"I've been looking for you for a long time." He almost purred with pleasure over my response to his malicious glee.
I still held on to enough pride that I wouldn't attempt to speak and confirm how truly terrified I was. I'm pretty sure the hitch in my breath and my dilated pupils told the bastard enough. "Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.", I thought. I don't normally curse, but I was a bit distressed with my current circumstances.
He actually chuckled as he drew back his fist for another punch. I put out my hand, not to divert the force of his blow, but to trace my fingers over his ribs and count to the fifth intercostal space. Just as he struck, I slipped his own knife through that space and into his left ventricle.
I'm a surgery resident, I know a little about anatomy and my attendings keep trying to teach me how to use a blade.
I saw stars as his final blow landed and felt the warm flow of blood drench both my nose and my right hand. Funny, we're both bleeding in synch, I thought. What a strange thought. And then I was suffocating below his, literally, dead weight.
I may have been thinking it the whole time, but now I said it out loud "Oh shit." Or at least I think I said it outloud, it was my intention. I probably should have attempted to say a prayer, but I'm nothing if a little irreverent in times of stress. I was a bit dazed still from the blow to my face, my nose felt broken, and my breathing even further hampered by the fine linen-clad weight laying across my chest. I hated that damn seersucker suite.
I rubbed my bloody nose in his meticulously trimmed hair in order to take a deep breath and used my entire body to push his to the floor. I wiped my sticky right hand against his matching linen pants and took another deep breath as I watched the blood continue to pour to the floor in compliance with gravity.
I know it wasn't eloquent, but I said it again, "Oh shit."
I lay there for a moment. I wish I could breath. If wishes were nickels and all that jazz.
Without rising from my semi-recumbent pose, I reached into his damp pockets and found his high tech cell phone. I fumbled with it for a few seconds until I realized you can't flip a non flip phone, I managed to rotate the face off the keys and hit 9-1-1. I didn't bother to talk to the operator, she'd find me with the GPS system soon enough. I glanced at the screen to make sure it was in emergency lockout and then chucked the phone at the corpse of my ex-husband.
I lay my head back down on whatever hard surface he had been knocking my poor brains against, oh yeah, the oak stairs we had argued over, and wished I was the fainting type. If wishes were nickels…
***
Maybe I am the fainting type. Or maybe I just blocked out the pain in a zen-meditation plane type thing. Either way, it felt as if no time had passed before there was pounding at the door.
"Open up, this is the police."
If my face didn't hurt so bad, I would have laughed at the drama of it all. How strange to watch my life turn into a Life-time movie.
I didn't try to tell them I was in the kitchen. Seriously, how could they hear me over their own loud cries and the pounding?
"Break down the damn door already." I croaked to myself. I felt around to make sure I was still decently dressed as the splintering of the door ended the hurtful pounding. Ash had taken the top few buttons of my shirt when he had grabbed me from behind, but otherwise most of me was still covered.
I cracked my right eye open when I felt the vibrations from the booted heels hit the oak floor. My left eye must have been swollen shut, my visual fields were limited to teh right side of the room. I was surrounded by men and a single woman in yellow and blue. Someone beyond my vision - either at my head or to my left- was swearing under his breath. I raised my right hand to ensure they knew there was only one dead body in the room; it must have been hard to tell - otherwise first responder training would have had them at my side first.
Some captain obvious commented on my movement and I was immediately jostled into a supine position. I mustered enough strength to feebly push at the innumerable hands with oxygen and cervical spine collar. "Ma'am, are you all right?" a man with a Latin accent asked in my ear.
I cracked open my good eye and looked up at the officer at my head. "I've had better days. Can ya'll just please back off. Murdering your ex-husband can take the kick out of a girl's step."
