Page 52 of Revived

“What the fuck is going on?” Wen bellowed from somewhere behind me. “Janet? What in the hell are you doing?”

“You stole her love from me!” She howled at him, again shaking their daughter as she did.

“You need to let go of her, now!” Wen ordered Janet.

“Why? So you can take her to go play happy family with your whore? So she can be a big sister to the bastard you have brewing in that bitch’s belly?”

Well, that was news, and judging by Wen’s face, it was to him as well. “I have no clue what you’re on about Janet, but you need to let Alyssa go, right now!”

To everyone’s surprise, Janet did, but only because she appeared to be reaching in her purse for something. Alyssa wasted no time in running to her father. Mel, Alex, and Tim had come up in the hall behind Janet and were standing back waiting, when Janet pulled a gun from her purse and aimed it directly at Wen.

“I told you that you would never take her. I warned you that you were never to have a family with anyone else. I let you play with that whore while we were apart and you knocked her up?”

“Janet!” Wen yelled while trying to tuck Alyssa behind his body. “What the fuck are you doing? Put that away!” I saw the puzzled look on Alex and Mel’s face before Janet shifted and they finally realized she had a gun.

“Do you really thing that Alyssa would want to be anywhere near you after this?” Wen asked his wife.

“It doesn’t matter. You’ve already tainted her. She told me she wanted to live with you and that whore.”

“I wonder why?” Wen taunted. Probably not the smartest thing he’d ever done. Then again, maybe it was, because Janet started screeching a bunch of nonsense and flailing the gun around as she yelled. Two things happened at once. John and Phoenix had come up behind Wen and grabbed Alyssa. John ran with the girl while Phoenix attempted to move around the narrow hallway. The other, was that Alex decided enough was enough and while Janet was distracted and not pointing the gun at anyone in particular, he tackled her to the ground.

At the same moment, I dove for Wen, hoping to take him down to the floor, just in case… The sound of the shot reverberated through the narrow hall, and then searing pain ripped through my thigh before we hit the cold, hard, unrelenting cement floor.

Phoenix moved quickly. He got the gun from Janet, tucked it into the waistband of his jeans and then flipped her onto her belly, zip-tied her hands behind her back and sat her down against the wall while he also zip-tied her ankles together. I guess he wasn’t taking any chances with the crazy bitch. Mel ran to me, snatched her bag from Mike, who was still standing by the door, stunned and completely out of it.

“Holy shit! Did that just happen?” He finally asked when Mel taking the bag from him finally brought him back around.

“Yes, now get down here and make yourself useful,” Mel ordered.

“What do you need?”

“Bandages,” she called out as she tried to get a better look at the wound on my leg. “Sorry about this,” she told me, without looking up from the wound. “Scissors first,” she corrected, and Mike handed her a pair of scissors that she immediately used to cut the leg of pants away from the bullet wound. Mel then leaned over and continued cutting the denim away. “It went all the way through,” she called out to no one in particular. Once the denim was cut and peeled away from the wound, she grabbed the gauze and bandages that Mike handed her and started packing and wrapping both the entrance and exit wounds.

“I think you got really lucky. If she’d hit the Femoral Artery, we would know it.”

“Ambulance is here,” someone called out from down the hall as the sound of wheels squeaking on the concrete floor drew closer.

“Don’t leave me,” I begged Mel as the emergency responders lifted me onto the gurney.

“I won’t,” she told me before turning to them and letting them know what the damage was. The police were there as well, dealing with the fallout of Wen’s crazy marriage. I didn’t envy him or his daughter what was about to happen from that point. Especially if what Janet had been ranting about was true. If Calista was pregnant when Wen left her this last time, I didn’t think she would be able to forgive him and go back.

That was a problem to delve into with my friend once I was patched up and doing better though. For now, I had my own issues to deal with and she was riding along in the ambulance with me to the hospital. “Fuck!” I hissed as the EMT stuck me with a needle. “A little warning would have been nice,” I scolded him.

“Sorry, we have to start an IV.”

“Why?”

“In case they need to get you into surgery, get blood into you,” he hitched a shoulder and grinned at me. “Just in case, really.”

“Great.” I glanced down at my bloodied, bandaged leg and let out a hollow laugh before looking up at Mel. “Is this enough blood for you?” I asked. She sat there, horror-struck for a minute, before she was able to school her features.

“This is a bit extreme – even for you,” was her answer before she turned away to try to hide her grin, or maybe it was the worry she didn’t want me to see. Either way, I was going to take that as a win. Getting shot had to have perks, right?

18 – White Walls & Regrets

Only part of the bullet that hit Gabe exited his body. It apparently fragmented when it hit the edge of his femur and they ended up wheeling him into surgery to get the rest of the bullet out, as well as the bone fragments that had splintered off in the bullet’s wake.

While I waited to hear something, I started making phone calls. My first was to Chevy, since he was Gabe’s only living relative.

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