Senior Prom 10

Joe and I stood stock-still, staring at each other for a fraction of a second and then as one we turned and raced for the bedroom.

I skidded to a stop just inside the door and Joe almost knocked me over. I was frozen, unable to think or move or act, caught in a recurring nightmare that had haunted me for the past year.

Lying on the floor in front of me, unconscious, was Ranger. He had his cargoes on and just above the waistband the white bandage was soaked bright red. The carpet on the floor underneath him was red, too, blood pooling and saturating it.

It was Scrog all over again, and I was watching the man I loved, the love of my life, bleeding out on the floor of my apartment. And I was tied to a chair, unable do anything to save him.

I felt Joe moving behind me, and all of a sudden he was slapping a towel into my hands.

"Stephanie!" he shouted. "Put pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding." He already had his phone to his ear and barked orders about ambulances and giving my address.

I felt like I was mired in quicksand. Ranger… Oh God, and I never told him. He told me he loved me, but I could never tell him. Why should true love be so complicated?

Joe closed his phone with a snap and moved in front of me, grabbing me by both arms. "Stephanie!" he shouted, shaking me. "Snap out of it! We've got to stop the bleeding."

He dragged me over to Ranger's side and pushed on my shoulders until I knelt down. I landed right in the blood soaking into the carpet and I felt its warmth and wetness on my knees. All I could think of was how I'd failed again. I never told Ranger I loved him, and now I couldn't even save him.

"Stephanie! If you love him, you can save his fuckin' life," Joe said. "Where's his wound? Which side?"

"There," I said, pointing and touching the right side of the blood-soaked bandage with a tentative index finger. You could see the old, darker bloodstain beneath the new red.

But I couldn't press on it. Ranger was dying and I didn't want to hurt him. I didn't want the last thing he felt to be pain caused by me.

Joe had no such qualms. He slapped the towel on the spot, took both of my hands and positioned them on the towel, his on top of them, and pushed down. "Like this, Steph. Press hard. Put your weight into it."

"I don't want to hurt him, Joe. I love him."

"Cupcake, if you really love him, you can save his worthless life. Just keep pressure on. Press hard. I'm going to go down and meet the paramedics and bring them up." He got right in my face, his hands still holding mine down, his eyes dark and serious. "You can do this, Stephanie. Press down. Hold it, hard. Stop the bleeding. Save him."

I can do it, I told myself. I love him. I can save him. I straightened up and leaned over Ranger, using the weight of my upper body to hold the towel tight on his side with both hands.

His face was pale, his mocha-latte skin faded to a grayish white. He looked dead already, but I stared, willing him to breathe, using every resource I could summon to try to compel his heart to keep beating.

"Ranger, there's something I need to tell you," I said, trying to keep my voice strong, even though it was clouded with tears. "You need to come back to me so I can tell you."

The tears ran down my cheeks and dripped onto his chest, still bare and beautiful. And as I watched the tears glittering like diamonds, I saw the refracted light shimmering and shifting with the infinitesimal rise and fall of his chest.

He was still breathing. "Oh, God, please God," I prayed in a whisper, "keep his heart beating. Please let him live, Lord, so I can tell him how I feel. Even if we can't be together, I love him and I need him to know. Please God, help me be strong for him. Help me save him. I love him."

I pushed with all my strength, and cried, and prayed, and watched the faint rise and fall of his chest, concentrating on it as if only my love pouring into him could keep him breathing.

After an eternity of battling the fear of my nightmare I heard clomping and saw the boots of a paramedic planted on the other side of Ranger..

"Okay, miss, you can let go now," came an unfamiliar voice from beside me. "We'll take it from here."

"No, I can't let him go. I need to save him." I didn't know what I was saying.

"Stephanie." Joe's voice penetrated my fog of feeling and I looked up to see him standing in the doorway. "You can let go now. These guys know what to do to save him."

Gentle hands took hold of my wrists and pulled them off the blood-soaked towel. "We've got him, miss. Now move out of the way so we can see what we have here."

Joe came across and lifted me with both hands under my arms. "Come on, Cupcake, we need to stay out of the way so the EMTs can do their job." He pulled me up and wrapped an arm around me, walking me to the opposite side of the room.

"I can't leave him, Joe," I sobbed, watching the paramedics cut away the bandages from Ranger's waist. "I have to save him."

"It'll be okay, Cupcake. Everything's going to be okay."

I stood there in Joe's arms for another eternity while the paramedics worked on Ranger. My eyes were blurry and my mind wouldn't function, but finally the word "stable" penetrated the haze.

"What?" I said, feeling like I just woke up from a hundred-year sleep.

"They've got him stabilized and are ready to transport him to the hospital," Joe said.

One of the EMTs left the room and returned after a few minutes with a stretcher on wheels. Joe let go of me to help shift Ranger's feet as they lifted him onto the stretcher, strapped him in and raised it.

As they started to wheel him from the room I grabbed the side of the stretcher. "You're not taking him anywhere without me," I said. "I'm not leaving him."

"Are you his next of kin?" one of the EMTs asked.

I hesitated.

"Yes," Joe's voice came strong and clear. "She's his wife. She goes with him."

TBC