That Day

In The End

A/N: Thank you guys so much for your kind words! This is the last chapter, but I'm already working on my next angsty story. Thanks again everyone, I loved every review!

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The next thing I knew, I was laying in an uncomfortable hospital bed with a tube down my throat and my eyelids taped shut. The darkness was so black and dark and frightening, deeper then anything I've ever seen or experienced. I thought for sure that I'd died.

I remember lying there for a good time, trying to decide whether I was in Heaven or Hell. Faith believes in the afterlife and all that, but I wasn't so sure. Not until then, that is. Darkness is my own Hell.

I was terrified.

Then the sounds drifted in: a monotonous beeping, a soft swishing. I knew these sounds. I wasn't in Hell. I wasn't sure at first where I was or what had happened, but I heard Faith's voice, low and soothing, and I knew: I had survived.

They told me later that I had come into the ER as dead as a doornail. My heart had stopped on the way over and I hadn't breathed on my own for at least ten minutes. My lips were blue, my eyes dilated, and my reflexes non-existent. Dead. I had kicked the bucket, cashed in my chips, bit the dust - I was gone.

Doc and Carlos had done their best - apparently they had shocked me three or four times on the way to the ER, but I just hadn't responded. They refused to give up though, and kept at it, hoping and praying to God that I wasn't really gone. Doc said that he had never seen so much blood come out of one person as he did that day. I lost nearly all of it, he told me. It was all over the bus, all over me, all over him... He was pretty sure that I was a goner.

The ER doctors had to pump me full of adrenaline to jumpstart my heart, and even then they had to keep shocking me for a good twenty minutes before I responded at all. They used liter after liter of donor blood to get my circulation going again, and were on the verge of cracking my chest open to manually pump my heart. They were out of options.

Faith said that she stood outside the trauma room window, watching the whole time in horror. The blood didn't bother her, she said, but it was the way the monitors shrieked so loudly after every shock of the defibrillator, and how limp I had become. She knew, though, that I'd be back, that I'd never give up. "You just wouldn't quit like that," she later told me flat-out. I'm glad she has that much confidence in me and my abilities, because I'm sure as hell that I had no control whatsoever over the whole being dead thing. It makes me feel better to know that she thinks I actually fought though it, less guilty about letting go back in the bus. If she only knew how scared and tired I was - there was no fighting on my part. But now, I'm just glad she was there for me. I need her.

After almost an hour of working on me, I was stable enough to go to the OR. They say I was a mess. The first bullet had hit my lung and collapsed it, and the second had ripped through my abdomen and shattered into a thousand tiny pieces. A mess. It took twelve hours of surgery to fix it all. You should see the scars I sport now. It looks like a train hit me.

I don't remember any of this. Nothing. I didn't even have one of those deathbed experiences you read about, you know, the light at the end of the tunnel, the angels. None of that stuff. Nothing but horrible black.

They say that I was in a coma for three full days. My body didn't have the strength to fight and had shut down almost entirely. It's funny, because even though it was days and hours later, it only felt like a second between the time my eyes closed that last time in the ambulance and the moment that I woke up.

Faith told me later that the first thing I said to her when I came out of it, was something to the effect of: "Shitty day, huh?" I guess I thought that it was still the day from Hell.

Jimmy ended up all right. The doctors say that, thanks to Doc and me, he was out at just the right time. Five more minutes in that smoke and he would have been dead. He came over and invited me out for a drink the other day. He had never thanked either Doc or me, not that I expected it or anything. His pride equals mine - we don't say thanks, it's too hard. I could see that he wanted to, though, and that's all that counts, right? I don't do my job for a pat on the back. I'm just glad he's okay. That's good enough for me.

I talked to one of the ballistic guys about why the hell those bullets went though my vest. He said that the bullets that were in the gun were that special kind, cop-killers. Vest-busters. Well, they did their job all right - they busted my vest, right through it. He had the stupid, shitty, piece of junk in the lab and offered to show it to me. I don't know why, but I couldn't bring myself to look at it. The damn thing let me down. It was supposed to save me, to protect me, but it was useless.

The guy that shot me is dead. Faith filled him with so much lead that the coroner had to ask her just how many rounds she fired. Ten. Ten bullets right into the head of that psycho.

We found out his name: Gary Steel. Kinda like what his head is filled with now. How appropriate... Turns out he'd been in and out of the mental hospital for years. He had some complex that made him think that people were out to get him... They have no idea how he got the gun. Mad, I tell you. Stark, raving mad.

I don't like to think about him. He scares the shit out of me. I've had nightmares for months of his sweaty, panicked face, bloodshot eyes and gravely voice screaming at me, and I wake up shaking in a cold sweat. I suppose he'll always be there, lurking in the back of my mind. I want to forget, but I need to remember, if that makes any sense. It doesn't to me...

Fortunately, I've haven't had such a weird and horrible day since getting back on the job - nothing I've been through has come even close. I don't think anything will ever come close. Nothing can.

Months have passed, and my wounds have long-since healed, but I'll never forget that day. It will always haunt me. Every sight, sound, smell and taste will be there, following me, haunting me with its painful reality, and reminding me constantly how good I really have it.

Because I'm alive.

~ The End ~