Chapter 5.
‘Hello?’ Danielle answered the phone.
‘Hey, it’s me. You’ve forgotten your CD at mine,’ Sabrina said, chirpily.
She was walking with Leo and Tony: Gregory had decided to go to Sebastien’s house to watch a film. ‘Oh, thanks! Um,’ she looked behind her briefly. ‘I’ll be there in about ten minutes.’
The guys looked at her, enquiringly.
She hung up the phone. ‘I forgot my CD at Sabrina’s house, so I’m going to go back and get it. You coming?’
Tony and Leo looked at each other and replied, ‘Yeah.’
The three of them were walking back to their friend’s house quickly, retracing their steps. The lampposts weakly lit up their path. They were chatting about which songs they liked best from Danielle’s CD, ‘Trivium’. It became a debate whether ‘Blinding Tears Will Break The Skies’ or ‘The Rising’ was the best tune, however, they all agreed that the whole of their first album was hard to beat. They shuffled round every corner, until they reached Sabrina’s road.
As they turned another bend, which was much darker, their giggles ceased to silence; their fast-paced steps became stumbles; their smiles turned to frowns as they discovered a very familiar dark red hoodie, sprawled on the cold pavement, motionless. Slowly, Leo went to check whether they were right…
He knelt down and carefully turned the body of the unconscious boy, making sure that he was being gentle. The face was covered in blood, some wounds still fresh; Leo soundlessly waved his arm over for the other two to see who he has found.
Andrew.
Danielle gasped in horror and took a step back.
Tony’s eyes widened; he put his ear to Andrew’s chest to check if he was still breathing…still alive: his breaths were few and contained long and deathly pauses, each one a ray of hope for Tony that their best friend was still here.
Leo whispered, ‘Still breathing?’
Tony nodded.
Danielle, shaking, took out her phone and dialled for the ambulance.
As she nervously talked on the phone, Leo and Tony tried to awake Andrew by calling his name anxiously…with no reply. They kept trying this, determined to wake their him up.
No reply.
Danielle hung up the phone after her cry for help, and then she ran over to Andrew. Panicking, she also called Sabrina, screaming every word to her to run over to them - Sabrina was on her way. Afterwards, she tried something, anything, to make sure he’s alive…and staying alive. ‘Andrew, can you hear me?! Listen, Andrew, if you can hear me respond!’
They all grouped around him, in high hopes, that there would be a response…any response. Fear mounted higher and higher between them as the long seconds passed without anything. It seemed to take forever…until Andrew flickered his eyelids, trying –with great difficulty- to open them.
A huge sigh of relief were made by his friends, half-smiling as they were pretty certain their beaten companion could hear them. Sabrina raced over to the huddle, panting. She knelt down to see her best friend, cut-up and bloody; when she saw this, hot tears that stung her eyes like a wasp trickled down her cheeks.
‘Is he alright?! What’s going on?! Oh my god, what happened?!’
Leo put an arm around her. ‘He’s going to be okay…we think. He’s just made it clear that he can hear us, and that he’s kind of conscious. Sabrina, it’s going to be alright, just calm down.’ With that, he hugged her: she was crying more, every tear streaming with pain and dread.
After five minutes of keeping Andrew warm with their jackets, the ambulance arrived with their sirens blaring and lights frantically flashing; they attended to Andrew as soon as possible, checking his reactions to injections and lifting him onto a trolley and carting him into the back of the vehicle; Tony and Danielle agreed they would go and accompany Andrew into the van, leaving Sabrina and Tony to rush back to her house.
