More time together (Grahamfield)

Facing the present

Max focused on the butterfly picture.

As expected, she found herself at Blackwell's bathroom again. Hopeless and exhausted, she sat on the floor, embracing her own knees and hiding her face, trying to muffle her weeping. She felt impotent, the only thing she could do was waiting for the tragedy she already had witnessed another time.

She couldn't actually listen to Nathan's and Chloe's voices. Her head was spinning and she felt like she was underwater. The shot noise, however, made her get back to reality. From now on, everything was new to her.

She struggled to get up - her knees were trembling, she felt dizzy and sick. She had to get up, though - she couldn't just let Chloe lying on the floor, dead.

Dead... Chloe was dead. And she had to face it, to look at her body, knowing that her death was a consequence of a choice only she could make. She runned to get to Chloe, but it was like she was in slow-motion.

She throwed herself to the ground, placing Chloe's head on her lap. Her blue eyes were still sparkling, but her unfocused gaze made Max remember that the Chloe who was lying on her arms didn't have the memories of their amazing last week. This Chloe died thinking that Max had abandoned her forever. It was so unfair. And painful, not only emotionally, but also physically. Max cried so hard and felt so guilty that she couldn't even breath properly. She ended up fainting over Chloe's body.

Right after the shot, Nathan Prescott yelled and bursted through the bathroom door, falling on his hands and knees. He was crying and grunting like a wounded animal.

The students that were around went into panick and started to run through the hallway, thinking that some sort of school mass shooting was happening.

David Madsen quickly intervened, disarming and immobilizing Nathan, who was having a nervous breakdown. David asked Samuel to hold Nathan for a while so he could see what was going on inside the girls bathroom.

He opened the door and saw an unconscious girl lying over another girls face. The girl lying on the floor had a heavy amount of blood on her shirt. The scene gave him goose-pimples. When he got closer and saw a lock of blue hair, he felt like someone had punched his stomach and he couldn't breath. He thought of Joyce immediately, feeling deeply sorry for her. Pity soon became rage and he stepped out the bathroom, shouting to Principal Wells to call 911. He also told the school nurse to check the girls on the bathrooms, and ordered the curious students to leave the building. He had such hatred in his gaze and voice that in a couple of minutes all the students were out.

At the exact moment Nathan's gun fired, killing Chloe, Warren was at the science lab. The class had just finished, but he was helping Ms. Grant to organize the place, as usual. He heard the shot and shouting, but when he approached the door to see what was going on, a bunch of students ran over him, looking for shelter in the lab. When he finally reached the door, David Madsen was already ordering everybody to leave the building, so he just followed the crowd.

In the outside, the noise of the students chatting about the occurence was almost deafening. Some were saying that one girl was shot, others said that there were two, even three girls. Warren looked in every directions, seeking for familiar faces. He saw Brooke, Luke, Daniel... Then Dana, Trevor, Kate, Alyssa, and many others but Max.

He approached Kate and asked about Max, but she also didn't know where she was. Feeling slightly dizzy by Kate's answer, Warren picked up his phone and tried to call Max. No response. He tried one, two, three more times, and nothing, she didn't picked it up.

Aware of the rumours that some girls had been shot in the bathroom, he started to fear the worst. He turned back to the school's building with the intention of getting in there and seeing what was happening, when an ambulance got there, along with the police. The officers ordered everyone to stay out of the way and entered the building with the paramedics.

The paramedics entered the girls bathroom and saw a lifeless girl lying on the floor. Next to her, shivering, there was another girl, who seemed obvioulsy in shock. The school's nurse was there, and, almost whispering, told the paramedics that one girl was dead and the other was unconscious when she got there.

The paramedics questioned Max about her name, if she was wounded, and other things, but she couldn't answer. In fact, she was not listening, she felt like she was out of her own body, watching the scene like someone who watches a movie. Although she didn't seem hurt, the crew decided to take her to the hospital to proceed some medical exams and keep her under observation for some hours.

Less than ten minutes after entering the school's building, the paramedics left it, now carrying a barrow. Ms. Grant was walking by they side. Warren did everything he could to catch a glimpse through the crowd of who was being taken to the ambulance. He finally saw the person's right wrist and immediately recognized Max's blue and red bands. He felt his heart skip a bit, and almost automatically rushed towards the parking lot.

Kate ran after him, asking where he was heading to. He told her he was going to the hospital and she asked to go with him. Quickly, they left on the car he had bought on the day before.

Meanwhile, in the crime scene, the police started to collect evidence. About one hour later, Chloe's body was taken to the legal medicine institute, where an authopsy would be perfomed. David went along with them, devastated, trying to figure how he would tell Joyce.

In the car, Warren kept silent, trying to focus on the driving. He only broke the silence when they were next to the hospital and told Kate that his mother worked there as a nurse and he would make sure she looked after Max.