I knew I should be dead, but I wasn't dead. Death couldn't be this painful.

Unless I was in Hell.

The pain was coming from everywhere. I didn't know what hurt worse. My right arm ached. My chest burned with every breath. My head was throbbing. The cuts all over me were stinging. My vision was blurry. Something warm and wet was oozing into my right eye. I reached up to wipe it away. I had to use my left hand because my right wouldn't move. I pulled my hand away and held it in front of my face examining the dark liquid. My stomach flip-flopped as I decided it was blood. I tried to raise myself into a sitting position but I hand firmly held me down.

"Don't move," said a rough monotone.

I struggled to make my eyes focus, but it the world was draped in shadow. For a second I thought I had gone blind, but then I was able to make out a shape hovering over me and realized it was just dark. Unable to rely on my sense of vision to decipher my predicament, I concentrated on what I heard. Besides the distant song of the city I could hear a voice. Not the same voice that had just spoken to me, but another one. Male, deep, with a street slang that reminded me of they guys that Tony worked with. He was speaking. I could understand some of it. "....You gotta get here right away..." I didn't know who he was talking to. "...the ally behind the cinema on 52nd street..."

"Jus lay still, " said the rough voice in a deep Bronx accent. "We're gettin' help."

I nodded so he knew I understood which caused me to wince and nearly blackout again. I tried to speak through gritted teeth and managed a hoarse shaky gasp. "Wh-who are you?"

"I'm Raphael," he answered. "You gotta name?" There was something familiar about the way he spoke, but I was in too much pain to comment on it.

"J-Josie."

"Josie?" he repeated oddly. "I need ya to stay still 'kay. I think ya got a concussion and some broken bones. Them Skinheads beat ya pretty good. We're gonna get ya to a hospital so jus hang in there."

I wanted to ask what' had happened to make the thugs leave, yet I suddenly realized I was shaking hard which increased the throbbing ache in my body. I couldn't stand pain. even paper cuts caused me to feel sick. And there was so much blood. I was covered with it. the smell of it sent a wave of nausea over me. I tried to turn my head to one side so I could vomit. Raphael helped turn me as my stomach released what little content it had found offensive. The heaves set my ribs on fire and caused me to shake even more. I began to cry hard as I heard the other guy return and converse with Raphael.

"Ambulance is on the way." He announced. "Jeez she looks bad. Ya think she'll make it?"

"She's goin inta shock," Raph announced. "We gotta stop the bleedin'. Casey give me yer shirt."

A moment later I felt warm cottony pressure against my head. I tried to tell them know that it wasn't shock. It was just the pain. Yet the acidic taste of puke and trembles that wracked my body kept me from speaking.

I continued to shake and dry heave as Raphael and Casey did every thing they could to keep me calm until the ambulance got there. 'Everything' mainly consisted of holding my hair back, wiping blood off me and reassuring me that I would be fine. I remember holding onto Raphael's hand tightly as I lay there and not knowing why it felt so strange. When I think back on it all I can say is that it was...different.

I heard sirens cut trough the otherwise normal sounds of the night and was glad the ambulance was close by.

"I'm out," I heard Raphael say.

"See ya," Casey replied.

Raphael tried to take his hand from me. It hit me what he had meant and I held on tighter. He's leaving. Why is he leaving? The thought of him not being there frightened me. I felt like a child alone in bed when the world is dark and the moonlight is casting unnatural shadows on the walls as the wind howls outside like a hoard of demons.

"No," I cried. The whooping sirens were drawing closer, like the tick of a bomb.

"It's okay. Casey'll be here." He assured me as he gently pried his hand from my grip. "Take care a yerself, kay."

With that he left me to await my fate with Casey.

I was in and out of consciousness for the next 2 days. What little I do remember is hazy and confused. I remember a woman paramedic hovering over me as I was rushed to the hospital and a team of medics hovering over me in a brightly lit room. They were speaking but I don't remember what they were saying. There was some debate over parental consent, but my need for medical attention overrode the need for proper paperwork. I had a broken wrist, two broken ribs, a concussion, a large gash above my right eye and numerous abrasions and bruises.

The worst part of it all was when the police came in and told me that Tony was dead. I went into a rage and wound up having to be sedated. They said he had been shot in the head after being brutally tortured by an unknown assailant.

Yeah right, I thought