the blood makes the heat rise in my body. I’m aware I’m borderline panicking, but I can’t lose Shepherd.
“We need to get you to a hospital. You can’t die, I can’t lose you,” I say as my breathing quickens.
Shepherd sets his hand on my wrist and gives it a gentle squeeze. “Killian, it’s okay. There’s nothing vital there, it’s just bleeding a lot and hurts like hell. I’m going to need you to get the medical kit out and let’s try to stop the bleeding.”
I nod as I realize that I need to stay focused and keep myself from passing out when he needs me now more than ever. So I tear open the bag and dig to the bottom where the medical kit is. Once it’s open, he reaches in with his good hand and pulls out a bottle of something.
“Okay, before we begin, there’s an exit hole, right?” he asks as he leans forward.
I peer around his shoulder, seeing that there is an exit wound which is probably the only positive thing about this. Because seeing it makes me question if I could just lie on the ground for a while. “Yes, there is,” I say as I take the bottle he’s holding out to me.
“Remember what we talked about with wounds? Disinfectant first.”
I nod and steel myself before spraying it into the wound. And while I’m ready to pass out, he seems to be handling everything perfectly fine.
“You doing alright?” he asks.
“I think you should worry about yourself and not me.”
He gives me a smile like any of this is smile worthy. Like he should waste any energy comforting me while he’s bleeding to death. “It’ll all be okay, alright?”
I nod, but I’m not so sure anymore. I should have just stayed in my home where my father dictated everything that happened. Everything I did.
He pulls out something else and hands it to me. “Put that on some gauze and push it into the wound, it’ll slow the bleeding.”
I nod as I take out some gauze and shake the powder down onto two gauze pads before pressing them against the entrance and exit wounds. His face distorts on that one, but he takes a deep breath.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
He nods.
Okay, focus, focus. He showed me all of this. He told me how to care for bullet wounds. I just need to stay focused. “Do we have time to do more?” I ask.
“No, just wrap it and let’s move. We can worry about more once we’re safe. I’m sure they’ll be looking for us soon.”
I nod and set to work on wrapping his shoulder the best I can before packaging everything back up. I glance out into the trees. “What about Bear?”
“We have to worry about ourselves. If he’s still at the house, he knows where Dave lives. He’ll go to him and we know Dave will take wonderful care of him.”
I nod because I need to trust him; he hasn’t steered me wrong yet. Shepherd reaches out and squeezes my fingers. “I know it’s hard leaving him behind, but we don’t have much of a choice,” he says. “Let’s hope he got scared and ran to Dave’s.”
I nod again but I know that Bear wouldn’t leave us unless he’s hurt or something happened to him. I want to run back for him, but I know that my priority is getting Shepherd somewhere safe where we can tend to his wounds.
“Do you remember the path?” he asks as he shakes some pills out onto his hand. He counts them out and swallows them down with water from the backpack.
“Yes,” I say as I reach back and take his good hand.
I don’t know why when he clearly doesn’t need me to lead him, but I just want him with me to keep him close. I want to feel him, to remember that I’m not alone, and that we can do this together. We just have to keep moving forward one step at a time.
He squeezes my hand as we walk, fighting hard to keep quiet and unnoticed in the forest because that will be our only key to survival.
Age Twenty
I almost have it. I almost have it.
I pore over the computer that I’ve stared at for hours. I’ve dug through every single thing in it because I know there has to be something. There has to be something that will ruin this man. That will drag him down so even his army can’t protect him.