Brutally Beautiful(75)

“Fucking hurts,” he coughed. His voice crept into my chest like cold dead hands on my heart, squeezing it tight.

Lainey pressed her foot down on the gas harder and asked, “Bree, how was that cough?”

“Clear,” Bree answered back through a garbled sob.

Flipping the dome lights on, she asked, “Skin color.”

“Perfect,” Bree sighed.

“Awesome. You’re doing great, Dylan. I’m going to drive with the lights on so Bree can watch you for any signs of stress, because she’s a big scaredy-cat when it comes to hospitals and such, and I think she’s a little in love with you so, I just want to make her feel better.”

“Yeah, mate,” he said. She was just keeping him talking. She was keeping him breathing. She was saving his life. She was saving my brother’s life.

The dial on the speedometer hit 150 miles per hour, and kept going while my hands gripped the seat. How f*cking fast does this little car go? The surge of adrenaline pumping through my veins helped me focus on Lainey’s voice during the whole drive, grounding me.

“You know, Dylan, there’s an ancient Chinese saying that goes, ‘You can live with a man for forty years. You could share his house, his meals, and talk with him every day about his every secret. Then tie him up, and hold him over a volcano's edge, one that’s about to erupt. And on that day, you will finally meet the man.’ You’re one hell of a strong man, Dylan Grayson.” She glanced over to me quickly, “And so is your brother.”

“Feels like I’m…feels like I’m in the volcano. Burns.”

“We’re almost there, Dylan, and as soon as we get there, you’ll get something for the pain okay?”

The first glimpse of light from the old gas station’s neon sign took my breath away. It couldn’t have taken Lainey more than eight minutes to get to the town’s border. “Slow down up near that diner that we ate at. You’re going to make a left and the hospital is about a mile up that road,” I said, trying to match the calm tone of Lainey’s voice. “Dylan, do you remember when Old Lady Bitlermeyer drove straight through the old gas station’s sign and she wouldn’t let me help her out?”

“Yeah, mate. She….said you were….the angel of death, coming to take her soul,” Dylan wheezed. Not even listening to his answers, I just kept him talking, just as Lainey did, until the bright lights of the hospital came into view. I couldn’t believe she’d gotten him there alive. The surge of hope in my chest burned a thick knot of fire so hot I had trouble breathing.

As soon as Lainey stepped foot out of the car, she grabbed the first guy in a white coat, told them who we were, and started sprouting off words that I would be definitely questioning later. An entire trauma team rushed through the pressure plate doors rolling a gurney and slammed it up against the hood of the Porsche with a loud crunch. When they pulled my brother out of the car, his face was pale and he was soaked with sweat. Lainey ran to him. “Two gunshot wounds…Possible right subclavian artery, loss of blood stunted by pressure and trauma tourniquet. Possible lung damage…Shortness of breath and wheezing, not coughing up blood yet and still able to speak. There are two trauma tourniquets around both wounds.”

Strapped down to the gurney, Dylan was whisked away, with Lainey and Bree on both sides of the nurses, running through the sliding doors of the ER. Slowly following behind, the bright white florescent lights made my eye sockets ache and my temples throb. I watched as they wheeled Dylan into a hallway and out of my sight.

The sliding doors closed behind me and the room seemed to blur and wobble. Black spots crowded the corners of my sight and the floor slipped up to meet me. Iciness seeped under my skin, spreading like an infectious virus throughout my body. Please God, don’t let him die. Please don’t take him away from me.