Page 84 of Further To Fall

I wheezed and rolled onto my back, clutching my stomach and trying to ease the pain. “Get up, you stupid whore.” I couldn’t have done it even if I wanted to. My breaths were shallow, and air didn’t seem to be able to get to my lungs. “I said, get up!” Kyle jabbed the knife in Blue’s direction. “Get up, or the mutt gets it.”

Tears tracked down my cheeks as I stared at Blue, whose teeth were bared at Kyle in a snarl. I wrapped an arm around my ribs and slowly pushed myself up. “I should have known you were just like the rest of them, just like all the other sluts in this city. I thought you were different, but you’re not! YOU’RE NOT!” He screamed the last words. Kyle was clearly devolving. “Get on the bed.”

My stomach roiled, and I knew I needed to make a move now if I was going to make it out of this alive. “No,” I said with all the calmness and firmness I didn’t feel.

“Get. On. The. Fucking. Bed.” Kyle punctuated each word with a point of his knife toward my torso.

I took a deep breath, calling up every ounce of courage and every hope for a beautiful future with Austin. I screamed, “BLUE!” as I struck out with a palm strike to Kyle’s nose. There was a pinch in my side at the same time I felt a crunch of bone beneath my palm.

Kyle bellowed in pain as he flew backward onto the ground, then Blue was on him, teeth at his neck. The next thing I knew, two police officers were charging in, and Blue retreated from Kyle to stand guard in front of me, growling at the officers.

“Ma’am, are you okay?” One of the officers had a hold of Kyle, while the other was trying to approach me with his hand out in a placating gesture. “Can you call your dog off?” Between the pain in my side and the shock of what had happened, I couldn’t seem to form words.

Just then, the officer whirled around, gun out, to face a rapidly approaching and ferocious-looking Austin. He looked like a true warrior and nothing, not even a gun-toting policeman, was going to stop him. “I’m her boyfriend,” he growled.

“Yes,” I wheezed out the word.

The cop lowered his weapon but didn’t holster it. “Can you get her dog so that we can examine her.”

Austin’s concern-filled eyes flew to mine. “Blue, lay down,” he called, his voice full of alpha authority. Blue whined but obeyed. Austin strode forward.

“I’m okay.” The words came out on that same weird wheeze. Suddenly, my chest was burning, and my legs started to collapse. The last thing I saw before everything went black was the horror written all over Austin’s face.

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Austin

Isurged forward, catching Carter just before she hit the ground. “Fuck! What’s wrong with her?” I yelled at the cop like he had some sort of miraculous knowledge that would enable me to help her.

“Let me examine her.” The calm quality of the cop’s voice just pissed me off, but I swallowed it back. I lay Carter down on the ground as gently as possible. He immediately got to work assessing her injuries. Her shirt was torn down the middle, and as the officer pulled it away from Carter’s body, I saw blood pooling around her abdomen. Vomit snaked up my throat, but I forced it back.

The next moments felt like an eternity as I knelt next to Carter’s broken body while the cop applied pressure to the wound on her torso. I watched blood seep from between his fingers, fixating on the dark liquid as if I could will it back into her body. I forced myself to look away from the gore and towards her face. I stroked her hair, silently begging her eyelids to open so I could see her vibrant green irises.

“Sir, I need you to move aside so we can treat her.”

I started at the voice behind me, and Blue growled low. I turned to see two EMTs with a backboard in tow. The second police officer must have already taken Kyle away because that fucker was nowhere in sight. I looked back to Carter, leaned down and kissed her forehead. “You can do this, baby. Fight.” I dragged myself and Blue away from Carter, my vision going fuzzy as I stared at the medics working on my beautiful girl. How the fuck did this happen?

What felt like both hours and mere seconds later, the EMTs were loading Carter onto a stretcher. “Are you riding with us?” one of them asked.

“Yes,” I croaked out. My mouth and throat felt like they were made of sandpaper.

“What are you going to do with the dog?”

I looked down at Blue’s sorrow-filled eyes. “He’s coming, too.”

The younger EMT looked to the older one, who shrugged. “We don’t have time for this, bring them both.” With that, Blue and I followed the stretcher out the door. Neighbors had come out of their homes and were huddled together on the sidewalk, watching the morbid action unfold. I ignored them and hefted myself into the back of the ambulance, Blue jumping right in after me.

The lights and sirens flared to life, and the ambulance pulled away. “How is she doing?” I asked the older EMT, who was in the back with me.

This guy had clearly mastered the stone-faced response in his years on the job because he gave nothing away when he said, “Too soon to tell. I think the blade may have nicked her lung because she’s having trouble breathing.”

I clenched the bench I was sitting on and said nothing. We flew through LA traffic, cars thankfully getting out of our way. The rig came to a stop, and the back doors flew open. The driver had apparently called ahead because doctors and nurses already wearing gloves and what looked like surgical scrubs greeted us. The stretcher was pulled from the ambulance, and the older EMT started shouting terms I didn’t have the first clue about to the doctors.

I jumped down, Blue hot on my heels, and we took off after the team with Carter. A doctor turned, putting a palm to my chest when we reached an interior set of double doors. “You can’t come into the trauma room with us, and that dog shouldn’t even be here. You need to wait in the waiting room or take your dog home and come back.”

My shoulders and fists clenched. “I’m not going anywhere, and this dog saved that girl’s life, so he’s not going anywhere either.”

The doctor shook his head, exasperated. “Fine, but you can’t come back here.”

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