Toe Pick: Sophomore Year

12 Days

Travis felt a blinding pain in his head as his eyes fluttered open. He felt a stream of warm, sticky liquid flowing down his face. Travis was suddenly aware that he was hanging upside down from the drivers seat of his old beaten Saab. Travis struggled to look below where he was hanging and he was greeted by a rather large pool of blood. Travis turned his head to look at the back seat and felt his heart drop. Zoey dangled from her seat, her chest, neck, and head were covered and soaked with the dark crimson stains of her blood.
Travis gingerly slid his hand to the small, front compartment on the center console and slowly slid the door on it open. He gently reached into the compartment and wrapped his fingers around the small pocket knife that laid inside.
He flipped open the tiny blade, the moonlight and the lights of on coming ambulances and police cars. Travis painfully slid the knife up towards the top of his seatbelt, stabbing it into the leather binding him to his seat. He sawed through it until it snapped and Travis fell from his seat and slammed into the blood covered aluminum below him. Travis screamed out, his shoulder burning and stabbing in pain. Travis let out another loud, painful wail and everything went black yet again.

Travis woke up to bright lights shining down into his eyes, a doctor running along side him. Travis realized he was rolling on a gurney in what he assumed was a Denver hospital. The doctor running beside him pushed hard on his stomach causing Travis to taste blood in his mouth. He coughed hard, spiting blood out of his mount and he passed out again.

Zoey awoke to a young, female nurse running beside her along with multiple other doctors. She winced at the bright, blinding lights streaming their rays deep into her bloodshot eyes. She screamed in pain as a nurse pushed a needle deep into the vein in her wrist. The nurse connected it to an IV bad above her head as she faded into unconsciousness.

"Travis, hey, Travis, wake up," Mya whispered, sitting in a chair beside Travis's hospital bed.

"Mya...?" Travis croaked back, his eyes fluttering open, gazing into the chocolate brown counterparts to his dark hazel eyes.

"Hey, Travis," Mya cooed excitedly.

"Mya, I'm so so so sorry," Travis mumbled back to his girlfriend, tears beginning to stream down his bruised, cut up face.

"Hey, for what?" Mya gently cooed, as she rubbed her thumb across his knuckles.

"I-I-I could've just killed your little sister Mya," Travis cried, his eyes now bloodshot, more tears flowing down his face.

"Travis, come one, it's not your fault," Mya coddled, holding Travis tightly, beginning to cry herself.

"I was driving Mya, it my fault. I might have just killed Zoey," Travis cried.

"No you didn't Travis, come here, come here Travis," Mya whispered as she crawled into the the small hospital bed and curled up into Travis's muscular frame, resting her head on his chest.

Across the hospital in a small operating room, surgeons and doctors swarmed around Zoey's beaten, battered body. To any other person, her tiny, mangled frame, covered in deep, bleeding gashes and open wounds would have seem gross and disgusting. But, to doctor Randolph Creed, it was a canvas for him to practice his beautiful art. Dr. Randolph Creed, the head Pediatric Trauma Surgeon at Denver Mercy Hospital. He graduated top of his class out of John Hopkins Medical School and had performed over 2,000 surgeries in his career spanning over 30 years here in Denver.
Creed walked over to the operating table where Zoey lay, sedated. He reached for a scalpel and stood above Zoey's petite frame. The heart rate monitor above Zoey's head beeped slowly and loudly. Dr Creed made a large, deep incision into Zoey's ravaged gut.

The surgery had been going on for about two hours when suddenly, the monitors above Zoey's head became beeping furiously and blood spilled and gushed into her wide open stomach cavity. The surgeons around her body rushed to find away to stem the bleeding. And, as Dr Creed began working the auction equipment to remove the excess blood, the heat monitor stopped its rhythmic pulsing, and began the long, held out, melodic note of death.