“Are you in pain?” he asks.
At first, his question seems odd. Maybe because something in my head is trying to make sense of the man I’m seeing. Because it’s really not an out-of-place question.
It takes a minute to truly register what he’s asking me. Am I in pain? I nearly ask why he’d think so, but then the throbbing reminds me that Iamhurting. Fear spikes through me, and I look down.
That’s a mistake because I can see the enormous hole in my fucking leg. It looks like something big went right through my thigh. Fear makes my heart beat faster. Now that I’m looking at it, all I can feel is pain. The way it feels like something is drilling into my leg. How it radiates outward from there. Fuck, can I even feel my foot?!
“Take these,” Oxley says.
“I was shot,” I say.
“I know.”
“They tried to kill me!”
“I know.”
I begin shaking as the echo of the gun explodes in my head. Rings in my ears. The pain tears through me again, and my scream ricochets.
“Take these. It’ll help with the pain.”
My hand is shaking when I reach for the little cup. I’m far too terrified—seeing it all repeat in my head over and over again—to truly grasp that his hand closes over mine when I can’t hold the cup on my own.
Oxley helps me to sit up as I put the pills in my mouth. Then, he helps me drink water from another small cup.
“Am I going to die?” I ask as he gently lays me back on the bed.
“No,” he says matter-of-factly. As if there’s zero doubt in his mind.
I don’t know this man. And yet, I take comfort in his words. He doesn’t look like the kind of man who would lie. Then again, maybe he’s a complete lie.
My eyes get heavy, and it becomes a chore to keep them open. My brain gets fuzzy and sluggish. Then my arm drops at my side, too heavy to hold up. I blink slowly, trying to find Oxley.
“You drugged me, Ox,” I slur. Horror fills my head anew. I can hear the heart monitor announcing my renewed fear.
“Oxley,” he says, and I barely hear it as I fade. “Sleep.”
As if his voice is a command, I do. Without choice. At least it’s a dead sleep, and I’m not living through being shot again.
2
OXLEY
The pitin my stomach lessened when I heard him stirring. Relief flooded me, though I couldn’t explain why. This stranger… he’s nothing to me. But when I gave him the drugs to put him back to sleep and his heartbeat spiked all over again, the pit opened once more.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur as I watch him fall under the drug’s hold.
Mark told me that too much stress, making his heart beat too erratically, would keep the wound bleeding freely. I don’t have any blood bags here, and Iwas nottrained for blood transfusions. He needs to relax until Mark gets here.
I managed to stop the bleeding, but I was so afraid of putting something over an open wound of this size, causing an infection, that the only thing I could wrap my head around doing was getting him out of there. Off the street. Away from dirt and disease, and the bacteria.
Getting home was a fucking nightmare, as I think I stared at him in my backseat via the rearview mirror more than I did at the road. I’m not entirely sure why I brought him home and not to a hospital. He needs a hospital. But bringing him there wouldmean he was out of my sight, and for reasons I couldn’t explain, that wasn’t acceptable.
On the way, I called Mark and explained what I had seen and what I was seeing now. Once I rejected his suggestion of bringing him to the hospital, Mark said he’d meet me at my apartment in an hour. I refused to bring him to a hospital. The dread of never seeing him again was far too great.
I tried to get Mark to get here faster, but he was an hour away. Even speeding.
There’s nothing I can do but wait it out. He should be here any minute now.
