Did I Die?

Max looks up at the sky and wonders, 'Did I die?'

   Did I die?

   Laying flat on his back in the snow, Max stared up at the inky sky, his thoughts as dark and murky as water in a well. There was a throbbing pain in his head and he could feel rather than see something blood brain life seeping into the white around his body.

   I can't be dead. It hurts. Everything hurts.

   The wail of sirens sounded through the air, breaking through the fog of his mind. Max struggled to move but something moved wrong in his torso and he let out a sharp hiss of pain. Despite himself, he slumped into the snow again. The icy cold bit into his skin where's my jacket I swear I had a jacket on but surrounded him, embracing him like a possessive lover.

   Lover.

   Jacqueline.

   "J-," Max tried to yell but he was interrupted by his own cough and the sound of someone approaching him, calling for him to stay still and quiet and that they were going to help him. No, they can't waste time with him; where's Jacqueline? 

   The men - paramedics, Max managed to recognize even with his addled brain - helped him onto a stretcher, carefully supporting his neck. It was a haze of movement and noise as they placed a breather around his nose and mouth and carried him to the hospital.

   He reached out with one hand and weakly grasped the jacket of one of the paramedics, who looked down at him. She had big brown eyes. No, Max wanted to see Jacqueline's blue ones. Blue like the lakes and the sky and the sea of cornflowers that grew in their backyard.

   "My wife... Jacqueline... where is she?" He breathed heavily, panting and struggling around the artificial air pumped into his lungs.

   The paramedic looked at her partner and frowned, a silent question in her eyes. She looked back down at Max and stated in a calm, soothing voice, "Sir, you're the only one we found. The police are examining the remains of your car but - "

   Even with the hard stretcher underneath him, Max felt as if he was falling. The remains of the car. He could remember it, faintly. The truck. The tree. The crushed remains of their small Honda, smashed as if it had been caught between the hands of a giant. How did he survive? How did he survive when Jacqueline...

   I made a mistake.

   I did die. 

Author's Note

written for a prompt