Suddenly, I wasn’t hurting anymore. I raced over to him and dropped to my knees. When I touched him he screamed even louder. He was totally hysterical and the only thing I could think to do was to slap him the way they do in the movies. So that is just what I did. Amazingly it worked. He stopped screaming, but he was still blubbering and in loads of pain; of course I didn’t blame him in the least. I can only imagine how much his leg must be hurting.
DASH DASH DASH!” he swore loudly.
Now, I’ve had quite a bit of First-Aid training. That was something that both my parents as well as Gary had insisted on. And for the most part their reasoning had been the same; as much time as I spend at the beach, I should know how to help myself or someone else in the event of an emergency. However, learning First-Aid and practicing it are two entirely different things.
“DASH DASH DASH! ALVIN! MY LEG, MY LEG IS DASHING BROKEN! OH DASH ALVIN!” Larry cried as he pulled on the front of my blood stained coat.
“Larry! Larry listen to me! You better just lie still. I am going to get some help!” I said, starting to stand up.
Larry grabbed the dangling strap of my backpack and wouldn’t let go.
He looked right into my eyes with his one still open eye. Had he not been so badly injured, I might have taken some pride in the fact that I’d caused his other eye to nearly swell completely shut and surge blood.
“You can’t leave me! Oh fuck Alvin, please don’t leave me! I’m sorry! I’m sorry I hit you! Oh fucking-shit Alvin, please don’t leave me here!” Larry was bawling and spraying my face with blood as he spoke.
“Larry, your leg is broken and there is no way I can carry you!” I said, trying to make him understand, but he was quickly loosing himself in the pain again.
“Hey listen, damn-it!” I slapped him again, but not as hard as I had the first time. “Alright, I won’t leave you, but you have to stop freaking out and help me here!”
If things were not bad enough, the snow was now falling worse than I’ve ever experienced in my life and I don’t mean light fluffy white Christmas snowflakes either. I’m talking heavy, wet snow that all but blocks out the sun and makes it near impossible to see more than a couple feet ahead of you at the most. Within minutes all traces of our struggle in the snow, including our blood was covered over again making it seem as though the fight had never happened.
As quickly as the snow was falling, still the blood from his leg seemed to seep into the fresh snow. I knew I had to stop, or at the very least slow the bleeding. I thought about it for a few seconds and then took off my backpack. It took a lot of effort, but I was able to finish ripping the loose strap, which I used to tie around his leg, just above the knee. As I pulled to make it as tight as I possibly could, Larry let out a wail of pain in the form of a long drawn out list of colorful expressions. That must have been the final bit of pain to put him over the edge because Larry simply lost it. He gave himself over to the pain and his fears. He became entirely unhinged, screaming things like, “I’M GOING TO FUCKING DIE! I’M GOING TO FUCKING DIE HERE IN THE SNOW!”
Perhaps it was a combination of fear, anger and panic that caused me to hit him like I did. This time I didn’t slap him, I punched him and I mean I punched him hard; harder than I have ever punched anyone in my life.
For a full second Larry was silent and stared at me in utter disbelief and then his eyes closed and he drifted into unconsciousness.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” I cussed, realizing that I had just knocked him out.
“Now what am I going to do?” I angrily asked myself, “I can’t leave him here. He’ll get buried alive in a matter of minutes in this fucking blizzard!”
After I had carefully freed his broken leg from between the two trees, I grabbed him by the wrists and began to drag him toward the entrance of the park. Man, Larry was heavy! I had only moved him about thirty feet when I decided to leave my backpack behind. It was just too much for me to drag Larry and lug all my books too. Like I said, it was snowing so much that I couldn’t see. I could only hope that I was moving us closer to the park entrance, otherwise the two of us were probably done for and frankly, I did not want to end up a ghost like Chris!
I heard something loud that sounded like a truck, or perhaps a road plow and that gave me hope that we were nearing the street. Then headlights blazed only a couple yards away. A horn blared and the lights swerved, followed by the crunch of metal against metal.
“What the hell are you doing in the middle of the street kid!” a man’s voice shouted.
“HELP! MY FRIEND IS HURT BAD! I THINK HE’S DIEING!” I screamed and realized that I was lying down again.