Chapter 41 #2
One more heave and I managed to get him into the passenger seat.
His body slumped, blood painting the seat and his clothes, sticky and soaking.
His head lolled against the headrest. His right arm hung limp, fingers twitching.
I leaned across him, yanking the door shut, then scrambled to the driver’s side.
The second I started the engine, he stirred.
“I can drive,” he mumbled.
“Shut up.” My voice cracked, raw and choked. “You’re half-dead.”
I threw the car into gear and peeled out of the lot, hands trembling around the wheel… but I had no idea where to go.
“You’re bleeding out, Halo. I need you awake. I need you to tell me where to go.”
His head lolled toward me. His mouth opened, but it took him a second to focus. He was fading fast.
“We can’t go back to the motel,” I said, glancing at him.
A slow nod.
“Then where?”
He didn’t answer for a heartbeat. I thought he was gone. I reached over, shook him.
“Halo. Where?”
“Safehouse,” he slurred. “East side. Old mechanic shop next to the train yard. Black gate… code’s 0713.”
I repeated it aloud, desperately burning it into my brain. “0713. 0713.”
“Take…” He cringed, trying to move in the seat. “Take 42nd to Boyle, turn left. Then the alley behind Carson’s.”
It was a thirty minute drive, and I felt every second of it. I cried quietly so he wouldn’t hear me. When we were almost there, I stole another glance over at him. His breathing was shallow now. Too shallow.
“Halo? Stay with me.”
No answer.
I slammed my fist on the wheel. “Don’t you fucking die on me! You don’t get to check out after everything… Do you hear me?”
I bit down on the scream in my throat. One more turn. One more street.
The mechanic shop looked abandoned when I pulled in. I was getting tired of these empty places full of empty people. The chain-link gate was shut, but not locked, and it groaned like it was dying when I pushed the car through. The gravel scraped under the tires like it didn’t want to let us in.
When we were along the front of the building, I slammed the gear into park and flew out of the car. My legs almost gave out, but I didn’t stop. The keypad on the side wall was crusted over with dirt and grease. I wiped it clean with my shirt, heart pounding in my throat.
0713.
The lock clicked, and the door popped open. Inside, it smelled like old oil and dust, but it was cleaner than I expected. There was a battered leather couch, a workbench, metal cabinets, a neglected cot. I also found a first aid kit, thank God.
I ran back to the car. Halo hadn’t moved. His lips were pale now. When I unbuckled him and tried to move him out of the seat, I saw that his clothes, jacket, and the carseat were soaked with blood. So much fucking blood.
“Okay… Okay. Come on, big guy. You got me out. Now I get you out.”
He didn’t respond. I braced myself against the edge of the seat. Dead weight. He was solid muscle and he wasn’t helping. I managed to get him upright, pulling him with everything I had, dragging him into the shop one agonizing step at a time.
We collapsed just inside the door.
“Shit. ” I tried to lift him again, but his blood-slick weight slipped from my grip. I stumbled backwards onto the floor.
Miraculously, I managed to get him onto the couch.
His breathing was rattling a wet, terrible sound.
I scrambled to the first aid kit, tore it open, and dumped the contents onto the floor.
Gauze. Scissors. Alcohol. Tape. I didn’t know what I was doing.
I wasn’t a nurse. I’d taken first aid in school like everyone else, but that didn’t prepare me for this.
I peeled his shirt back and nearly gagged.
The bullet wound in his shoulder was bad: an ugly, jagged mess, still oozing blood…
. but the one in his lower back? It was worse.
I didn’t know if it hit anything vital. I didn’t know how he’d stayed upright or carried me out.
Did he have some kind of internal bleeding?
Some kind of damage that I couldn’t fix?
Was he just unconscious from pain or blood loss?
I grabbed gauze and pressed it to the wound. It made a squelch that turned my stomach, and blood fell in thick globules from beneath it. He groaned, a soft sound: just a reflex, not conscious.
“I know,” I whispered, blinking back tears. “I know, I’m sorry. I’m trying.”
The bleeding wasn’t stopping. I pressed the gauze tighter, hands soaked red.
There was a prefilled syringe of epinephrine in that kit.
I hesitated. I knew it was for an allergic reaction and not this but…
Would it help jar him awake for a little bit?
I knew it wouldn’t last long, and it wouldn’t be a fix.
I stabbed it into his thigh.
He jolted slightly, a breath caught in his throat. His eyelids fluttered. He grabbed his chest and my stomach sank. If I gave him a heart attack with that injection, I would just die right here with him.
“Halo?” I leaned over him, running my fingers through his hair. “Can you hear me?”
He looked up at me, glassy-eyed. His lips moved, but I couldn’t hear what he said. He struggled to sit up, grappling for the gun at his hip.
“No.” I cupped his face in both hands. “There’s no one else. Just me and you now.”
He blinked slowly, barely conscious. His hand twitched at his side, reaching for mine. I held onto it like it was the last rope in a storm.
“I’m not letting you go,” I whispered. “I don’t care what it takes. You brought me back. Now I’m going to do the same.”
He needed real help, but Halo didn’t have friends. There was no backup, no cavalry coming. It was just me, and I wasn’t losing him. Not now, not after everything.
His eyes moved to the empty epi-pen and then back up to my face. “I’ll crash out soon.”
“Tell me what I need to do,” I said desperately. “You’re bleeding so much.”
“Hemostats in the first aid kit – get the bullets out if you can.”
I found the hemostats in the bottom of the first aid kit: dull, a little rusted around the hinges.
I’d never removed a bullet before. I’d never seen someone who had been shot up close.
But I’d watched him take lives with his hands, carry me out of a nightmare with a bullet in his back…
if he could do that, I could do this. He was barely breathing again.
His skin had gone clammy, and the blood loss was catching up fast. I knelt beside him on the couch, wiped sweat and dirt off my face with the back of my sleeve, and braced myself.
“I’ll do this one first,” I said, more to myself than him.
He was watching me, and as I leaned closer, I heard him sigh.
“You’ve got blood on your face,” he murmured, slurred and distant.
I blinked. “You have blood coming out of your back, Halo. Worry about that first.”
But his fingers twitched weakly toward my cheek. “Did they… hurt you?”
I felt the sting in my throat rise. I pushed it down. He was delirious. “I’m fine.”
I swallowed back my apprehension and unwrapped the makeshift pressure bandage on his shoulder. The wound oozed dark red, but it wasn’t spurting, which I took as a good sign. The bullet was lodged deep under the skin. I couldn’t see it.
I doused the hemostats in alcohol, wiped them clean, and muttered a quick, shaky prayer. Then I pushed them into the wound. Halo’s entire body jerked, a deep groan tearing from his chest.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry—” I whispered, trying to keep my hands steady.
Blood welled up instantly, and I had to work by feel. I pressed deeper. The sensation of metal on metal guided me.
“I found it,” I breathed, surprised and proud of myself.
I clamped down, twisted. He didn’t make a sound, but gritted his teeth as I pulled it out. A small, jagged piece of lead, slick and hot in the hemostats. I threw it aside and grabbed more gauze and pressed, holding it against him.
He was panting, face white as ash.
“Stitch it,” he rasped. “Straight line. Keep the edges… clean.”
“I don’t think I can”
“I don’t have the strength to do it myself.”
My hands were trembling so badly when I reached down for the suture pack that I nearly dropped it. Halo’s left hand came up, slow and shaking, and closed over mine. His grip was weak, but steadying.
“You’ve got this,” he muttered.
“Hold still,” I whispered, voice tight.
His jaw clenched so hard, I thought it might crack, but he didn’t flinch. Not when the needle pierced his skin, not when I fumbled and cursed under my breath. He just breathed, shallow and steady, and told me what to do.
“In… through the skin. Not too shallow,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Keep the thread taut.”
“I’m trying.”
“I know.”
The needle shook between my fingers. His blood was warm on my knuckles. I could feel the heat of his skin, the thrum of muscle under it. Every time my fingers brushed his chest, I felt the shiver he tried to hide.
“Tie it off there, close,” he instructed, watching my hands with quiet intensity, “and cut.”
I tied the knot, and I was confident it would never hold, but it was the best I could do. I snipped the end of the remaining suture and reached up to gently touch the flesh around the sewed-up wound, then laid a piece of gauze over top to soak up the blood.
It was messy and far from perfect, but it was closed.
“I’ve got to do your back next,” I told him, voice cracking.
“That one’s deeper,” he whispered. “You’ll… have to dig for it.”
“I know.”
He tried to push himself up but didn’t make it more than an inch. “I’m going to pass out… you know that, right?”
“You’re allowed to pass out,” I said softly, “but you don’t get to die.”
There was a ghost of a weak smile on his lips as he rolled over, and with the bloody hemostats back in my hands, I got to work.