His eyes close and they don’t reopen.
“Falco! Oh my god what thefuckis happening?”
There’s blood everywhere. It weeps steadily from a large incision in his abdomen and my stomach rolls at the sight.
A smattering of smaller cuts cover the rest of his torso, but none of that compares to his arm.
Deep, thin lines wrap around his arm like ribbons and blood pours from them like he’s nothing more than a juice box sliced up by a knife.
My hands stain quickly and they slip as I touch his chest, then his neck and back to his face.
I’ve never seen this much blood before.
“Falco! Please wake up, please, what am I supposed to…”
He told me to call someone but who? An ambulance? Could they even get a helicopter this far up the mountain in time? Should I call my dad? My brother?
Oh god.
My stomach tightens and rolls as I scramble to my feet and lunge over my bed to where my phone rests between my pillows.
I’m going to be sick.
I’m going to throw up and make this mess a hundred times worse.
Back at Falco, I cover his abdominal wound with one hand while fighting through sobs I’m no longer in control of.
Unable to breathe and struggling to think, I call the only person I know for sure will help.
Pidge.
He slipped his number into my phone under a disguise, with a whisper to call him if I ever felt like I had no one. This is definitely that time.
He answers immediately. “Pidge!” I scream around my sobs. “I need help. Falco needs help. I don’t know what to do but there’s so much blood and I’m panicking and I think he’s going to die!”
“Holy shit,” comes Pidge’s response. “Talk to me, Aerin. Tell me what happened.”
“I don’t know! I was asleep. There was all this yelling and crashing so I woke up and there was a man over my bed. I h-hit him with the lamp and I panicked then I was screaming for Falco and this man was just laughing. He was just laughing and sayingit was my time and then—” I choke and cough as Falco’s blood spurts against my palm.
“Then?” Pidge sounds breathless.
“Then Falco came in and shot him, but he’s hurt, Pidge. He’s so hurt. There’s so much blood and I don’t even know if it’s safe, I don’t know what to do! He’s going to die, oh my god.”
“Aerin. Listen to me. I need you to turn on your camera and let me see.”
“What? Shouldn’t I call an ambulance?!”
“You already know the answer to that or you wouldn’t have called me.”
He’s right. These people found us and the only people who knew we would be here were my own family.
No one can be trusted.
“Okay,” I gasp. “Okay. Okay.” My fingers tremble like someone else is in control of them and it’s a struggle to activate the camera.
Finally it clicks into life and my own tear-stained face stares back at me for a second, then I flip the camera and do my best to show Falco’s condition.
“Shit,” Pidge breathes. “Do you have any medical training?”
