He groaned low and deep but it meant he was alive still, so I would take it. Off in the distance, finally, the sounds of sirens could be heard. It wasn’t like attending to two victims of a gunfight was anything new or worthy of extra haste in the Point.

“Theee . . . kiddd?” They weren’t words so much as they were expulsions of air huffed and puffed out.

I looked over my shoulder at where the other body was sprawled, Chuck’s guys keeping a close eye on him, but I could see multiple places where blood was pooling and leaking out of the young man and staining the parking lot underneath him.

I squeezed Nassir’s fingers and cried even harder into him when I felt his struggle to curl around mine. “He didn’t make the right choice.”

I felt him shudder at my words but I couldn’t explain anything further because the cops and the paramedics were suddenly all over us. I was pulled one way and Chuck was pulled the other, both of us complaining loudly, as uniformed professionals moved around Nassir’s prone form. There was so much blood and so much noise I thought I was going to have a breakdown. When a cop tried to pull me aside to ask me what was going on, I swung at him without even thinking. Luckily, Chuck was there and wrapped me up in a huge bear hug while I collapsed in a sobbing mess into his arms.

“She just watched two people get shot not even ten feet in front of her and one of them is her man. Can you cut her some slack?”

The cop grumbled something but I couldn’t focus on what he was saying because they were strapping Nassir to some hard-looking plastic board and hefting him onto the stretcher. They weren’t taking him anywhere without me. I shoved at Chuck’s arms until he set me free, and bolted to the back of the ambulance, only to be brought up short by one of the paramedics.

“Lady, he’s in bad shape. You need to meet us at the hospital.”

I would have taken a swing at him too if I couldn’t see the other medic in the back of the ambulance swearing and rushing around trying to hook up Nassir to as many IVs and machines as the back of the emergency vehicle could hold.

“I’m going with him.” I wasn’t about to give the guy a chance to argue, so I just pushed past him and took a seat on the hard little bench so I could keep my eyes glued to what was happening to my now dying devil. Nassir must have been in really bad shape because even though there were two medics and they were a lot bigger than me, neither one wanted to waste time arguing with me. Instead they pulled the doors shut and began frantically working on him.

They had ripped his shirt open and I could see that Chuck was right. The kid had managed to get off more than one shot. There was a perfectly round hole up high in his shoulder almost in the exact same spot where I had taken a bullet, but there was also one lower and more toward the center of his chest. From where I was sitting, it looked like it was exactly where his heart would be.

I started chanting “no, no, no, no” over and over again while the two men rushed around and muttered things to each other that didn’t sound encouraging.

“His BP is crashing. Not good.” One of the guys grabbed a syringe filled with something and started pumping it into one of the clear plastic tubes going into Nassir’s arm. All I wanted to do was reach out and hold his hand, but we were moving too fast and I didn’t want to get in the way of the men trying to save his life.

“Any word on the other GSW victim?” The guy that had tried to keep me from getting on the ambulance shook his head.

“He was DOA on the scene.” His gaze skipped over to me. “Seems like you were pretty lucky to make it out of there unscathed.”

Oh, I was very much scathed. The one person in the world I knew that I would ever love and ever give myself completely to was struggling to stay alive and I could see him losing the battle with every minute that ticked by. It was grossly unsettling that Nassir could survive war, his own warped beginnings at the hands of a zealot, the corrupt manipulations of government and political power, and the streets of the Point only to be taken down by a kid that had been crafted in his mirror image.

I dropped my head into my hands and pulled on the front of my hair so hard that it hurt. “I’m not feeling so lucky at the moment.”

“You should’ve just met us at the hospital. It’s never easy to watch someone you care about hover on the verge of death.”

I snapped my head up and glared at the insensitive ass. I didn’t need to know how close Nassir was to not pulling through. I could see it for myself. His normally golden skin was waxy and tinged gray. His lips looked blue and there was still blood oozing out of him in more than one spot.

“I’m going to appreciate any time I have with him, even if that time is running out right in front of me.”

Deciding I didn’t care if I was in their way anymore, I reached out and found Nassir’s hand so I could hold on to some part of him as we raced the rest of the way to the hospital. Once we got there, the doors to the ambulance swung open and an army of doctors and nurses rushed to attend to him. They were saying things like “shock,” words like “blood transfusion” and “nonresponsive” hit me like bullets. I didn’t want to let them take him out of my sight but I knew making the medical staff deal with a hysterical woman wouldn’t help him, so I bit my lip and continued to cry as I stepped out of the boxy vehicle and watched them take my man away.

I don’t know how long I stood there in front of the hospital covered in Nassir’s blood, silently weeping and at a loss as to what to do with myself, but it was long enough for Chuck to eventually find me. When his arms wrapped around me and I was pulled to that barrel chest, the numbness that had been holding all my bits and pieces together evaporated and I became a wailing, noisy, sloppy mess. I started screaming about the unfairness of it all, about how I would never forgive Nassir for pulling me so far in that I couldn’t get out. I cursed a million different ways for his making me love him when he knew it was going to lead to this kind of heartache.

I ranted.

I raved.

I raged.

Chuck just held me and continued to pet my hair while I acted like a crazy person, and told me everything would be all right. When I finally calmed down, he pressed his cheek to the top of my head and gave a soft little chuckle.

Indignant that he could find anything funny about this dire situation, I dug my elbow into his ribs until he grunted and took a step back.