Life in Brooklyn

Chapter 21

Steve just got the eggs and was passing aisles to get to the cash register when he heard a slam and shouts.
He picked up the pace and looked down every aisle, he almost passed the one with tony and the man, plus the woman running out, covering her boys eyes.
He saw the man holding tony up by the collar and his forearm pressing against his throat. Tony, who's lips were blue and eyes were closed while his skin was pale.
'Nononononononononono' he ran up to him and kicked him away. He didn't even bother beating the man up even more, just grabbed tony and propped him up on his lap. "HELP! Someone call an ambulance!" He tried shaking him awake, but he remained unconscious and still. He put two fingers to his throat to fell for a pulse, but there wasn't one. "Hurry! Please! Come on tony, come on."
He hadn't realized more people crowded the hallway or the man running out of the building, but he saw blood even if there wasn't any. It covered his hands and all the way up his arms. He saw blood spreading through his shirt on the abdomen and his shoulder. He looked down at tony- wait, no, the little girl. Bullet hole right in between her eyes. "No no no no." He closed his eyes and covered his ears, to try and block out the screams that filled his heads, but they were all in his head and wouldn't hush. He hit his head a few times and opened his eyes to see that everything was back. Although, not completely. Tony still didn't have a pulse and his lips were still blue. But now, he was being lifted onto a gurney and paramedics rushing around him, starting CPR.
"He-he...!" Steve managed to stand up and run after them, even if he felt like throwing up. "What did you say?!" One of the paramedics shouted.
"He-he has a bad heart, he has a pacemaker."
"Okay. You hear that?!" He yelled to the front of the ambulance. "Yeah!" The driver confirmed and started yelling information over the radio.
Steve only realized he started crying after he wiped his cheek and grabbed tonys cold hand.
Once they arrived, tony was brought to a trauma room and steve was rushed to a waiting room. He tried fighting them away and staying with tony, but he hurled when he saw them cut a small hole in his throat and shove a tube down it.
Then he sat there for hours and hours with only a few visits from surgeons. The first was to inform him that tony needed a heart transplant now or he wasn't going to make it. The second, which was hours later, was that they found a heart, but it was halfway across the country and that it will take a few hours for one of their doctors to get there and back with the heart. Steve felt his jump to his throat. For the meantime, the surgeons were going to have to keep him in surgery and try to keep him stable. The surgeon went back and steve collapsed in his chair.
His mind floated back to what he saw and heard back in the supermarket while he held tony on his lap. The girl. The screaming and yelling. The blood. The horror of it all. And thinking back to it was enough to send him back there. He saw and heard it all again, just faintly. Short flashes of it and sweat formed all over his face.
He tried to keep calm until he got to the washroom and locked the door after he checked no one else was there.
He took deep breaths, hands on the door and he hung his head low. He couldn't calm down. Along with the war flashbacks, were flashbacks with tony, dead in his arms.
He saw blood running down his hands and down his arms until it was to his shoulders.  There was no sign of where it was coming from, and it just kept coming, nonstop.
He ran to the sink and turned the water on as hot as it would go. He scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed, and saw blood going down the drain. It was thick, dark red blood, not like it was mixed with water.
He didn't feel pain, from the water or from the scrubbing. He felt horror.
He didn't know he was crying, he didn't know he wasn't breathing, all he could focus on was cleaning the blood and the voices in his head.
The screaming got louder and louder and louder and he couldn't control it. He put his hands up to his ears and yelled, to try and block out the screams, but they only got louder. He stumble to a stall door and banged his head on it, hard, trying to get them to stop.
He didn't hear the slam of the door opening from someone kicking it down.
He didn't see Bucky run up to him.
He didn't hear Bucky telling him to stop or that it was going to be ok.
He was barely conscious when Bucky pulled him back.