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I race from the stands. I take the stairs two at a time, trying to get to the rink.
He wasn’t getting up. Damien wasn’t getting up. He just laid there, still, on the ice, as blood pooled around him.
“Ma’am you can’t go past this line, I’m sorry.” Someone grips my arm, and my momentum is halted as I attempt to enter the closed-off area that surrounds the rink.
“My husband. Damien Henderson is my husband.” I screech at a man that’s clearly just doing his job.
Any other time I’d be thankful that he takes his job so seriously, but right this second, I need him to not be such a hard ass and let me get to Damien.
“Yeah right, and I’m an underwear model for Calvin Klein. Go home, game’s over.”
Well, sir, I gave you the benefit of the doubt. I appreciated your very tiny position of authority at this rink, but you clearly have an ego problem and I do not have time to deal with your shit today.
I fumble for my identification, anything that will prove I am who I say I am. I need to get to him. I need to make sure everything is okay. Things always look worse on the ice than they truly are. Right? It’s probably nothing. Just a few stitches. Maybe a missing tooth.
Two medics rush past me with a stretcher into the arena.
Somehow, I manage to locate my Rafferton student I.D., but the asshole doesn’t give it a second look when I shove it in his face.
I’m seconds from taking my chances, and risking arrest when the medics rush back in our direction. I see Carter skating up behind them.
The color drains from his face the moment he sees me.
The medics rush past me in a flurry, one of them holding something firmly against Damien’s neck, but all I see is the blood coating everything.
“Go, Gia! Follow the medics. Now!” Carter screams at me. The fear in his voice coats my insides with a nasty sludge that settles like lead in the pit of my stomach.
I turn and run. I chase after them. They’re already climbing in the back of the ambulance by the time my feet catch up.
“Gia Henderson!” I shout my name at them.
They completely ignore me, but they don’t stop me when I climb into the back of the ambulance just before someone slams the doors closed.
Within seconds we’re in motion. I huddle in the corner, completely petrified. I try to remain invisible, it’s not difficult. Not a single person in that ambulance so much as glances my way. Their attention is focused on Damien.
The medics scream things back and forth to each other that my brain struggles to comprehend.
Two words.
Two words register.
“No pulse.”
I repeat them over and over again in my head like the most nauseating mantra known to mankind.
“Less than one minute out.” The driver shouts at us over her shoulder.
Dread creeps up my spine and wraps its knowing, long arms around my lungs and heart, squeezing me until I feel like I’m suffocating.
It’s both the longest and shortest few seconds of my life.
The medics hurry out of the ambulance meeting a team of people in scrubs who take Damien from them and leave me standing in the emergency bay of an unfamiliar hospital alone.
I want to crumple into the fetal position on the concrete. I want to fall asleep and pretend like this is just some bad dream. I want to be anywhere but here, living in this moment.
I shouldn’t have come. This is my fault. This loss. The fight. The blood. All of it.
I’m seconds from falling apart.
