This Is My Love

It was like something out of the worst action movie you've ever seen. Blood sprayed out in a fine mist as the bullet hit Pete, splattering onto the silk of my slip on my chest, where the bullet would have impacted me instead. Pete landed with a sickly thud on the floor, and I fell onto my knees and skidded to land behind him. He laid on his side groaning before throwing himself onto his back and using his right hand to grasp his left, upper arm. The gun that was pointed at me just moments ago now hung loosely in Vicky's hand as her arms and shoulders went limp before she too sunk onto her knees. She watched Pete groaned in pain, his eyes closed, her own eyes wide with shock.
"No, it wasn't supposed to be you," Vicky whispered as she reached to absentmindedly touch Pete, but I slapped her hand away with a harsh smacking sound.
"Don't fucking touch him!" I screamed before turning my attention back to Pete. I sobbed uncontrollably as I scooted closer to Pete and carefully moved his head onto my lap. He hissed, his teeth bared and his lips curled up as his nose scrunched in discomfort.
"Oh, Pete!" I cried, not able to stand the sight of him covered in blood and pain. His eyelids fluttered open at his name and his eyes darted around the room before coming to focus on my face. He let out a sigh of relief at the sight of my being okay, until he saw the blood on my slip.
"Ano, you're hurt?" He asked, motioning with his head to the blood on my chest.
"No, Pete, I'm fine. You... You saved my life." I cried harder as he sighed in relief and he took his bloody hand from his arm to reach up to me. Fresh red blood literally squirted out from his arm in thick ropes when the pressure of his hand was released, and I let out a loud gasp.
So much blood...
Quickly, the little bit of trauma knowledge I had set in and I knew two things: he had been hit in a major artery and he would bleed out if pressure was not applied to the wound.
"Oh, god, Pete," I whispered in a rush of air as I quickly pushed my hand against the wound on his arm. Pete yelped and instinctively placed his hand where his wound laid under my own. I looked up when I heard the sirens, but it wasn't the sirens I needed. It was only the police. The paparazzi must have called them when they saw Pete's sign for help.
"Ano..." Pete whispered faintly. I looked back down to him, a few of my tears trickling onto his face. He was already looking pale, and his eyelids were growing droopy. We needed to tie off the area above the wound before he bleed out, but I couldn't take my hands away from the wound lest I wanted him to lose more blood, and Vicky was fucking useless. She sat on her haunches with the her hand with the gun in her lap as she blindly stared down at it. In my racing thoughts, I didn't even hear the door burst open.
"Freeze! Drop the gun!" The lead cop demanded, his own gun drawn and pointed at Vicky as another two cops swept the rest of the house. Vicky pushed the gun off her lap and the cop quickly kicked it away before holstering his own and pulling out hand cuffs instead.
"Ano, look at me please," Pete pleaded meekly from under me. I tore my eyes away from the cop pulling Vicky to her feet and looked down to him. His smile was weak but present as he eyes struggled to stay focused on my face. He took his right hand off of mine and used it to reach up and push his fingers into the hair at my temple. I whimpered and nuzzled my face into his hand, keeping my eyes on his.
"Stay with me, Bruno," I whispered hoarsely. His breathing was slowing now, as if he was relaxing, but I knew he was just losing a lot of blood.
"For you, I'll try," he replied in an exhausted mumble through a soft smile. "I love you, baby," he whispered weakly and managed to brush his thumb against my bottom lip just before his eyes fluttered closed and his hand slid down my face to land on his chest. My breaths came out fast and panicked, not sure what just happened.
"Peter! Stay with me! Pete!" I screamed as I strengthened the pressure on his wound. He didn't respond. I bent down to place my ear near his nose and was only slightly relieved to feel and hear his soft breathing. "I love you, Peter! Don't you leave me!" I hollered to him, but before I could do anything else I was being pulled off of him by strong arms and two men in dark blue scrubs flew to his side. I thrashed and kicked against the hold as they drug me away from Pete.
"No! He needs me!" I screamed, but the arms held me tight as the men wheeled my husband out of the house, their hollered commands to each other and into the radios only muffled noises in my ears. I wailed pitifully against the arms, but it was useless. I cried pitifully before taking in a deep lungful of air and screaming; "You promised you'd never leave me!"

I paced the waiting room, hugging the huge, dark, paramedic's coat around my petite frame as I waited for more news. I knew that Pete was alive, even if barely so, loosing a lot of blood, but luckily the paramedics got there in enough time to keep him from bleeding out further and making quick work of hooking up IVs to keep him from going any further into shock.
After calming down enough to speak coherently, I called up first Pete's family, then my Dad, and they were all flying out to L.A. on the red eye. That was five hours ago.
Just in time to keep me from running down a permanent path into the floor, a doctor in full uniform came out holding a clipboard. He strode towards me confidently, his eyes locked on me. I stopped my pacing and hugged the jacket tighter against me in preparation of whatever news was to come my way.
"Mrs. Hernandez?" He asked softly. I quickly nodded my head. He extended his hand to me. "Dr. Lucas, nice to meet you." I slipped my arm out of the confines of the jacket and shook it before Dr. Lucas gestured to the chair behind me in invitation to sit with him, but I shook my head.
"I'm sorry, I can't. I'm too jittery," I whispered in part explanation, part apology. He nodded his head in understanding.
"I can imagine, you've been through quite a shock," he stated. I glanced down to the floor as memories of the incident flooded my mind. "Mrs. Hernandez?" The doctor asked, pulling me from my thoughts. I flicked my eyes up to him and let him know he had my attention. I had a hard time reading whether or not he came baring good or bad news, but luckily he didn't let me guess for long.
"Your husband was hit in his Brachial Artery, that's a major artery that runs right through here." He used his pen to show me on his upper arm where the artery ran before continuing. "It's a very common injury, so luckily we have a lot of practice in it. Unfortunately, your husband lost a lot of blood, and that is always a tricky situation," he informed me softly. I bit my lip to stop from crying like a fool and nodded my head to let him know I understood so he would continue. "But, we were able to diagnose the hit to his Brachial straight away, so we didn't have to waste time on a preoperative duplex ultrasonography and went straight to the O.R. for further bleeding control and vascular repair. Your husband got through the surgery successfully, Unfortunately, because of the wound, his body formed a blood clot, which is a natural thing for the human body to do with this kind of wound, but," he reached out and placed his hand on my upper arm. I looked down at his hand then back up into his eyes. He looked sympathetic, and that terrified me. I silently pleaded for him to continue. He sighed. "The blood clot moved to his brain, and he's now comatose."
Comatose...
The word bounced around my skull and left a ringing in my ears like a pinball machine. Suddenly, I had no choice but to sit down, for my legs gave out under me and I landed in the chair with a thud. I looked down at my hands as they twisted nervously on my lap and saw that some of Pete's blood eluded the soap and water when I washed my hands and was now dried onto my wrist. Tears streamed down my face.
Oh, Pete...
The doctor sat down beside me and watched me with concern in his eyes.
"Is he going to be okay?" I asked. The doctor quickly went into an explanation.
"It's hard to tell where he will go from this. We will monitor him and continue to give him medicine to thin the clot, but we don't know how long it will be until he wakes up."
I sighed and glanced up to the doctor. "So, in other words, you don't know."
The doctor frowned.
"No... But, your husband is young, strong, and healthy," the doctor stated. I placed my face in my hands and let a dry sob escape my body, for my throat was void of moister, but my eyes were full of it. I needed him to pull through. I needed him, period. Why was this happening? Were we not allowed to be happy for long periods at a time?
The doctor placed his hand between my shoulder blades.
"You know what else he has going for him?" He asked me. I kept my face in my hands but shook my head. The doctor rubbed little circles into my back to try to soothe me as he spoke. "He's got something to pull through for," he assured me, but I cried harder at this, for, little did anyone know, he had two things to pull through for.