed into the corner of his eye where she could see something happening that she didn’t like. ”Can I see her?” he asked, the effect of Mog’s tiny hand stopped the shine in his eye developing more than it could. He pulled her hand away and in turn received a face full of white-blonde hair as Morgan slapped her cheek against his chest, causing another shard of pain through his body.

Taffy shook her head. “They wont let anyone in to see her yet. Sweety, the doctor said you have to have an operation. They were going to do it before you woke up but I guess something came up…”

“But, Ten’s-”

“Don’t worry. The doctor said that once they get her breathing by herself someone can go and sit with her. So long as I can convince them to let me in as her next-of-kin. She has your name down for that. They need to get her stabilised, too.”

Stabilised? Breathing by herself? Brody’s own breath vanished as dizziness twisted his senses. He rubbed the back of his hand against his forehead, clamping his eyes shut tight as another pain streaked down his arm. He didn’t care. He was set for building up whatever stamina and strength he could to get out of the bed and go and find her himself, but the door to the room opened and a new voice sounded. He looked up, spying a doctor and a nurse making their way towards the bed. Taffy grabbed Morgan from the bed and this time the tot didn’t protest. The doctor started talking to Brody in a high speed of French of which he didn’t care to concentrate to understand. The nurse, though probably excitably attractive under normal circumstances, barely stole his gaze for more than a second before he watched as she pulled out three long syringes and pumped them one by one into an IV in the back of his hand. He had barely a minute to recognise the burning pain as the previous medication wore off before the new one seeped into his system and had darkness closing in on him again. This time, he welcomed it.

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