CHAPTER 19:

~Marcus saw the bullet come spiralling towards him before he could blink~

A body dropped to the floor in a bloody matter. The mobsters had ducked and covered behind various objects when the gun fired. The head man looked up over the couch when everything went quiet.

"All of you leave and I won't shoot any of you." The men looked at each other for a bit and then at the bloody and bruised woman with a smoking .50 cal pistol in her hands. They decided to take her warning and leave at a run, grabbing Marcus' envelope of money he left out on the table. Fiona crawled past Marcus' lifeless body without a hint of remorse. She set the gun down, in his still warm fingers. She avoided the blood and bits of brain matter and kept crawling towards the front door. Eventually, she made it to the hallway. She kept pushing herself towards Jen's door, occasionally going in and out of consciousness. The door in reality was only a mere ten feet away but in Fiona's semi-comatose mind; it felt as if it was an eternity away. Fifteen minutes later, she at last reached the door. Out of breath, she knocked as hard as she could.

"Please….help…me…."

Jennifer heard a slight knock at her door. She wondered why they weren't using the doorbell like normal people did. When she pulled it open, she saw no one standing at her doorstep. She looked down the hallway, still to see no one. She was about to turn away when she felt something grab her ankle. She looked down to see Fiona, covered in blood and bruises sprawled out in front of her.

"Oh Fiona! Holy mother of God! James! Cooper! I need help!" The two men came rushing to the door to see Fiona.

"Shit." Cooper muttered. He grabbed his keys off the counter.

"Fiona, can you hear me?" James said, kneeling down beside her. He got no response. "Fiona!" Suddenly, her blue eyes opened.

"Jen…they're out to kill you still. We…have to…go." Fiona was barely audible. Cooper ran into Jen's room and pulled a bed sheet out of her closet. He ran back into the front room and with James' help he shifted her onto the sheet. Cooper and James then lifted Fiona gently. Jen ran ahead of the two men to the elevator. Eventually they made it down and Cooper ran to his car and sped back over to the front laneway of the building. James and Jen carefully set Fiona down in the back. James sat shot gun and Jen sat next to Fiona. She barely closed the door before Cooper put his foot on the pedal and drove off back towards St. Mary's hospital.

"No, Cooper, don't go to St. Mary's…it's too close, they'll find me. Go to the north, towards St. Joseph's." Jen said. Cooper quickly added it to his GPS while they were at a red light. He looked in his rear-view mirror. There was a black Cadillac following him. Then he saw it: the black barrel of a machine gun sticking out of the passenger side window.

"Jen, get down!" Cooper yelled. "All of you get down!"

"What? Why?"
"The mob's following us!"

"Bloody Hell!" Jen yelled, as the first shot was fired. She ducked down below the seat on the floor, making sure Fiona was in a steady position. Cooper grabbed the wheel even tighter as he prepared himself to get the hell out of the area without any one getting shot. James had meanwhile gotten down on the floor.

"You can do this Cooper." He said. Cooper nodded and accelerated the car. He swerved in and out of lanes, just barely avoiding other cars. The mobster's car got stuck behind a large truck and had no room to pass thanks to a mini-van only going forty-five kilometres per hour. Cooper then took a back road and skipped across town. Eventually, the mafia men lost track of them.

"Oh Fiona, I wish I had warned you about him. Please forgive me…don't die on me whatever you do." Jen felt a hot tear stream down her face. Fiona looked up at Jen.

"I'll try not to. As much as I wanted to hate you, you were right and I should have listened and I…" Fiona suddenly started shaking. Her eyes rolled back in her head.

"Shit! She's seizing!" Jen grabbed part of the sheet she was on, ripped it off, and put it in Fiona's mouth to prevent her from swallowing her own tongue. Fiona's body shook uncontrollably and Jen was trying her hardest to keep her head still. James turned back, not knowing what he could do from the front seat of the car. But finally after two minutes, Fiona stopped seizing. Jen sighed. She knew Fiona was still in trouble if they didn't make it to the hospital soon. Jen had started weeping softly. Fiona's almost lifeless body was barely hanging on.

"We're almost there." Cooper pointed out. James turned around in his seat once more after hearing no reply from Fiona or Jennifer. Jen was sitting over Fiona, tears dripping down her face.

"Jen? She'll make it. We're almost at the ER door, come on." James said. Meanwhile, Cooper had already stopped the car and ran in to get help and explain the situation. Cooper came out about forty seconds later with a nurse and two interns pulling a stretcher behind them. Jen and James loaded the unconscious form of Fiona onto the stretcher. The nurse and the two young doctors ran the wheeled stretcher inside.

"What did you tell them Cooper?" Jen asked quietly through her tears.

"I said her ex decided to get violent, and that we went here instead of waiting for an ambulance because he's crazy and was going to come after us."

"Oh, well…unfortunately it's true for the most part." Jen whispered as the three of them found seats in the waiting room. James sat between Jen and Cooper. Jen leaned her head on James' shoulder and broke down into quiet tears again. James wrapped his arm around her, trying to calm her down. Jen finally stopped her crying and closed her eyes. She had nothing left to do but wait and hope that Fiona would come out of surgery alive.

Hours had past and the trio had not heard a word about Fiona from anyone. Jen had slept here and there as she was utterly exhausted from the waiting and the worry. James hadn't been able to sleep whatsoever. Cooper had occasionally gotten up and walked around the various parts of the hospital to stretch his legs at different times in the night. Cooper was just returning from another one of his walks. He was about to walk into the waiting room when he saw a doctor and intern in scrubs talking to Jennifer and James. Cooper was separated from them by a door and he could not hear what they were saying. But he judged it was something bad when Jen started bawling again and burying her face into James' chest. Cooper rushed into the room.

"What's going on?" He gasped. Jen was crying so loudly that she was barely comprehendible.

"Fiona is…."