A Beating Heart

2.

A shot rang out, loud and sudden, heard over the beat of the music. Then another, and another. I pushed away from Levi, breaking the contact and trance-like state I had been in, looking around wildly for the unmistakable source of the gunshots. People started to scream and panic. Several people ran in between me and Levi, knocking me off balance.

Levi.

Levi.

Where did he go? If anything happened to him...

I spun around, looking for the source of the weapon again. Suddenly there was a break in the crowd and I saw a man in dark clothing with a shiny piece of metal in his hands. Who was he? Why was he here? Doing what he was doing? He turned and saw me, his eyes locking with mine, and it was like everything slowed down around me. All of the faces, bodies, and lights faded away. Frozen in place, I watched him raise his hand with the gun, watched as it pointed at me from across the dance floor that only moments ago was the site of happiness and good times.

I heard the shot go off.

The force of the bullet ripping through me knocked me to the ground.

And then everything went black.

In a heartbeat a life can change forever. A single heartbeat is all it takes for a life to begin, and a single heartbeat is all it takes for a life to end. A single heartbeat was all it took for me to realize I was in love with Levi, all because of that stupid baseball hat. A single heartbeat was all it took for some idiot with a handgun to decide to come to a place that I considered to be my safe haven and rip my life apart with the twitch of a finger on a trigger. A single heartbeat was all it took for a bullet to rip through my abdomen, slice through muscle, tissue, organs, and bone, and knock me to the ground.

A single heartbeat to change my life, and the lives of all the people I love, forever.

The first thing I realized was that it hurt...everywhere. I tried to groan, tried to find a way to let out some of the pain in my body, but I couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't open my eyes. That's when I knew something was wrong.

I started to panic. Where was I? What happened? The last thing I could remember was being out linedancing and-

The club.

My friends.

Slow dancing with Levi.

The man with the gun...

I had been shot by some crazy man in dark clothes in what I thought was one of the safest places in the world. So if I was shot, that meant I must be in the hospital. I could hear the beeping of machines nearby, feel a softness underneath me and around me that I could assume was a hospital bed. Somewhere far away someone called for a doctor to see some patient in some room. Why couldn't I move though?

I heard the door open and the sound of my parent's voices come in. Mommy...Daddy... I wanted to call out to them, to hug them and have them tell me everything was okay. I was so scared and I just wanted my parents. They were talking quietly to themselves next to my bed. Talking about what the doctor had said. From what I could understand, I had been shot two nights ago and been rushed to the hospital as soon as the situation with the shooter had been "resolved". I had been rushed into surgery for several hours where they had to stop the internal bleeding and remove the bullet from my abdomen. No long-term damage was done, but the shock my body went into from the blood loss had caused my body to temporarily enter sleep mode, for lack of a better term, which is why I was now apparently in some sort of a coma. They both sounded exhausted and alternated between whispering and my mother crying while my father comforted her in between shaky breaths. I felt both of my parents press a light kiss to my temple before they exited the room again.