I squeezed my eyes shut, saw through her eyes. She walked inside with a limp, cursing like a sailor which I could barely hear over Marjorie’s sobbing. Sam walked over to the couch and stood over Barry. The hole over his heart pushed tiny gushers of blood out with each slowing muscle contraction.
He moved his glazed eyes to her and, in effect, he stared right at me. Sam lifted her gun and pointed at Barry’s face. I braced for the shot, knowing from experience I could not look away. Somehow I found myself concerned with shielding Marjorie from seeing what went on in her living room. Crazy, I know, but crazy had become the norm.
Sam lowered the gun, kept her gaze on Barry as her body shifted a bit and then her hand came back into view. This time she held Marjorie’s Smith and Wesson. The gun Barry insisted on giving her. The anniversary present. Sam displayed a flare for the dramatic, I’ll give her that.
“You watching, bitch?” she said and fired a bullet into his forehead. The back of his head came apart and ruined the upholstery and the sunflower wallpaper behind the couch. No need to ever tell Marjorie.
My senses were coming back to me. The fear driven dash to the car let me forget about the pain in my leg and my head for a second. “You’re going to a hospital, right?” I asked Blake.
“Yeah.” His voice came out strained. I pushed up from the backseat and peered over the seat. He drove with one hand. I saw his blood-soaked shirt sticking to the seat back. Blake had been hit worse than I thought.
I turned back to Marjorie to evaluate her wounds. Not good. Nothing vital seemed hit, just a lot of extra Oreos and Ben & Jerry’s that parked itself on Marge’s body. She’d live if we got her help soon. The biggest threat for her was loss of blood, and with three holes to leak from, Marjorie dripped like a leaky faucet.
I seemed to have made it out the best with only two phantom injuries. I decided complaining about the pain would have been petty. I tried to put my leg pain in perspective. Marjorie’s had three actual bullets in her, where I had one invisible bullet wound. And the further the car got away form the house, the less I could feel it. The electricity between Sam and I lost voltage the more miles were between us.
Lucas. I thought about Lucas.
“Blake, is Lucas okay?”
“Dunno.” He sucked air through his teeth, grinding through the pain. I reached over the seat, put my torso up on the headrest and bent down to dig through his pockets. My hands were as close as they’d even been to Blake’s dick, but I doubt he even noticed. I found his phone and lifted it out.
Blank screen. Nothing. Disconnected.
So Lucas could be dead anyway. I’d be devastated and Sam would be pissed she missed her chance to pull the trigger. With those midnight six nutjobs in the room, I’d be shocked if anything living came out of there. Potted plants wouldn’t stand a chance and Lucas could dodge bullets about as well.
A horn blew and the car veered back into our own lane. I dropped the phone onto the seat next to Blake and caught his reflection in the rearview mirror. Not doing well.
“Move over,” I said. “I’ll drive.”
“You sure?”
“Blake, you can hardly keep from passing out.”
He eased the car to the shoulder. I noticed Marjorie stopped crying and I checked on her to make sure she wasn’t dead.
“Marge?”
She emitted a low groan. Hurt, but still with us. Groan all you want, Marjorie. It hurts to be shot. No need to tough it out like Blake here.
Blake slid/I pushed him into the passenger seat, then I moved behind the wheel, my leg complaining as if I had a real and not a phantom bullet in there. The seat was soaked in blood. Felt like sitting into a bowl of soup. Warm, sticky and wet. I nearly gagged.
I dropped the car in gear and pulled back out onto the road. I didn’t talk, didn’t ask them any questions. I left my passengers alone with their pain. Last thing I’d want if I had to bite through multiple bullet wounds would be someone wanting to know what came next. Hospital, morphine, extraction with forceps. That’s what came next for these two.
I focused on the road outside. I tried to zero in my mind on the flashing white lines the same way I had on the trigger to Marge’s Smith and Wesson. Go. Move. Faster. Get these two to safety so this day isn’t a total disaster like the others. I didn’t pull the trigger on her, I didn’t kill myself and Sam at the same time. Might as well make some use of myself if I’m going to be around. Lord knows no one would have gotten shot at all if I had the guts or the power over my little damn finger.
I wondered if that’s how everyone who does it views suicide. An easing of the burden on everyone else.
I passed a sign: SPEED LIMIT 45. I checked the speedometer. 47. Hell yeah.
Despite the headache I bared down like a woman in labor and pushed the car up above 55. A little bit of balance. A tiny rule broken. Hope that I could be at least somewhat bad again.
Like I said at the start, everyone has a bad side. God damn but I wanted a little taste of mine back.
ER (EMERGENCY ROOM),
GSW (GUN SHOT WOUND),
WTF (WHAT THE FUCK?)
I parked in the Emergency lane. Fuck ‘em. I ran around to the passenger door and helped Blake out. I knew better than to try to lug both of them and Marjorie was a much bigger task. Still moaning in the backseat, I knew she’d keep until I could get the pros out with a gurney.
Blake leaned hard on me. I took easily eighty percent of his body weight. When the automatic doors slid open I started yelling right away.
“I need help. He’s been shot!”
Everyone in the waiting room turned. Six people, none of them bleeding. I hope they all felt a little silly to be clogging up an ER with a case of the sniffles.
A man and a woman in light blue scrubs came running out to meet me. The man scoped his shoulder under Blake’s other arm and took his weight off me.
“There’s another one in the car,” I said.
Gunshot wounds get reported to the police. I knew that. I’d walked into a hornet’s nest and I didn’t give a damn. Let them have me. Lock me away again. I’ll testify for Lucas even if she’s never caught. Of course, after all the gunfire I heard over the phone, I started to doubt if my testimony would be necessary.
Two more male nurses came out of the back wheeling a gurney. I led them out to the car and opened the back door. Marjorie’s hand flopped out and for a second I thought she was dead, but then she picked up her steady moaning.
The nurses muscled her out of the car and set her down on the white sheets of the rolling bed. They hustled off like the flag fell on the Gurney 500 and they were in pole position, leaving me in the dust.
As I staggered in a stern looking nurse approached me with a clipboard.
“What happened?”
“They were shot.”
“I can see that, what happened?”