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Shawn nodded, trying to collect himself. Javier snapped the cervical collar on Brandon’s neck and we all put our hands on him, ready to flip him.

“On the count of three,” Javier said, not looking up, sweat beading on his forehead. “One, two, three!” And in one fluid motion we turned him onto the backboard.

Brandon always wore heavy-duty pants when he rode. But he was in a T-shirt. It was eighty today. His bare left arm was torn to shreds by the asphalt. He looked like he’d been through a lemon zester. Blood oozed from the white streaks of the under layer of his skin. And this was the least of his worries.

Shawn, Javier, and an EMT lifted him onto the gurney while I felt his chest and stomach. He had rib fractures and rigidity in his abdomen. “A possible liver laceration,” I said, a lump bolting to my throat.

Javier mumbled a curse word, and Shawn shook his head, his eyes red and glassy.

We needed to get him to the hospital.

The ambulance crew took over.

I rattled off what I knew as we ran him to the open ambulance doors, my voice professional and disembodied, like it came from someone else, someone who wasn’t standing over his critically injured best friend. “Twenty-nine-year-old male, motorcycle rider struck by vehicle, thrown twenty feet from the point of impact. Helmet has significant damage. A weakened, thready radial pulse. Pupils are equal and reactive. Open femur fracture, severe road rash. Unresponsive.”

I climbed into the ambulance and saw the woman from the blue Kia being slapped into handcuffs as the doors slammed shut behind us.

We’d gotten him in the ambulance in less than five minutes. I worried it was five minutes too long.

I leaned over him. “Hey, buddy.” My voice cracked. “Hold on. You’ll be all right. I’m going to get Sloan over here, okay?”

Tears stung my eyes, but my hands kept working, running on muscle memory. I set up his IV en route. The EMT put him on oxygen while the driver called it in.

We cycled his blood pressure. Put him on an EKG to monitor his heart. But none of this helped him. It was nothing but reassess. That’s all we could do. Reassess. It was the longest ride of my life.

Finally the rig turned hard into the hospital parking lot.

The EKG flatlined.

“No!” I started chest compressions to the long, static beep of the heart rate monitor as the ambulance pulled up to the ER. “Come on, Brandon, come on!”

The ambulance doors swung open and I climbed the gurney and straddled him, pumping his chest with the palms of my hands. Javier, Shawn, and Luke were waiting, and I ducked as they lowered us both out of the ambulance and wheeled us into the trauma room.

“He’s crashing!” I screamed between thrusts. “We’re losing him!”

The emergency room team descended on the gurney.

The room was chaos. Shouting and barked orders, beeping machines and the squeaky sound of wheels rolling on a hard floor. I kept doing chest compressions until they ran over the crash cart. I didn’t stop until I saw paddles.

A doctor in a white coat waited for me to clear the gurney and then he pressed the charge to Brandon’s chest. “Clear!”

Brandon’s body lurched with the jolt and everyone froze, staring at the lines on the monitor.

Nothing.

“Clear!”

He lurched again.

We waited.

The jagged V of a heartbeat launched the room back into action, and I breathed again.

I was backed out into the hallway by the throng of people working on him. They started a central line. They started X-rays. Neurology was called. And then a curtain yanked closed and it was done. There was nothing else we could do for him. That was it.

It was out of our hands.

I stood there panting, in shock, the adrenaline crashing into me now that I’d stopped moving. I looked down at myself, my hands trembling. I was covered in his blood.