A Love to Kill

Part Seventeen

A nice long part for you all to enjoy. I wanted to finish this by the end of winter break, but I don't think that's going to happen. Oh well. It's the beginning of the end now. I keep on wondering to myself why the hell I keep writing these romances lately. What do I know of love? Nothing. But, as an old friend of mine says, 'love and misery is the common fate of man.' I don't need love. Not when I have so much more to live for than someone holding me back.

Rodger closed his eyes, but when he opened them again, she was still there. Shit. Rodger grabbed a phone. 911. He never thought he'd be dialing that number in his life.

"Hello?" a calm woman on the other line greeted clamly.

"Hello? Um yes. I'm here with my girlfriend. I think she overdosed on pills."

"Is she breathing?"

Why didn't Rodger look and see if she was breathing before? He was losing his mind! He glanced over at her chest, rising and falling rapidly. "Yes."

"I'm sending someone out right away." The woman told him. "What's the address?"

What was the address? What was the address? Rodger ran outside the apartment. "The building is 2D. It's the apartment complex on maple."

"On maple?"

"Yes."

"Do you know what pills she took?"

Rodger ran back to Dawn's room in a frenzy, grabbing random bottles. "I can't read them. They look like pain pills to me, but probably much stronger. She had-has-cancer."

"What kind of cancer?"

What was that word? He couldn't believe it didn't pop straight into his mind. "Lymphoma!" he shouted as it finally came to him.

"So you think she just took the pills that were used to treat her lymphoma?"

"Yes. They're all empty."

"Is she unconscious?"

"Yes."

"Is she vomiting?"

"She was, by the looks of it."

"How long ago did she take the pills?"

"I don't know exactly. Maybe fifteen minutes ago?"

"An ambulance should be there any minute. Has her condition changed at all?"

Rodger scrutinized the dying girl. "No." he replied.

He could hear the roar of an ambulance down the street, the sound deafening. "Thank goodness. They're here."

"Good. You can hang up now, if you want to."

"Do you think they'll be able to save her?" he whispered into the phone.

"Hon, I'm a telephone operator, not a doctor. I don't know."

"I understand. Thank you." His voice was barely audible, especially with the blaring siren in the background.

"Good luck sweetie." Then she hung up.

The phone operator just called a murderer 'sweetie'. But Rodger didn't have time to laugh about the strangeness of that situation. Not when he was in the middle of a nightmare. He heard footsteps in the living room, and shouted to the paramedics "She's in here, down the hall. The last door."

Three professional looking men, and two women with sharp faces plunged into Dawn's bedroom, and strapped her to a gurney.

"We need to suction her stomach." One of them pointed out.