Filed to story: Brace Face Betty Drama Story
I have to find Marcus.
If he’s hurt, I need to be with him.
I crash into a firefighter on the stairs up to the library. He tries to grab hold of me, to stop me, but I duck around him, pressing forward…
..and then I stop.
The library’s a blood bath. Everywhere I look, bodies lie in strange, unnatural poses. Some of them are covered with grey sheets, body bags laid out on the floor beside them.
Fuck.
Where is Marcus?
WHERE IS MARCUS?
I see Sheriff Hainsworth, standing grimly by one of the stacks, his head bowed, hands on his hips, and I make a beeline for him. “Sheriff Hainsworth? Sheriff Hainsworth, have you seen Mar-“
The question freezes on my lips. At the sheriff’s feet, three EMTs are working frantically over a body. The floor is slick with blood. So much blood. It’s everywhere.
Then I see the hand thrown out lifelessly to one side. A glimpse of the fierce wolf tattoo on the back of it. The sharp, thorny vines that are wrapped around the wrist.
“Oh, God. God, no, that’s not…that’s not him?”
“Betty, get outside with the others. There’s nothing you can do here,” Sheriff Hainsworth commands, trying to push me back. I rip myself free of him, struggling forward, determined to prove to myself that I was seeing things just now. That the body on the floor does not belong to Marcus.
“He’s coding,” one of the EMTs grinds out, scrambling around in the small red bag beside her. “There’s too much blood. Airway’s collapsed. We need to intubate. Damn it, where the fuck is the epi!”
She shifts out of the way, and my heart stops dead in my chest.
Marcus.
It is him.
“No! No, no, no, no, no!”
His t-shirt’s been cut away, exposing his chest. And there, just below his left pec, a tiny, perfectly round hole is leaking blood all over his tattooed skin. His face is so pale, his dark eyelashes resting against his cheekbones. He doesn’t cry out in pain as one of the other EMTs sticks him with a needle. He doesn’t respond at all.
“Still in v-fib. Prep the paddles. Forget the trach kit. If we can’t get a rhythm, it won’t matter if he can’t breathe anyway.”
The dull roaring in my ears mutes the words they’re firing back and forth to one another. The world is crashing down around me. “Save him! Oh my god, you have to save him. Please!”
“For Christ sake, someone get her out of here,” someone snaps.
Hands close around the tops of my arms. I yank myself free again, spinning on the police officer I saw back in the hall. “Don’t fucking touch me! I’m staying!”
The EMT who stuck Marcus moves quickly, placing two gel pads on his chest. “Charging to two hundred. Clear.” She discharges the defibrillator next to her, and Marcus’s back arches off the ground. The next second, he’s still again. Lifeless.
“No good,” she says, her fingers pressed against the side of his throat. “Again. Charging to three hundred. Clear.”
I cover my mouth with my hands, biting down on my lip so hard that the metallic, sharp taste of blood coats my tongue. Marcus’s body jolts again, then slumps back down to the ground.
“Anything?” the first EMT asks.
The woman operating the defibrillator rechecks Marcus’s throat for a pulse…then shakes her head.
“Nope. Nothing. Flatline. I’m afraid he’s dead.”
…