Chapter 2

Alex walked quietly, not wanting to let anyone know he was coming in case the person calling for help was actually a mugger or a crazy person. Eventually, he made way down the long alleyway, with the calls for help becoming louder and louder, until he came across another alleyway cutting across the one I was going down. When he turned to the right, he saw the source of the cries for help: a bleeding man.

The man was sitting on the ground while slowly wrapping a black wool jacket around his left thigh, which had a lot of blood coming out of it. The man was a middle aged black man, with a big beard, cool beanie and a blue jays shirt. He was seething in pain, looking like he wanted to cry. Alex stood there, not sure what he should do now that he knew that the source of the sound was an injured person. The man looked over to him and cried out in joy.

"Thank god!", the man happily cried out. Tears were now coming out of his eyes. "Please, help me. I need medical attention, but my leg hurts too much and I can't walk by myself".

Alex, being as extremely socially inept as he has always been and having never dealt with a situation like this before, responded with "Uhm, okay". He stood there for another second, awkwardly staring at the man before trudging towards the injured man and kneeling down next to him.

"That, uhm, looks like a pretty bad wound", Alex sheepishly said. "How can I help?".

The man awkwardly looked around before saying "By helping me get to a hospital?", he said in a confused voice.

Alex realized he had asked a stupid question and said "Oh. Right." in an embarrassed tone.

He then grabbed the man's left arm and started helping him up while making sure he didn't exert himself too much. Then Alex and the man started slowly but surely making their way to the right to get onto the street.

"There's a hospital nearby. We should be able to get there in a couple minutes", the injured man said.

Alex nodded his head to the man in understanding. They reached the end of the alleyway and started to make their way down to the hospital. While they were staggering along, the injured man started telling Alex about himself.

"My name's Jack.", he said through his winces of pain. "I was going to a friend's house to get some food she had made for my daughter. I was using the alleyway as a shortcut when this punk with a knife started running at me from behind. He was able to slice my leg pretty good. But just as he cut me, I was able to hit him real hard in the face. I'm pretty sure I broke his nose real bad because even though I had fallen against the wall from my wound, he started sobbing up a storm and ran the hell out of there."

"Uh, okay", said Alex.

We walked for a couple more seconds before he started talking again.

"I just wanted to say, thank you for helping me out there. Not many people would have come to my aid like you did", said Jack in an appreciative tone.

"Okay", said Alex. He knew that his answers were terrible, but he could barely have a decent conversation with teachers he knew, much less a random injured guy he was having a hard time carrying due to his "bigger than average size".

"You don't have to talk if you don't want to.", said Jack, realizing that he may be annoying Alex.

Alex quickly rebutted his comment. "No, it's fine, I think. I'm just not a, I guess you could call it, people's person. Guess that's why I'm so alone all the time.", he said in a dismayed tone.

Jack looked sympathetically at him. "Well, I think you're a good guy. A good guy like you should have lots of friends. You're probably a cool guy when people get to know you", he said.

Alex nodded to him. "Good guy? Me? I'm not a good guy OR a cool guy.", he despondently thought. "I'm just some poor loser with shit parents. Who in their right mind would want to hang out with me?"

Eventually, Jack and Alex reached the hospital. It was a small hospital, with many people outside, waiting for friends or family having checkups and surgeries inside. There were also many more people on the surrounding side walks. Once they got close enough, Alex started calling out for help to people near-by, saying "I need help! This man is injured!". People started looking at the two of them and started gasping in surprise, saying things like "Holy crap, that guy is bleeding like hell!". Luckily, there were some nurses outside who heard this commotion. They saw Alex and Jack and started scrambling towards them, yelling out to a nurse going inside to get a doctor and a stretcher. When the nurses got to them, they started asking questions while trying to stop Jack's bleeding.

"What happened?", a nurse asked Alex.

"I don't know, he said his leg was sliced badly by some mugger guy, I think. I found him in an alleyway a couple minutes ago", Alex stammered to the nurse. "Is he going to be okay?". The nurses weren't able to answer him due to having all their focus on tending Jack's injury. Alex started to get really worried. Jack already couldn't walk properly when he was injured. Combine that with him sitting in the alleyway injured for a couple minutes and having to partly walk for another couple and he must have lost a lot of blood by now. The nurses were adjusting the black wool jacket to look at the wound, which let Alex see his wound, which was leaking a lot of blood. He froze in panic. His mouth was dry and my breathing was hoarse. He had just realized the severity of the situation.

"Calm down man", said Jack. He was in a lot of pain, even more than before, but he still had a confident smile on his face. "You did a good job of getting me here. Trust me, some knife wound isn't going to do me in", he said with an inappropriate amount of swagger for the situation. This made Alex feel better, even if only a little bit.

A couple seconds later, some doctors and nurses came out of the hospital with a stretcher and some medical supplies while making their way through the crowd that was starting to form. Once they got to Alex and Jack, the doctors, along with the help of the nurses and the medical equipment, were able to get Jack's bleeding under control. Alex felt extremely relieved.

"Ok people, let's get going, this man isn't going to do surgery on himself", said one of the senior doctors.

As the hospital staff started to wheel the stretcher inside, Jack yelled out to them to wait a second.

"Come here kid", said Jack to Alex.

Alex darted over to Jack, not understanding why he was having everyone stop so he could talk to him.

Jack smiled at Alex. "See kid? I'm gonna be okay. I told you that you did a good job. You gotta have more confidence in yourself, you understand?". Jack made a small, but strong grin at Alex.

Alex, who normally didn't like to do anything out of the ordinary and liked to just stay on the sidelines, admitted to himself that it felt pretty good to help Jack out. Alex made a small, awkward smile at Jack.

"I understand", Alex said to him in as much of a cheery, confident voice as he could muster.

The medical staff were starting to get impatient. "Yeah, yeah, that's very nice. Come on, let's g-"

"You aren't going anywhere", said a young man in an intimidating voice.

A gunshot suddenly rang out from out of nowhere. It caused everyone to jolt in shock from how unexpected it was. Once the shock was gone, all the people that were on the sidewalk and in front of the hospital started freaking out and running, screaming and crying in fright. Alex looked behind him to see where the gunshot had come from to see five young men. The man in the front had a large revolver, with smoke protruding from the barrel. They all look pretty pissed and Alex could tell right away that they probably weren't here to give best wishes to Jack's recovery.