Sara

12

It felt like forever until the sirens signaled the arrival of the police at the pharmacy, although when Sara glanced at her phone she saw it had only been a couple minutes. Jack was giving off soft moans every now and then, his wounds continuing to bleed, and Sara had no idea what to do beside clutch his hand and murmur soothingly to him.

Please be okay please be okay please be okay.....

You have to be okay....

An ambulance had arrived with the police as well and EMTs quickly carted Jack out on a stretcher. Two other customers had been taken out on stretchers as well, and one employee was pronounced dead at the scene. Everyone else was rattled but okay.

"I'm going with Jack to the hospital," Sara declared to her boss, grabbing her purse and coat from her office. Her boss just nodded, looking just as shocked as she felt.

"Why?" she heard him murmuring as she hurried away. "Why us? Why Public Pharmacy? All we have is prescription medication...."

Sara thought she knew why.

Sliding into her car, Sara turned on the engine and sped out of the parking lot, heading for the hospital. The Fall Out Boy CD she had left in the player blared loudly through the speakers and Sara didn't lower it, not wanting to be left to her own thoughts right now. She would have too much time in which to think once she reached the silence of the hospital.

"Where is your boy tonight? I hope he is a gentleman. And maybe he won't find out what I know. You were the last good thing about this part of town."

He's in the hospital! Sara wanted to scream at the radio. That's where he is! Angrily, she punched the machine and turned off the music. Leah was wrong; Fall Out Boy is not the answer to everything!

But then the silence got too loud, too frightening, and Sara hastily turned the radio back on, skipping the accusatory song in order to have some noise in the dreadful silence.

Finally, she pulled into the parking lot of the local hospital, climbing out of her car and practically running into the reception area. "I'm here for Jack Neumann, I'm a...." Sara paused, panting, trying to figure out exactly what she was to Jack. How do you tell a complete stranger exactly what you are to someone? "I'm a friend."

"He's in surgery right now," the receptionist told her. "I'll let you know when you can see him. Your name, Miss?"

"Sara," she answered. "Sara Lark."

"Well, Miss Lark, you can wait over there," the receptionist said, gesturing to the waiting area. Sara nodded and turned away from the desk, slowly walking over to a chair in the corner and sinking into it.

Oh, Jack...oh, Jack. Promise me you'll be okay. Promise me....

Sara placed her head in her hands and tried not to cry. Jack had saved her live, had risked losing his own to make sure she survived. Oh, Jack...I don't deserve you, not at all. I should be the one in surgery right now, for those bullets were meant for me. A tear trickled down her cheek.

"Okay, tell me about this Jack."

"He's nice. I work with him every day and he's always a gentleman. I'm just...nervous about going out with him."

"Don't be, Sara! He's just realized what an amazing girl you are and decided that he absolutely must have you in his life."

"Be honest, Leah. I know you're only saying that because you're my sister and you feel obligated to."

"Sara, since when have I ever felt obligated to say anything?"

"True."

"Do you like Jack?"

"As a friend, yeah. I don't know about anything else."

"If you're just friends, then why didn't you just tell him that, let him down easy?"

"Because...maybe I do like him a little? I don't know! It's all so confusing."

"Then go out with him, Sara! What do you have to lose?"

"Our friendship?"

"Oh, come on, Jerry and Elaine used to date, but they managed to stay friends."

"Leah, Jerry and Elaine are fictional characters on Seinfeld. I don't think they count as good examples for this situation."

"You're such an example-ruiner."

"That's not a word."

"It is now. Anyway, Sara, what else have you to lose?"

"We're coworkers, Leah. If we go out and it ends badly, we then still have to interact every day."

"Last I checked, you're not on NCIS. So there's no Rule 12 you have to follow or anything."

"Since when do you watch NCIS?"

"Darius likes it, and he's gotten tired of Seinfeld. So we've been watching NCIS. It's not bad. But anyway, you can date your coworker, Sara. There are no rules against it. What else is stopping you?"

Sara hadn't had an answer for that. So she had accepted Jack's invitation to go out to dinner Monday night, the night Leah was shot and killed. She hadn't known Sara had gone out with Jack. She was going to tell her after the date, let her know that it had gone well, better than she had ever expected. Sara had enjoyed their date and had said yes when Jack had asked if they could do it again.

But then she had heard about Leah's death, which might have even occurred while Jack was walking Sara to her car after leaving the restaurant. And in the chaos that had followed, they had never gotten around to going out again.

And now Jack was in surgery, possibly dying, all because of Sara's quest for justice.

Oh, Jack, I'm so sorry. This is all my fault. If I hadn't gone looking for justice, you wouldn't have gotten shot. I'm so sorry.

Leah would never know that, thanks to her encouragement, Sara had had an amazing evening with a guy she really liked. She would never get to meet Jack, like she had wanted, and use her Seinfeld line on him.

"Just promise me, Sara, that when you introduce me to Jack, introduce him as Jack Neumann. That way, I can greet him like Jerry and say 'Hello, Neumann.'"

"Will you ever not quote Seinfeld?"

"A couple days after I'm dead. Only then will I stop. And that's a promise."

Sara felt more tears cascade down her cheeks until her shoulders were shaking with sobs. This is my fault, all my fault.

Maybe I should stop, maybe I should run as fast as I can away from all this. That's what Leah would want, that's what would keep us all safe.

If I had run to begin with, none of this ever would have happened.

Jack wouldn't have gotten shot.

I'm so sorry.