I hit the stairs to the bus first, before the girl, before the cops and the EMS workers.
Dax is already there, and he tries to stop me, holds out his arm and catches me before I slip in it.
Bile rises in my throat and my head begins to spin.
The entire room is coated in blood. It's everywhere: floors, walls, even the ceiling. It's splattered everywhere, just everywhere, all over fucking everything. My eyes are wide now, and my heart is beating so loud I can hear it in my skull.
“Don't look, just don't look at it,” Dax is shouting, tears streaming down his face. The world goes silent. There are two bodies on the floor, two female bodies, naked, bloody, beaten, blonde. Either of them could be Naomi. Neither of them could. A line of a song slides through my skull.
To find you, only to lose you, even the devil couldn't think up a hell worse than that. I abused you, when I should've held you, and only the truth will set us free.
I turn to my right and vomit, all over the back of the captain's chair. The barefoot girl climbs the steps behind me and stands with her hand on the railing and her chin lifted in the air.
“I knew it,” she whispers. “He got here first.”
And then there are men in uniform, dragging me and Dax and the girl back, pulling us out of the blood, away from the scent of copper and pain. My first instinct is to fight, and I end up elbowing a cop in the face. They cuff me and throw me in the back of a squad car, but I still have a first row seat to what's going on in front of me.
One body goes on a stretcher, the other in a body bag. I don't know which is which, and it's killing me.
This can't be happening. It just can't. I can't discover Naomi only to lose her. How fucked up is that? And she can't be dead, not yet, not with that pain she's carrying around. She deserves someone to show her a good time first, show her that life isn't all bad. Maybe I'm not the one, but maybe I am. How the fuck are either of us supposed to know, to be happy? If she is gone, I get the feeling that I am really and truly screwed. And I also know that I don't care because without her on this earth, nothing else will matter. Not even me.
Blue and red lights flash as the ambulances speed away. Well, one speeds, one goes slow. That's the one that scares the shit out of me. I drop my head to the back of the seat, and I scream. It echoes out the open window and ricochets around the lot.
In the midst of the gathering crowd around me, somebody smiles.