Torn
Chapter 35
We all piled into the limo that was taking us to the awards and it took off.  About halfway there, there was weird noise coming from the front seat.  Mom rolled down the divider and suddenly we were all thrown to the right as the limo jerked to the left.  We were going way too fast and I could only watch in horror as we crashed headlong into a cement structure outside of a big building.
                Everything seemed slowed down and I saw everything in high-def.  The driver disappeared through the shattered windshield.  Mom's head smashed into the side of the car, cracking the glass.  Dad flew forward into the front seat and disappeared.  Elaine flew forward too, smacking her face into the mini bar.  Tyler saw what was happening a split second before it happened and threw himself on top of me.  I never saw Eli.
                The next thing I was aware of was a soft whirring.  I struggled through layers and layers of sleep back to consciousness.  I opened my eyes and the first thing I saw was Tyler asleep in a plush chair across the room from me.  I assumed I was in a hospital, and a quick look into the hall of rushing doctors confirmed my suspicions.  I looked in the opposite direction and saw Lanie lying motionless in another bed.  The beeping from a monitor proved that she was still alive, but her cuts, bruises, broken arm, and lack of consciousness proved that she was not doing okay.  Suddenly a high pitched beep went off and Tyler jerked awake, running up to Lanie at the same moment that doctors and nurses ran in.  One of them pulled a curtain so that I couldn't see what was going on, which didn't stop me from screaming out her name. Tyler was pushed back out of their circle, so he made his way over to me, trying to hush me.  It was no use.
                A few minutes later, there was silence, no beeping, no shrill noise, no doctors talking.  Suddenly one doctor did talk; he broke the silence with "Time of death, 22:14."  That sent me into a frenzy.  I ignored the piercing pain in my head, the fact that my leg was in a cast, and the compressing feeling in my chest as I ripped every monitor off of me and tried to run over to her.
                "Lanie!"  I got to the curtain before the doctors tackled me and dragged me back to my bed, stabbing me with what was obviously a sedative. 
                When I woke up, the horror from before came flooding back to me.  I saw Tyler in the same chair as before and he came over to me.  "How are you feeling?" he asked gently, brushing my hair with the arm that wasn't in a sling.
                "Where is everyone else?" I asked, barely able to whisper.
                "Hayles, the driver had a seizure and lost control of the limo, there was nothing anyone could have done.  It was so unexpected."
                "Are they...?" I couldn't even finish my sentence, afraid of the answer.
                "You, Lanie, and I were the only ones they pulled out of the scene alive.  Everyone else was dead on impact. I'm so sorry baby."
                Then an awful realization came to me, "Baby... how's our baby?"
                "Like I said..." he began slowly, choking up, "You, Lanie, and I were the only ones they pulled out of the scene alive..." tears started streaming down his face and his voice wobbled, "everyone else was dead on impact. I'm so sorry," he broke down on the word 'sorry' and started bawling.  It was the first time I had seen emotion like this from him and it scared me a little bit. A few minutes later he got up and left without an explanation.  He returned quickly however, with a magazine in his hand.  He laid it down by my head and I picked it up and saw that, yet again, we were front page material.  This time the pictures from the wreckage graced the front page.
                I flipped to the page that our story was on and saw an old family photo with a three page article underneath.  
                "A mother. A father. A brother. A sister. A baby. An entire family.  That is exactly what 16 year old new singer Haylee Crown lost this Friday before the award ceremony that she was supposed to attend with boyfriend and rapper, Tyler Matthews a.k.a. T-Mat, father of the lost baby.  All gussied up and riding in a limo, the couple had no idea how much their lives were about to change.  The driver, 63 year old California born and bred Merlin Waltz, had a spontanious seizure on the way to the awards, sending the limo along with the entire family careening into a cement slab outside of a building in downtown New York. Waltz, Sophia Crown, age 40, Daniel Crown, age 41, and Elijah Crown, age 19, were all pronounced dead at the scene, but miraculously Elaine Crown, age 18, Haylee, and T-Mat were all pulled from the wreckage and airlifted to New York General Hospital where they underwent separate and extensive surgeries to stop massive internal bleeding and other serious injuries.  The condition of the three is unknown at the moment, but one thing we do know is that the baby was lost at the scene as well."