The Day I Died

Astrid POV - Help

Astrid-POV

My frozen fingers fumbled on the phones buttons. My whole body was shaking from fear and cold mingling within me. I held the phone to my ear my heart racing and eyes darting between the two boys before me.

"Hello, please state your emergency" crackled a man's deep voice.

"Hello, an ambulance...please I desperately need an ambulance, there is a boy and he jumped and oh my lord please-," my panic was interrupted by the jogging boy taking the phone from me an in a cool, calm voice saying,

"Hello we need an ambulance as an adolescent boy has attempted suicide." His face remained neural but his eyes were reflecting the true worry he was experiencing. "Thank you sir, we are on the river bank beneath the bridge entering the town." He ended the call and slipped the phone into his pocket. He turned and smiled telling me it was going to be alright but I couldn't hear him over my brain screaming as my eyes bore into the injured boy. His hair was plastered to his forehead and his skin was paling. The leg he had injured was mangled and in an odd position, sticking out sideways, slicked in blood. The sand around it was sticky and a stomach turning shade of red, drying to brown around the edges already. A slight gap in his full yet pale lips showed a peek of his straight teeth and pastel pink tongue. His eyes were almost fully close but you could see a slim strip of white under his long lashes. Despite how haunting he looked, a glimmer of obscure beauty shone from him.

When the ambulance arrived I had gnawed my finger nails to bone and had discovered the running boy was called Will. We had used my towel to apply pressure on the bleeding but that hadn't stopped the flow. The medics were very quick. They arrived and then immediately got to work, lifting, wrapping, and applying. I got given a blanket that was grey and itchy but reassuring. They asked to call a parent or guardian to come and take me home but I declared I wanted to accompany the boy to the hospital. They insisted that a call to a carer was necessary even if I wished to accompany the boy. The poor, mangled, beautiful boy, whom was still nameless to me. He needed my help, I'm not sure what told me this but I just knew he did.

On the phone my parents had agreed it would settle my fuzzy mind to see the boy safely to hospital. Will wished to come also so we both crawled into the back of the ambulance and sat to the left of his still body. Black and purple bruises were surfacing on his pale skin in a shocking contrast. A shiver rolled down my spine; not just because of the frozen autumnal air, but because of how rapidly colour swirled in and out of his face. White, red, black, blue, pink, green all swam and twirled across his calm features. It was horrifyingly mesmerising.