Chapter 65th

Pain filled me again, my eyes opened wide and gazed up at a dark, star-filled sky. I heaved, my throat coarse, wounded, an oxygen mask pumping a violent gush of air into my body!

I was on the patio floor, by the gate, stretched out over a board. Flickering lights filled my blurry vision, blurry people stood around me, crouched over me, touched me… I grew scared, agitated, but they held me down – their grip a gentler touch, less menacing… I could see uniforms. My heart skipped a beat, understanding…

I wasn't dying. Chris was right. Where was he, from what height could he see me? My eyes sought the school building, surveying the floors, searching, wondering… How far could he land a shot? I wasn't safe… not just yet! We were too close! He could see us – he'd kill everyone, and then he would kill me! I held onto the arms around me, trying to convey the urgency… trying to speak, to tell them what had happened to me, but I found no voice.

"Whoa there!" strangers echoed as their hands bound me down again, keeping me from getting up – from trying. I couldn't possibly stand… I couldn't possibly run. I had never been so vulnerable in all my life!

"It's okay, I got this…" a distant voice called, opening the way, and finally a familiar face filled my view. It soothed me at once… it eased my suffering, relaxed my throbbing muscles… put my hot, inflamed brain at peace:

It was Joe.

I whispered his name with recognition, my mouth stretching into the happiest smile I ever remembered giving.

"Joe…"

What a strange, irresistible attachment! It felt like I was seeing a long-lost friend again. My eyes filled with tears. Luckily, he didn't think it odd… he didn't shun me as if we were strangers. He crouched down next to my head, offered me his hand, squeezed my cold fingers heartily, lending them some heat… I stared into his eyes for a long, quiet minute, thinking of nothing but how glad, how happy I was that he was alive… and that he was there!

…The strange bliss of that moment effaced. His eyes hovered down, beholding something unpleasant about me – my wound. I looked at it too, drawn there by his eyes. My heart beat fast again. I fidgeted, nervous.

"I-it's okay!" he tried to reassure me. "You'll be fine…"

I heard my own breathing.

"Won't she, doc? Tell her!" Joe smiled playfully, and the doctor mumbled something to comply to his wish. I didn't hear him.

It flooded back in, then: why we were there… why I had ever even met Joe, and I'm afraid my face blushed with shame. To that, Joe didn't have anything to say… nothing but his own, twisted share of contrition, which he showed as he patted my head and turned away, walked away, sighed into the wind. My stretcher was pulled up from the floor, and a new pair of faces approached me, both equally familiar – long, long familiar: my parents!

"Abby…" they said, approaching quietly, confused… "Abby, what happened to you?!"

"Careful, ma'am!" a distant voice warned as she approached me more earnestly, coming in for an embrace but confusedly prevented. We stared at each other, sharing the strange discomfort of that moment. How much did they know? When did they get here?

"It's okay…" the doctors guaranteed as they wheeled me into the back of an ambulance. In the distance, I saw them all: my parents, standing there. Joe, his back turned, his eyes lost into the night, wondering… Susie, my little sister, wrapped in a blanket, sitting in my father's car, her face moist, marked with pain I couldn't address… and the swirling lights of the ambulance painting and darkening their faces… red and blue, in unyielding succession.

The doors closed, and I laid down, staring at the blank ceiling of the ambulance, remembering their faces still, and being caught up in a strange realization: That I had rather gotten used to the idea of never seeing any of them again… That this moment right here was one I never considered I'd have to deal with… I never thought I'd have to explain anything of what had happened, to anyone… because I wouldn't know how to start.

How strange to experience that dread in my heart, and to feel it plunge into darkness: to look and find no relief in being alive.