Honor

I got out of the driver’s side of the car and fell onto my knees next to Nassir’s side. I couldn’t tell where the bullet had entered him because there was so much blood seeping onto his chest. The white fabric of his shirt was turning entirely crimson and he wasn’t moving at all. I pushed the sides of his suit jacket out of the way while I searched for a place to put pressure. I was watching him die right in front of me. Suddenly all those years of fighting to be independent, of struggling to make it on my own, felt wasted and foolish. I was more myself with him than I had ever been and now I felt like I was losing one of the best parts of me.

Chuck dropped down on the other side of him and tapped him on the cheek. Tarnished bronze eyes peeled open with great difficulty to peer up at us. “Already called the law. They got the medics with them, boss, so you hang in there.”

“I can’t see where he’s hit, can you?” I felt like I needed to put pressure on the wound, to stem the flow of blood rushing out of the man I loved, but I was useless and all I could do was grab his lifeless hand and hold on. His fingers didn’t even slightly twitch and I could see how hard it was for him to breathe.

“I think he got hit more than once. Idiot. Trying to negotiate with a gun pointed right at his heart. What were you thinking?”

Chuck seemed as worried and at as much of a loss as to what to do as I was. I leaned forward and pressed my lips to Nassir’s. They were so cold and all I could taste was my own salty tears and the tang of blood. There was no life in there to kiss me back.

He was thinking he would offer the kid a break he had never been offered. He was thinking he would show the young man that when you had a reason, had a purpose, you could make choices that mattered. He was trying to tell him that even when you were broken and twisted deep down inside, there was always a way to get in there and shape all those mangled pieces into a better man. Maybe not a good man, definitely not a law-abiding and upstanding man, never an easy or agreeable man, but a man that was better than what he had been created to be.

“If you die on me I’m going to be so mad at you.”

I whispered the words against his unresponsive mouth and started crying in earnest when a warm puff of air escaped to touch my lips.

He groaned low and deep but it meant he was alive still, so I would take it. Off in the distance, finally, the sounds of sirens could be heard. It wasn’t like attending to two victims of a gunfight was anything new or worthy of extra haste in the Point.

“Theee . . . kiddd?” They weren’t words so much as they were expulsions of air huffed and puffed out.

I looked over my shoulder at where the other body was sprawled, Chuck’s guys keeping a close eye on him, but I could see multiple places where blood was pooling and leaking out of the young man and staining the parking lot underneath him.

I squeezed Nassir’s fingers and cried even harder into him when I felt his struggle to curl around mine. “He didn’t make the right choice.”

I felt him shudder at my words but I couldn’t explain anything further because the cops and the paramedics were suddenly all over us. I was pulled one way and Chuck was pulled the other, both of us complaining loudly, as uniformed professionals moved around Nassir’s prone form. There was so much blood and so much noise I thought I was going to have a breakdown. When a cop tried to pull me aside to ask me what was going on, I swung at him without even thinking. Luckily, Chuck was there and wrapped me up in a huge bear hug while I collapsed in a sobbing mess into his arms.

“She just watched two people get shot not even ten feet in front of her and one of them is her man. Can you cut her some slack?”

The cop grumbled something but I couldn’t focus on what he was saying because they were strapping Nassir to some hard-looking plastic board and hefting him onto the stretcher. They weren’t taking him anywhere without me. I shoved at Chuck’s arms until he set me free, and bolted to the back of the ambulance, only to be brought up short by one of the paramedics.

“Lady, he’s in bad shape. You need to meet us at the hospital.”

I would have taken a swing at him too if I couldn’t see the other medic in the back of the ambulance swearing and rushing around trying to hook up Nassir to as many IVs and machines as the back of the emergency vehicle could hold.

“I’m going with him.” I wasn’t about to give the guy a chance to argue, so I just pushed past him and took a seat on the hard little bench so I could keep my eyes glued to what was happening to my now dying devil. Nassir must have been in really bad shape because even though there were two medics and they were a lot bigger than me, neither one wanted to waste time arguing with me. Instead they pulled the doors shut and began frantically working on him.

They had ripped his shirt open and I could see that Chuck was right. The kid had managed to get off more than one shot. There was a perfectly round hole up high in his shoulder almost in the exact same spot where I had taken a bullet, but there was also one lower and more toward the center of his chest. From where I was sitting, it looked like it was exactly where his heart would be.

I started chanting “no, no, no, no” over and over again while the two men rushed around and muttered things to each other that didn’t sound encouraging.

“His BP is crashing. Not good.” One of the guys grabbed a syringe filled with something and started pumping it into one of the clear plastic tubes going into Nassir’s arm. All I wanted to do was reach out and hold his hand, but we were moving too fast and I didn’t want to get in the way of the men trying to save his life.