Her hands frantically paw at me, and I grimace, gritting my teeth to not cry out but a curse slips from my lips.
"Oh God, I'm sorry!" She pulls away quickly. Blood stains her palms, her hands shaking as she scrambles for her phone. She drops the damn thing once… twice… before she's steadied enough to even press a button on the cracked screen.
Her and that fucking phone…
"Just… hold on," she says. "Hold on, okay? I'll get you some help."
She starts dialing 9-1-1, but I stop her before she can press the last number, shaking my head as I reach for her phone. "No! No police."
"What?" She looks at me with shock. "Naz, you're hurt! Like really bad hurt! You need a fucking ambulance! You need to go to the hospital!"
"Carter," I mutter. "Call Carter."
"Who's Carter?"
"He's a doctor," I say. "His number is, uh… it's three four seven, uh… eight five three… uh… one…"
"One what?" she asks when I hesitate. "What's next?"
I shake my head. Fuck. Everything's hazy. I'm swaying. "My phone… it's in my phone. Look for Carter."
She drops her phone and digs into my pants pockets, grabbing mine. She calls the number as I stagger past her, ignoring her protests. The wound is bleeding badly, but I don't think it hit anything major.
Had it hit an artery, I would be dead by now.
I can hear Karissa, her voice sounding underwater. She speaks frantically into the phone before she calls out to me. "Naz, wait… he says not to move, to stay where you are!"
Before I can even respond, she's grabbing a hold of me, trying her best to help me as I head into the den. I collapse on the couch right inside, trying to keep my eyes open. I need to get this bleeding stopped.
"Tell him to hurry," I mutter.
"He's on his way," she says, throwing my phone down before the words are completely from her lips. "What can I do? What do you need?"
"Put pressure on the wound," I say. I'm getting too weak to do it, the pain too much for me to inflict any more on myself. Self-preservation is a bitch.
"How?"
"Just… get a towel or something. Use anything."
She looks around for something to use before, in a snap decision, pulling off her shirt. It happens in a blink, one second she's just sitting there, the next she's practically on top of me in nothing but her bra, her white tank top balled up in her fist.
She couldn't just go get a towel?
Shoving my hand out of the way, she presses the fabric to my side hard. I grimace, groaning as the burning rips through my gut.
"Fuck, Karissa," I mutter. "I'm already wounded, and you start taking your clothes off. Are you trying to kill me?"
"Not funny," she says, a slight tremble in her voice, her tone dead serious. She doesn't find it funny at all. Forcing my eyes open, I peer at her, my vision blurry but clear enough to see tears silently streaming down her cheeks.
That sobers me up quickly.
"Hey," I say, my voice gritty as I reach for her, brushing her cheek with the back of my hand, ignoring the fact that I smear a streak blood on her face. "Don't cry. It's going to be okay."
She doesn't meet my eyes, keeping her gaze trained on my side as she presses against it with everything in her, the tears still falling. I'm not sure what to say. I don't know if it's the bloodshed or the realization that I'm hurting her again that makes me feel like throwing up, the nausea so intense it burns my throat, everything fuzzy, my chest feeling like it wants to cave in.
My heart might really give out at this rate.
The dizziness is coming on hard, my vision fading as sweat forms along my brow, running down the side of my face as I try to focus on staying conscious. Every second gets harder, every breath more of a struggle.
"How do you know?" she asks quietly. "How do you know it's going to be okay?"
My eyes drift closed, my eyelids too heavy, the wooziness too strong for me to fight, the current sweeping me under. I struggle with every last bit of energy in me to respond, my words barely a whisper.
"Because you're not getting rid of me that easily."
"Naz! Oh God, Naz!"
I'm caught in that space between sleep and awake where the world is a slow-motion haze, an illusion I can't believe. It's not real. It can't be. It can't be happening. Her voice is a fiery scream of terror, a sound that rattles my bones and stops me from breathing.
"Naz!"
She screams again, my name morphing into an ear-splitting shriek. It's a blink of an eye, a split second where I stare in the thick darkness at a cold, calculated face that used to regard me warmly.
They say when this life takes you it's usually at the hands of a friend.
I never thought it would be him.
The gunshot lights up the room before the blast hits me straight in the chest, like a firecracker going off beneath my ribcage. I can't speak, can't react, as the pain ruptures inside of me, expanding, exploding.
Fuck, I'm dead.
I'm dying.
I fall back on the bed, my vision already blacking out from the blast, blood staining the white sheets surrounding me. It looks black in the darkness, shadowy oblivion threatening to take me away.
She's still screaming.
She's screaming my name.
Over and over again.
Naz.
Naz.
Naz.
The name dies on her lips as another gunshot echoes through the room, her voice swallowed up by a loud gasp. A gasp for air, for another breath, for another chance… a gasp that rocks me to the core, a pain I feel beneath my skin, gripping me harder than the buckshot in my chest, constricting my heart until it explodes.
A blink, and he's gone. There's nothing but darkness around me, the room completely still.
Another blink, and I force myself to move, defying the laws of nature as I struggle to pull her into my arms. She's still gasping, desperate, trying to speak, her lips moving as they sound out my name, but there's no sound to accompany it. I hold her tightly, fighting… and fighting… and fighting, but there isn't enough fight left in the world for her.
One more blink, and she's gone, too.
Through the heavy blackness, the faint scent of antiseptics hits me, making my nose twitch. I shiver, the flimsy blanket covering me stiff and cold, like a sheet of thin ice, as air blows down on me from somewhere up above.
Before I even open my eyes, I know exactly where I am. I've been here before. This isn't the first time I've woken up this way.
Last time I thought I was in Hell.
The hospital.