Michael pitched forward beside me as she tackled his legs.
He kicked at her, stomping, leveraging off her toward the gun.
My fingers brushed Janie’s arm as she grabbed Michael’s wrist and pulled it away from the gun. Screaming as his fingers tore at her.
I seized the gun. Brought it down to his eyes.
Fired.
The bullet slammed into the bridge of his nose, drill-pulping metal and bone into his brain.
Michael lay there, staring up at me. The muscle tension in his straining neck let go.
The gun in my hand felt different. The pads of my fingers thickened somehow, desensitized. Like Halloween-creature fingertips had been glued on. The layer between me and the bullet in his head.
I collapsed on the floor, feeling the gun fall out of my hand.
Janie fumbled for it, threw it across the room toward the front door. She sobbed and pushed her fingers into my hair as I lay struggling for air.
“Hold on.” She rocked slightly, fingers rolling over a lock of my hair. “Just hold on. Just hold on.”
A new mantra for me.
The sirens stopped in front of the unit.
Cyndra knelt, wiping blood from her mouth. She crawled toward the front door.
“Hold on.” Janie’s tears fell on my face. Her hands in my hair shook.
“Help! Help us! We’re unarmed!” Cyndra called outside.
Police screamed to each other.
The air grew cold and thick, harder to take in the little sips I was getting. Cyndra lay on the floor. Screaming police told everyone to get down. Janie tented her body over mine until an officer ordered her away. They cleared the room, aiming two-handed as they checked the corners for danger. They picked up Michael’s gun, and then an officer knelt at my side.
My lungs struggled, my throat clamping like a weak straw under too much suction. I couldn’t make myself breathe slower.
Phased out. Came back to urgent voices and pressure on my chest.
My fist connected with someone. Hands grabbed my arms, pushed me down. Restraints fastened around my wrists. My dislocated shoulder ground against the backboard. I tried to yell. Nothing came out.
“It’s his larynx. We need to intubate.”
A piece of curved metal pressed into my mouth and down my throat. The EMT pulled the metal out, leaving a tube jammed down my throat and hanging out my mouth.
Nausea pinpricks bloomed in my cheeks, my heart shuddering like it was submerged in freezing water.
Another EMT attached an air bag and started squeezing.
Tears slid out my eyes and ran into my hair. The forced air filled my lungs, left, pushed in again.
My trapped hand grasped the shirt of the EMT. He glanced down at me. His small, round-frame glasses reflected the sunlight from the window.
“It’s okay.” His voice was calm and deep. “I’ve got you.” He squeezed the air bag again. “I’ve got you.”
I couldn’t let go of his shirt.
Janie crouched by my head, gnawing her fingertips. Distant eyes, transfixed by some internal collapse.
By the door, Cyndra hugged herself, sobbing. A cop listened to her torrent of words. A second EMT was examining her arm.
I felt it all running away, flowing out of me into the floor, into the air. Into the spaces between. Looked down on it all, the huddled people, the white-shirted paramedics working over me.
My fist, clenched on a shirt.
The world swam away, pulling with confident strokes that it was on to better things without me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Time is strange. It doesn’t always help. Or heal. Sometimes it just passes.
A stay in a hospital, doctor visits, a move to a group home and lessons with homebound teachers. Meetings with a judge, a court-ordered counselor and advocate, calls and visits from your best friend where neither of you says much. Weekly visits with your little sister. They’re just things that happen. To fill the time. That mark the passing days.
It doesn’t do any good to fight against it. Like I did in the hospital, demanding to see Janie. Worrying about her. Her eyes sucking in the darkness. Seeing inside and hating what she found there.
Self-hatred, a coil of knotted bone. Paralyzed, cement gathering in your core.
And when I finally did see her, that first time after. How she edged into the hospital room, arms clamped tight across herself, like she was made of air, or like if she opened up, dark-winged birds would burst from her chest, scattering what was left of her.
How we barely talked. Just watched it in each other’s eyes.
The muffled explosion of the gun, the heat of the barrel, and the kick. The impact of the bullet.
His face. Empty eyes looking up at me. Bone and blood and brain spatter. Blood glossing from the hole.
Fingers on my throat. Trapped, struggling. Powerless.
The images strobing behind my eyes. Cool air drying the sweat on my face, my heart dog-paddling in oil-slicked waters.
That was in the hospital, before I learned to keep my head below the surface. Before I learned to bury myself, sinking into the nowhere blackout.
I made myself forget. Held it down, deep inside. Built a dam to keep it there. Slept to keep it away, took the pills to help me sleep. Wouldn’t let my mind drift unsupervised.
I pushed it all down. Held myself under, cushioned by the empty water. Insulated from the noise, from the buffeting chop. Submerged beneath it all.
Beast and the bartender had stayed in the hospital longer than me, but both made it through.
The bouncer had died. And the tattooed man. And Michael.
My father.
I let it all wash over and past me.
Same thing in the courtroom. I sometimes saw the others on the way in: LaShonda and T-Man, Dwight, Ray-Ray, and Mike-Lite. Blaze and the waitress, who both spoke up for me. The words would flow by, and what I did or said was irrelevant.