Dare to Breathe

by Tina Maurine

  I. CAN’T. BE. IN. HERE. ANYMORE.

  At the ‘T’, I took a left and froze.

  Someone was there. I warily backed up as stealthily as possible. Maybe they hadn’t seen me right? I mean, it’s dark where I was and they had moonlight coming from the classroom, filtrating through the opening where the vent had been. I sat. I waited.

  Chapter

  +8 Hours

  “Rhea?” A nearly inaudible whisper wafted to my ears. Had I heard correctly? I had begun to think I was maybe going crazy what with all the bizarre thoughts that I’d had playing in my mind. It was crazy how someone as sarcastic and sane as me could feel the crazies from being cooped up in the dark, confined, eerily silent air duct I had been in for close to… I pulled out my phone and stuffing it under my shirt, swiped the screen. 4:15 stared back at me. It had been almost exactly twenty hours since I had stepped foot on campus and impossibly longer since I had eaten anything or peed. Just thinking about it put me in a bad way.

  “Rhea!”

  That time I was positive I heard my name; I cautiously peered around the corner of the duct intersection and nearly came face to face with a man. I fell back on my ass, scrambling to get away from him. I rolled back onto all fours and scrambled to get away. I was certain that this was how I would die. My time was up.

  Strong hands reached out for me and long, solid fingers wrapped around my right ankle closest to him.

  It’s all over.

  I rolled onto my right side and kicked with my left foot as hard as I could, air gusting out of my lips as quickly as I sucked it in.

  “Jeezus Rhea! Stop for Christssake!”

  I froze. I quit struggling. How did the gunman know my name? Surely they had taken some sort of attendance off a class roster and I was the only girl missing.

  “H…how do you know my name?” My voice was unrecognizable. Small, timid, weak—so everything I wasn’t.

  “Fuck. We’ve only been emailing each other since this damn thing started.” At that, he let go of my ankle, and I pulled myself into a seated position. I didn’t trust he was who he said he was…not yet. I hugged myself tightly, keeping away from him. Away from sure death.

  “Jeezus Rhea, it’s me, Eli.” His voice softened and he rounded the corner and pulled my bundled body in tightly alongside him. I couldn’t believe it. I wasn’t alone anymore.

  I’m not alone. I’ve made it. It’s finally over.

  I exhaled severely into his chest as he stroked my hair, tightly hugging me to him.

  “Shh. Shh baby. It’s all over. I won’t leave you.

  You’re not alone any longer.”

  I couldn’t help myself and sobbed heavily. “Eli.

  Eli…my sweet Eli.” I looked up at him and intense chemistry flowed between us. Unabashedly, wildly. It shook me even deeper to my core than the fear I had been existing in the past day. His lips lowered down to mine and pressed softly at first against my cracked, chaffed ones.

  I let myself feel something other than the panic and terror I had felt every second of every minute of the last twenty hours. I kissed him back. Gently at first, then with a degree of passion that I’d only read about in those cheesy newsstand romance novels. My hands moved into his hair as I pulled him to me for an even deeper kiss. Eli responded, drawing my tongue into his mouth and caressing it with his own. His hands held my face and guided our kiss. It wasn’t aggressively lustful, but a kiss filled with pent up desire and need. I needed him to make me feel safe. I needed this minute, these sixty seconds to forget about where I was, where I’d been and what I’d have to do to survive.

  As he pulled his mouth from mine, he kissed my forehead. “Come on, we need to get moving before everyone wakes up.”

  I nodded. “Isaac, I think he’s been shot.” “Your professor?”

  I nodded again. “I haven’t heard from him since those last two shots went off last night. I got so tired right after that I fell asleep for a short time, but when I woke up the only emails were from you.” I stumbled over my words, “I mean, not that I wasn’t glad you wrote me.”

  He cut me off, “It’s just you had hoped to hear from him. I understand.” I could hear the smile in his voice even if it was too dark to see him. “We really need to get out of here.” He patted my leg and moved toward the ‘T’. “Are you coming?”

  I nodded and followed at his heels until just before we reached the vent opening. Eli went on ahead, pausing at the entrance to the darkened classroom before disappearing completely.

  A moment later he was back. “Rhea? Baby, we need to move.”

  I crawled towards the vent opening and paused at the dead-end that I had found refuge in for so many hours.

  “We really need to get moving.” His voice was urgent, demanding me to move.

  I nodded although he couldn’t see me. I hesitated to step out. I couldn’t explain it, but now I understood why caged animals didn’t always choose to escape when their cage doors are left open. Just the vastness of the open space was daunting. Terrifying really; so was not knowing if the gunmen were around the corner.

  Eli reached out for me and I grasped his hand as though it were a lifeline and I were drowning.

  “That’s it,” he said softly, “you’ve got this.” He pulled me to my feet and our bodies brushed for a second time, sending shock waves through my body, intense feelings flirting across my soul. He took my hand, and I followed at his heels to the rear door of the classroom.

  He turned to me, “We’ve got to move fast. Where did you say Isaac was?”

  “He said in the beginning he was heading to the attic, but we were talking to one another last night and he said he was in the storage room below the attic.” I shrugged, “I had no idea where that is.”

  “Okay, I if it is near the attic then I know where it is.

  Stay on my heels, we haven’t got much time.” I nodded and smiled timidly.

  He quietly pulled the door open and checked the hallway lit by only emergency lighting. Nodding to me that is was clear, he pulled me through the door and down the hall. It was antagonizing how slowly we were moving, placing our feet carefully so that none of the gunmen in the room down the hall heard us.

  At the first corner, we paused so he could check and then at every subsequent corner until we reached a doorway. We stopped and he nodded toward the door. I stared back at him like a doe in headlights.

  Does he really expect me to go in there alone? He said he wouldn’t leave me alone!

  “Rhea,” he said in a low whisper. “That’s the door, Isaac should be there. I have to go do a check and see what’s going on outside. Last I looked there were teams staging outside.”

  I just nodded and reached for the door pushing it carefully open. “Make it back safely.”

  He smiled and swooped down for a brief kiss. “I will. I’ve been moving around all night.” He winked and was off.

  I turned back toward the darkened room and stepped in, gently closing the heavy door behind me. It wasn’t nearly as dark as the ducts had been and once my eyes adjusted to the lack of light—the moonlight lit things up pretty well. I moved into a dark corner and scanned the room for any type of movement.

  “Isaac? ISAAC, are you there?” I whisper-shouted his name, hoping he’d hear me. SILENCE. I searched the room for the air vent and finally saw it across the room, partially showing behind a stack of boxes. If he had been talking to me from there, I’d surely see him. I reached the boxes and expecting to see him felt the bottom drop out of my stomach. He wasn’t there. I sat down behind the boxes, I had to try to figure out where he was.

  Minutes went past as I tried to piece together the turns that I had taken to reach the vertical air duct that I had talked to Isaac through.

  Vertical air duct…VERTICAL AIR DUCT! He was above me and this room was on the same floor as me! I had to find stairs!

  With a renewed sense of purpose, I stood up and scanned the room. It was a large room, big enough to hold a large lecture in, o
r a social dance. There were all kinds of boxes, posters, computers, classroom furniture littering the room, so I decided the best way to find the attic entrance was to trace the perimeter. I went ahead and moved forward, seeing as how I already knew there were no doors or stairwells from the direction I’d come.

  The process was a bit tedious, because although I could see reasonably well, there was still a lot of stuff I had to navigate without bumping. After a few sufferable minutes,

  I located what I was looking for, the storage door to the attic. I glanced back behind me, making sure the coast was clear and pulled it open. A blast of frigid air hit me—they obviously had the attic on a different heating zone. I made sure the door gently closed and pulled my phone out, sweeping the screen so the light from the home page could light my way. I noticed that I had emails, but none from Eli or Isaac; and quite frankly—everyone else could wait.

  The space at the top of the old wooden stairs opened into an expansive room with exposed wooden beams and high ceilings. If I had thought the other room was littered with boxes and random shit, this room had twice the amount…at least.

  “Isaac? Isaac! Are you up here?” I heard a faint scuffling, a sort of scraping noise and I followed it around several piles of boxes until I could see the far end of the room. There, laying on the ground was a dark shadow and beside it—an air vent.

  Oh my God! Isaac!

  I ran towards him, not even considering the echo my feet made on the hardwood floor. My only thought was he was alive. I knelt down beside him, “Mr. Matthews—oh my God Isaac, you’ve been shot.”

  Two chestnut colored eyes flickered open and blinked a few times before focusing on me. He didn’t say anything, but just stared at me.

  “Isaac? Please tell me you’re okay?” I reached out for him, but when I touched him he jumped involuntarily. It was only then that he reached out for me.

  “Rhea? Rhea is that you?”

  I took his hand in mine and leaned over him so he didn’t have to turn his head or strain to see me looking into

  his eyes. “I’m right here. Eli found me and now I’ve found you.”

  Tears filled his eyes and he gave my hand a weak squeeze. “I’ve been shot.” I followed his hand with my eyes to his abdomen, and below his diaphragm was a large bloody stain on the upper right side closest to me.

  “Jeezus, Isaac, you’ve lost a lot of…” My eyes swept the floor area he’d been laying on and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed the pooled blood. “…blood.”

  “Rhea?”

  “Shh, Isaac, you don’t need to say anything. Help is almost here.”

  “Don’t lie to me. I’m not going to make it…the blood, it’s all over and I’m so cold.”

  I started to pull away from him, to get up and go find something to help keep him warm with but he caught my arm.

  “Rhea. You’re all that has kept me alive. Thinking of you and me after all of this. The possibility of us, how good it can be means everything to me. This is your sliding door; don’t let our future pass you by.” I placed my index finger on his lips to silence him, but he kissed it. His grip on my arm got surprisingly stronger and he was actually trying to pull me into him. “Rhea, just one. Just one kiss to tide me over.”

  I looked into his teary eyes and my heart ached for him. We had bonded through the duct, and I hated to see my own fear reflected back at me in his eyes. I leaned into him, scarily aware that his bullet wound was about where I was, and I kissed him. My lips grazed his in a demure kiss before I raised my head.

  He chuckled and coughed as he did so, grasping his abdomen. “Aw, come on. Surely you can’t let that be the last kiss I ever receive. That was pitiful.”

  I smiled widely and leaned in, teasing him with my hot breath as I looked into his eyes. “Isaac, you kept me alive in the duct, and I’m going to keep you alive out here.” My lips met his in earnest, and as his mouth parted, my tongue slid into its warm depths. Our tongues danced, pulling and drawing from the other. For a gunshot victim, he sure could kiss. When I finally raised my head, I was nearly as breathless as he was.

  “Dear God…” I said breathlessly.

  “I’ve been praying to him all night myself.” The cutest playful smile flickered across his lips before his body started shaking uncontrollably. I ran my hand across his forehead and hopped up. Immediately my eyes found a heavy moving blanket that had been laid over some print billboards for protection. I whipped it off and rushed back to Isaac, covering him. Praying it would stop the shivering.

  My Grand-Mimi had been young for her age and I had gone to her when she was only in her early forties. She’d met and been devoutly loyal to Jessie, an EMT. They had never married, but that was only because she had been married to the role of raising me. They stayed together until I was a senior and he passed from a tragic gunshot wound he had received on the job. But one of the things she had encouraged was our relationship and I thought of him as a father—even if he wasn’t. He had taught me many things back in the day that I had filed in the useless file, but seeing Isaac laying there in a pool of blood—well I accessed the ABCDE file he had taught me.

  Airway—I quickly assessed whether Isaac’s airway was unstable or at risk, but saw no need for intervention.

  Breathing—I assessed his breathing sounds, rate and depth. I listened to the sounds of his breathing and noted they were shallow.

  Circulation—well, that was the obvious one. He’d lost a lot of blood and would most definitely need several units once they got him to the hospital. I checked the rate, regularity, strength and quality of his pulse and made a note that it was weak and fluttery. He was in a dire situation if he didn’t receive help soon.

  Disability/Neurological—He was alert to verbal stimuli and responsive to pain.

  Expose—I did a quick evaluation of his body, pulling the blanket and his clothing aside. I found that he’d held a now saturated sock to his bullet wound in his upper abdomen for some time—probably until he’d passed out or gone into shock last night. I didn’t find another bullet wound and was relieved that of the two shots fired, only one had hit him.

  I completed the ABCDE assessment and looked back at Isaac. His eyes had already gotten glossy again since I had started my evaluation, and I wondered just how much blood he’d lost. He seemed to be slipping away.

  I leaned back over him and whispered, “Don’t you dare die on me, Isaac! Not after everything we’ve been through. Don’t you dare die.”

  His eyes rolled back into his head and his breathing shallowed. I leaned in to make sure he was still breathing.

  “…love yo…” the last two sounds he breathed out before he went silent.

  Oh sweet Jeezus! No. No…you couldn’t be…

  I sat back on my heels, watching him, looking for evidence he was still breathing—there, a breath; as shallow as it was—he’d only passed out.

  For now. I sighed a breath of relief.

  I moved to the other side of him and laid down, pulling the blanket over our heads, and snuggling in closely. He’d lost so much blood I wanted to make sure he didn’t slip into hypothermia, and if I could keep his core temperature up through our body contact and a warmer environment…well—hell, he’d have less of a chance of hemorrhaging.

  Thank you Grand-Mimi for Jesse!

  As I lay there snuggling in to him, enveloped in his scent, there. Right there was where I needed to be. Exactly where I wanted to be.

  Chapter

  +10 Hours

  I must have dosed off. Being under such emotional duress and being snuggled in tightly to a fine specimen of a man will do that to you. I smiled—really? Never mind, being snuggled up against a sexy man has never put me to sleep before. I was curious where Eli was. What time is it? How long have I been out? I couldn’t bring myself to move from the warm cocoon I’d fashioned. Light was visible through the blanket, so I knew it had to be after six in the morning— the sun was up.

  “You’re awake.” The gravelly
voice beside me sounded so pained, so finite that I raised on my elbow to look into his eyes.

  Those eyes that I had gotten lost in many times over the past two years, were focused pointedly, directly at me.

  “It feels better than I’d imagined having you like this…by my side I mean.”

  “Shh, just rest.” I was beyond relieved that he was hanging in there. I was well aware that the liver and gallbladder were in the vicinity of his wound, and gauging the amount of blood he’d lost, they’d probably been compromised. If my estimation on the time was right, he’d been shot over eight hours ago. It was superhuman that he was still alive let alone talking to me.

  “I’ll have plenty of time for rest—I want, I want you to know somethings.” he said unevenly, pausing to suck in a shallow breath. “I’ve had a lot of time to think.” His breathing was shallow, and his words were coming out in gusty exhales. I could tell he was having a hard time talking, but was expending the effort because he felt it was important.

  I smiled genuinely at him. Earlier I had told him that my heart had been filled, but that I wasn’t against the

  possibility of us; so, didn’t I at least owe him these precious moments?

  “You’re so beautiful.”

  I blushed, thankful he couldn’t see it in the dim light under the blanket we were still cocooned under.

  “You know, I noticed you when you toured campus as a high school senior nearly three and a half years ago. I was finishing up my senior year and looking at options for my future in Advertising and Journalism. I choose the Ph.D route, but having you in my classes was a benny for sure.” He coughed, grabbing his abdomen as waves of pain rolled across his face.