Greg's Song.

         For as long as I can remember, Caylee and Greg were my best friends. The three of us had gone to school together, and ended up working in the same office. We were inseperable. That is, until the accident...

         It was a very cold, snowy winter evening. Work had just ended, and I was giving Caylee a ride home. Greg had left the office a little early, feeling sick, and the two of us had decided that we would drop by his place, and see if he needed anything. As we were driving down the highway, we noticed traffic was slowing us down. Soon enough, we weren't moving at all. We turned up the radio, and heard that there had been a huge accident further up the highway, involving four cars. Three men were rushed to the hospital, and one of them was in critical condition. Just then, my cellphone rang. It was Greg's brother, Josh.

         After I hung up the phone, I told Caylee that Greg was in the hospital. He had been in the accident, and he was the one in critical condition. We both agreed that as soon as we could move the car, we'd go to the hospital, and though it felt like hours, we were able to get moving within a few minutes.

         Once we got to the hospital, the nurse advised that Caylee and I shouldn't go into the room at the same time, and so I agreed to let Caylee go in first. The nurse brought me to the waiting room and said that she'd let me know when it was my turn to visit Greg.

         I looked around, and saw that most of the people in the room were staring at their shoes or out the big window. The t.v was on, distracting only itself. No one was watching it, except one woman, who looked more as if she was staring at it for the sake of staring at it, rather than to see what was on it. There was a stack of old, ripped magazines on a dusty old table in the corner. They seemed like they had stayed untouched for quite some time. The only sound in the room was that of the clock ticking. Each tick was one more second that I had trouble sitting still, waiting to be called into Greg's room. Finally, the nurse came into the room. Everyone looked up at her, anxious for news that might put them at ease, but she ignored all of them, and looked at me, motioning for me to follow her.

         After we walked down a long hallway smelling of chemicals, the nurse stopped in front of a door, and told me I could go in. It was Greg's room. Before I could say anything to her, she walked away, leaving me standing in front of the door, all alone.

         Walking into the room, I got a funny feeling in my stomach. Greg was laying in a bed, with tubes down his throat, and machines beeping all around him. The one that scared me the most was the one showing his hearbeat.

         I finally got up the courage to sit down on the side of his bed. I touched his hand, because even though he was unconcious, I thought it might be comforting if someone was with him. I was scared. His face was bearly recognizable from the cuts and bruises, and I started feeling a little sick knowing that he might die looking nothing like the Greg that we all knew. This wasn't Greg at all. He was normally so happy, and full of life...

         I must have sat there staring at him for a long time. I didn't know what I was supposed to do. I started to think about when we were kids, and all of the games we used to play. Then I remembered it. His song. There was a song he used to sing to me and Caylee when we were upset or hurt. At the end of the song, all of our pain would be gone. Of course, we were very young then, but I remembered all the words, and, staring at Greg's bruised body, I knew it was his turn to hear the song. I started to sing.

         I knew every word to the song, and I was singing it like he used to sing it. Just then, I heard a voice start singing along with me. I turned around and saw Caylee stepping into the room. She gave me a knowing look, took Greg's other hand, and kept singing with me. We got to the end of the song, and as we finished the last words, the machine with his heartbeat went flat. He was dead.

         Caylee started crying, but I didn't. I remembered how the song had lifted our pain by the ending, and now it had lifted Greg's.