The concrete burned under her feet as she ran down the sidewalk. She had been at work when she received the phone call and it scared her and so she had to make sure he was alright. Even if that meant leaving work straight away, endangering her job, and running across town. She heard the yells and wolf-whistles of the Socs beside her and she ignored them, running on. She didn't know where the burst of energy had come from; she had never run this much in her life. She reached the ramshackle house and burst through the door and ran through the ground floor, looking for him before running upstairs. The bedrooms were empty and she was starting to lose hope until she tried the bathroom door and it was locked. She slammed her shoulder against it twice before kicking it – hard. The door fell in and she ran in and grabbed his bleeding arms before holding onto his bleeding face.

"No, no, no, come on. This isn't fair! You can't do this!" She begged before running back downstairs to the phone, dialling 911.

"911, what's your emergency?"

"Ambulance please, it's my best friend. He's been hurt really bad." She said before hurriedly giving the address.

"OK, sweetie, an ambulance is on its way to you. Just stay calm and keep your friend breathing, OK."

She nodded shakily. "OK. Thank you." She said before hanging up and running back up to the bathroom. She checked his pulse and found it to be extremely weak. "Come on. Hold on. The ambulance is coming. Just hold on a little bit longer." She held onto his arms in an attempt to stop the bleeding at the rate it was going. "Just a little bit longer. Please."

The gang burst through the doors of the hospital's emergency room and their eyes darted around before landing on a girl looking at her feet, her arms up to the bottom of the rolled up sleeves of her plaid shirt covered in dried blood, patches of blood on her jeans where she had been kneeling and Converse splattered slightly with more blood.

"Effy." Two-Bit said and she looked up and Darry crouched in front of her.

"He called my work. He sounded so…done. It scared me to death. There was so much blood. So much fucking blood. I didn't know if. I tried to. But I didn't know if it would-," Her voice shook and she gasped for air; refusing to allow herself to cry. "Jesus Christ. So much fucking blood. The things I've seen and I didn't know the human body had so much fucking blood." Her hands shook and Ponyboy handed her a cigarette and he lit it for her. "Thanks kid."

"Is your brother coming down here?" Steve asked and Effy shook her head as she inhaled.

"He thinks you're all just kids playing the big leagues. A pack of idiots." She exhaled the smoke. "He'd sooner go to jail than help one of you guys out."

"Nice to know he thinks so highly of us." Steve said and Effy snorted, the cigarette obviously calming her down.

Johnny sat in the seat next to her. He didn't say anything but he put his tanned hand over her lightly tanned one. She gave him a grateful smile and he smiled slightly in return. The colour was starting to return to her face as the cigarette calmed her down. The rest of the gang settled into the other seats beside her for the long wait.

While they waited, Effy thought about how much she hated hospitals. Hanging around her brother and his friends for as long as she had, she had been in enough hospitals more than enough times to know that they were boring, smelt like bleach and always seemed to deliver some form of bad news. She tapped her feet against the floor and picked at the blood on her hands casually before remembering whose blood it was and stopped, the tears prickling at her eyes. She inhaled slowly and then exhaled again. She wouldn't cry. She couldn't cry. Crying was a weakness – that had been drilled into her from a young age. Crying was a way of letting people know they'd found something they could hurt you with. Doctors and nurses walked past them, not looking at them as if they were invisible.

A nurse appeared and cleared her throat. She spoke and they all looked up at her.