Caged

36

Time passed slowly.

There was a dull ringing in my head as the ambulance arrived at the hospital, us not too far behind. The flashing blue and red lights lit up the otherwise dark streets as the collection of buildings came into sight. After that, it was  a series of events that registered in slow motion in my head as we entered the chaos of the hospital. People spoke, but I didn't understand what was being said. I saw things, but my mind refused to process them because everything else was drowned out by the same scene that replayed in my head every minute.

The waiting room of the hospital was quiet.

There was an old couple sitting at the right side, near the door, and a mother with her child on the opposite side. Other than that, it was just my family.

Caleb took the seat on the left side of me, while Ethan sat in the chair across from us. Elijah had been coming and going. He was juggling multiple tasks at the moment; talking to the doctors, signing paperwork, staying with us, and heading off to answer the phone calls he got every minute that I didn't ask about.

There was nothing else on my mind apart from that one moment playing on repeat in a torturous cycle. Nothing else besides my scream as the bullet pierced through Kaiden's chest, inches from his heart.

At least, I hoped that it was inches from his heart because then he'd have a chance at survival. It wasn't likely, but if it missed, then there was a chance and I needed to believe in that more than anything.

I remembered only some of what happened before the ambulance arrived. Everything was hazy.

After Lucas had shot Kaiden, he'd left in the blink of an eye. No one had stopped him, but I didn't think that it was on purpose. The only thing that had been on everyone's mind was Kaiden as he collapsed and his blood marked the walls and floor of our house. It stained everything.

I'd never seen so much of it.

I vaguely remembered Amina scream, and then it was all chaos. Ethan had rushed to get the phone and call 911, while everyone else had dropped to the ground next to Kaiden, trying to do everything they could.

Roman and Alastair couldn't help. They had to get rid of Will's body before assisting with Kaiden until the ambulance arrived. But there wasn't much we could do anyways, apart from checking to see if he was breathing until help arrived.

I'd never forget hearing Elijah say that he couldn't find a pulse.

I'd never forget the panic that had surged after. It had seemed like hours passed before the ambulance had arrived, but it was only minutes.

I'd lost all hope as they took him away in the emergency room, not letting us follow, and I believed that it was truly the end.

Right now, my brothers and I were waiting like we had been since the ambulance arrived at the hospital. Hours had passed, and we received little to no updates.

All I knew was that Kaiden was alive and he was undergoing emergency surgery.

The bullet had missed his heart.

That was what we'd been told towards the start when the paramedics brought him in and it allowed me to breathe a little more. They'd done all the tests necessary to make sure.

He had more of a chance at survival now, but it wasn't over. There were other structures that surrounded the heart and chest that could mean life or death. If any major blood vessels, the heart itself, the pulmonary arteries, or any major organs had been grazed or hit, it would be fatal. We'd also been told that there was the possibility that it hit bone and deflected out of the chest. Overall, I'd learned that a gunshot wound to the chest didn't always mean death, and that was the hope I needed.