Authors: Suanne Laqueur
The sound of the last gunshot seemed to echo forever. An awesome noise sending Erik’s mind reeling backwards down a long tunnel. Warp speed through successively faster rectangles of light. Like the Emerald City hall in
The Wizard of Oz
as it framed the epic retreat of the Cowardly Lion.
Gradually the sound faded. Instead of crashing through a window, Erik came with a thump to a gentle halt. A solid weight nestled against his shoulder blades and he remembered he was sitting up against the side of row M.
He opened his eyes.
He looked at space. At the wall of the theater, at the plaster frieze around the stage and the curtain within it.
The auditorium was wrapped in screaming silence. Within this noiseless shroud, time slid out of proportion. A load of adrenaline tipped from the center of Erik’s chest and cannonballed into his stomach, splashed along his limbs until his fingernails were electric and quivering. Still he sat, pulling in breath after trembling breath and staring at the space where James had been standing. Negative space now. His stomach roiled and burned. A high-pitched whine took over one ear. A cold sweat began to creep down from the crown of his head, tingling and prickling along his hairline, dripping down his back.
His eyes skittered around and finally lowered to the floor. To James’s sprawled body. The gun still in his hand. The halo of red in the carpet around his head.
Clutching the arm of the aisle seat, Erik got up. He stepped over James and started down the aisle on wobbling legs. He stumbled, grabbing more seats until he steadied and began to run.
“Get down, Fish,” someone cried from behind him.
“It’s over,” he said, not looking back. “He’s dead. It’s over. Get help.”
Hand and foot on the apron, springing up onto the stage just as Lucky and John came creeping out of one of the wings. Neil Martinez’s head rose over the Manhattan skyline, David came crawling around the side. The theater was twitching, unfurling tentative feelers and tasting the air.
Blood pooled around Daisy and Will.
Too much blood,
Erik thought, just as his foot slid in it and he fell down by Daisy, his hands in a viscous puddle. Her head flopped over to him. She was white as death, her eyes dimmed to slate and frozen wide open. She looked at Erik, yet she looked through him.
Lucky was down by Will, raising up his left arm. A bloody mess where Will’s hand should have been.
“Towels,” Lucky yelled. “Look in dance bags, look backstage. Dressing rooms, wardrobe. Anything that looks clean, grab it. We need help here.”
Daisy’s left inner thigh looked torn open, as if she’d been mauled by a bear. Erik swallowed hard and pulled off his outer T-shirt, wadded it up thickly and pressed it against the heinous gash of flesh and tissue. She cried out, her hands flying up, trying to bat his away. Her spine twisting, she tried to move away from him, get away from the pain.
Erik gritted his teeth, knowing to help her he had to hurt her. “Lie down, Dais,” he said—using the harshest tone he had ever used with her—and he pushed the improvised bandage firmly against the wound. “Lie still.”
“Where’s the shot, Fish,” Lucky said. “Knee?”
“Inside of her thigh.”
“All right. Medial. Femoral artery. Find the pressure point. Top of her leg, right in her groin.” She pointed on her own body to the place. “Heel of your hand there and bear down.”
David, Neil and John came flying from backstage with towels.
“John, come here,” Lucky said. “Take his arm. Keep the towel in place on his hand. Your other hand here, this is the pressure point. Feel it? Keep holding it tight. Neil, get in here. See his side? The bullet went straight through. Pressure front and back. Good, keep it there.”
Lucky came to Daisy then. She snatched the towel David was trying to fold into a bandage. “Move,” she said. “Out of the way. Go get Will’s feet up, get them elevated. Fish, you keep pressure going. Let me in here.” Swiftly she replaced Erik’s shirt with the folded towel. “Jesus,” she whispered, a frantic edge in her voice. “Fuck, this is not good. We need help.”
Not letting up on the pressure, Erik jammed his elbow into Lucky’s side, just hard enough to startle her, shock her back on track. “Don’t you fall apart on me, Luck,” he said through clenched teeth. “You know what to do. You’re the only one who knows what to do.
Do it.”
Lucky pressed her lips, drawing air in through her nose. “She breathing, Dave?”
David now lay on his stomach on the floor, holding Daisy’s head. “She’s awake.”
“Neil, Johnny—is Will conscious?”
“He’s with us,” John said.
“Pressure, then,” Lucky muttered. “Pressure, pressure…” Her lips moved vaguely, as if reciting.
Daisy moaned, her upper body writhing. “Squeeze my hands, Marge,” David said, giving them to her. “Hard as you want. Go ahead and break my fingers. I know you always wanted to.” Daisy moaned again and David began to speak soothingly in French. His voice was pitched low in his chest. It didn’t falter even as her face kept coiling up into spasms of pain and her knuckles were clenched white around his fingers.
Time dripped by.
“Will breathing?” Lucky kept saying.
Sometimes John answered, sometimes Neil. “He’s breathing,” they said.
“I’m breathin’, babe,” Will said once. His voice was soft and shaky, but it was there.
“Don’t talk,” Lucky said.
David kept whispering in French.
Daisy said nothing.
Little by little, Erik became aware of the presence of campus security. Then police began to fill the theater, sleek and menacing in vests and helmets. Like an invasion of black bugs they swarmed the aisles and wings, multiplied to fill the stage with authority. Loud voices. The crackle of walkie-talkies. And everywhere Erik glanced he saw guns.
Paramedics then. Hustling in pairs with bags of equipment. They were vested as well but more benevolent in shades of blue. One of them, a large black man, knelt down by Daisy’s shoulder. His partner—slight and trim with a baseball cap—settled by her legs. Brisk and calm, he introduced himself as Greg, asked Erik and Lucky’s names, then quickly unzipped a bag and pulled on gloves. “You two keep those hands where they are.”
“Hey there,” the black medic said, up by Daisy’s head. “My name’s Lewis. I’m a county paramedic. Can you tell me your name?”
She gave it. Erik exhaled in relief.
“All right, Daisy. Do you know where you are?”
“I… I’m at school.”
“Good. Do you know what’s happened?”
Her head lolled side to side.
“Do you remember anything?”
“The glass…”
“What’s that?”
“I heard it.”
“You heard gunshots, Daisy. You were hit in the leg. We’re gonna take a look at you and get you to a hospital as fast as we can.”
“Did I fall down?”
“You could say so. We’re gonna get you out of here. Besides the leg, can you tell me if you have pain anywhere else? In your back or your neck?” His large, competent hands began to move along her collarbones and arms. “I see you’re squeezing your friend’s hands there, excellent. No broken bones in your arms. Do you have pain in your head? Chest or abdomen? No? Just the leg.” Deftly he withdrew a penlight and shone it in each eye, held up a finger and had her follow it.
“How long ago was she hit?” Greg said, moving in by Lucky.
“She lay here bleeding about five minutes before anyone could get to her,” Lucky said. “We’ve had pressure on it about twenty minutes now.”
“Did she lose consciousness at all?”
“I don’t think so.”
“All right. Erik, you keep the pressure. Exactly what you’re doing. Lucky, you scoot back and ease up on the wound, let me in here. Let’s see.”
Greg moved the towel dressing and Erik looked away. He had an awful ache between his shoulder blades from holding his position, holding the pressure, but he didn’t move. Daisy had her arm over her eyes, blocking the light from the lanterns over the apron. Her other hand was still clamped around David’s fingers.
“Bleeding’s relatively minimal at the wound, Lew,” Greg said, replacing the towel. “Your hand there again, Lucky, please. Good.”
With a pair of shears Greg cut through the ribbons of Daisy’s pointe shoes, straight up her pink, bloodied tights. A quick slide of the blades and he tossed the material aside. With his gloved hand he felt around the thigh and Daisy cried out, her head lifting out of David’s hand, teeth bared.
“It’s all right,” David said, his voice cracking.
Greg’s fingers ducked into the hollow under Daisy’s knee. “Popliteal fossa has no pulse. Bullet got the femoral artery or else the hematoma is compressing it. We gotta move.”
“Scoop and scoot, man,” Lewis said. “Get an IV in, let’s fly.”
They flew. Let rip with jargon and acronyms. Another EMT came over and relieved Erik of his pressure duties, and finally he could get up to Daisy’s head. David scooted away to make room for him.
“I’m here, Dais,” Erik whispered, sliding his hands where David’s had been.
She turned her head toward the sound of his voice. “Did I fall down?” she asked again.
He ran his hand carefully along her face. “You fell down,” he said. “You’re going to be all right.”
“Give me a vein, give me a vein,” Lewis said under his breath, his fingers palpating along Daisy’s arm. “You’re a little thing with little veins aren’t you…”
She did look little. Small and defeated. Down by her leg, Greg was packing fresh gauze and Erik made the mistake of looking. At the sight of the gunshot wound, he clamped his teeth on his lip, fighting not to break apart.
“IV going in, Daisy,” Lewis said. “Big pinch here and some sting. Scream if you gotta.”
She didn’t scream, just closed her eyes and moved her hand with Erik’s against her mouth. She set her teeth against Erik’s knuckles. Tears began to slide from her eyes, running diagonally toward her ears.
“It’s all right,” Erik said, lying down on his stomach to put his head by hers.
She was breathing harder now, her eyes flitting all around. “Where are you?”
“I’m right here. I won’t leave you.” He glanced up, catching Lewis’s eye.
“She your girl?” Lewis said lowly.
Erik nodded.
“Where are her parents? How far from home is she?”
“Two hours.”
Lewis gave a grunt, his hands busy. “I can’t let you ride in the back of the bus,” he said. “You can ride up front if you keep cool, stay out of the way and don’t puke.”
“Thank you,” Erik said, forcing his voice into calmness, digging down and pulling it together from some unknown reservoir of strength. He was grateful for the simple directions, which he repeated like a mantra:
keep cool, stay out of the way, don’t puke.
He stayed by her as Greg and Lewis immobilized her leg. When they needed to get a backboard under her, he helped by keeping her head and shoulders in line as she was rolled toward the uninjured leg and back again. His fingers were beginning to throb from her clamping grip, but he kept a hand in hers as the team counted off and lifted her onto a gurney. He helped the medics hand the gurney down from the apron of the stage. The theater hummed with purpose. Huddles of police and EMTs in the aisles, working on the injured.
And James’s body still lay in the aisle, covered now with a sheet.
Will’s gurney was handed down from the stage. He was swaddled up in white sheets. Lucky walked by his head, lovingly holding his long, thick ponytail.
A man in a grey suit fell into step by Erik. Reaching into his breast pocket he withdrew a badge. “Detective Nikos Khoury, Philadelphia PD. I need to ask you some questions about what happened today.”
Erik’s heart twisted in his chest. “I can’t,” he said, walking. “I have to go with her.” He felt annoyed and affronted. He was busy keeping cool, staying out of the way and not puking.
“I need to speak with you now, son,” Khoury said, and the entourage stopped.
Erik looked at Lewis, who shook his head. “We gotta go, man.”
Erik felt he would either blow up or burst into tears. Nobody understood. Nothing needed to be asked. Nothing required investigation. No need to search the building or question the witnesses. It was all James’s doing. James and only James and he was a clump of white sheet in the aisle and it was
over.
Everyone could just move along and let Erik do what he needed to do. Which was stay with Daisy.
“I can’t,” Erik said again, his voice rising. “I go with her.”
“Hey now,” a third voice broke in. It was a campus security guard. He put a hand on Erik’s shoulder. “Listen to me. Listen. She has to go. You stay and talk to the police, while it’s fresh in your mind. You take the time and tell them everything that happened. Believe me, this will be the better way. You’ll get it done. You go to the hospital now and they’ll only make you leave there to go down to the precinct. Am I right, Boss?”