My World Shattered

I felt nothing when the bullet entered right below my shoulder blade, but I did feel the searing pain once the bullet exited my chest. I bend forward trying to keep the bloody vomit in my mouth, I can't get her dirty, if I did then this would all be moot wouldn't it? I can hear people screaming but the noise starts to fade in and out making my already exhausted brain give into the darkness.

As I opened my eyes the first thing, I felt was confusion. The last thing I could remember was getting shot in the back trying to protect her, and the next thing I know I'm laying down here on this uncomfortable bed with a tube down my throat. I can hear the cold beeps of heart rate monitors ticking away. At first, I didn't know what to do, the tube down my throat was really uncomfortable but I was too scared to try and pull it out, I mean I'm no doctor but there was probably something keeping everything in place and I wouldn't want to injure myself in a moment of thoughtlessness. The first thing I wondered was how I was still alive; in that moment I could almost feel myself dying. Even now my body hurt all over, especially in my chest and left arm. It hurt so bad that my right arm and pretty much everything below my pecs didn't feel like anything at all. My eyes slowly begin to widen as a horrified look begins to spread across my face. As I try to move my right arm and toes the realization finally sinks in the resignation starts to intensify—I was currently paralyzed from the mid chest down, only able to move my head and my left arm. I close my eyes and trying to shut out the truth. hoping that this sick joke would come to an end. I let unconsciousness take me again, away from the implications of this discovery.

When I open my eyes again its dark out, and the lights to the room are currently turned off. I assume it must be night, I just lay there, not even bothering trying to move. Just laying there as if this denial would help heal what I assumed to be a deeply injured spine. I notice movement out of the corner of my eye, someone has opened the door to the room allowing some light to peek in from the hallway, it's probably a night nurse on shift checking in on the patients. I move my arm to try and flag them down. I can't exactly see them, but I can feel a sudden movement as if someone was approaching my side. Soon they enter my range of vision. It was a nurse; I can see her mouth moving but no noise comes out. At first, I was afraid that my hearing was gone too but I soon realize that it was something else entirely. I could see white cracks forming across my visions. It almost looked like this wasn't real life, but I was viewing the world through a screen, and that screen was cracking. Almost as if to corroborate my idea my vision began to "pull back" and the vision of the nurse began to shrink almost like I was being pulled down a dark tunnel, but it suddenly looked like I stopped, I could almost reach out to the "picture" of the nurse which was now frozen, those white cracks began to flash from white to red until a shattering sound was heard and then that picture and lights shattered crumbling into the nothingness that was the void around me, leading me into nothing but darkness. I couldn't tell if my eyes were open or not, but I soon found myself slipping away into nothingness, and in that moment a voice that wasn't my own began ringing in my head

With those words still echoing in my ears I find myself blacking out…