When it rains in the desert

Before

I woke up and Celia was gone. I looked around the room frantically, but there was no sign of her. Then I remembered how she'd been taken away. Instead Rick was sat in the corner of the room, watching me look for her. "Good morning munchkin." He smiled.

"Where is Celia?" He tilted his head and pretended to pick something off his coat. "She won't be a problem for you anymore." I flinched, what the hell did he mean she wouldn't be a problem? He saw my reaction and answered the question I had yet to ask.

"She's not here, and that's all you need to know." Before I could ask another question I smelt gasoline. Like strong, pure gasoline. Rick smelt it too because he got up and started walking around the room.

Then it all went boom.

There was dust, everywhere. It was so dark but all I could see was dust, I could feel it on my face and on my hand mixing with sweat and sticking to me.

I blinked. once. twice. before I realised that I was laying flat on my stomach. I tried to move before crying out in pain. My legs were trapped under something I couldn't see. I tried to wriggle my way out but the pain.

There was fire. Someone had blown something up on the roof, causing the broken ceiling to cave in. I was looking up at the hole in the roof before I realised what I'd seen.

Shit. I quickly looked around. I thought i'd hallucinated seeing her fall through the ceiling. I was looking at the concrete from the roof around us when I saw her hand, under a pile of stone and wood. Her sweet delicate hand, it was twitching.

"Ceils? Can you hear me? I'm coming" I tried moving forward again but I couldn't. Whatever was on my legs was too heavy. I moved to my left a little, as much as my legs would allow and tried to reach for whatever it was. It felt like a massive plank of wood. I looked back over and her hand had stopped moving.

I couldn't see the rest of her body and my heart dropped . I had to get out of there. I put all my weight into my arms, trying to free my legs, keeping my eyes on Celia not caring about the pain. I had to get to her.

It was working, i'd moved a few inches forward so I could flip over and reach the wood that was stopping me from moving and freed myself. Without thinking I got up and as soon as I put my weight onto my left leg I regretted it. But I had to keep moving.

I limped forward and began moving the pieces of stone and wood from on top of her before she began to almost materialize in front of me.

I was going to explode. I was so glad to see her, but too afraid she was already dead to care. All my worries went away when she slowly blinked herself awake. She began looking around before her eyes fell on me. They started low and slowly made their way up to my eyes.

I smiled and sighed, relieved before I ran my fingers through her hair and sat beside her. She tried to get up and flinched at the pain.

That was when I saw it. I felt my heart beating 10 beats too fast and then stop all at the same time. She was holding it but the blood was seeping through her fingers. A beat too late I put pressure on the hole in her stomach. I couldn't tell what had caused it but there was so much blood.

She was looking at me, still not speaking. She moved the top of her head to tell me she wanted to speak. "I don't have the strength . You need to apply pressure." She whispered.

I quickly held my hands to where her own had been and began pressing. She shook her head and pushed my hands down further. The blood was now seeping through my fingers.

I'd never seen so much blood, I mean Celia was small, smaller than me anyway. She was about 5 ft 4" and she was skinny, you'd never think this much blood could come out of a person of her size. My hands were becoming sticky with blood. I cautiously took off my shirt and held it to her abdomen. "Celia- c-Celia, I need you to stay awake okay baby? I need you to stay conscious. Talk to me."

I used my free hand to cup her face and tap it lightly until she opened her eyes, her big beautiful green eyes. There was still life in them, I could see it and that gave me hope so I took a breath and said "You need to go to the hospital, Where is the closest one?" We didn't have phones, We were stranded god knows where and she bleeding out, fast.

I was about to lift her up, I didn't know were I would go but she needed the hospital, I'd have carried her there if i'd needed to.

She shook her head at me and reached for the inside of her pants. She pulled out a phone. A Phone! I could've died from the feeling of relief. "I took it from Rick's pocket when I pushed him." In that moment I was so grateful for her. I was so glad.

When I felt the tiny phone in my hand, I dialled 911 and remembered we weren't in America. She took the phone from my hands and dialled the number for me, handing me back the phone after.

"Hello what's your emergency?" The voice at the other end of phone said. "Listen, we need an ambulance . My girlfriends been-" I could barely get my words out. "She's been shot and the building we're in is burning. I need you to hurry up."

"okay sir I need you to calm down and tell me where you are" She said. But I didn't know where I was, I didn't have an address.

"Its a warehouse in London I don't know the exact location" I began panicking before Celia reached for my hand and practically breathed "Hollywell Roa- It's the one on Hollywell Road."

"Holywell road, It's the one on Hollywell Road please hurry." I pleaded. "Okay sir I have units being dispatched to your location now." I cut the phone.

"Celia, what happened?" She looked at me, her breaths coming in slowly and shallow. "Rick gave me to Maggie, told him something and then took me. He said that he was ready to negotiate."

My hand was still pressed to her stomach, the bleeding had slowed down. "But he took me to the roof and made me kneel, he was going to shoot me." She laughed, but there was no humour in it. It was a bitter laugh.

"When I first came back to the compound, after you'd been taken. I poured petrol on the roof. I knew it was unstable. Rick had to have it patched up all the time. I just did it as a precaution.If he shot us, I needed to make sure he died with us." She took a deep breath. It was hurting her to speak.

"I needed to make sure that he would never get to Rory and Natalia." She said. I was so in awe of her. Even when she was facing death, she'd still managed to protect them.

"So on the roof, Maggie fired a shot at me. But the shot caused the roof to set on fire."

The walls were beginning to catch fire and I spotted the fire extinguisher in the corner of the room. I got up and began spraying it around at the bottom of the wall. It took a few tries but the fire slowly began to get smaller and smaller. There was just a small pile of wood in the corner still on fire when it stopped working.

I threw the extinguisher at the wall in frustration when I realised I hadn't seen Rick or Maggie. He was in the room with me when the ceiling fell through. There was no way they'd escaped. They couldn't have.

It wasn't until the paramedics told me that there was no other bodies found inside that I knew they'd escaped but I'm getting ahead of myself. We need the sad part first.