My thumb finds the nine on my phone.
There’s a sudden shuffle of feet. Something scraping against the floor.
Then a crash, sharp and sudden, followed immediately by the sound of small boxes hitting the linoleum in a cascade, one after another, like a shelf coming down. My mother makes a muffled sound and my thumb moves.
Nine. One. One.
It rings once before someone picks up.
"Nine one one, what's your emergency?"
"Someone broke into our pharmacy." My voice comes out barely above a breath as I press myself against the wall beside the door. My heart is slamming so hard I can feel it inmy throat. "Cassville Care Pharmacy. On Birch Street. Please send someone."
"Can you tell me what's happening?"
"I'm in the back room. I can hear—" I stop and listen. "There's someone in the store. They won't leave. And I heard something fall over."
"Is anyone else in the building with you?"
"My parents." The words come out cracked down the middle. "My parents are in the main part of the shop with him."
"Okay. I need you to stay where you are. Can you do that for me?"
I press my back harder against the wall and close my eyes.
"Yes," I whisper.
Then my mother screams, and my body moves.
I hit the door with my shoulder, bursting through it into the main pharmacy floor, and my feet find the blood before my eyes do.
I push myself up on my hands.
My palms are wet.
I look down, horrified to see that I landed on my father.
He's on his back in the middle of the cold medicine aisle, surrounded by boxes of cough suppressants, cold packs, and thermometers. Everything that was on the shelf above him. His lab coat is soaked through, dark and wet, his face turned toward me with an expression I have never seen on him before.
"Dad?" I whisper, praying he’s still alive.
His mouth moves. His face is a ghostly white, etched with a shock so profound I almost don’t recognize him.
“Eh…elle…” He tries to lift one hand toward me, and it barely gets off the floor before it drops back down, fingers twitching uselessly. The blood is coming from his chest, pumping up from somewhere deep in rhythmic spurts that match the frantic beat of my own heart.
There's so much of it. soaking through his lab coat, pooling around him, seeping into the cracks of the linoleum. I can't figure out where to press, I can't find the wound, I can't find anything that makes sense.
I press both hands against his chest anyway, pushing downhard.
"Dad?” My voice shakes. “Look at me. Look at me."
His eyes find mine.
From somewhere on the other side of the shelving unit, my mother makes a sound that I will hear for the rest of my life. It's not a scream but something wetter, something choked and guttural, like an animal caught in a trap.
Fear rips through me as my head snaps up at the sound.
Through the gap between the bottom of the shelving unit and the floor, I can see feet. Two pairs. My mother's white pharmacy clogs, one of them knocked sideways. And a pair of dark boots, moving.
