You Can Go Home Again

Chapter 17

"Harper! Stay with me dammit!" I hear Thomas' voice, urgent but distant. The light of the day fades in and out as the pain envelopes me. I can feel my shirt soaking up the blood and getting stuck to me. I try to calm my breathing as I feel Thomas' hands pressing on my wound. "This isn't how you go out, Harper!" Thomas is still shouting even though he is kneeling right next to me.

"What the hell?" I hear someone else, I think Derrick, yell from further away. "What is happening Thomas?" I hear his voice move closer. There's a long bout of silence before I hear gasping crying not far from me. I realize my eyes are closed, and I try to force them open. "Rick, we gotta move. We gotta get them to the hospital. There might still be time."

I feel myself being lifted and carried for quite a ways. Whoever is carrying me is huffing and puffing, so I try to lift myself to help alleviate the weight. My movements cause a pain to ripple throughout my body though, and I feel my body give up on its own strength. My carrier sets me in the front seat, which they immediately set back so I'm closer to a horizontal position. A grunt followed by some labored breathing comes from the back seat, and I have a feeling Ray is back there now too.

"How are we going to do this? What if we don't get there in time?" The car engines roars to life, and I feel a lurch in my stomach as speed in some direction.

"Don't say that, Rick. We're going to make it. We have too." Thomas' speaks so low I almost don't hear him. I hope he is right. I'm not ready to give up on life just yet. Once again, I attempt to open my eyes, and this time I get them to a squeaky squint.

"Harper? You awake?" My body gets thrown around a bit as we round a corner.

"Yeah. Yeah." I want to say more, but the effort it took to answer that much was more exhausting than I thought it would be.

"Thank God. Stay awake. Talk to us," Derrick's voice comes across strong and commanding. I can detect the worry he is probably trying to hide from me.

"What happened out there Harper?" I peer over at Thomas from under my lashes, trying to form the words in my mouth.

"Ray, we – it was all an accident," I moan as images flash in my head. I shot Ray. Ray shot me. I'm not sure if those things happened. I was shot, and Ray was shot. We both had the gun. We struggled. The gun went off, but it went off more than once. Was it two times? Was it three? Everything happened so fast. How did Thomas and Derrick get there so quickly? How long were we there?

"Harper, stay awake! Stay with us!" The urge to listen to Derrick is strong, but not as powerful as the peacefulness that is beckoning me away from this nightmare. I run to this mysterious peace, wanting nothing more than to forget this horrible day. "Shit! Drive faster Thomas! Speed! I think we're losing her!" I feel the lurch of the car as we move faster down the road. The faint sound of sirens fills the air as we speed down the road. The faraway quiet calls to me again. I chase it, wanting it more than ever now.

"Rick, I gotta stop. State trooper, man." I can feel myself getting closer as Thomas' voice sounds further away. I just need to sleep. Sleep is okay, right? The warmth of the blood from my wound has taken over so much of shirt, like a weird, sticky blanket. The dark place I'm running too, it's so cool there. That coolness almost makes the warmth bearable.

"We die together." My eyes jump open as I gasp for air. A bright light above me is blinding after that darkness.

"She's back. Let's continue." Everything is too bright and too loud for me to decipher what's going on. "Keep that charged in case she crashes again." That same commanding voice I heard when I woke up yells out instruction after instruction. "Anesthesia stat!" No, I don't want that. I want to know what's happening. Someone tell me what's happening! Please! The words never make it out of my mouth before a mask is placed over my face, and I feel myself slipping back into the void.