Chapter Four
James
Her voice is soft and broken from the pain but also harsh. Very harsh. I take out my phone but she gets my attention, telling me not to call 911. I don’t question her this time. I kneel beside her, wincing a little at the amount of blood. I start to reach for the wound when she smacks my hands away. “We’ve gotta get the bullet out.” I mummer.
“That’s gonna be kinda hard with the amount of blood.” She snaps.
“No shit. But if you just trust me, you’ll come out of it fine without making me call 911.” I growl. She kind of glares at me before removing her hand.
“Be fast.” She mummers. It sounds pleading so I bite my tounge on the snappy comeback. I pull my knife out of my back pocket and cut up the side of the jeans she was wearing. What was with girls and skin tight jeans? I use the leg that I sliced up to help stop the blood, or clear it away and find the bullet wound. Luckily, the bullet isn’t too deep. I very carefully use the tip of my knife and dig it out. Shes making soft crys of pain, trying not to scream. She’s got quite the pain tolerance.
When its finally out, I pull off my shirt and tear it into strips-so much for saving a good shirt. I wrap it tightly around her leg, making the best bandage I could for her. Thankfully it was good enough for the moment. If I had to do a tunquite, I would have been forced to take her to a hospital.
“Do you have a sewing kit at home? Anything that could be used for stitches?” I ask her, trying to keep calm. She nods, her eyes shut tight and hands gripping the grass so she wouldn’t cry out. “Is your house very far?” She shakes her head this time. Thank god. “I’m gonna carry you okay. You’ve gotta let me know where to go though. Anyway you can.” I tell her. Another nod. “Okay.” I mutter to myself. I stand and take her in my arms. I start in the direction she came running at me from but soon came to a fork. She, although with her eyes closed, knew where we wear and pointed in a direction. This is how we get to a house that’s falling apart. She ashures me this is it with a nod and I walk in, dogging boxes they have on the floor and set her on the beaten old couch.
“Where is it?” I ask frantically, seeing red start to seep through the shirt-bandage.
“Kitchen…cabinet …farthest left…top shelf.”
“And pain pills?”
“Get. It. Sewn. First.” She growls, clearly in a lot of indescribable pain. Nodding I run to where she described and got the first aid kit I saw. Opening it, I saw everything I needed and ran back to her.
“Okay…this is gonna be…difficult.” I warn, undoing the bandage. The bleeding had slowed a little but it was still pretty bad. At least the hole was small. I pull out a needed from a small plastic bag and it’s already strung and-I hope-sterilized. With no other warning, I start stitching the wound. The sound and feeling of the needle popping through her flesh is sickening. Not that I have any room to complain right now. I go kind of fast but make sure it’s good and I can get it closed in one but add one just in case. She dosen’t seem to mind. When I tie it off and look up at her, I know why. She’s almost past out from the mix of pain and blood loss.
“Shit.” I mutter, setting down the bloody mess of cloth in my hands and the needle beside it. “You gotta sit up.” I tell her, helping her move to that position. I run and grab her a tall, cold glass of water and make her drink it while I almost tear apart the house until I find the pain pills. Returning with those, I get her another glass and make her drink it. This goes on until shes awake enough to speak.
“Sorry about that.” I mummer, looking at the stitches. I had spent the past almost half hour cleaning the blood and there was still a nasty stain in the carpet I was working at.
“Dosen’t matter now.” Her voice is scratchy and dry. It’s also calm and quiet which throws me off.
“You’ve got a hole in your leg and a bad blood stain on your carpet. You’re gonna be sore as hell for who knows how long and you just got shot saving someone from suicide. Someone your friends pick on every day. None of this matters to you?” All I get is a shrug. “Okay.” I say, giving up on the stain for now and sitting beside her. “What does matter to you?”
“What matters to me?” She repeats. For a while we sit in silence as she thinks. “The fact my mother and my sister just died matters to me. That I’ve got to stand there and watch a kid get abused everyday is important to me. The fact that kid almost killed himself matters to me..” She drifts off with her words. I wanted to ask her why she watched it go down every day. Why she sat there and let it happen.
“You’re sister and mother just died?” I ask softly. She nods.
“Car crash. Neither of them should be dead. I should have got home quicker. Picked her up from school. They shouldn’t have been on the road!” She mutters. I rest my hand on her knee to stop her. It does the trick. She stares at my hand like it was a scorpion. “Sorry.” She mutters eventually.
“It’s okay.” I say back. For the next while, we sit there in silence.
“I don’t want to watch it. Don’t want to be part of that..thing. The Crowd.” Her quivering voice breaks the silence. “We can’t afford to keep moving though. So…I can’t get in any more fights and they’re…the only way I can fit in and not get in fights. So…I have to…I have to watch you get beaten every day.” Her eyes meet mine. “I am so sorry.”
“It’s okay.” I whisper. “I’m use to it .”
