The Man I Love (The Fish Tales, #1)(49)

Gradually the sound faded. Instead of crashing through a window, Erik came with a thump to a gentle halt. A solid weight nestled against his shoulder blades and he remembered he was sitting up against the side of row M.

He opened his eyes.

He looked at space. At the wall of the theater, at the plaster frieze around the stage and the curtain within it.

The auditorium was wrapped in screaming silence. Within this noiseless shroud, time slid out of proportion. A load of adrenaline tipped from the center of Erik’s chest and cannonballed into his stomach, splashed along his limbs until his fingernails were electric and quivering. Still he sat, pulling in breath after trembling breath and staring at the space where James had been standing. Negative space now. His stomach roiled and burned. A high-pitched whine took over one ear. A cold sweat began to creep down from the crown of his head, tingling and prickling along his hairline, dripping down his back.

His eyes skittered around and finally lowered to the floor. To James’s sprawled body. The gun still in his hand. The halo of red in the carpet around his head.

Clutching the arm of the aisle seat, Erik got up. He stepped over James and started down the aisle on wobbling legs. He stumbled, grabbing more seats until he steadied and began to run.

“Get down, Fish,” someone cried from behind him.

“It’s over,” he said, not looking back. “He’s dead. It’s over. Get help.”

Hand and foot on the apron, springing up onto the stage just as Lucky and John came creeping out of one of the wings. Neil Martinez’s head rose over the Manhattan skyline, David came crawling around the side. The theater was twitching, unfurling tentative feelers and tasting the air.

Blood pooled around Daisy and Will. Too much blood, Erik thought, just as his foot slid in it and he fell down by Daisy, his hands in a viscous puddle. Her head flopped over to him. She was white as death, her eyes dimmed to slate and frozen wide open. She looked at Erik, yet she looked through him.

Lucky was down by Will, raising up his left arm. A bloody mess where Will’s hand should have been.

“Towels,” Lucky yelled. “Look in dance bags, look backstage. Dressing rooms, wardrobe. Anything that looks clean, grab it. We need help here.”

Daisy’s left inner thigh looked torn open, as if she’d been mauled by a bear. Erik swallowed hard and pulled off his outer T-shirt, wadded it up thickly and pressed it against the heinous gash of flesh and tissue. She cried out, her hands flying up, trying to bat his away. Her spine twisting, she tried to move away from him, get away from the pain.

Erik gritted his teeth, knowing to help her he had to hurt her. “Lie down, Dais,” he said—using the harshest tone he had ever used with her—and he pushed the improvised bandage firmly against the wound. “Lie still.”

“Where’s the shot, Fish,” Lucky said. “Knee?”

“Inside of her thigh.”

“All right. Medial. Femoral artery. Find the pressure point. Top of her leg, right in her groin.” She pointed on her own body to the place. “Heel of your hand there and bear down.”

David, Neil and John came flying from backstage with towels.

“John, come here,” Lucky said. “Take his arm. Keep the towel in place on his hand. Your other hand here, this is the pressure point. Feel it? Keep holding it tight. Neil, get in here. See his side? The bullet went straight through. Pressure front and back. Good, keep it there.”

Lucky came to Daisy then. She snatched the towel David was trying to fold into a bandage. “Move,” she said. “Out of the way. Go get Will’s feet up, get them elevated. Fish, you keep pressure going. Let me in here.” Swiftly she replaced Erik’s shirt with the folded towel. “Jesus,” she whispered, a frantic edge in her voice. “Fuck, this is not good. We need help.”

Not letting up on the pressure, Erik jammed his elbow into Lucky’s side, just hard enough to startle her, shock her back on track. “Don’t you fall apart on me, Luck,” he said through clenched teeth. “You know what to do. You’re the only one who knows what to do. Do it.”

Lucky pressed her lips, drawing air in through her nose. “She breathing, Dave?”

David now lay on his stomach on the floor, holding Daisy’s head. “She’s awake.”

“Neil, Johnny—is Will conscious?”

“He’s with us,” John said.

“Pressure, then,” Lucky muttered. “Pressure, pressure…” Her lips moved vaguely, as if reciting.

Daisy moaned, her upper body writhing. “Squeeze my hands, Marge,” David said, giving them to her. “Hard as you want. Go ahead and break my fingers. I know you always wanted to.” Daisy moaned again and David began to speak soothingly in French. His voice was pitched low in his chest. It didn’t falter even as her face kept coiling up into spasms of pain and her knuckles were clenched white around his fingers.

Time dripped by.

“Will breathing?” Lucky kept saying.

Sometimes John answered, sometimes Neil. “He’s breathing,” they said.

“I’m breathin’, babe,” Will said once. His voice was soft and shaky, but it was there.

“Don’t talk,” Lucky said.

David kept whispering in French.

Daisy said nothing.

Little by little, Erik became aware of the presence of campus security. Then police began to fill the theater, sleek and menacing in vests and helmets. Like an invasion of black bugs they swarmed the aisles and wings, multiplied to fill the stage with authority. Loud voices. The crackle of walkie-talkies. And everywhere Erik glanced he saw guns.