#this is half a novel but if yall wanna be emo :) ur :) welcome :)

[willwolfie]

Location: Pittsburgh, PA. Time: Last Spring. Triggers: Blood, Death, Accident

“The fear of death never left me; I couldn't get used to the thought; I would still sometimes shake and weep with terror.” ― Simone de Beauvoir

If life got busy it was tough luck and if one lived life as one William Moritz Wolf did, then the lives of everyone else needed saving before his own. His entire adolescence was spent in and out of hospitals, in and out of doctor’s offices, in and out of treatment centers. He loved his annoyingly careful parents with his whole heart, but life had never seemed as worth it as it did when his disorder and he were not at the center of it anymore. And life was busy enough right now for him to forget fully about himself and do what he did best instead. Soothe others, care for them, save them.

   They usually rotated on air ambulance duty, and while Will suspected it was still because they did not entirely trust him, the newly certified flight paramedic, it didn’t bother him as much as he initially thought it would. It kept him close to the 027 Fire Department-- his home and family that had seen all too little of Will the weeks leading up to his final examinations and away from getting too close to the pretty nurses that he sometimes was made to sit in the small aerial space for hours. And as he made his way into Jefferson Health for the first 12-hour shift this week, his eyes made a bee-line for the prettiest one to join him yet. He had always liked the nurses better than doctors, regardless of whether they were women or not; they took their time and liked to indulge in his lulling stories with charms, even if they were just as busy as anybody else in the hospital. She (later found out to be named Sami) seemed no exception to this rule as she entertained him throughout the shift by dropping by and giving various kinds of information in exchange for a joke or two.

   Air ambulances had the ring of great risks and adrenaline, but there was a lot less glamour attached to the job that one would hope. Transporting corpseless, artificially kept-alive organs through the state like a butcher delivery service irked Will. As morbid as it sounded, he was happy for every real emergency that sent their way to get away from the everyday duties that left him never knowing whose life was altered. Who was saved or not? Getting one Harmony Logan off of Mount Washington after a biking accident sounded a lot more like helping a person than arbitrarily pushing former human body parts around for hours to Will.   “And hey, Will, maybe we can get together for after-shift drinks” Sami’s words cut right through his train of thought as the paramedic got into the helicopter for the sixth time for the day, the third of which with her. “Sure” he’d told her absentmindedly, willing to push whatever really had been his post-shift plans for another couple hours without much of a second thought. They got up in the air in a good enough mood at three thirty-one pm and would most likely return before five;  average day, well enough outcome.

If life got busy it was tough luck and as the impact of the crash hit Will’s chest and neck, a realization hit him with almost the same brutal force. His date for the night had supposed to be the I.V. bag lying at home for five days too long. When life got busy, he was playing with his life on luck. Two missed days of treatment of factor eight and he knew what the natural percentage of his clotting factor returned to. Still, his first instinct was to look for Sami and the pilot. He was the paramedic and a bloody cough would not stop him from any of it. Will was out to assume the worst at all scenes, but as his heart steadily pumped at a heightened rate his eyes already seized the young nurse stirring on the ground as though she’d only been knocked to her knees in a clumsy tumble. All fine. A soft smile tugged at the corners of his mouth in relief, helping Sami to her feet in almost the same motion that he used to lean into the cockpit and assure himself of person number two. Anger mixed with atonement came billowing out of the pilot's mouth, too preoccupied with his mistake in the too harsh landing to respond to Will’s questions on his state of being but lively and on the move in their limited space that he, too, seemed fine. All back to himself then.

   His hand gently felt over his uniformed chest where he had brutally hit the inner walls of the helicopter. Dry as ever, no skin had broken at the place or any other and sent a wave of relief through Will’s body. Maybe, just maybe it would be fine until they got back. He’d rush to the E.R. and have someone hook him up as the last minutes of his break rung in. “We can’t take off” The repeating sentence, almost screamed in anger by the pilot, shouldn’t have been the first indicator that things weren’t fine anymore, but Will was determined not to be what his genetics dictated him to be. Fine, fine, fine his mind repeated with every step he made outside of the helicopter to look for whom they had come there for, fine he told himself as the metallic taste of blood started to replace any other sensation he felt and pooled in his mouth, only for him to spit the mixture if it and saliva onto the ground. Fine until the color of what now continuously wet the ground grew darker, redder, thicker. Until the masses of it forced Will to his knees this time, and a scream rung in his ears as though a tragedy unfolded before somebody’s eyes. But where?

   All he saw was the full terror and absolute horror in the girl’s eyes as she kneeled above his body. His mind knew that there’s nothing she could do for him but his instincts now screamed louder than any coherent thought for her to help him, save him from what was happening inside. Do anything than let him miserably choke on his own blood that wouldn’t just stop flowing, giving his life the short few final minutes until his body would either shut down completely or it found its way into his lungs and suffocated him first. For every breath he took now, there was a mouthful of the warm, red liquid that stained the surrounding ground and his face to make way for air that barely found its way inside. This was not supposed to be how it ended. There was no peace in his mind or heart and no one else to blame but himself. Suddenly he was at the center of everything again and there was nothing to do but bleed and slowly fade away to nothingness. The wetness on his face was not exclusively what was drained of him, but sudden tears. Only his own, he thought for a split moment, but what vision he’d left told him that they dripped down from Sami’s face, screwed up in shock, where they’d meet his.

   He was not twenty-five at that time as much as he was four years old when he first cut his hand and would not stop bleeding. He was thirteen and had gotten punched in the face at school for the first time with his teachers freaking out. He was twenty-one and on the doorstep of his parents for the first time in months, beaten and bruised. He was all those boys, but he was ultimately alone even with his hand held and faces surrounding his failing body. They couldn’t know what to do, Will had never told anyone about it, refused to acknowledge or bear the alert bracelet and would be one of many bleeder’s to bleed out for his own actions. It felt like trying to scream underwater to tell them what was wrong with him, why his body reacted so severely while everyone else’s did nothing, only that water didn’t drain his body and energy from it. Hemo was as far as he’d get before coughing fits and the struggle to breathe pushed aside any more attempts to vocalize. There was only one or the other, and the one thing kept him alive though unclear for how long when even pushing out the breath started to burn like every drop of blood he lost was replaced with fire burning the insides of his lungs. Will started to count his breaths, trying to slow his heart from pumping so rapidly to his demise but to no avail. It paradoxically tried to fight him instead of fighting for him. Eight. Nine. Ten. He barely even felt anything entering him with breath ten and knew, that should his body muster up another one, it would be his last. His hand clutched, harder than before, at Sami’s and blue eyes wide like never before-

Eleven.

There was that day, and then there were the six weeks of recovery after to learn what happened after breath eleven. Many days of that time were spent in the same walls of Jefferson Health that he’d left then so carefree, never to return the same. His brain was full-functional but the body too weak to leave, so that waking nights were too hard to escape. Closing his eyes haunted him, made him afraid it would be the last time that the motion would fulfill itself, so every morning a nurse was greeted with a faint smile paired with bloodshot blue eyes that had evaded the dark once more to pass out in the daylight, only to repeat the motions day for day. They never were Sami’s eyes that he would meet though, and as he asked for her or how she’d been doing, they told him that she had quit at Jefferson. There was no judgment, only bitterness that remained like the metallic taste on his tongue like a torturous reminder that he had done this to her. Gotten into an impossible situation and forced her to look on as he bled out onto her. Who would blame her?

   February 28th came early that year. He turned twenty-six and there was nothing he wished for. Nothing but one thing that, from that day on, glimmered on his left wrist without a fail. He faulted his parents for a lot of things but never for crying as they brought the very same gift to his hospital room as they had to his childhood bedroom for years and Will wearing the silver bracelet for the first time in his life.