Let It Be Me by Becky Wade (top young adult novels .TXT) 📕

“Injury to the larynx. It’s preventing airflow down the trachea.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” the driver of the sedan said. “He was in my lane. I honked and he swerved—”

“Call 9-1-1,” Sebastian told him.

The man blanched. He fumbled for his phone.

“I need a straw,” Sebastian said.

“There’s one, ah . . .” The man pushed a shaking hand to his temple. “In my car. I stopped at 7-Eleven earlier.”

Sebastian sprinted to the man’s car.

Dylan was trying to say her name, she could tell by reading his lips. But no sound was coming out now. She squeezed his hand. He was struggling for air, like a fish in the bottom of a boat, and the sight of it was the very worst thing she’d ever seen. She wrestled down the sob that wanted to rise.

“I love you,” she told him. “So much. Everything’s going to be all right.”

Dylan’s lips were beginning to turn blue.

Frantic, she looked up for Sebastian. He was reaching into the trunk of his Mercedes. The stranger was talking to 9-1-1 dispatch.

God! she begged silently. God, please. Please!

Sebastian ran to them, knelt on Dylan’s other side. With one hand, he flicked open a Swiss Army knife. With his other, he felt the area just below Dylan’s Adam’s apple. “Dylan, I’m going to open an airway into your lungs.” Then with full assurance and zero hesitation, he slid the knife through the skin of Dylan’s throat. Instantly, blood rose to meet the blade. He twisted the knife just enough to open the incision he’d made, pulled a wide red straw from his jacket pocket, and inserted it into the hole.

She heard air pulling through the straw, urgent and deep.

Dylan relaxed slightly.

“That’s it.” Sebastian used his fingers to close the hole around the straw. “Take it easy and breathe.”

The whistling, beautiful sound of an exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

“Good job.” Sebastian looked straight into Dylan’s eyes. “Did your throat ram into the steering wheel when your truck hit the tree?”

Dylan gave a slight nod.

“Your lungs are getting the air they need,” Sebastian said. “You’re going to be okay. Do you hear me, Dylan?”

Another nod.

Leah was too terrified to believe what Sebastian had just said, that Dylan was going to be okay. And much too terrified to believe that he wasn’t.

Dylan’s focus flicked to her. Brown curls fell against the bright autumn leaves blanketing the ground.

“I’m here,” Leah said to the boy she’d loved since the day he was born. The one who was more important to her than her own wants, her own desires, her own life. “I’m here, sweetheart.”

Sebastian tightened his hold on the skin around the straw, doing his best to create a seal.

He loved Leah. And Leah loved Dylan. He’d once lost what he’d loved, so he would move mountains and oceans with his bare hands to ensure that she did not endure the same pain.

He’d perforated the cartilaginous rings of the trachea. The pressure he was exerting on the wound would mitigate the loss of blood. Even so, he could feel it running down the sides of Dylan’s neck.

“I performed a tracheotomy,” he explained to Dylan, “which means that the straw is functioning as your windpipe, allowing oxygen in and out. The straw will tide us over until we get you to the hospital. There’s a trip in an ambulance in your near future. And a hospital stay. I’m sorry to tell you that hospital food is just as bad as its reputation would lead you to believe.”

This situation had stripped years off Dylan. Though he was trying to appear brave, he looked young and defenseless.

Leah’s concentration remained trained on her brother. She probably wasn’t aware that tears were wetting her face and turning her lashes spiky.

It was too late, much too late, to protect himself from her. From now on, for the rest of his life, there would be no hiding from the things she made him feel.

A siren’s blare started small and grew in volume.

“You can look forward to a few days off of school for this,” Sebastian told Dylan. “This is a tough way to cut class. But congratulations. You managed it.”

Dylan tried to smile. The straw made a gurgle and Sebastian adjusted the angle of it so Dylan would continue to receive plenty of clean air.

The paramedics arrived. Sebastian gave swift instructions. They brought over tape and Sebastian used it to secure the straw so that there was no leakage around it and no possibility of dislodging it.

He helped the paramedics move Dylan onto the stretcher. Blood smeared bright against the boy’s sweatshirt.

Once they’d secured Dylan inside the ambulance, he helped Leah into the back of the vehicle.

“Thank you,” she said.

“I’ll follow behind.”

But she was already looking back at her brother.

Leah had spent the last ten years worrying about the dangers that might devour Dylan. Today, one of them had devoured him, in part, because of her and the things Dylan had overheard her saying to Sebastian.

The ambulance ride ended at their local hospital’s emergency room. Doctors, nurses, white walls. Dylan, at the center of it all, the only entity she could see in sharp focus.

They replaced the temporary straw with a much more sophisticated tracheostomy tube. Dylan’s vital signs stabilized. The staff informed Leah that they’d treat Dylan here until surgery could be arranged—which would likely take a day or two.

No doubt the surgery and recovery would be difficult, and Dylan might face a degree of lasting damage to his vocal cords. But all Leah could think, sitting beside his bed in the room they’d been assigned, was that the consequence of his injury could have been much, much worse.

Without a doubt, he would have suffocated, if not for Sebastian.

Sebastian hadn’t sought out her attention once. However, she’d been aware of his presence ever since the accident. Two different times, when she’d looked up to find him so that he could answer a medical question, he’d been there. Because of him, she knew not to allow Dylan to be passed off to the