The Devil's Elixir

8

“Meesh, stay with me, okay? Just hang in there,” I yelled, breathless, all kinds of expletives coming out thick and fast inside my head as I threw quick glances behind me to see how she was while I pulled out my phone.

As I hit the green button twice to redial the last called number, I caught a glimpse of her looking up at me, and it wasn’t good. Her eyes were half-closed, her mouth was twisted with pain, and the sheen of sweat on her face had turned into a full-on drench. Her chest was now soaked in blood, and she had her right arm around Alex, squeezing him tight against her. Her eyes widened and hooked mine, and she started to say something, but it was cut short as she coughed and blood spurted out of her mouth.

My gorge shot up into my neck.

“Hang in there, baby,” I repeated as Villaverde picked up the call.

“Reilly?”

“I’m with Michelle, she’s been shot, we need help,” I told him. “I’m in the car with her and her kid and—” I scanned the area around us, looking for markers to give him. “I’m on the seafront, heading west, away from the hotel.”

“You being pursued?”

I glanced in the mirror, but couldn’t see any sign of the goon squad.

“No. But I need to get her to a hospital, fast.”

I heard Villaverde call out to one of his men, then he said, “Okay, you must be on Harbor Drive, which means the nearest hospital to you is . . .” He paused, thinking about it.

“Come on,” I hollered, “she’s bleeding out”—and just then, something caught my eye, in the sky, to my left. An airliner, coming in to land.

My pulse tripped. “Forget the hospital. I’m by the airport.” My eyes scanned the road ahead and, sure enough, I spotted a big overhead sign for the airport, announcing an exit for Terminal Two. “Get them to send an ambulance to meet me outside Terminal Two. I’m in a blue Ford sedan.”

“Hang on.”

I heard him yell out the order to get onto the airport’s EMS dispatcher, then Villaverde came back.

“What about the shooters?”

“I got one of them in the parking lot, some of him might still be there when your people get there, but the others’ll be long gone.”

“All right, I’ll keep you posted. And good luck with her.”

I chucked the phone onto the seat next to me and crunched the pedal. As we blew past some slower vehicles, I adjusted the mirror and locked it onto Michelle’s face.

“Almost there, Meesh, you hear me?” I urged her, “We’re almost there.”

Her eyes were struggling to stay open.

Fear swamped my heart as I guided the Ford past a blur of cars before veering off the six-lane road and throwing the car onto the winding ramp that led to the terminal. Less than a minute later, we were pulling up to the curb by a startled traffic cop.

I leapt out of the car and threw a quick glance up and down the ramp, looking for the EMS van. There was no sign of it.

“There’s an ambulance on its way,” I shouted to the cop as I flung open the rear door to get to Michelle. “See if you can find out where it is. We’ve got an emergency here.”

I leaned in, and the sight that greeted me froze me stiff. Michelle wasn’t moving. Her breathing was shallow and when it did come, it wasn’t much more than a feeble wheeze. There was a messy streak of blood and saliva running down from the side of her mouth, and the car seat was drenched.

Softly, I reached out and pulled up her shirt, looking for the wound. There was a dark crevasse just under her left breast, and thick blood was seeping out of it. I put my hand on it and applied some pressure, trying to stem the bleeding, anticipating the pain I’d be causing Michelle, and sure enough, she flinched hard as my hand pressed harder. I moved my other hand up to her face, giving her pale, clammy cheek a caress, unsure about whether or not she could even feel it. As I did, my eyes drifted off her face and down to find Alex, who was tucked in under her arm, his face down, his eyes shut tight. He was shivering wildly.

“Hey,” I said, softly. I reached over, then hesitated and pulled my hand back before it settled on the boy’s head. “It’s gonna be okay,” I told him in that annoying, desperate way that we sprout out these platitudes. “She’s gonna be fine.”

Alex didn’t look up. Instead, he remained still for a moment, still coiled up tight and trembling, then he gave me a minuscule nod before going back to his shell-like seclusion.

I felt my heart stall as Michelle’s warm blood kept seeping through my fingers—then I heard a faint siren growing in the distance.

“They’re here, Meesh, you hear that? The ambulance is here.”

Her eyelids flickered half open, allowing her eyes to connect with mine momentarily. Her face scrunched up as she tried to say something, but she couldn’t manage it and just coughed up some more blood.

I leaned in closer. “Don’t talk, sweetie. Just hang in there, we’ll have you in the ambulance in no time.”

She seemed insistent and tried again, but the words shriveled up in her throat.

“What is it, baby?” I asked as I heard the siren’s shriek grow louder, almost with us now.

Her eyes widened briefly, like it was the result of some superhuman effort, and she met my gaze again, even though it seemed to be taking a huge toll on her. “Alex,” she wheezed. “Keep . . . keep him . . . safe.”

“Of course. Hey, I’m not going anywhere,” I said, managing some feeble attempt at a reassuring smile, stroking her cheek while keeping my other hand pressed down on the entry wound. “We’re both right here with you,” I told her as I glimpsed the ambulance pulling up behind us.

Within seconds, the paramedics were in the car, checking her out. My gut twisted as I read the look on their faces when they first saw how pale and weak she was and when they saw the amount of blood that she’d lost. With more and more curious onlookers congregating around the car, I helped them lift her out of it and onto a stretcher, keeping Alex close and hanging onto his hand before doing my best to shield Michelle from his view as the paramedics tended to her on the curb.

The sound bites coming from them weren’t reassuring.

“She’s got massive internal bleeding,” one of them finally told me while struggling to set up a second intravenous line into her arm. “I can’t tell what’s been hit, but we can’t do anything about it here. She needs surgery.”

Just then, some sensors started beeping wildly and the other paramedic blurted, “She’s crashing.” The first paramedic sprang to action and they both went frantic, hands and mouths moving at lightning speed as one of them started on the CPR while the other looked into her mouth to secure an airway for intubation. I stood back and watched in numb silence as they worked on her, feeling my whole body seize up every time she convulsed under the paramedic’s compresses, holding Alex tight against me, making sure the kid couldn’t see what was going on, hoping against hope that they’d be able to save her, but somehow knowing it wasn’t going to work out, feeling impotent and helpless at not being able to step in and make things right and bring her back to her vibrant, mesmeric self, feeling a surge of fury converging in my temples and making them feel like they were going to erupt, then the beeping stopped and the flatline took over and the lead paramedic turned to me with a tenebrous look and a small shake of the head that reached deep into my very core and shredded everything in its path.