“Can you see him from the door?”
“Yes.”
“Then go now. I’ll stay on the line.”
The hallway feels endless. My legs don’t feel real as I force myself up, and my foot slips straight out from under me, the floor slick beneath it. My hand hits the wall, catching me, the world tilting for a second that stretches too long, something sharp cutting deeper into my foot. It registers and doesn’t, like it’s happening to someone else.
I drag myself upright, already moving again, reaching for the lock. My fingers miss it once, twice, before I get it open and turn back, running to him like distance itself is dangerous. I fumble for the phone, blood smearing across the screen as I pick it up. “I’m back.”
“You’re doing exactly what you need to do. The ambulance is very close now. Can you tell me if his lips are turning blue?”
I look. “No. Just pale. Very pale.”
“Okay. That’s helpful. Keep speaking to him. Tell him help is coming.”
“Help is coming,” I whisper to him, to myself, to the walls. “They’re coming. You’re okay. You’re okay.”
The words feel like fiction.
In the distance, finally, I hear it.
Sirens.
The sirens start as a distant thread of sound, thin enough that I almost convince myself I imagined it, and then they grow, swelling through the quiet street until they feel like they’re inside my chest, vibrating against my ribs.
“I can hear them,” I tell the operator, my voice shaking so badly the words blur together.
“Yes. Stay on the line until they reach you.”
The sound becomes unbearable and miraculous all at once. Red light pulses through the kitchen window in rhythmic flashes that make the broken glass glitter like something theatrical instead of catastrophic.
“They’re here,” I whisper, because saying it out loud feels like sealing something into place.
A moment later, there is the heavy slam of doors, the quick, purposeful thud of boots on the front steps, and then voices, low and controlled, moving through the house with the confidence of people who have done this a thousand times and cannot afford to feel every version of it.
“Paramedics!”
“In here!” The shout tears out of me before I know I’ve drawn breath.
“I’m going to disconnect now,” the operator says gently. “You’ve done everything right.” The line clicks dead.
For a second, the silence roars louder than the sirens did.
Then they are in the doorway.
Two paramedics move into the kitchen with the focused urgency of a storm contained inside human form. One kneels beside my father, already working, while the other turns to me with steady calm.
His attention shifts downward. “Where’s the blood coming from?”
For a second, I don’t understand the question. Then I follow his gaze and see it, the streaks across the floor, the red under my feet, as if it belongs to someone else.
“It’s nothing,” I say, like it barely exists. I wave a hand, already moving aside. “Glass or something. I’m fine. Just,please,look at him.”
He watches me for a second, measuring something. “Okay,” he says. “We’ll deal with him first. Then we deal with you. I’m Aaron. What’s his name!”
Is he British? He sounds British.
Wait, he asked me something. Name. ‘What’s his name!’
