“Why didn’t you finish?”
“My sister is sick with heart problems.
Another boom, this time it wasn’t a crash, and unease rippled up my back. In the bed, Nikolai stiffened, his head shooting around to the door.
More shouting started, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying. Scraping back the chair, I smiled down at him.
“I’ll just be a minute, and then, you can tell me some more of your stories.”
He lashed out, much faster than his stroke should have let him and his weathered fingers closed around my wrists almost painfully tight.
I glanced down at them in shock.
“Don’t go out there,” he ordered.
“It’s nothing to worry about.”
There was panic in his voice, and it was making me uneasy. A trickle of dread went down my spine like the raindrop from earlier.
“You need to shut the door and get us—”
I shook his hand away. “It’s just an unruly resident. I’ll be back in no time at all.”
Heading towards the door, I straightened my shoulders and put the dread to the back of my mind. Nikolai wasn’t our only difficult guest, not by any stretch of the imagination, and this was clearly what I was hearing.
I’d got halfway down the small side corridor when I heard it again. Only this time, there could be no denying what I was hearing.
Pop pop pop.
I froze.
Was that? I sucked in a breath that seemed to shake my whole body. Was that gunfire? I knew the sound from TV and movies, but I’d never heard it in real life before, and I didn’t want to believe I was hearing it now.
It had to be my imagination or a TV up too loud.
Only I could hear Carla screaming from the front desk. She was begging for her life.
I had a split second to make a decision. Carla was my friend. Lots of the people who worked here were. But if there was an active shooter in the building, my first priority should be the patients.
Spinning around, my rubber-soled shoes squeaked as I sprinted towards Nikolai’s room. Quickly checking the open doors on either side of the hallway, I closed each one as I went. There was no one else on this floor. All the residents had been moved down to the day room, so that just left me and…I skidded to a halt in the doorway.
“They are coming for me,” he said, and there wasn’t one ounce of fear in his voice, just a weary sort of acceptance.
I had a split second to take him in, shoulder his door closed, and fumble with the lock.
“Leave the lock.” He barked out an order. “Unless you have locked every other door in the hallway. It will give us away.”
I hadn’t, so I left the key unturned and rushed over the bed to him. “It’s OK.” Damn, my voice shook so much that my words came out all garbled.
Pop pop pop.
The sound was coming closer now, but my heartbeat was even louder than the gunfire. It was all I could hear, and it was deafening.
“It’s going to be OK. Just stay quiet. I won’t let anything happen to you. I bit back a sob.
I’d been scared before. When my sister got her diagnosis, I had felt fear, but it was nothing like this. This was all-consuming, like I couldn’t breathe. I had a lump in my throat and an open pit in my chest.
“Get me off of the bed, Amy,” he hissed.
