Its color was too grotesquely bright, its scent too overwhelming.  She remembered a car accident when she was young; remembered her mother, dazed and bleeding, frantically checking her children for injuries.

She'd shrunk back in fear, wide eyes drawn to the trails of crimson down her mother's cheek, the drops hovering at the edge of her jaw before falling away into oblivion.

The sight of her panicked, bleeding mother was far more terrifying than the accident itself, the shriek of metal on metal, the sickening lurch of incomprehensible motion, the sudden, jarring silence.

That time, too, she'd been unable to recall the event for days, her mind fixated on the blood.

Last night, she was walking along, laughing with Sam, and then she was dazed and bleeding on the ground.  Even now, her palms and her knee ached from the fall, her head pounded, arrhythmic and insistent, and she couldn't remember anything before the blood.  Her hand, pressed against the pain in her skull, came away dripping with blood.

Her stomach twisted, her breath caught, and her gaze locked onto her hand.  She didn't know how long she'd sat there on the ground behind a squad car, surrounded by panic and chaos, before a paramedic pulled her up, tended her wounds, cleaned the blood from her hands.

Already, she'd forgotten what happened.  She knew, looking around, but she couldn't remember.  That was bad enough, the blood on her hand, the pain in her heart, but then it got infinitely worse.

Toby's tortured cry, the undisguised panic in his voice -- she'd known immediately, with that sense of sick certainty she always experienced during crises.  She and Sam, clutching at each other, reached Toby and saw Josh's bleeding body, lying across the top step, one arm dangling down the stairs.

The only thing she could see at first was the blood.  Dark, deep red against the blue of his shirt, glowing dully in the night.  She fell to her knees below him, her gaze caught on his bloody, lax hand.  He's dead, she thought.  He must be dead.

She could hear Toby's curt orders, Sam's anguished replies, and knew they were trying to stop the bleeding.  She tore her gaze from his hand, pale under the blood, and looked at his face.  His head was turned a bit towards her, his eyes closed, his mouth parted.  He must be uncomfortable on the rough cement, she thought absurdly, so she slid her hand underneath his head, scraping her knuckles in the process.

Her fingers trailed through the softness of his hair, and her free hand clutched blindly at his arm, silently begging him to open his eyes and look at her.  She said his name, her voice strangled, just before the paramedics arrived, swooping in and scattering her, Toby, and Sam to the edges of the frantic activity.

The paramedics ripped open his shirt, slit it right down the middle, and exposed his chest, pale, and overflowing with dark blood.  She made a strangled noise, squeezed his hand convulsively.

It was fragmented, her memory.  She didn't remember anything in between the stairs and climbing into the harsh, fluorescent light of the ambulance.  She squinted as she clambered in, still holding Josh's limp hand, still trying to anchor him to his body by sheer willpower.  She was a damn stubborn woman; her mother had always told her that.  So she decided that Josh was going to live if she had anything to say about it.  Her tone grew more commanding, less a plea than a demand for compliance.

She thought Sam and Toby were squeezed into the ambulance too, that the pressure around her back was maybe Sam's arm, but she couldn't tear her gaze away from Josh's blood.  His pale, pale chest struggled, rising in uneven fits and starts, his breath rattling ominously each time.  Crimson leaked from the hole, now hidden by stark white gauze slowing turning a dull rust color.  The effect was like watching celluloid melt on an old filmstrip, only from light to dark, deep red.

There was more.  Tubes and needles and beeping, and then Josh's hand clutching hers as his eyes fluttered open.

It's possible that she yelled his name, that she leaned over so he could see her.  He smiled, a scary, demented grin, and then coughed, wet and ragged.  He struggled to breathe, his hand exerting pressure against hers, trying to join its mate in clawing at the wound.

Yelling from the paramedic, from Toby, from Sam.  Something about his lung.  He couldn't breathe, but she knew that much just from watching the look in his eyes, the naked fear, the desperation.  She realized belatedly that she was matching her breaths to his, that she was lightheaded because she was breathing as fast and as desperately as Josh, his hands clutching at her.

And then the doors burst open, Josh was ripped away from them, from her, and careening towards the double doors.  She and Toby and Sam jumped down, stumbling, and caught up, joining the phalanx as they rounded a corner, gained Leo's panicked voice and frantic demands for information.

The noises around her faded, Leo, Sam, Toby -- she couldn't hear them.  She couldn't hear the doctors and nurses tossing incomprehensible acronyms and numbers back and forth as they circled Josh in carefully orchestrated chaos.  All she could see was Josh.

Josh's white skin, his hands smeared with blood.  A smudge of red on his pale cheek as he yanked feebly at the oxygen mask, struggling to rise.  Sam tried to soothe him.

She stood back, shaking violently, and watched the nurse strip Josh with efficiency, watched the soaked, bloody, scraps of fabric fall into a heap on the floor.  A sharp noise startled her, and she focused on the sickly blue drape settling on Josh's chest, covering his tiny, deadly, bleeding wound.

God.

Leo made a strangled noise beside her, and she could see Sam still at Josh's side, his eyes widening in shock as the doctor sliced into Josh's side.  Into his skin.  Toby's hand grabbed hers, and they watched, horrified, as the blood pooled in this fresh wound, and then a body -- the doctor's body was blocking their view.

Another groan, but this time she wasn't sure if it came from Leo or from Toby.  Josh had slipped into unconsciousness, his pale eyelids fluttering closed, his mouth, once pursed in pain, slack and partially open, leaving small clouds of condensation on the oxygen mask.  The doctor stepped back, revealing his handiwork -- a clear tube disappearing into Josh's body, carrying dark red blood out.  An alarming amount of blood.

The bullet wound was bad enough, the small, evil tear in Josh's body, but to watch the doctor rend his skin, invade his chest -- she was sure she was going to throw up.

Before she had time to react, to faint or vomit or whatever else her body decided would be appropriate, a nurse materialized directly in front of them, Sam in tow.  They had to leave now, they were told; they were ushered out and deposited, still numb and trembling, in a waiting room.  Abbey and Zoey were already there, and looked up, panicked, when the four dazed staffers stumbled in.

She dropped into a seat, her knees giving into the liquid feeling seeping through her body, and Leo filled them in.  She couldn't concentrate, couldn't explain, couldn't think of anything but that tube filled with Josh's blood, flowing out of his body.  Leaving him.

Sam was nearby, she could tell.  His crisp, white shirt was like a sunspot in her peripheral vision.  And then Toby was pulling him up, leading him away.  Something about washing the blood off.  She sucked in an uneven breath and managed to focus on her own hands.

Bloody.

Her hands were bloody.

Josh's blood was on her hands.

Her head dropped down and she struggled to breathe normally.  Then Abbey was with her, rubbing her back and speaking softly.  She had no idea what Abbey was saying, but it helped.  It anchored her to reality, to the waiting room, instead of that tube, or the image of Josh's arm dangling lifelessly down the flight of stairs.

A choked sob.

Abbey pulled her up, steered her towards the door, and she went blindly.  And then there was a sink in front of her, and Abbey was rolling up her sleeves, testing the water, helping her get Josh's blood off of her skin, out from under her nails.  She cried as she stood there, almost unaware of the tears tracking down her cheeks.

Abbey rolled up her sleeves for her, folding the spots of Josh's blood out of sight.  She thought she should probably thank Abbey, but couldn't find the words.  Abbey gave her a smile, and she thought it was an understanding smile, she thought Abbey knew what she'd say if she could.

Abbey led her back to the waiting room, settled her in a chair.  Sam and Toby were back, and Leo was exactly where they'd left him, all but paralyzed by the danger his best friend and surrogate son were in.  Zoey sat beside him, her small hand in his.

She was better now, had more of a grip on herself.  She'd stopped crying.  She'd wiped her eyes.  She'd run an impatient hand through her hair to get it out of her face.  She'd straightened her clothes.

And so she took her seat in the waiting room and resigned herself to a very, very long night.

THE END

10.06.01