I’m gently rolled onto my back and something hard slides under me. I finally open my eyes, hoping the memories fade as I let go of the darkness.
I blink rapidly when someone shines a light into my eyes while my arms and legs are strapped to something hard and uncomfortable.
“Hey, there you are! How do you feel? Can you speak?” Brad asks as he leans over me with his stethoscope, pressing it against my chest.
I look down and notice my sweatshirt has been sliced in half right up the front of my body. Before I can say anything to him, a plastic oxygen mask is pressed against my nose and mouth. Brad gently lifts my head to slide the elastic band around my head to hold it in place.
“Just breathe normally and take it easy,” he instructs me as I feel cool air inside the mask begin to float down my throat and put out the fire in my lungs.
I feel a prick in my arm and have the sudden urge to start giving Brad instructions on how to properly start an IV. That makes me want to laugh, which immediately makes me start to cry. I cough into the oxygen mask as my eyes sting with tears and my throat swells with emotion.
“It’s okay, you’re going to be okay,” Brad tells me softly as he continues to move the stethoscope around my chest.
I’m lifted suddenly and I stare up into the trees, watching them float above me as I’m moved until the night sky filled with stars is above me. I hear the rumbling of trucks, the wailing of sirens and so much shouting when we break through the trees that it makes my head pound.
“Oh, my God! Get out of my way! GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY!”
A face comes into my line of sight, blocking out the stars, but it’s shadowed in darkness. All I can make out is short hair and I start to cry harder.
“DJ,” I croak with a raspy breath, my voice sounding like Darth Vader in my ears with the oxygen mask over my face.
I try to speak again, to tell him I love him and how sorry I am for everything I put him through. I want him to know that I was never really alive until I found him again. I want him to know that I can survive anything because of HIM. Because of his love and his belief in the type of person I could be.
“Sorry, princess, you get the consolation prize.”
I blink through my tears and the flashing lights from one of the vehicles illuminates Dax’s face as he stares down at me.
“Jesus Christ, I can’t believe you’re alive,” he whispers, resting his palm on top of my head as he shuffles along with the group carrying me.
Reaching up, I pull the oxygen mask away from my face as I suddenly stop moving and Brad leans over the opposite side of me, tightening straps and pulling blankets tighter around me.
“DJ,” I whisper, wincing at the pain in my throat. “Where’s DJ?”
I’m lifted away from Dax and pushed into the back of an ambulance, but I didn’t miss the look of sadness and worry on his face when I asked him where DJ was.
Once I’m inside the ambulance and locked into place, I twist my head to the side to look down beyond my feet where Dax is still standing by the ambulance doors.
“He thought…we saw…it didn’t look good, princess. They brought two body bags out of the house and, well…he pretty much lost it,” Dax tells me as Brad and another paramedic jump up into the ambulance with me and start hooking me up to all sorts of equipment.
Oh, God, DJ. It would have killed him to see something like that.
I don’t let myself think about the fact that one of those bags would have been filled with the remains of my father, the man I hated for most of my life, but who tried as best he could in the end to make up for everything.
“Don’t worry, I’m going to find him and get his ass to the hospital as soon as I can, okay?” Dax reassures me.
I nod and close my eyes as Brad presses the oxygen mask back to my face.
I just need DJ. I need the sound of his voice and the feel of his arms around me to make everything okay. My heart won’t hurt with the memory of the look on my father’s face when he told me I deserve to be happy because DJ will erase all of that pain with just his smile.
I just need DJ.
“You can’t leave,” Collin argues with me as I rip the heart monitor stickers from my chest and pull the surgical tape holding the IV in place off of my arm.
“I can’t stay here. You idiots already let me sleep through the night,” I complain, wincing as I gently pull the IV needle out of my skin.
“Look, I’m going to find him. I’ve been to almost every fucking bar in the whole damn city and anywhere else I thought he might go. When I find him, I’ll bring him right to you. After I kick his ass for turning his damn cell phone off.”