Siege

Nine

I didn’t know how long I sat in the ambulance wrapped up in the orange blanket they handed me the minute Dannon was race to hospital. I watched the library door as they took away the gunmen on stretches. Their bodies covered with blankets. I shivered when I saw a stretcher with a small girl lying on it. The paramedic adjusted the blanket over her head before taking her towards a spare ambulance and placing her in it, and driving away. I watched a petite lady sob as they took her away. A man beside her wrapped his arms around her shoulders, pulling her into a tight embrace. They must have been her parents. I turned away and scanned the crowd, hoping to see mine, but they weren’t here, and neither are Dannon’s. Casey had left with her mum and dad a while ago; they were taking her to the ER to check for any injuries or trauma. Leon was still sitting beside me, with a matching blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He stared out at the crowd as he watched his mum argue with a paramedic about his health. He looks distraught without Casey by his side keeping him sane. I wish I had that, I wished my parents cared enough to come and check on me. However, they’re not and I’m left to sit alone in the back of ambulance wishing that the gunmen had shot me instead. I can’t handle any more of this pain; it’s just all too much for me to bear.  Every time I close my eyes I see the gun being pointed at me, I see Lily’s broken body; I see the fear in the teacher’s eyes, I see Dannon brokenhearted by his father’s words, and most of all I see me huddled up in the corner with no will to fight this anymore because I have nothing to live for. I know I sound pathetic; I made it out of a siege alive. I should be grateful but I’m not. Lily deserved to live; she deserved to walk out into her parents loving arms and cry until it doesn’t hurt anymore. I shouldn’t be here; I should have taken the bullet. God damn it if she had enough time to run across the remove and jump in front of it, then so did I! But I’m a coward, a moron. I just froze and waited the inevitable end, or what I thought was.

“Riley?”

A voice broke me away from my downward spiraling thoughts. I looked up and saw my mother standing a few meters away. Her face was pale and fatigued. Her normally shiny black hair looked dried out and stringy. She didn’t look like my mother, she looked like a very worn out middle age suburb mum, which she was, but she always looked so certified and proper like she belonged in a seat at Parliament or brunch with the Queen. She never looked what she actually is. “Mum?”

“Oh honey” she gushed as she raced towards me, “I’m so sorry, they wouldn’t let me through” she hugged me with tears streaming down her face. “Oh I’m so sorry,” she sobbed.

I hugged her back, not knowing how to reply. I mean what do you say to someone who you thought never cared, even for a second.

She pulled away and brushed my cheek lightly with her hand as stared at me with a tight-lipped smile. “I wish I could take away all the pain,” she said softly.

Does she really? Or is she just saying that because that’s what a real mother would say? She isn’t a real mother; she hasn’t been since I turned six. I pulled myself away from her reach and straightened my back, trying to not be as cold as the midnight air.

An exasperated sigh escaped her lips as crossed her arms against her chest. I could see her fighting to urge not to role her eyes at my childish behavior, but momentarily this was how she deserved to be treated. That call is still burnt in my mind, the way my father just brushed it off and how my mother never decided to call back and how she left me sitting in the back of an ambulance for two agonizing hours by myself. She deserved the cold treatment, but not as much as my father who evidently isn’t here. She must have noticed my eye lingering in the crowd, looking for him because she cleared her throat, grabbing my attention. “Sorry, but he couldn’t come”

I shrugged my shoulders trying not to look fazed by it, but it hurt so deep, like a knife to the bone. “Whatever” I mumbled as I brushed it aside, trying to hide the hurt in my eyes.