He could feel it coming. He shouldn't have been able to feel it coming but somehow, he did. It was almost impossible and later he couldn't explain it, not to anyone, so he just didn't say anything. And yet, when it hit him, that silver, metal, bullet of almost imminent death, it surprised him. As soon as it hit him and he could feel the blood rushing down his head, he thought that he was going to die. He couldn't feel anything; no pain; just fear, and wet blood running down the sides of his face. This isn't happening. He thought over and over. This isn't happening, my dad's here, he'll fix it, he can fix anything. Later, he just felt nothing, thought nothing. He absorbed the world around him but couldn't understand it, couldn't even realize that it was happening. He had started off his night, that night, so, so long ago, thinking that death was the worst thing that he had to be afraid of, but he realized now that he was wrong. Death wasn't what he had to be afraid of; it was the nothingness. It was that feeling that you would never wake up again and the feeling that you were insignificant and you didn't matter, not anyone, not any more, anyway. When he stopped being so numb, when he could hear what people were saying and started thinking actual thoughts again, he started getting angrier and angrier that he couldn't get up; that he couldn't move, that he was some invalid that people talked at, not someone they actually talked to. He kept thinking about that warehouse, the feeling of blood on his face. He wondered what exactly happened after he was shot. He kept thinking up this little scenario in his head: The bullet would have hit him. He imagined that it went through glass and the glass shattered into a million little pieces. He also imagined that the bullet went into the side of his face, but he wasn't really sure where it hit. He never even felt the bullet. "Michael!" Sonny would have screamed, rushing toward him. "Son, get up! You have to get up right now! You have to be all right!"

And that was where it ended, because turns out, he wasn't all right and he didn't know what his father would have done when he realized that. He wondered if his father blamed himself. He wondered if his mother did too. The truth was, he blamed himself. He should have told his dad that he couldn't go that night. All he had to do was tell him about the big project that was due and his father would have made him stay at home, he wouldn't be stuck in this bed now, maybe for the rest of his life. A lifetime of nothingness.