Page 107 of Bad Decisions & Back Roads
I was numb as I stepped onto the ambulance with Misty.“She’s dying.I need to be with her.”
“Okay.I’ll be at the hospital.Right behind you,” I heard him say.
The ride was bouncy, but I held onto Misty’s hand until the EKG showed her heartrate flatline.The sadness was there, but I’d been saying goodbye for a long while.So, there was also relief and a bit of happiness that she got to go on her own terms.
“Ma’am,” the paramedic next to me asked.“Are you sure you’re okay?”He pointed to my scrub top.
“Mostly her blood.”I felt a bit of stinging pain.“Hurts a little bit.”
“I’m real sorry she’s gone, but I need to take a look at you.”He lifted my shirt and examined my back.Then he took vitals on me.Without asking, he whipped off my shirt and started bandaging around my middle.A second paramedic was putting an IV line in my arm.Both looked far more tense than they should’ve been if it’d only been a glancing blow.
When we arrived at the emergency entrance, the paramedic asked, “You think you can step out and get on the gurney we have waiting for you?”
I stood, but my head went so light I thought I might pass out.I remembered this.I’d experienced this the last time I went to a hospital.I shook my head and sat back down.The gurney with Misty’s covered body was rolled out and another was rolled in.I didn’t remember lying on it, but found myself lying flat.
I grabbed the paramedic’s hand before he rounded me off to an ER clinician.“Timothy…I need him.Timothy Hurst.”
* * *
TIMOTHY
“Where is Gia Stevens?”I demanded at the emergency room desk.“She just came in.Her sister had a gunshot wound.”I looked wildly around the crowded waiting room.“Gia isn’t here.”
She wasn’t answering my texts nor a phone call.
The woman behind the desk barely glanced up at first, fingers flying across her keyboard.“Gia Stevens…” she repeated.Then her expression shifted.She picked up the phone, murmured something quietly, and looked back at me.“What’s your name?”
“Timothy Hurst.”
She nodded, clinical and professional.“Mr.Hurst, she asked for you when she arrived.”She typed a bit more, not even looking at me.“I’m going to ask you to wait out here while surgery evaluates her.The doctor assigned to her case will update you as soon as possible.”
Surgery.The word hollowed me out.Misty hadn’t fully shielded her.Gia had been hit too.
For a second I couldn’t breathe.Couldn’t hear anything except the roar of blood in my ears and the echo of gunshots replaying in my skull.
“What’s going on?”Jackson put a hand on my shoulder.
“She got shot.”My voice sounded hollow.I didn’t move to sit.“I want to wait with her.”
“Are you family?”The question hit harder than it should have.
“She’s…” My throat tightened painfully.“I’m all she’s got now.”My voice cracked.“Her mother was just murdered.Her father was killed.Her sister likely died in her arms on the way here.”I swallowed hard.“Please tell me if she’s… I need to see her.”
The woman stared at me, the exhaustion leaving her face all at once.Horror replaced it.Then she stood quickly and motioned me toward the locked doors.
The emergency floor beyond them was chaos.Stretchers rolled past.Voices called out numbers and vitals.The sharp antiseptic smell mixed with blood turned my stomach.
But all I could think was:Gia is alone in here.
Jackson followed silently behind me.
The nurse hurried me down a long hallway and into an exam room crowded with people.There she was, so pale it scared me.IV fluids dripped into her arm.Blood stained the side of her gown.
A doctor examined beneath a giant gauze pad against her side, the one that already had the long scar.A nurse read off numbers I couldn’t process.
I crossed the room in seconds and went straight to her bedside.“I’m here.”
Her eyes fluttered open at the sound of my voice.Drugged.Exhausted.But when she saw me, something in her face loosened.She tried to lift her hand toward me, but she was too weak.
