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Carl turns to face Lewis, and the knife goes into Lewis’s stomach. It’s quick. So quick, even Lewis doesn’t realize what has happened.
“No!” I scream. “Lewis,” I repeat, crawling on my hands and knees to where he’s standing. Carl has lost his sense of purpose. He has almost forgotten about me as he throws his hands up in the air and runs them through his hair, his bloodied hand still clutching the knife.
“Lewis.” I inch forward when Carl grabs my hair and pulls me backward.
“Now, look what you made me do!” The whites of his eyes are cracked with bloodied veins, and spit gathers at the edge of his mouth so he resembles a rabid dog. He raises his arm, the knife above my head, as Lewis powers into him from the side. The pair fall like skittles. I throw my hands over my head, anticipating their landing, but they fall on either side of me.
Lewis is on his back, his hand clutching his stomach. Carl is rolling over, readying himself for whatever he came here to do. Does it make any difference to him, two instead of one?
Then we hear the siren. It’s loud. It’s close.
Lewis mumbles, “I told you I called the police. They’re coming.”
Carl stands and hesitates for a second, his eyes checking me over. A second, that’s all it would take to do the job he came to do. But there are voices now, male and gruff. The sirens are loud. They could be on the other side of the shop. They could have Carl in cuffs in a matter of seconds.
Carl makes his decision, turns, and runs out of the yard and down the back of the alley.
I blink him away and try to stand. I must get to Lewis.
My legs are like melted candle wax, my hands that of a trainee surgeon, and my head at ground zero. But I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself.
“Lewis. Lewis, are you okay?” It’s a ridiculous question, but it is instinctive. I saw the knife go in, yet I expect him to jump up any minute and declare that he’s fine, and tell me it’s only a scratch.
“I didn’t call them. I said it to make him go.” As the words leave Lewis, sirens grow, then fade just as quickly, moving away from the coffee shop. They are for someone else’s emergency.
The little sense of relief extinguishes as quickly as the siren as I stare toward the small alley where Carl disappeared.
“I need to go get my phone, Lewis. I need to call an ambulance.” Even in the dim light, I can see he is pale and clammy, and his skin looks wet.
“I’ll come inside. I can make it.” His voice is raspy, his words slipping out along with his blood. I tell myself not to panic. People get stabbed and live to tell the tale. You see it on television shows all the time. Just because he has been stabbed doesn’t mean it is fatal. This is Lewis. He will be fine.
He pulls himself up as I try to support him. He’s much taller than me, and his size makes it clumsy. I pull one of his arms around my shoulder as I hobble toward the kitchen with him draped over me. He has one hand bundled over his stomach as if he’s holding his insides in.
“Steady, easy does it,” I say as we shuffle through the kitchen. His steps are short, and his movements are arduous as I push open the door to the shop.
We’re about to reach a chair when his legs give way beneath him. I stumble downward, almost falling on top of him. I pull his arm from around my neck as I desperately search his face.
“Lewis? Lewis,” I repeat. I don’t know what I want him to say. I can see him now in the coffee shop’s light. His skin is gray, his eyes are sleepy, and his mouth lolls open, the grimace gone. I make myself look down at his hand. It is red. Sodden. Fuck. He looks bad. It all looks so horribly bad.
Some radical idea springs out of nowhere that I should be putting pressure on the wound. Maybe this is an old memory of a hospital drama I’ve watched, but either way, it’s what I think I should be doing. I dash back into the kitchen and grab an armful of towels that have just come out of the tumble dryer. I skid my way back to Lewis and kneel next to him.
“I’m going to apply a little pressure, Lewis, to stop the bleeding.” Fuck, I don’t know what I’m saying, but Lewis deserves to be in the hands of someone who does, so I should at least let him think I have a clue.
I haul his hand away from the wound and nearly retch at the sight of the blood. There’s so much. I’ve never seen this amount of blood. It is hard to believe that moments ago, this blood was pumping around his body, going about its business, doing whatever blood does, and now it is draining relentlessly over the coffee shop floor. I can’t see the wound beyond his clothing. It must be tiny. The knife was only a few inches wide. How can it have done so much damage?
I hold his arm in midair as I reach for the towels. My hands are covered in blood. It squelches between my fingers. I don’t know how I’ve managed to get so much on my hands. It’s as if the blood is coming from me. I try to pack the towels on top of one another, but I don’t want to hurt him. My hands are shaking so badly, it’s as if there’s an earthquake raging through me, the epicenter being my stomach. When I’m done with the towels, I carefully lay his arm back over them, hoping it will apply some pressure. I watch the once-white towels change color before my eyes as if they’ve been submerged in red dye. Shit.
“Lewis, I’m going to get my phone. Hang on in there. I’ll get help.” I don’t want to leave him, but I’m not doing any good standing here staring at him.
I run to my locker, practically jumping over the counter to get to the office. I scramble with my key in my pocket. Why is it so fucking small? My fingers feel as though they are covered in oil. I can’t get a grip on the key, and it takes what feels like hours to finally get it in the hole and pull open my locker. I grab my phone, but the workings feel alien. My phone doesn’t register my bloodied thumbprint. I rub my hand down the side of my apron and try again. This time it works, and the screen lights up. I dial nine-nine-nine as I jog back to Lewis.
I kneel beside him. I connect immediately to a woman who asks what emergency service I require. I tell her ambulance and police. Hell, should I throw in the fire brigade for good measure?
“Lewis, Lewis?” I should keep talking to him because I’m scared about what will happen if I don’t. He isn’t responding. His face seems to reflect his body, shut away like it isn’t taking any calls. I draw my eyes to the blood-soaked towels. I pull them away as I inwardly curse at how slow this all feels.
I hear a woman’s voice. She remains calm and normal as she extracts information from me. There is a sense of relief that someone is here with me, if not actually in the shop. She tells me her name, which drops completely from my mind. I’ve gone into emergency mode, only retaining the details paramount to saving Lewis’s life. She instructs me to put the call on hands-free as she may need me to check a few things. She makes it sound casual, like a computer repair line telling me to turn off the machine and wait for it to restart. I follow her voice, checking if Lewis is breathing by placing my ear close to his mouth and watching for his chest to rise and fall. I try to concentrate, but my breathing is so loud I find it hard to know which are my movements and which are Lewis’s.
“I think he’s breathing,” I report as she congratulates me, quickly moving to the wound. I describe it as best I can and am pleased to discover that my initial thought of putting pressure on it is the right thing to do. My stomach heaves at the sight of the cotton towels. They are heavy and warm, laden with bright red blood, the sight of which frightens me, the brightness of the red like a hooded girl in a dark forest, the fairy tale turning into a nightmare. The woman keeps talking to me as I press my hands onto the wound, the blood pooling between my fingers and spreading over my palms. I push my hands down against the wound, hoping to convince the blood to stay inside Lewis.
