The world dissolved into a blinding, deafening blur of crimson lights and screaming sirens.
I didn't remember the ambulance ride.
I didn't remember the paramedics shouting over my head, or the way the vehicle violently swerved through the midnight traffic of Manhattan.
My reality had shrunk down to one single, horrifying image: William, lying flat on his back beneath a harsh fluorescent light, his chest bare and glistening with a terrifying amount of dark, viscous blood.
The ambulance doors flew open with a violent crash, and the sharp, sterile air of the hospital emergency bay hit my face.
"Trauma one! We've got a thirty-year-old male, gunshot wound to the upper left thoracic cavity!" A paramedic roared, his boots slamming against the concrete as they rolled the stretcher out of the vehicle at a dead sprint. "Massive internal hemorrhaging! Blood pressure is cratering, eighty over forty and dropping!"
"William!" I sobbed, my voice a raw, unhinged strip of leather.
