TW: mentions of violence, rape, blood
"Please, somebody help me!" she cried, her voice hoarse, curled up in a fetal position in the alleyway that she was disposed of.
Not a single person could hear her sobbing or see her mascara and eyeliner running down her pale face as she bled out. If they did hear her they didn't care enough to help her. She was in too much pain and too dizzy to move independently as she was bleeding out from her left side. She yelled as loud as she could and that wasn't very loud at this point. The scene was quite gruesome, a girl laying in a pool of her own blood with a deep slash in her abdomen. Her vision was becoming blurry and her hearing seemed like it was muffled as if she was wearing a pair of bulky, noise-canceling, headphones. She clutched a bunched-up section of her t-shirt pressed firmly against her bloody wound. She had no idea what else to do except to continue hopelessly crying for help.
"Is someone back there?" A male voice called.
"Somebody, please..." The girl cried again now losing her voice, as well as more fluids.
The male figure came closer and crouched down next to her, a phone pressed to the man's ear. He wondered what kind of monster would destroy such a beautiful girl. She couldn't quite make out what he was saying, but she could tell he was worried, definitely something she didn't expect from a stranger. Her head was spinning as the man's large hand came in contact with her forehead. The man gently caressed her head with his tattooed hands, in an odd attempt to keep her conscious and calm since the man really didn't know what to do in this type of situation.
"Please, hurry!" The man desperately begged into his iPhone, followed by muted gibberish coming from the other end of the call.
The kind stranger kept the girl company as they waited for an ambulance to come for her, which he hoped was soon. He searched for the girl's wallet, in an attempt to find an ID of some kind. He was successful in his search. He found a small black wallet with her driver's license in it.
Erin R. Harris, date of birth: October 29th, 1992.
The girl, who the man now knew as Erin, had gone unconscious due to losing such an excessive amount of blood. Her hand that was holding her wound had fallen to the cold blacktop beneath the two of them. This mystery man immediately pressed the section of her bunched-up t-shirt against the waterfall of blood, hoping that it would keep her from losing too much more. Some of Erin's blood stained the man's inked hands. Her body was limp and the man positioned her so her head rested on one of his thighs as he knelt next to her.
Minutes later, almost feeling like hours, the sounds of sirens grew louder and the lights became brighter as the ambulance backed halfway into the alley. Two paramedics emerged from the back doors of the vehicle with a red and black gurney. They lowered it down to the ground as much as they could, to avoid moving this unfortunate girl too much. The two paramedics gently lifted the fragile body off of the blacktop and onto the stiff mattress of the gurney and secured her to it. They raised the legs of the gurney and loaded Erin into the ambulance. They invited her savior to join them in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. Normally, only immediate family was allowed but the paramedics assumed that he might know something about Erin.
The man took a seat once the doors were closed and the vehicle began to move. There were three more paramedics in the vehicle, adding up to a total of five of them. One asked the man questions while the other four hooked Erin up to IVs and such.
"Okay, sir, what's your name?" The young woman with a clipboard asked him.
"Chris Cerulli," he answered, growing a bit anxious.
"Okay, Mr. Cerulli. Do you know the patient?"
"No, but I found a driver's license in this wallet," he replied, handing the black wallet to the woman.
The woman asked Chris more questions such as "what were you doing when you found the patient?" and "did you happen to see what happened?". Chris was walking home from a night out with his friends, sure it was almost 3 a.m. but he and the guys always hung out late. But he didn't see what happened, he just happened to hear Erin calling for help. Normally, Chris wouldn't interfere with such an event since he was the shy type but something wouldn't let him pass Erin by. It was so hard for Chris to think over the noise of the machines running and beeping, the sound of the sirens, and the calm yet somewhat panicked voices of the medics. Once they arrived at the Emergency Room entrance of the hospital, the medics helped get the gurney out of the ambulance and one went to get her checked in for emergency surgery as soon as possible. Chris was directed to a waiting room by a stray nurse and took a seat. He pulled his phone out of his jacket pocket and looked at his notifications. He had numerous texts from his friend Ricky. He was one of the guys that Chris had been hanging out with tonight.
"Dude, did you ever get home?"
"Chris answer!!!"
"It's almost 4 am you're scaring me!!!!"
Ricky: 13 missed calls
Chris sighed and swiped right on the notification about the missed calls since it would call Ricky back. Chris was shaking, in shock at what was happening, his brain could barely wrap around it. It amazed him how life is. You never know if you'll wake up dead or if you'll wake up immortal. His head was not in the best place for Ricky to start bombarding him with questions that he didn't have answers to. Hell, he didn't even know this girl.
"Chris, what the fuck? Why didn't you text me? I called you like twenty times! Jaime and I were so close to sending a search party for you!" Ricky screamed on the other end, speaking almost as fast as Eminem raps. Though it was comforting to know that he cared this much.
"It's a long story but I'm okay. I'm at the hospital," he informed him, taking a deep breath in an attempt to calm himself down.
"The hospital?" Ricky shrieked like a girl. "Are you hurt?"
"No! I'm fine. I'm here for someone else." Chris' heart was racing now.
Chris explained his entire situation the best he could but there were still questions that he had, still without answers. Sure, there were probable answers but nothing definite. Chris had so many questions of his own. What happened to Erin? Was it attempted murder? A mugging? Had a drug deal gone wrong? And who is Erin? He knew nothing about this girl and he just picked her up from the street in an attempt to save her.
What Chris did know was that Erin definitely needed emergency surgery, which was where she was right now. The doctors found that the stab wound had penetrated her kidney. Basically, lots of blood was being lost. A doctor tried to simply explain the procedure to Chris while Erin was opened up on the operating table, being worked on of course. Chris still didn't understand a single word of what the hell the doctor was saying. The doctor lost him right when she started talking about blood vessels. He just nodded and occasionally threw in an "uh-huh" or "yeah". First, he was shaken up about this whole situation, now he's exhausted – emotionally and physically – and now he had to hear about blood vessels and kidney penetration at almost 4 a.m. Give this man a break.
Chris ended up falling asleep in the waiting room. He got as comfortable as a 6'1 man could in one of the shitty chairs. He was just so exhausted, that he couldn't help it even if he tried, which he did for a while. Besides, people always fell asleep while waiting for people. It made the time pass quicker especially when he got bored of constantly refreshing his social media pages. When you sleep for eight hours sometimes you feel like you didn't sleep at all. It's strange how time moves. It's always too fast or too slow, it's never just right. Dreams also fuck up our perception of time. They make you see and feel things sometimes so realistic you don't even realize it was a dream. Right now, Chris wasn't dreaming. How could he when he was uncomfortable and only sleeping because he couldn't hold his heavy eyelids open much longer? It just wasn't that type of sleeping.
After hours of Chris' rest which will probably make him feel worse when he woke up, he was nudged awake by another nurse. His eyelids were still heavy and the bright, white, lights burned his eyes. He stretched his long arms upwards and his legs outwards. He rubbed his eyes before the nurse opened his mouth to speak.
"Erin's surgery was successful. She's been placed in room 203 and is hooked up to some IVs. She's not awake right now but the doctors are done with her for tonight," The nurse explained slowly, knowing Chris' brain was probably in a whirl after waking up.
"Okay. Can I go in there?" He hoped the answer was yes since there was the possibility of there being an empty bed or comfortable chair in the room.
"Of course," he smiled. "Right this way."
It was almost creepy being led down the plain corridors of a hospital in the early morning. Chris had not a clue what time it was but he still didn't bother to check. There were those huge carts that had all the cleaning stuff on it outside a couple of rooms. It smelled like old people and some kind of disinfectant cleaner. Chris tried his hardest to keep his Vans from making too much noise against the eggshell white linoleum tiles beneath his feet. It felt like they had been walking through the hallways for hours and it was just awkward silence between the two figures.
Reaching Erin's room was a relief. But to Chris' disappointment, there was no extra fucking bed. It was one of those rooms for only one person. There was a chair though. It was brown with cushions and armrests. Not terrible but definitely better than the shitty waiting room chairs. Before the nurse walked out, Chris thanked him and then sat down on the chair. He decided to shut his eyes again. Not sleep, just close his eyes. He sunk deep into the chair and rested his head on the back of it, his ass barely on the seat. Luckily, the grip of his sneakers kept him from completely slipping off. He was at peace. Sort of. Actually, he wasn't very comfortable since he was too tall to even attempt to curl up in the chair. Sure, he could just leave a note for Erin and then take off but that seemed like kind of a dick move. It was also pretty insensitive and besides, Chris knew he wouldn't want to wake up in the hospital without a person in sight. It's unsettling. He could only imagine the anxiety and fear that Erin would experience if she just happened to wake up with no one there to console her and assure her safety.
"Who the fuck are you?"
Chris' eyes flew open in response to the hoarse voice calling from the bed. "I'm Chris. I brought you here."
The girl went quiet for a minute, probably recollecting her thoughts.
"Do you remember what happened?" Chris spoke up and Erin tensed at his question.
"I wish I didn't."
She fiddled gently with the IV tubes that were attached to her pale, fragile, hands. She was silent again. Did Chris dare to ask anything else? Should he just wait for the doctor to ask questions? Hell, he doesn't actually know Erin to begin with so he definitely felt that he was overstepping a boundary. It was barely his business to even know her name. Especially since he found out her name by searching her pockets for a wallet that he hoped had some ID.
"If you don't mind me asking, what happened?" Chris mumbled, scared to even ask.
"My ex... he uh... raped me and then stabbed me. Left me in the alley to die." Erin inhaled sharply, obviously hesitating while speaking, and Chris' jaw dropped.
He thought it was a mugging or some kind of failed drug deal. Maybe even just a failed murder attempt. Just nothing as complicated as it really was.
"Oh my god. I'm so sorry." Chris got up from the shitty chair and sat on the side of Erin's bed, being careful and making sure that he wasn't sitting on her.
"Thank you for saving me, though. You don't even know me yet you were kind enough to save my life." A small smile appeared on Erin's face, and her cheeks flushed, she was definitely still in shock.
"Maybe we can change that."
Thank God she made it to the emergency room.