Ch. 25 John

"I just took a DNA test, turns out I'm a hundred percent that Bitch..." I belted out the lyrics. Damn, Lizzo is cool. I was driving down I-85 trying to make it to work on time. The line at Starbucks had been slow, so I was running a little behind. Then it started snowing. What the hell? Is this like some kind of post-Christmas miracle?

It doesn't snow in Atlanta, Georgia. It just doesn't. It only drops below forty a couple of times per year, so snow? Unheard of. When it does snow, bad things usually happen. It's like an unwritten rule...hope it lets up before we have a repeat of the great gridlock disaster that happened during Snowpocalypse 2014. That shit was insane...

By the time I got to the parking deck, I was jogging to the unit.

"Hey, Iris! Slow down. You're almost late. Wouldn't want to ruin your perfect record." Sean called to me as he passed. Asshole. He played it off like he was just making a friendly joke, but he would be the first one to trip me if he got the chance. He sucked at his job, and he treated the patients like trash. He told me once that he was mostly in it for the money...well that's a lot of shit—literally and figuratively—to deal with for minimal payoff. Idiot.

"Mmhmm." I raised my hand in sardonic acknowledgment. It was going to be a long night with him working...

Oh shit. Did I drop my chapstick? I scanned my badge to enter the break room as I dug around in my oversized purse. I was usually a clean person, but my work bag was like a trash bag. Guess it was time to incinerate it...oh well, a problem for tomorrow...

"Hey, Sandy." I said in passing as I reached for my badge to clock in. That's when I saw him. Him. He was standing silently beside Sandy with one hand behind her back. Only then did I notice that she had tears in her eyes. She shifted infinitesimally to one side, and I saw the handle of a gun in the man's left hand.

He was a rough looking guy, older with dark hair with some spots of gray, a short, unkempt beard, shaggy hair, and a navy baseball hat pulled low over his eyes. He wore a black and gray plaid oversized flannel, and dirty, wrinkled jeans. I didn't notice his shoes because I didn't dare look away from his face or hand on the gun once I saw it.

"Sir..." Then I saw them, the crinkles by his eyes, the wrinkle in his nose. It was him. The crying man. If he moved his gun from Sandy's back. I knew what I would see there...a ring with a strange design, like chain links. Oh God. He's angry, distraught still. It's been months, but here he is...

"Please, you don't want to do this. You're a good man." I spoke in an exaggerated calm voice.

"Iris..." Sandy shot a warning glance to me, but I saw no other way out of this. He had us cornered. Sitting ducks.

"It's fine. He's going to put the gun down, and take a walk. Cool down a bit and think this through, aren't you?" I stared back into the dark eyes, eyes of death. He was dead inside, nothing to lose. She was everything, and I didn't save her. We didn't save her. This was bad. Worse than bad.

"Please, she didn't do anything!" Sandy cried.

"Oh, she did something alright. I remember her. She was here that night. She spilled water on my shirt, the one I was wearing when SHE died." An emotion flashed in his eyes for a second...hatred.

"John..." Sandy began, addressing the man intimately. John? JOHN?! What the fuck?!

His angry gaze shot from me, and refocused on her face. "Why'd you go and say my name? Now I have to kill you both." Oh Fuck!

"No!" Sandy screamed, but I couldn't even respond before she quickly turned to face John. Her John. The one who was complicated...married. She attempted to grab the gun from him, but before she could, he aimed it right at me and then there were three shots fired.

It's foggy after that. I don't think I passed out, but maybe the shock of it all...

The next thing I knew, the man was yelling, panicked. "She was my everything! She was my everything and now she's gone! What am I supposed to do? What should I do?" The pain in his voice was heart wrenching. It felt like someone was squeezing my trachea closed and punching my gut over and over as I stared hopelessly up at him. "What should I do? What to do? Oh God. I can't believe this. What do I do? She is everything..."

"No, oh God, Iris!" Sandy was blubbering.

"You did this. It's your fault! You should've saved her, but you were jealous! You did this. It's your fault..." the man was yelling. Then a look of fear and confusion crossed his face, and he ran away, out of the room.

"Iris? Oh my God that's a lot of blood..." Sandy's voice was shaking, but she was moving quickly. She removed my shirt, holding pressure to the fresh wound in my abdomen.

My mind was reeling. Three times. I had been shot three times. How often had I wondered what my gunshot victims felt like? Not that I wanted to particularly experience it, but it was one of those thoughts that passes through your mind out of pure curiosity. Now I knew. It was horrible.

"HEEELLLPPP!" Sandy called from the break room. In had only just clocked in. How the hell did this happen? I just wanted to clock in. I hadn't even sipped my coffee. It was all over the floor, mixed with something red...my blood. No, that couldn't be my blood. There was so much of it...the human body only had 4 or 5 liters of blood...how was there so much around me? Was Sandy shot too? How was there so much blood? How was there so m—

"Iris?! Wake up! Wake up, Iris! Oh God, Iris?" That name sounded familiar. "HEEEELLLPPP! CODE BLUE! CODE BLUE!" Someone was jumping on my chest. Why the hell would someone jump on my chest? Can't they tell I'm probably hurting? Gah, freaking stop it! You're killing me!

"Uhhhhh..." was all that escaped my mouth and the jumping stopped.

"Hang on, girl. Help is coming. You're going to be fine..." That voice. I know that voice.

Before I could figure it out, all was black again.

"Iris?! Iris, can you hear me?" Ugh...someone was holding my eyelids open and shining a light in it. What the hell are you checking my pupillary reaction for? It was a gunshot not a head injury. "Get her on the table! NOW!" I'd heard that tone from Dr. Powell often. It meant everything was going to shit.

"She's losing blood. I need 2 units of P-R-B-C's STAT. Do we have access yet?"

"Working on it. Iris, honey, stop moving your arm. I have to get the IV in. You've lost a lot of blood."

"S...susan?" My vision was growing dark. Like looking down a long tunnel with the lights out on a sunny day.

"Yeah it's me, honey." I really liked her. She was a badass nurse who got shit done. She could come off a little harsh, but we all knew she was only crass because she was so passionate about doing her job. I'm glad she was here.

"I...I'm..c..c..cold." I stuttered as I watched her short brown spiked hair bob up and down at my arm as she inserted the peripheral line. I didn't even feel the needle break my skin or the catheter inserted. This was bad.

"I know, honey. We're working on it. Stay with me. She's got access! Sean, give me the blood infusion set...What do you mean it isn't primed? What the hell have you been doing this whole time?! Give it to me." She sounded frantic. Susan always sounded so calm and collected. This was a really bad sign. I was going to die...

The light was bright, and everywhere, all-consuming. It was warm. I could finally feel something. Is this what dying felt like? Was this the part that everyone describes after surviving a near-death experience. This didn't feel like near-death...this felt like the real deal...final.

Even as I realized this was the end, a sense of peace overwhelmed me.

"Iris, welcome." A female voice echoed from far away, yet I could hear it clearly as if she were standing beside me. What a strange sensation to experience.

"Where am I? What happened?" I asked in awe.

"She shouldn't be here." A man's voice cut through this time. He seemed calm, but confused, a question in his tone. I shouldn't be here? Then where should I be? Then everything was dark again.

"Iris?! She's crashing! Get that saline wide open! Get the crash cart ready!" These voices were harsher, not as peaceful as the others. I wanted to tell them to send me back. And that annoying beeping! God, make it stop!

"Oh my God...He didn't want her. It was me. It was me. Iris, I'm so sorry. He wasn't after her. This is all my fault." A female wailed from somewhere across the room. Sandy? What was she talking about? How could this be her fault? Oh John. The gunman was her John. Shit.

"Get her out of here!" A male voice called, Dr. Powell, I realized.

"B-P eighty-two over forty-seven, heart rate one forty-two." Oh shit. That was bad. It was bad, and yet, somehow I couldn't seem to care enough. I could feel my time here ending.

"No, she saved me! Please! Iris!"

"I said get her out!"

Saved her? Yes...I needed to save her. She was everything to him, and I didn't save her. I should have saved her...saved her. Save her. I have to save her. SAVE. HER.

•PTaT•

"It was John. I didn't save her. I died, and I didn't save her." I awoke crying into something cold and hard...Edward's chest.

"Iris, what are you talking about?"

"The man who...shot me. His wife died at the hospital. I couldn't save her. His name was John, and my friend, Sandy...she was having an affair with him. He was angry because he thought she didn't try hard enough to save his wife on purpose because of their relationship...and the water...I spilled water on his shirt...oh God..." I wailed as the tears were flowing freely now.

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