The Boiling Point | ✔️

45 | collateral damage

ASHTON

They say that any meaningful things you see when you die are just hallucinations your brain conjures up when it loses oxygen. I think it depends on how you go. If it's sudden, you don't have time to realize you're dying. That way, I think everything just goes dark. And if it's a slow death, like mine, you're thinking about your life as you go. Those thoughts move with you, fall with you, and pass with you.

As I lay bleeding out, I thought about four people: the mother I never knew, the almost-mother who saved me, my brother of a best friend, and the girl who turned my life inside out.

I saw their faces, and I knew what I'd say to each of them if I had to say goodbye. And it devastated me that I wouldn't get that chance. Especially with Summer. I would die and our last interaction would stay that way forever. Another fight, another blow to her heart.

And then I felt my mom scooping me up in a blanket of warmth. It was only for a moment. I don't know how, but I knew it was temporary. And then the warmth was gone, and Nick was there. Fuzzy blackouts. Sirens. He was yelling. It's always jarring when Nick yells. Why was he yelling? Oh right. My death.

Fading in and out, I register the speed of the ambulance, a paramedic handling bloody gauze. I register Nick on the phone. He says her name.

"Summer," I repeat through an oxygen mask, trying to sit up, being held down. Headrush. Weakness. "I'm sorry. Tell her I'm sorry... tell her..."

Darkness.

❖❖❖

Like a slow, monotonous alarm, the sound of a beeping machine slips into my conscious as I wake. The surprise of being alive hits me first, then the dryness of my throat, and then the sharp burning pain radiating from the left side of my stomach.

I open my eyes with difficulty, getting my blurry bearings. The lights are dimmed and I know I'm not in heaven, but I'd recognize that angelic head of hair anywhere. Summer is sitting next to the bed I'm in, resting her arms on the mattress, her head down. I reach over and touch her hair.

"Summer," I mumble, clearing my groggy throat. She flaps away my hand and I realize she's sleeping. "Cupcake."

A couple of seconds pass before her head whips up. "Ashton! You're awake!" She leaps forward and embraces me, making me grimace from the spike of pain to my abdomen, but I don't tell her to let go. "We thought you weren't gonna—I was so scared—I'm so—" a whimper escapes her as she strokes my face, tender over the bruises.

"It's okay, it's okay." I breathe through tight lungs, watching her eyes welling. "Looks like I'm sticking around."

"How did this happen? Was it your dad?"

I slowly shake the fog from my head. "No, this guy he owes money. Julian," I murmur in thought, straining for the snippets of how I ended up here. "I remember getting home and seeing the door open, I thought it was my dad but his truck wasn't there... everything was trashed. Julian was looking for him, looking for money. We got in a fight when I couldn't pay him."

"So he shot you because your dad owes him money?"

I hear the gun shot reverberate in my head. I should have figured he was carrying, but it never even struck me during the fight. "Yeah... guess I was just collateral damage. A message for my dad to find whenever he comes back."

"Even when he's not here he's causing damage." Summer sighs and reaches over to the bedside table. "They got this in the surgery."

She gives me a little plastic vial that holds a single bullet. I feel the side of my stomach, wondering how something this small can cause so much harm. Being in this hospital, surgery, all this machinery around me – it suddenly sinks in and I start trying to get the tubes out of my nose.