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Randy aims the gun back in my direction. This time I know he's ready to fire. Before he squeezes the trigger, a crash booms from the front of the apartment. Both Colton and Payton rush into the living room, guns raised.
Behind them, I spot Ryan, a look of absolute horror etched onto his face. He's carrying a tray from the coffee shop in one hand and a bouquet of flowers in the other. My heart stutters at the sight of him. I smile sadly, knowing I probably look horrible with a bloody lip, swelling eye and whatever other bruises are forming on my face.
"Drop the gun, Randy," Payton yells a few feet from us. Randy knows he's outnumbered, but he continues to aim his gun at me. I'm his only leverage.
His eyes search the room frantically, looking for an escape, but there isn't one.
"Drop the gun," Payton repeats. "Don't make me shoot you. Lower your weapon, and we can all walk out of here alive."
When Randy turns back to me, I know.
He is going to kill me.
His eyes go blank as his finger squeezes the trigger. Sound explodes through the apartment as I jerk back in surprise, taking in the scene before me. Randy screams in pain, crumpling to the ground, blood seeping out of his right leg, and the hand no longer holding the gun.
"No," Ryan cries out so loud I wonder if he's been shot. He rushes towards me, coffee and flowers falling to the carpet as I feel my legs give out.
Pain radiates through my body when I hit the floor, but the worst is concentrated somewhere just below my collarbone. The ache is so sharp I struggle to breathe and catch my breath. Tears cloud my vision, but not before I see the blood.
"Em," Ryan kneels beside me, scooping me in his arms. He rips the duct tape off my wrists, releasing my arms and then presses a hand down on my chest. The pressure makes me cry out in agony. "No, no, no," he chants. Pure terror etches his face and his eyes are wild with panic. His fear seeps into me until my pain morphs into fear too, mirroring his.
I blink away my own tears, only to see Ryan's are falling down his cheeks. I try to raise my hand to brush them away, but every part of my body feels too heavy.
I'm so tired.
"Don't close your eyes, Em," Ryan orders shaking me slightly. "The ambulance is almost here. I can hear it. It's so close. Just stay with me."
I can't hear anything but his voice, and even that sounds far away. I try to keep my eyes open because he's begging me to, but I just can't. My eyelids are heavy. Too heavy. I just want to close them for a minute.
I just want to take a little rest. Maybe dying really is like falling asleep.
The room is too bright, and there is something strange and beautifully comforting about the blackness that engulfs me.
23?
On the Mend
Ryan
The steady beep of the monitor reminds me Em's alive. Her hospital room is crowded but quiet. Holly's sitting with Luke in the uncomfortable hospital chairs by the window, her eyes red and puffy from crying. They heard the gunshots from upstairs and came rushing down before the ambulance arrived. When they burst through the door, Em was bleeding and unconscious and Randy was screaming and writhing in pain on the floor while being subdued by Colton.
I thought she was dead.
When Randy fired the gun and red bloomed through Em's tank top, I thought she was going to die and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I sat there, helpless, with her wrapped in my arms trying to stop the blood flowing out of her chest wound, praying the ambulance would get to us in time to save her.
I begged God, and every other deity, to save her. To take me instead. I would have bargained away anything to keep her alive.
The bullet hit right below her collarbone, barely nicking an artery which is why there was so much blood. Less than an inch lower and it would have pierced her heart or lung. One or two millimetres to the right, it would have torn tight through her artery.
She was so fucking lucky.
The doctors removed the bullet quickly and repaired and closed the wound, but she lost a lot of blood and hasn't woken up yet. I grip her small hand in mine, watching her chest's steady rise and fall. She looks pale and fragile, lying in the hospital bed.
Bandages cover her wound, and a tangle of cables and an IV are attached to her, monitoring her vitals. Her wrists are bruised and chaffed from where the duct tape was wrapped tight and torn off. Varying shades of purple bruises cover her neck and jaw, some the shape of oval fingertips. There's a scab on her lip, and her left eye is swollen shut, a lovely black and blue colour, from where Randy pistol-whipped her.
Rage courses through me at the thought of Randy touching her. Hurting her. I want to fucking crush him. Beat him to a pulp. I want to rip him limb from limb and give him a taste of his own medicine. Only a fucking pitiful coward would hit a woman.
But I have to be satisfied with our judicial system's justice. Payton and Colton may or may not have roughed him up a bit before the ambulances came.
