Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Said I needed to learn to meditate, do yoga, whatever helped me keep my blood pressure even. I’d still been in the denial phase and hadn’t asked him if it was because my blood pressure could impact my vision, or because he was worried I’d have a heart attack from holding everything inside.
But what if he had been talking about the health of my eyes?
Maybe all this pressure within was causing my vision to degenerate even faster.
I took a deep breath, immediately regretted it. The searing cold of the ambient air burned my lungs.
Shivering, I looked forward . . . and realized that most of the right wall was just gone. No wonder the air felt like shards of ice.
Small piles of white sat below the jagged remnants of the wall.
“The track with the brush marks seems to turn here.” Aaron moved the beam of his flashlight to the left. It wobbled.
“Sorry,” he said in a voice that held a tremor, “hit of vertigo. Can’t stop thinking that the wall to our right is barely hanging on.”
“Wigs me out, too,” I admitted. “I’m behind you, don’t worry. Stuck to you like glue. Try to lose me and I swear I’ll run screaming after you like a banshee.”
Chuckling, he turned left to follow the streak on the floor. The furniture around us lay upturned—as if the fire had thrown it around. A possible explosion? Like in that movie I’d seen a few years back about firefighters being blown back right after they opened the doors into rooms that boiled with fire.
Aaron’s hand banged hard against the back of what might’ve once been an armchair. Before I could ask if he was okay, the same hand crumpled partially under his arm as he went down hard on one knee. His flashlight hit the floor with him, the beam bouncing wildly until it settled, the light pointing back the way we’d come.
“Aaron!” I grabbed instinctively at his shoulder. “Did you trip?”
“My . . . head.” He leaned forward, his breath erratic pants. “Swirling.”
Wondering if he was having a panic attack, I knelt down and put my hand on the back of his neck. “Just breathe, slow and easy.”
He tried—I could see him fighting to concentrate—but he collapsed onto his hands and knees moments later, would’ve gone to the floor if I hadn’t slipped my arms under his and helped him to a seated position against the burned-out armchair.
“Go . . . look for . . . Ash,” he managed to get out, his words emerging in slow motion. “I’ll just . . . just . . . catch . . . my breath.”
I didn’t want to leave him, but knew he was right. The faster I did this, the faster we could leave. “Don’t move.” Leaving him with the bigger flashlight by his side, beam on, I used my smaller one to sweep the area while fighting the claustrophobia that was my lack of vision anywhere beyond the narrow strip of light.
When it passed over a pair of legs, I almost didn’t see it. My brain, hitching. Snagging.
A delayed reaction.
I swept back the beam, barely stifled a scream, and a split second later was rushing over to Ash. He lay slumped on his right side, part of his face pressed to the dust and blackened debris of the fire, and his skin so white that I was certain he was gone.
Hand shaking, I put my chilled fingers to his throat.
His skin was the same temperature as mine, and as still as death. No, wait—
After blowing on the tips of my fingers to warm them up, I pressed them against his throat once more . . . and wondered if I was imagining it. “No, it’s there.” A pulse too deep and far too slow. “He’s alive!” I yelled to Aaron.
“Thank God.” Lethargic but understandable.
Trembling, I began to check Ash for injuries. Had he hit his head?
My fingers were so cold once again that I didn’t even feel it when I touched something sticky on his back. It was only when the beam of my flashlight caught my hand that I saw my fingers were coated in red.
Perhaps it was shock, but I didn’t panic. I just shifted so I could look at his back.
A mass of darkness spread over the camel brown puffer.
Holes—so many holes—in the fabric, the filling that spilled out a dull pink from his blood.
“He’s been stabbed.”
No response from Aaron.
Heart kicking, I crossed back to him. “Aaron!”
“Lu . . . ?” My name a slurring attempt that faded into nothing as his eyes fluttered shut. He fought to open them. “Wh . . . wh . . .” Another exhale, this one quieter and somehow more peaceful.
Then, nothing.
I took hold of his narrow but strong shoulders, shook hard.
When I got no response, I didn’t give myself time to think—I slapped him on one cheek. Hard enough that it stung even my mostly numb palm.