“Yeah. I need to fuck him up.”
“Wha-“ before Ryan could finish, the door was thrown open with a force that he wasn’t expecting, throwing him down to the ground, slamming his body against a small table that he kept near the door. The shoes that had previously lined the top came crashing down to the floor and scattering around Ryan as the small table collapsed underneath his weight. Eric stepped in and immediately locked eyes with me, his fury rising as he saw me sitting next to Jason, his skin a paper pale that was beginning to flush with a furious red. My throat dried up, stopping me from pleading for my life.
In his hand was a shiny, silver, dangerously lethal gun ready to blow someone’s head off. And it was aimed straight at me.
“What the fuck?!” Jason said, immediately standing up. That’s when the first shot went off. The sound of the shot left my ears ringing as I instinctively screamed and covered my head. I heard a loud thud as Jason fell to the ground, a growing spot of red emanating from somewhere on his chest. I dropped down next to him, trying to slap him awake but he wouldn’t open his eyes. He just wouldn’t.
“Eric! Please, stop it, Eric! Please!” I cried out. I tried to apply as much pressure as I could on the bright red spot, hoping to staunch the bleeding. I looked down at my hands.
They were soaked in dark crimson.
“You were cheating on me this whole time,” he spat, a blind rage overtaking his features. He didn’t see when Ryan came up behind him and grabbed him by the neck, bringing him down to the ground. I saw the gun flash again in his hand, pieces of plaster from the roof raining down on the cruel scene. My ears were ringing to the point of hurting. It must have startled Ryan because his grip loosened, allowing Eric to wiggle free and position himself on the opposite end of the room. He now had his gun pointed straight at Ryan.
“Get the fuck over there,” he said, motioning towards me. His other arm was still in a cast and for the first time, I noticed he was still in his light blue hospital gown.
I sat there on the floor, my body shaking.
Fear paralyzed me.
Something is going to tear me away from this man. And that something was Eric. I looked straight at him, his eyes devoid of any soul as he aimed that gun, barrel pointed straight at me like an archer aiming his arrow true and through a bullseye. The air in the room felt heavy, sticking to my lungs, sinking to their depths, much like if I were drowning in oxygen. But my head felt so light, as if it were free floating, trying to reach the highest heights and run away from here. It made the whole scene have a hazy, nightmarish effect. Almost as if I was watching it all through a jar of golden molasses.
At least that’s what it seemed like.
I’m sure it was something completely opposite to what Ryan was seeing. I noticed him in the side of my vision. His muscles looked tense and his jaw was clenched extraordinarily tight. He also had a laser-beam precision focus on Eric, but Eric wasn’t paying any attention to him.
He was paying all his attention to me.
“You’re really gonna go fuck both of those pieces of shit?” he spat, lifting his gun and motioning towards both Jason and Ryan, his eyes still boring holes through me. I saw the speckles of saliva propel through the air. His chipped bottom tooth clacking with the crooked top one. The deep, black pupils getting wider and then narrowing back down.
It was what you noticed when you’re waiting for your life to flash before your eyes.
“No,” was all I could whimper, my voice cracking with fear. I felt my cheeks get wet from the tears that I didn’t even know were falling. I didn’t think I was crying, or at least I didn’t feel like I was, but my cheeks were still soaked.
“I fucking loved you. You were my everything. We had everything. When my mom,” he paused, his finger tightening around the trigger, “when she left, you were there for me. How do I know you weren’t being a fucking slut and lying to me?”
“This isn’t you,” I said, trying to regain a semblance of my composure but failing miserably. I could start to feel my hands shaking, my knees following suit. The gun was pointing too long at me.
He was pointing the gun at me for far too long.
Why was he pointing the gun at me for so long?
“How did you find us?” Ryan asked.
“I followed that douchebag straight here. It wasn’t hard sneaking out of your hospital,” Eric said. I tried searching for a shred of humanity in him, but it was all gone.
“And the pictures?” I asked, fear coloring my voice. My body felt loose, like a wet piece of spaghetti slapped hastily against the wall, shocked and weak.
“You were inside our apartment?” he asked, a hint of shock lying underneath his anger. I saw his face flush even redder, and I noticed his left eye twitch just the slightest. It was something he did whenever he would get really stressed, a little tick that I always thought was endearing.
Now it was horrifying.
“Answer her.”
“You shut the fuck up!” Eric yelled, waving the barrel of the gun straight at Ryan’s forehead.
My heart raced so fast it felt like it was going to be torn to shreds.
Then he turned to me, a sudden placidness overcoming him. I knew what was coming. It had to be.
“Emma,” he said, and for a second I saw a flash of what once was.
“I’m sorry.”
And then I saw the third flash of light.
My body felt like it was flying through the air, the impact taking me completely by surprise. The weight from the blow knocked all the wind out of me, emptying my lungs of any oxygen they once laid claim to. My shoulder felt shattered as I heard the crack of what was probably a broken bone. And then I saw drops of crimson. I felt the pooling of warm, red, sticky blood collecting around me and I tried to cry out. I tried to open my mouth and scream as loud as I possibly could but nothing came out of it. All that I could muster was a dry heave as the adrenaline coursed through my body. I saw Eric, still through the same nightmarish haze that clouded my vision, crumple to the ground, the gun falling feet away from him. He had a horrified look on his face, as though he realized what sort of terribly horrendous act he just committed. But that was impossible.
Monsters don’t realize.
Suddenly the weight on top of me shifted as Ryan rolled to the ground next to me. I could see him gripping at his own shoulder, blood spilling out through a bullet wound that tore right through him. His face twisted in pain, blood falling from a gash in his forehead, as he applied more and more pressure to stop the bleeding that was showing no signs of slowing.
I suddenly forgot about Eric. I needed to make sure Ryan was ok.
“Ryan, hey, listen I’m here. We’re getting through this ok?” I said, finally finding the strength to speak. I lifted myself up using my other hand, the slightest movement that affected the right shoulder shot waves of searing pain straight through the fiber of my being. I reached into my pocket, got my phone and dialed 911.
“They’ll be here soon,” I reassured Ryan, sitting next to him on the floor. His head was on my lap, his color getting more and more pale. It was an odd pale too. Almost like a gray stone color. It could have been my shock painting him into a statue, but I knew he was slipping. I kissed him on the forehead, the same way he lightly kissed me over and over again after the first time we made love. After the first time I found the one who was perfect for me.
And now he was being taken away.
I wanted to yell. I wanted to scream at the very loudest a human can possibly scream. I began to feel as though my body was a cage and I just wanted to tear right through. I wanted to slam my fists in a wall and feel my knuckles crack through the plaster.
I felt so helpless.
“I love you,” Ryan said, his eyes looking up at me but losing their focus. The wound on his head was starting to bleed even more now.
No, no, no, no, no.
“I love you too,” I said, trying my hardest to stay as strong as I could but feeling myself break. I felt my whole spirit crack under the menacing presence of death. I was about to lose the one chance I had of ever finding true love again. The one shot I had at being happy again in a way that made everything feel perfect. Ryan was about to lose his life. Everything he’s loved, everyone he’s known, his parents.
Oh God. Please make it stop.
I wanted it all to just freeze and rewind back to the beginning. A time when I could have picked up on the warning signs and saved Ryan.
“Don’t leave me,” Ryan said and all I could do was nod, because I knew that the moment I opened my mouth a sob would come out in the place of words. Time slowed to a crawl as each passing second felt like a year of torture.
And then I heard a click behind me. My whole body froze anew. I couldn’t turn around to what I was sure was my death. I knew Eric needed to finish what he started and this was that moment.
“Mam, what happened here?”
Wait… that wasn’t Eric.
There, right behind me, was a team of EMTs along with a police officer who was handcuffing Eric while he was face down on the floor.
I let my body fall loose as tears rushed to my face.
“Please, just make sure he’s ok,” I said in between my shallow intakes of breath. One of the EMTs helped me up and sat me down on the couch. The other EMT worked on stabilizing Ryan, but I couldn’t tell what was going on. I heard one whisper about him needing hospitalization and experienced a wave of panic course over me, joining the crushing mountain of panic that was already racking through me. They worked quickly with him. Before I knew it, he was already loaded into the back of the ambulance. Same with Jason, who had a perforated lung and was also bleeding out fast.
Apparently, my shoulder wasn’t in fact broken but it had been popped out of the socket. It was put back in by one of the brunette EMTs, her technique helped minimize the pain, which I wasn’t sure if my body could even take anymore.
I still needed something to numb the pain.
I needed to numb a lot.
I couldn’t sleep that night. Or the next. Nor the next.
It was on the fourth night that I could sleep. And it was only because I was with Ryan when he finally woke up. I’ll never forget that moment. The moment when I felt as though I could take an actual breath again. As though my eyes could properly process color and my hearing wasn’t so muffled anymore. The air around me felt brand new the moment Ryan opened his eyes, the beeping of medical machines creating a surreal backdrop as everything slowed down. I was there, sitting next to him, reading Gone Girl, when I heard a small whimper. I turned and that’s when I looked into Ryan’s eyes again. I couldn’t help but start crying as I put my hand in his and felt him squeeze just the slightest bit.
Seeing him awake eased every single fear I had. When he was brought in the doctors didn’t even know if he would be waking up, they had no clue as to whether the swelling in his brain would have caused a permanent coma or not. All they could tell me was to stay positive and hope for the best because it was out of our hands. The answer frustrated me to no end and the four previous days were spent by his bedside, jumping at the slightest hint of movement. It was always just the wind picking up a corner of the bed sheet or an ant crawling across the wall, but it still tricked me into thinking Ryan was back.
And now he actually was.
I brought his IV infused hand up to my lips and kissed him. Over and over again as his fingers hugged my hand tighter.
“I was so scared,” I said, looking into his hazel green eyes.
“So was I, but you were there.”
“That hardly means anything,” I said, wiping away the tears.
“It means I knew it was all going to be ok,” he said weakly, his throat parched.
I grabbed him a cup of water, my hand shaking from the emotions coursing through me. His words kept echoing through my head. It was all going to be ok.
“How long have I been asleep?”
“Seven years,” I said, smiling down at him.
“And look at you, you haven’t aged a bit,” he said, smiling back at me.
“Four days. Four very hard days.” My smile weakened as I remembered all the trauma that we had endured over the past week. It was all so much to handle, but I was happy I had someone to handle it with. If I had to face this all by myself, I honestly wasn’t sure if I would have made it through. But now I had a chance.
We
had a chance.
“I’m sorry,” he said, genuinely sounding apologetic for getting shot.
“Are you kidding me? I’m the one that put you into this, I feel devastated inside.”
“Well don’t. We have each other now,” he said, giving my hand another squeeze. Then he remembered.
“Wait, how’s Jason?” he asked, worry crossing his features. My heart broke again, I wasn’t sure what to tell him.
“He was worse off, Ryan. From what I’ve seen, he’s been in and out of surgery. I’m sorry,” I said, resting my head down on Ryan’s chest. I made certain to avoid getting close to the bandaged shoulder which I’m sure still hurt him.
“He’ll be fine. I can never get rid of that asshole.” I could tell he was trying to convince himself of that fact. It was how he coped with things, always looking for the positive, for that little glimmer of hope at the bottom of a pile of crap. It was something else I found so admirable about him. Even here, in the darkest of places, Ryan still clung on to the good side of life.
“Dr. Matthews! You’re up!”
It was Wanda, the resident night nurse on shift. We had gotten to know each other quite well over the past few days. I heard all about her two kids going to live with their father in Alaska and the rocky divorce that came between her and her husband. She also talked a lot about how she couldn’t figure out how to keep her sunflowers alive.
“Wanda!” Ryan said, his memory still intact apparently.