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Slowly, his eyes opened. He groaned as he lifted his heavy head, and blinked at the blurry world around him.
“Is everyone okay? Sound off.”
Words were spoken, but he barely registered they were being said. His head was too busy spinning.
“Gordon?”
Hearing his name grounded him, settled his head for a moment to realise that they were waiting for him to answer.
“Yeah-” His voice came out croaky, his throat dry. He swallowed. “I’m good.”
“What happened?” Someone asked.
“There was a deer.” Virgil’s voice came from the front, which was followed by a grunt. “I can’t get my door open.”
Gordon blinked at him, realising he was in the front seat of a car. That’s where they were, they had been in the car together. Everything was tilted.
“Can you open your door, John?” Scott twisted around from his seat in front of Gordon.
“Already tried.” John’s voice sounded so far away. It took Gordon too long to catch up to what was being said. “It’s jammed.”
He wondered why he wasn’t asked to try his door, but the branches in front of his face that glistened with pieces of broken glass let him know why.
“I’m calling emergency services,” Scott announced from behind the wheel.
Gordon let the noise of Scott on the phone fall into the background. His arm was going numb and he felt like he couldn’t get a breath in. He pushed against the weight digging into his side.
“Sorry, Gords,” Alan apologised sheepishly as he attempted to remove his elbow from Gordon’s ribs. “If it makes you feel any better, John is squishing me too.”
“Sorry,” John said from Alan’s other side. “Let me try and lift my weight off you guys.”
Gordon grimaced when the weight increased slightly and he was pushed further against the car door for a moment as his brother moved, but then the weight lifted slightly. Alan shifted too, and then Gordon felt like he could finally breathe in a lungful of air.
And he winced.
He must have cracked a rib or something. His chest ached whenever he tried to suck in a breath, but despite the pain, it was better than the feeling of his brothers weighing down on him.
“Anyone injured?”
Gordon tuned back into Scott’s words when he realised they were directed towards him.
“I think my wrist is busted,” Virgil replied.
Gordon’s head was aching and his chest hurt, but that wasn’t worth bringing up, so he stayed quiet and let the words fade away again. Now the weight had lessened, he adjusted himself into a more comfortable position, freeing his arm and sending the blood rushing back to the limb.
He shifted, and cried out as a sudden sharp pain shot through his side.
“Gordon?”
It took Gordon a moment to register Alan saying his name and even longer for him to take in a shaky breath as he waited for the pain to dull.
“I’m good,” he got out through clenched teeth, and shot his brother a smile. “Just think I cracked a rib.” It wasn’t a lie.
“Okay, just breathe slowly,” Alan told him like he wasn’t already trying to do just that. His brother adjusted his grip on the headrest in front of him and tried to pull himself up a little higher.
No moving. Gordon tried to stay still. Even just a small twitch made his side feel like it was tearing open.
He tentatively reached an arm around his side, gritting his teeth to keep in the cry when his touch sent sparks through him. When he pulled his fingers away, they were wet, covered in red.
He wiped them on his shirt.
“How long until help gets here?” Alan asked what he was thinking. Gordon forgot Scott had even called for help.
“Soon.”
His brother continued to speak but Gordon let it fade away again. Soon. He could hold on for that long.
He tried to find a more comfortable position that lessened the pain, but there wasn’t one. He squeezed his eyes shut in the hope he could block it all out.
He woke up to the sound of something loud shaking the world around him. He wasn’t aware of drifting off, wasn’t even sure if he had and time had just gone by quickly.
He lifted his head. He couldn’t see what was happening, but there were voices that he didn’t recognise and the shrill noise of metal scraping.
He tried to concentrate back on what was being said, but it was getting harder. Everything felt so far away, like he was underwater. He could just drift away again.
“Gordon?”
A hand on his shoulder jolted him, and he blinked up at Alan’s blurry face.
“Scott’s leg is stuck so they’re gonna get us out before him.”
It took Gordon a long time to process Alan’s words, and even then they felt like they slipped through his fingers before he even had a hold on them.
He looked past his brother, and hadn’t even realised Virgil and John were no longer there.
“Gordon? You okay?”
Gordon looked at Alan again. Black walls were crowding into his vision. His eyes slipped closed.
“Gordon!”
Hands were on him and he wanted to tell them to stop, that they were hurting him. He opened his eyes, and all he saw were shapes.
“He’s bleeding!”
His lips parted as he gasped at the pain as his side was touched, but no sound came out.
He felt really tired.
He closed his eyes again, but they fluttered open a moment later. He didn’t know what was being said anymore. He let it fade away. He was sure the words weren’t being spoken to him anyway.
Everything felt heavy. The voices were still lingering in the background of his subconscious.
He expected to see the inside of that car when he opened his eyes, not white walls that had him squinting at the brightness. He didn’t remember sleeping.
“Hey.”
The voices quietened to just one. Gordon turned his head towards the gentle sound, blinking a couple of times as he focused on his surroundings easier than before.
“How you feeling?” Virgil smiled down at him, the kind of smile that didn’t reach his eyes. It must have been bad.
He thought about the question.
“I don’t feel anything at all,” Gordon replied honestly. He felt like he was laying on a cloud and he didn’t want to come down. He worried that if he thought too much about it, something bad would cut through the nothingness.
“That would be the drugs for you.” Virgil sat back with a chuckle, breathing out like he was letting go of the tension a little. That was good. Virgil didn’t need to worry about him.
He let his eyes scan past his brother, and could see two of his other brothers next to his bed as well. They all looked worse for wear, with casts and bandages and cuts and bruises. But Gordon noticed something was missing.
“Where’s Scott?” He looked around the room and could see another bed next to his, but it was empty.
It was Virgil who spoke again. “In surgery for his leg.”
“What?” Gordon was sitting up before his brothers had a chance to stop him, and he regretted it immediately when pain finally broke through his cloud and stabbed him harshly in the abdomen.
“Easy.” John was at his other side, grasping his arm before he collapsed, and he gently eased him back against the pillows with Virgil’s help. Gordon’s body shook in their hold. “He’s fine, he’s going to be absolutely fine. He should be out soon.”
Gordon nodded, his strength gone along with his words. The pain faded to a dull. He suddenly felt exhausted.
“Get some sleep.” Virgil smoothed the blankets over his chest, noticing how heavy Gordon’s eyelids suddenly seemed to become. “When you wake up, Scotty'll be here too.”
That sounded nice. They could all be together again, like this vacation was meant for. At least if they were grounded, they could extend their vacation a little longer.
He let his eyes fall shut, this time welcoming the sleep that overcame him.