32. Reva #2
Elbow back. Heel down. Nails into skin. A curse ripping out of her that sounds like the girl who used to declare war over stolen cereal.
Then he catches her by the throat and wrenches her arm behind her back. She goes still. Fear moves across her face so nakedly I feel it in my own body.
“Delia,” I shout.
“Stay down,” she chokes.
The guard drags her toward the door. She does not stop watching me.
That is the thing I will remember later. Not the gun. Not the blood. Her eyes. Terrified and furious and sorry.
Then she is gone through the door, pulled backward into the light.
The first guard steps over me. His gun lowers toward my face.
Cal fires.
The guard grunts and staggers, hit in the arm. His weapon swings away, but not far enough. Cal tries to fire again, but his knees go out.
He hits the stone hard.
“Cal!”
I scramble toward him on hands and knees. The guard recovers faster, bringing his pistol up. Cal’s gun lies beside his hand, slick with blood. I grab it.
I have held guns before. At ranges. Under supervision. With Cal behind me saying breathe, kid, don’t slap the trigger.
This is not a range.
My hand is wet. The grip slips. I use both hands, raise the gun, and aim at the dark center of the man walking toward me.
He sees it. He laughs once, like he thinks I won’t squeeze the trigger. Like everyone thinks I am still the girl in the closet.
I pull the trigger.
The recoil snaps through my arms. The shot goes wide, hitting the side of a planter. Clay explodes. The guard flinches but keeps coming.
Cal says something. I can’t hear it, my pulse too loud in my ears.
I fire again. This time the bullet hits his chest. He stops, surprise opening his face.
I fire again because he is still standing and because my nervous system does not understand the difference between threat and dying threat. The third shot throws him backward against the railing. He slides down, leaving a dark smear on pale stone.
Silence crashes in.
My ears ring. People are shouting inside. Somewhere beyond the gate, a car horn blares. Cal is making a wet, awful sound through clenched teeth.
I drop the gun and turn to him.
Training takes over because panic is useless, and I have spent years learning that panic can wait its turn.
Pressure.
Airway.
Breathing.
Bleeding.
I rip open his jacket.
“Stay with me.”
His eyes are open, fixed on my face. “Reva.”
“No. Shut up.”
Blood covers my hands immediately. Too much. Warm and slick and wrong. The entry wound is high on his left side, under the ribs. No exit wound I can find from the angle. His breathing is fast, shallow, catching.
I press both hands over the wound.
He jerks.
“I know. I know, I’m sorry.”
He tries to grab my wrist. His hand is weak, bloody, shaking.
“Kid.”
“Do not kid me right now.” My voice breaks. I push harder. “You do not get to show up after I told you not to and then bleed all over a terrace like this is helpful.”
His mouth twitches. A joke. He is trying to make a joke. That scares me worse than the blood.
“Pressure,” I mutter. “Keep pressure. Need packing. Need ambulance. Need—”
My medical bag isn’t here. All my gear…not fucking here.
I have a ball gown, a mask, blood on my hands, and no way to plug the hole in the man who raised me.
I look toward the door. “Help! Somebody help me!”
The words come out too raw to be useful. No one answers. Inside, something slams. A shout. Running.
Cal coughs, and blood stains the corner of his mouth. My vision tunnels.
“No.” I lean over him, one hand still pressing the wound, the other touching his face. “No, no, stay with me. Eyes open.”
His eyes flutter. I slap his cheek. Not hard, just enough, hopefully, to bring him back to me.
“Cal. Look at me.”
He does.
For one second, he is there. My Cal. The man who made pancakes. The man who checked under my bed. The man who lied and loved me and came anyway because someone told him I needed him.
“I’m here,” I say, because I do not know what else to give him. “I’m right here.”
His hand closes over my wrist. Too weak.
“Run,” he whispers.
That word breaks me.
“I am not leaving you.”
His grip tightens by a fraction. “Reva.”
“No.” My hands press harder. Blood pushes through my fingers anyway. “No, I need gauze. I need a trauma kit. I need—”
I need to be in an ambulance. I need him on a stretcher. I need this to be someone else’s father on someone else’s terrible night. My thumb claws at my wrist for rubber bands that aren’t there. Just skin. Bracelet. Blood.
Footsteps pound behind me.
Nash reaches us first, tuxedo jacket open, gun in hand, face carved into something I have never seen on him.
Deacon is a step behind him.
He stops when he sees the dead guard.
Then Cal.
Then my hands.
For one second, his eyes meet mine, and the whole terrace seems to tilt.
Too late. They are too late.
I look back down at Cal and press harder, as if pressure can undo a bullet, as if blood can be bullied back into a body by a girl who has lost too many people already.
“Help me,” I say. “Please. Fucking help me.”
My voice does not sound like mine. Nash drops beside me.
Deacon moves past us toward the door with murder in his face, but I cannot care where he goes. I cannot care about Isabel or Delia or the guard cooling on the stone.
I only care that Cal’s blood is under my nails. I only care that his eyes are slipping closed again.
“Cal,” I say, leaning over him, shaking now. “Cal, please.”
The green satin of my dress spreads across the stone around us, darkening where the blood reaches it.
I press my hands to the wound.
I keep pressing.
And for the first time since I became an EMT, I have no idea how to save the person in front of me.
THE END…