Page 3 of Hidden Nature

The shooter—black Adidas low-tops, gray trench, jeans frayed at the bottom—began to fade out of her mind.

Dimly, she heard another shot, then one more.

Then Joel was beside her, pressing down on her chest so the pain screamed in her head. “Sloan, Sloan! You look at me. You fucking stay with me. Officer down, Officer down. Need immediate medical assistance.”

She stared at his face—she knew that face—as his words fell away and into a void.

Then his face was close, so close it blocked everything else, and his eyes—dark as two new moons—were fierce.

“You stay with me. Help’s coming. I’m here, right here.”

“Hurts.”

“I know, sis, I know. You use that, use that hurt and stay with me. I’m with you. Don’t you go anywhere. Stay here, stay with me.”

Pain obliterated time and space. She drowned in it, and went under. When she surfaced, the pain came with her. Screaming like the sirens. Faces she didn’t know snapped out words she couldn’t understand.

Cold, bitter cold covered her, but didn’t numb the wild, unrelenting pain.

But she heard Joel—somewhere as the world sped by.

“You’re strong. You’re fucking tough, and you’re gonna fight. You hear me? You hear me, Sloan?”

Everything was white. Everyone shouted, but the voices bounced off her ears and away. Lights, too many lights hurting her eyes, so she closed them.

Then it was Joel again, gripping her hand, his eyes fierce. “I’m right here. I’ll be right here. You fight, goddamn it, Sloan. Don’t you give up.”

Then it all went away. The pain, the lights, the voices. It all went to black.

When the light came back, it came soft, gauzy. She felt free in that light as she floated. As she looked down at the woman on the table. So pale, so still. So much blood.

All those people around her. They’d cut the poor thing open, she thought, before she realized, with a kind of mild interest, she was the poor thing.

It’s me down there.

Someone shoutedClear!and the paddles made her body jerk. Floating, she sighed. They were working so hard, and she—I—looked tired of it. So tired of it.

You can let her go, she thought.Let me go.

The paddles hit again, and she ignored them.

She could see so much from where she floated. Joel, pacing, pacing, a phone at his ear. She could even hear him.

“She’s still in surgery. Her family’s on their way. I’ll call you when she’s out.”

She watched him swipe tears away, and that touched her. She wanted to tell him she was fine, peaceful in this soft, pretty light. But there was blood on his shirt, and his eyes were shattered.

“We’re not going to lose her, Sari. We’re not. She’s going to fight. She won’t give up. She’s not finished yet. Sari, she’s not giving up.”

All right, all right, damn it.

Once again, she looked down at herself. She thought of Joel and a baby coming. She thought of her parents, her sister.

The next time the paddles struck, she let them take her back to the black.

When she woke, the pain was there, but dulled, as if smothered under a warm blanket. The air had a sting to it, one she recognized as hospital even before she registered the beep of machines.

The light, dim but harsh, pressed against her eyelids and made her long for just a moment of the soft and gauzy.

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