Page 114 of Wrecked

Adam looks down at the knife sticking out of his gut. He falls back to the floor. I run to him, my hands no longer caring about my decency. All I want to do is touch him.

He’s alive.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

He just got fucking stabbed, and he’s asking if I’m okay.

My hands jumble over his body. The knife is there, and I want to pull it out. “What can I do? I don’t know what to do.”

“Just stay with me.” He grabs my hand. “Don’t leave me.”

“I won’t. Never. I love you.” I kiss his mouth and then his cheeks, his forehead, his neck, everywhere on his face. “You’re gonna be okay,” I say the words though I don’t know if they’re true.

I pray again. This time, to every person and every saint and every star and every celestial being in the sky.

Please don’t let him die.

chapter TWENTY-SEVEN

The police are at the house within three minutes. The ambulance is right behind it. When the gurney comes in, I nearly convulse with the thought of Adam’s body going on it. The paramedics push me aside, needing to work.

When they see the blood on the couch and my torn clothes, they call for a second bus.

As I sit in the back of an ambulance, they tell me I have a concussion and that I have to go to the hospital for tests. I refuse. Not without Adam. It isn’t until I see him come out with an oxygen mask on his face that I finally sit back and allow them to whisk me away.

He is alive.

His ambulance arrives at the hospital before mine, and he is rushed inside. My case isn’t an emergency, so I am wheeled through the ER and given a bed in the corner. I don’t have my phone with me, so I ask to use one.

I call my parents. My mom freaks out and will probably say a novena on the way here. My dad will most likely drive in silence, keeping his nervous thoughts to himself.

The speaker above calls for a code red. I know it’s terrible of me to think, but I hope it’s someone else dying. I can’t lose Adam. Not now. Not for another sixty years.

When an officer comes to ask me questions, the first thing out of my mouth is, “How’s Adam?”

He doesn’t have any answers for me. He wants the details of the night. So, I give them. Every gruesome moment. A fifteen-minute scene stretched out into great detail over forty-five minutes. I feel like I’ve just lived it three more times.

My parents arrive just in time for a nurse to come in to take me away for tests. I promise them that I’m okay as I’m wheeled away. I’m sure my MRI is going to show abnormal activity, as my brain can’t seem to stop moving at a million miles a minute.

This is taking way too long. He should be out of surgery by now.

“Are you all right?” My mom grabs my hand when I’m back in the ER, clinging on to me like I’m going to drift away. “We were given only a few details. Did he…did he—”

“No, Mom,” I reassure her. “Nothing bad happened to me. Adam got there just in time. I need to know where he is.”

Dad steps up to my bed. “We’ve been asking, sweetheart. They won’t tell us anything.”

“I called his mother. She’s probably here already,” Mom says.

“What about Nico? He’s out there. He could be—”

My words are halted as my dad pats me on the shoulder and makes me a soft shushing sound.

“There are officers all over this hospital, waiting for Adam to get out of surgery. You’re safe here.”

I raise my hand to my head. I’ve suddenly become dizzy, the room rocking from side to side. I close my eyes to make it go away, but that only makes me very nauseous. My mom must notice what is happening because she is immediately at my side with her hand on my back and a round pink pan in front of me. My dad holds my hair back as I lose my stomach.

“That’s a symptom of the concussion,” a doctor says.