I was bleeding out in the back of an ambulance. I called my parents and said, “I need blood-AB negative.” My mom said, “We’re on a cruise with your sister. We’re about to set sail. Figure it out!” Then I passed out on an ER gurney. Three days later, my parents finally showed up-horrified to see the man sitting next to me
“I need blood,” I said, choking on the words as the ambulance hit another pothole. “AB negative. Please.”
The paramedic beside me kept one gloved hand pressed hard against my abdomen. His voice was calm, too calm, the way medical people sound when everything is going wrong fast. “Stay with me, sir. What’s your name?”
“Ethan,” I whispered.
Warmth kept spilling beneath me. Not warmth—blood. My blood. The smell of metal filled the ambulance, thick and nauseating. My vision flickered under the violent white of the ceiling lights as the siren screamed over traffic.
Ten minutes earlier, I had been driving home from work on I-75 outside Tampa when a pickup truck hydroplaned across two lanes and slammed into the driver’s side of my car. I remembered glass exploding inward. The steering wheel crushing into me. A stranger’s face at the shattered window shouting, “Don’t move, man, don’t move.” Then red lights. Hands. Pressure. Pain so huge it became distant.
The paramedic held my phone to my ear because my hands were slick and shaking too badly to grip it. “Call whoever can make medical decisions,” he said. “Anybody who knows your blood type, history, emergency contacts.”
I already knew my blood type. AB negative. Rare enough that doctors always made a point of repeating it. Rare enough that once, at a family barbecue, my mother had laughed and called me “medically inconvenient.”
My parents were on a cruise out of Miami with my younger sister, Chloe. My father, Randall Mercer, believed vacations were sacred. My mother, Denise, believed everything could wait if it interfered with her plans.
Still, I called.
My mother answered on the fourth ring, irritated before I even spoke. “Ethan? We’re boarding.”
“Mom,” I gasped. “Accident. I’m in an ambulance. I need blood. AB negative. I need you to call the hospital, call someone, I—”
There was a pause. Then background noise: laughter, announcements, gulls, wind over a harbor.
“We’re on a cruise with your sister,” she said flatly. “We’re about to set sail.”
I thought I hadn’t heard her right. “Mom, I’m bleeding.”
“So figure it out!” she snapped. “What do you expect us to do from the port? Chloe has been looking forward to this trip for months.”
My father’s voice came faintly in the background. “What’s going on?”
She covered the phone for half a second, then came back on. “Your father says the hospital can handle it. Stop panicking.”
“Mom—”
May you like
The line went dead.
For one stunned second I just stared at the phone in the paramedic’s hand. He looked at me, and something in his face changed—not surprise, exactly. More like the grim confirmation that some injuries happen long before the body starts bleeding.
