Page 33 of Annika's Aurora

“Thasgood.” Her words were starting to sluras a blacknesshovered at the peripheryof her vision. She knew she was losing too much blood, the loss making her actions and thoughts sluggish.She needed…needed to think! Shehad to get the kids out. Shecouldn’tlet the darkness take over.Keep your eyes open!

“Now you, Miss Northrup,” she heard Sam as he kneeled in front of her.She could feel him placing the tape over her wounds,and she clenched her jaw in an effort not to cry out at the pain.He wrapped the tape around her middleas he had donefor Suzanna,after he coveredthe wound in her side. Then he moved to her backand wrapped more tapearound both sides of her shoulder. Had she been shot three times? She only rememberedtwo.

Caleb was growing more agitated.He waved the gun at the boys. “That’s enough.Go in the corner.” The two lookedather,and she whispered for them to go.

Once the boys had moved,Caleb walked closer toAnnika.He brought the gun up and pointed it directly at her forehead. “I can’t anymore, Miss Northrup.”

“Caleb! No!” she screamed as she sat bolt upright. Warm arms embraced her from behind. Gasping, she struggled to steady her breaths before she hyperventilated.

“Breathe with me,” Logan said softly. He leaned her back against his chest and she tried to match her breathing to his exaggerated inhalations. It was working, but then the trembling started. Logan quietly held her until she defeated the worst of the fear. When she was calm enough, he wrapped the blanket around her and lifted her into his lap as he leaned back against the headboard. She laid her head against his shoulder.

“Tell me … please,” Logan begged quietly. “It was a school shooting, right?”

Annika nodded. “Caleb. He was one of my best students,” she started. “He’d been having a hard time, college pressures. He lost a scholarship to another one of my students. I didn’t know it at the time, but he blamed me. When he lost the scholarship and Yale all in one day, he snapped.”

“He came into my classroom at his normal class time, pulled a handgun out of his bag, and started shooting.” She hesitated, and Logan prompted her to take a deep breath. “I was hit first. Twice. It knocked me to the floor. I was stunned, but I could hear the screams from all around me. He blocked kids from escaping through the door, locking it, trapping us in with him. Kids were huddled in groups, trying to make themselves as small as possible. The fear in their eyes …” She broke off shuddering. She’d always heard the stories about other school shootings. Kids texting their last words to their parents while they hid. These kids were too afraid to move. They were frozen in fear.

“Suzanna was lying beside me. There was so much blood. I knew she needed help quickly. I tried to sit up, eventually making it upright enough to lean back against my desk. Caleb was pacing and muttering to himself. I have no idea what he was saying. I asked him if we could get help for the injured kids. He wouldn’t allow that, but he did let me go to Suzanna. I crawled to her and placed my hand over the hole in her body. But I was too weak to do any good. I couldn’t stop the blood. I begged Caleb again for help. He let two boys help me. They found some duct tape and covered Suzanna with it. Then they covered my wounds. I didn’t know it at the time, but the one in my shoulder went straight through. I wondered why the boys were taping up my back at the time.”

“How did you stay conscious? You must have lost a lot of blood too?”

“I have no idea. I could feel the blackness hovering nearby. I knew that I couldn’t give in to it. My kids needed me. I had to save my kids.”

“That’s a lot of responsibility.”

She snorted. “Tell me about it.” She didn’t want that type of responsibility. Not ever again. “For some reason, I knew that I could talk Caleb down if I could just get him to listen to me. He shooed the boys back to the corner of the room and came toward me. His gun was pointed at my head.”

“Fuck.”

“I screamed his name.”

“Is that when the nightmare woke you?”

“Yes. It usually ends there.”

“But it didn’t end there. What happened next? How did you escape?”

“When I screamed at him, it shocked him. It was like he’d suddenly woken up. He looked at the gun like he didn’t know how it had gotten in his hand. I started talking to him. Gently. He’d listen sometimes. Then go back to pacing and muttering other times. Suzanna was still bleeding. She was so pale. I knew she didn’t have much time left, but I couldn’t get Caleb to put the gun down. I could hear people in the hall, a hostage negotiation team or something like that. There was no way Caleb was going to listen to a stranger. It was up to me.”

“Those guys go through extensive training. And they’re pretty good at it. They might have been able to do it.”

“They couldn’t see him. Every time they spoke to him, he became more agitated and waved the gun around. I was afraid it would go off and kill somebody. I had to get his attention back on me. He was calmer when I talked to him. I think the negotiator realized that, too, after a while. He backed off.”

“That’s good. But you know they were probably watching everything with a camera pointed through the window. Theycouldsee him. And you.” He had her hand in his and was absently playing with her fingers, the movements calming her.

“Maybe. I don’t know.” She played with his fingers, loving the feeling of his big warm hands on her.

“So, how did you finally talk him down?”

“I was still with Suzanna, holding her hand while blood still seeped past the tape. I was losing her; I needed this to end. She needed it to end. Quickly. I had a little couch in my classroom. Kids liked to sit on it to read or work on projects together. I got him to sit down on it, and we began to talk.”

“Christ! How did you do that? How did you stay conscious for so long? You must have been very weak. How much time had passed since he entered the classroom?”

“I don’t know, maybe thirty minutes to an hour. I’m not sure. I guess the adrenaline was flooding my system. I sat on the floor across from him, and we talked. I got him to tell me everything he was feeling. The pressure his parents were putting on him to get into Yale. They were basing his entire future on Yale; no other college would do. And when he didn’t get in, he snapped. Since he couldn’t take it out on his parents, he turned his anger on me. There had been an essay contest for a scholarship. It was between him and another student. I wasn’t a judge, but I’d helped both of them write their essays. He thought I’d helped her to win it, thought I’d told her exactly what to write to win. It wasn’t true. I told him I thought he was a shoo-in to win and was surprised when he didn’t. And that was the truth. He was the better writer. But hers tugged at the heartstrings.”

“It was Suzanna, wasn’t it?” She was surprised he’d figured that out, but she shouldn’t have been. He had always been very perceptive.

“Yes. It was.”

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