A/N: I would like to point out the ever-so-helpful assistance from Sassyblondexoxo in this chapter. I know nothing when it comes to medical stuff, so her experience helped immensely! Honestly, thank you, girl! So nice of you to back me up with your knowledge!

Chapter 9

January 17th; 2:25 a.m.

My body was cold, my heart racing and my mind flustered. New York City had never before seemed so dark, so lonely. And it wasn't because of the freezing night that hung above us, stalked us. The reason for it was the thoughtless people that slept in its embrace.

Not a stranger in the entire city cared about us, about the unique life that was fast slipping away from my grasp, from the world - and it infuriated me.

There would be a media frenzy once the public discovered the bloodbath on the rooftop. The people of the city would gather to honor and celebrate the lives of those who were lost, killed by us in a desperate act of self-defence. Yet no one would shed a single tear for my brother, perhaps the most kind-hearted of them all. In their eyes, he was as insignificant as the alley rats that fouled their existence.

Not one thought would be wasted on him.

And so his life rested in our hands - and in our hands alone. Just like his survival rested on my conscience. Because no matter what happened to him, I was still to blame for his suffering, for our pain. Not an apology in the world could change that, undo what I did.

I was responsible.

We rarely travelled by ground, but with Don's critical state we simply couldn't jump the rooftops like we usually did. It was a good thing we knew everything there was to know about stealth, because even in the protection of the darkness in the alleys we passed, there were still some close calls. Lucky for us, Mike did a good job of pointing them out in time, where he ran a few yards up ahead. I knew he must have felt awful because of his concussion, but he never displayed any pain. He simply pushed it aside so he could put all his energy into saving Don. He loved him far too much to lose him. And with that motivation keeping him alert, Michelangelo flawlessly led us through the darkened city that never slept.

Raph and I did our best to keep Donatello awake as we carried him with each of his arms draped around our shoulders, gripping his lax wrists with distressed determination. He barely moved his feet at all, his mind slipping in and out of consciousness throughout the journey. Even while his mind drifted into darkness, the pain was still evident on his twisted features. But the real torture was for him to walk. Every muscle in his body objected as we forced him onwards, his jaw clenched in anguish. Nevertheless, we had to keep up the pace.

We didn't have time to stop.

The hard part was to get him up the fire escape to April's apartment. Somehow though, we managed to help him up all five floors, his body nothing but dead weight in our arms. To say the least, April was surprised to see us when we came in through her living room window. She wore nothing but a beige terry robe, tying the worn rope around her waist as she tried to grasp the chaotic situation that abruptly woke her up.

Raph and I did our best to help a somewhat aware Donnie through the much too small window, as Mike hurried inside the apartment to get towels to stop the bleeding with. April tiredly rubbed her eyes and reached for the light switch on the wall, her eyes widening in fear once the room was illuminated.

"Jesus," she gasped, her hand cupping her mouth in shock, taking in the bloody scene before her. Don barely stood on his own two feet in the living room, his entire stance depending on us to hold him up. Warm drops of blood travelled down his arm and stained her sand colored laminate floor. Trying to hold his head up, his eyes slowly flickered to stay open.

Every moment was a struggle for him to stay with us.

Having no time to explain ourselves to her, Raphael and I guided Donnie to her living room couch, only to have her voice interrupt us before reaching it,

"Wait!"

We turned to look at her, Donnie's head tiredly dropping forward in dazed exhaustion.

"Put him on the bed," she insisted, urgently turning on her heal to enter the bedroom she recently just left, her robe dancing around her legs as she trotted on her bare feet.

Raph and I exchanged quick glances before following her, practically running her down as we passed her on the way. Once reaching the door, Raphael shifted his body, walking sideways through the doorway with Don on his right shoulder, while I came in last, supporting him with my left side. The room was dark, not even the light of the moon reaching in through her closed drapes. There was a small lamp lit on her night stand, though, and with its light guiding us through the clean chamber, we walked over to the master bed that stood centred with its frame against the left wall, its lemon yellow covers carelessly flipped over to one side.

April came in behind us and introduced the entire room to light by hitting the light switch on the wall by the doorway. She watched us as we gently laid him down on the bed, his grimacing features facing upwards at the hurtful movement. I quickly hurried around the foot of the bed to assist Don on his left side, trying to get eye contact with him as his eyes lazily fluttered open.

"I got these!" Mikey nervously exclaimed, running inside the room with various towels huddled in his embrace.

"Give 'em ta me," Raph demanded, impatiently waving his arm for Mike to hand over the towels, while keeping his face turned to Donatello, his features strict.

Mikey hurried up to Raph and handed him a light blue towel, Raph roughly snatching it from his hand. He pressed the soft towel to Donnie's arm, watching as the dark blood seeped through the terry fabric, the red color spreading across the piece of cloth like cancer; corrupting it. Snatching another one, Raph determinedly added more pressure to the wound, causing Don to moan in anguish, feverishly stirring his head on the pillow.

Carefully, I placed a comforting hand to his pale forehead, his cold touch sending a fierce shiver down my spine, transforming my gut into a chunk of ice. I looked up at Raph - his stubborn hands pressing the towel to the wound - and realized how much he really loved his family. He wouldn't break his focus as long as there were heartbeats beneath Don's plastron, which was kind of ironic. Because normally, Raphael was the pessimistic one, his bitter nature acknowledging the end when we didn't want to. But when it concerned his brother - his family - all of that dramatically changed.

He simply refused to let life have its cruel way. He refused to let him go.

It didn't take long for the blood to soak the second towel, and Raph angrily turned to Mike for more. "Gimme anotha'," he ordered, grabbing a white towel from the youngest arms.

Soundlessly, Mikey exchanged a worried glance with April, before turning back to watch Raph as he pressed the white cloth to Don's bleeding wound, the innocent white color quickly changing to a deadly red.

Raph instantly grabbed a forth one.

It was awful, the feeling of being useless, powerless. My brother was bleeding to death right before my very eyes, and there was nothing none of us knew that could help him. It was unfair. Why couldn't we rush him to the hospital like everyone else did with their family members? Why couldn't a doctor take care of him, like they did everyone else? Why did it have to be so damn unfair?

I felt my eyes beginning to sting with tears and quickly blinked them away, holding them back. This was no place to cry, no time for weakness. So instead of giving into my feelings; my pain, I carefully cleared my throat. "It's not working," I said quietly, sadly.

Raphael angrily looked up at me, daggers shooting from his eyes, and said nothing. He didn't have to, because I saw it in every breath he took, every thought he knew. He was just seconds away from hitting me. And to tell you the truth, and don't know what stopped him.

I expected him to burst.

April's voice suddenly interrupted the hateful silence in the bedroom, her voice silent, yet decisive. "You need to stitch his wound," she said, nervously fidgeting with the lazily tied rope of her robe. "I.. I think there's still some stuff left here since Casey." Reading the looks in our eyes, she pointed towards the door. "I'll go get it." With that, she rushed out of the room, leaving us alone with our brother.

A few months earlier, Casey got hurt when running into the Foot. The cut needed medical assistance, but we didn't want him to go to a hospital, because then there would be questions, and the police would get involved. To avoid any unnecessary attention, Donnie stitched him up by himself, leaving some of the supplies at April's in case the wound would get infected.

It never did, because Don knew his thing. Sadly, the rest of us did not. So as fate put Don under our care, we didn't know what to do.

As if realising the same thing, Raph angrily pressed the towel to the wound, causing pain to hiss through Donnie's teeth.

"Schhh... It's okay," I told him, gently stroking his forehead with my thumb, repeating the movement in an attempt to calm him.

"Leo?" he quietly asked, his confused voice hoarse as he spoke. He searchingly turned to look my way, his eyes squinting open as he looked at me.

Unsure of what else to say, I told him, "I'm right here." Doing my best to reassure him of my support, I continuously caressed his frontal lobe, his beads of sweat sticking to my skin.

"Leo.." he breathed, his eyes flickering in distress, trying to hold contact with me. After discovering the rest of his surroundings, his features confusedly twisted and he tried to lift his head from the pillow. But in doing so, a wave of pain washed over him, causing him to grunt. I instantly forced him down with my left hand on his plastron.

"Lay down," I gently ordered, guiding him back to the pillow, his tense body slightly protesting to my touch. "You need to rest." The image was ghostly similar to the night in Sensei's subcar, that last dreadful night in his company. As if poisoning me with its return, I felt the flashback draining my psyche on hope, one ray at a time. Refusing to give in to the whispers of my self-pity, I quickly ridded my mind of the memory and turned back to my brother, a forced determination in my eyes.

Donnie breathed heavily, that small act alone having drained him on a lot of energy. "What.. where am I?" he finally managed to get out, confusion obvious in every word he spoke. On the bright side, though, he hadn't been this conscious since he first passed out, and that in itself was a miracle.

"You're in April's bedroom," I explained, brushing my thumb on his forehead. "She left to get medical supplies... to help," I quietly added, as if to provide him with a tinge of hope.

With his eyes temporarily closed, he roughly whispered, "How bad is it?" his body tensing with his hissing breath.

I exchanged a worried look with Raphael across from me, none of us wanting to tell him the harsh truth: that he might actually die within the hour, perhaps even a matter of minutes. However as it turned out, the awkward silence answered Don far better than any of us ever could.

"How long have I.. have I been out?" he breathed, slowly opening his eyes to look up at the two of us.

"Ye've been in and outta consciousness fer a few minutes," Raph said, breaking Donnie's gaze to focus on his injury. "I'm not sure how long," he continued, mumbling. "Ten.. maybe fifteen? I dunno." With that said, he reached out his right hand to Mike standing behind him, who handed him a new, clean towel, which he mutely pressed to the dressed wound, tossing the used, blood-soaked towels to the floor.

I caught Mikey looking at him through sorrowful eyes, witnessing his older brother as he went into the safety of his tough guy-attitude, his face losing all signs of emotion.

It was painfully sad to watch.

"I found it," April's stressed voice interrupted us as she strode into the bedroom, carrying a see-through plastic box in her arms, big enough to easily fit a basketball. "I dunno what's in it, but--" When discovering a conscious Donatello on the bed, her words came to a haltered stop, her mouth slightly gaping in surprise. After a few seconds of staring at him in silence, she finally found her voice again, "You're awake."

She was indeed stating the obvious, but the mind never knew how to act in such a situation, so you were likely to say stupid things, if not guaranteed to do so.

"Ape, the box," Mike cut in, causing April to wake up from her trance, shaking her head in apology.

"Of course," she said and walked up next to Raph to place the box on her night stand table, moving her alarm clock to the side to make room for it. She opened the plastic lid and put it aside behind the space between the box and the wall, leaning it against the wall. She reached inside the box and brought out a bottle of antiseptic, her eyes scanning the fine print of the text. "I'm not certain.. but I think you can use this," she mumbled to herself, her eyes still glued to the label. "Says here that--"

"How's that gonna stop the bleedin'?" Raph roughly snapped, his impatient eyes boring into hers.

April was caught off guard by his sudden rupture and stared at him, dumbstruck. "I... I don't know," she sadly confessed, her energy blown out like a candle by Raphael's outburst.

Panic rose within me at her answer, because a part of me had hoped she would know the things we did not. I desperately turned to Don for answers, his eyes barely open where he laid, focusing on nothing in particular. "Don," I said, moving my hand from his forehead to his side, cupping his right cheek and turning his face to me. "Donnie, look at me. We need you to help us," I solicited, the strength of the leader I once was tracing my words like a familiar echo. I locked my eyes with his and focused every fibre of my being on getting through to him, my words as clear as the driven look in my eyes. "Tell us how to fix you."

He attentively held my gaze, his eyes slightly wavering back and forth as he looked at me, due to the short distance between us. "How deep is it?" he asked, his voice barely a whisper as it filled the silence of the room.

I thought back to when I dressed the wound, trying to get an idea of how deep the cut had really been. But all I could see was blood. There was just so much blood, and I couldn't seem to remember anything but that. With my attention focused on him again, and fear hidden in my voice, I finally answered him, "I don't know. The blood... I couldn't see for sure."

Don nodded slightly and blinked in understanding, his eyes still as kind as ever, but with a hint of sorrow soaring within them. "You'll prob'ly have to stitch it.." he wheezed, his eyes leaving mine in deep thought, turning to stare at the ceiling, or whatever laid beyond it. It was as if he was looking at nothing at all. A nothing the rest of us couldn't see. "First you have to.." he winced as he moved, trying to get comfortable when lying on his shell. "You have to clean the wound," he finished, his teeth still clenched because of the pain that surged through his body. Then, with his eyes wide open, he turned his head back to look at me, his left cheek buried in the white pillow, hiding the corner of his eye. "Get water," he said quietly, simply.

Mikey was already halfway out the door when April put her hand on his shoulder to stop him. "I'll do it," she said as he turned around to look at her, his cheeks still damp from the tears he shed earlier. "You just stay here with Donnie." Her voice was kind and understanding, just like the look in here eyes as she faced my orange masked brother.

All of us knew why she offered to leave, why she wanted Mike to stay. Donatello looked like his last breath could be next in line after each exhale he made, and if that was the case, April thought it was best if all his brothers remained by his side. He was of course a dear friend to her, as well. And the thought of losing him was just as painful to her as it was to us, I saw it in her eyes. But even so, Mikey was his brother. And if it was something she had learned since meeting us, it was that that came before everything.

Michelangelo nodded silently as April offered a weak smile and left the bedroom to boil the water, her stance shaky as she walked, as if she was only seconds away from succumbing to the tears that burned in her eyes.

Meanwhile, Mike made his way over to the bed, joining us beside Raph. He looked at Don with fear in his swollen, red-stung eyes, like I child would when visiting their dying grandparent in the hospital. "How're ya holdin' up, bro?" he asked, trying to produce a tune of humor in his voice. He certainly didn't sound very happy, but his small attempt to lift our spirits was still appreciated.

Don rolled his head on the pillow to look at his younger brother, breathing heavily as he did so. "Been better," he replied, the corner of his mouth pulling slightly upwards at the small joke.

Mikey chuckled through his tears, causing the salty water to trickle down his cheeks, which were already irritated from the last flock of tears, his skin rash. He reached out across the bed and found Donnie's right hand, which he gently took in his, tenderly squeezing it as they held eye contact.

Raph and I glanced at each other, and I caught tears in his eyes, even if they were tears he wouldn't allow to fall. We both knew how close the two of them were, how much they had been depending on each other since Sensei passed away. I feared what would happen to Mike if Donatello didn't make it. He didn't just see him as a brother, but as his best friend, and as such he desperately clung to his hand, refusing to let him go for even a second. Mikey would feel as though he was utterly alone if Donnie died, even if it wasn't the case. He would still feel like he had been abandoned by the person he trusted most of all - his best friend.

Looking at Raph - the dread in his eyes reflecting my own - I knew that was something we both feared.

If Don were to fall, that would only be the first domino brick to topple. It was only a matter of time before the rest of us went down with him, broken.

Raphael discreetly sniffled to himself - his grief hidden behind his shield of anger - and turned to Mike with determination in his eyes. "I need a new towel," he said, a little harsher than he might have intended. As Mikey handed him the cloth, Raph was quick to switch if with the old one, adding it to the pile of tainted towels on the floor.

"You should untie the.. the bandage," Don said, his attention turned to his upper right arm as Raph pressed the towel to it. Raphael looked up at him, slightly surprised to hear his voice. Donnie tiredly met his gaze and quietly explained, "You need to clean the wound," he breathed, pausing to find air, his plastron weakly rising up and down as he did so. "Has to be disinfected before you... before you stitch it." His voice was becoming foggy, as if it was harder for him to shape the words, and I noticed his eyelids continuously dropping, reluctantly giving into the need to rest.

"Don?" I questioned, gently shaking him by his left shoulder to get his attention. "Don, stay focused," I insisted, and witnessed as his eyes immediately shot open, as if he hadn't even realized they were closed. He slowly turned his head over to look at me, his eyes disoriented as they tried to meet mine. "Tell us what to do next," I spoke up, doing my best to keep him with us. Because without him to lead us through the procedure, he was doomed. We all were.

"If the artery.." he began, his words as dull as if he was talking in his sleep. "If it.."

"It's not the artery," Raph cut in as Donatello trailed off, already working on the knot of the tourniquet. "I checked," he added, his eyes switching from Don to his injured arm, panic beginning to rule his working hands as Don's eyelids dropped.

"Don!" I called, shaking him by his shoulder a second time. Once again his eyes shot open, working their way towards mine. "Stay with us, Donnie," I commanded, my voice gentle as I did so, almost pleading. "How do we stop the bleeding?"

He was barely looking at me. It was as though he was looking at invisible people standing on either side of me - his eyes swaying back and forth - completely out of his control. He did his best to answer, but nothing intelligible came out of his mouth as he spoke, just faint murmurs, despite his best attempt to form the words.

Uncontrollably, his eyes began to glaze over.

"Donnie!" Raph angrily cried, moving his attention to the pale features of his brother, shaking him by his chest to keep him awake.

Mike's eyes widened in fear as the hand in his grasp fell limp, his eyes moving in panic between Donatello and myself. "Donnie?" he questioned, gripping the hand tighter, shaking his body by his hip. "Donnie, wake up!" he cried, his face beginning to squirm, turning into the very image of sadness as the tears came faster, spilling from his flooded eyes like water would when overflowing a glass and rising above the edge.

But no matter how hard we cried for him to stay with us, no matter how many times we called his name, it didn't keep his pupils from rolling back into his skull, the white in his eyes being the last thing we saw before they closed shut.

I felt as though my panic got caught in my throat, leaving me gasping for air in fright. There was only one thought that ruled my senses then, and it repeated itself over and over until there was nothing but those horrendous words, the monotone sound of them slowly driving me insane.

It can't be. It can't be. I can't be. It can't be...