Free Exit Wound by Alexandra Moore Page A

in hospitals. Once, I’d heard that prayers in hospitals are more sincere than those in chapels, and suddenly, all I could think of was praying. If hospital rooms could procure a miracle on account of a few prayers, I was willing to shake the dust off my religion and try to make a miracle out of this disaster.
    I said a few Hail Mary’s, and I said a prayer for Everett and another for the first one to be heard. I was shaking, and I wanted nothing more than for Everett to live through this.
    “Hey there, beautiful,” Everett’s voice said, and when I looked up I saw him awake, trying to fight through the pain. He was paler than usual, almost ghostlike.
    “Shhh, don’t say anything. Save your energy.”
    He laughed and squeezed my hand as tightly as he could. “You save it. We both know where this is going.”
    “If we know where this is going, we can stop it,” I said, hope lighting my trembling voice.
    “You can only fight Death for so long before He comes to take you, Frances. I'm not going to fight anymore.”
    I tried not to sob. Even so, my face still contorted in the way it usually did when the unstoppable tears came running out.
    “Do one thing for me?” he asked.
    I nodded. “Tell me what you need. I'll do it.”
    “Tell me you love me.” My heart dropped into the pit of my stomach. How could I lie to the face of a dying man? How could I lie about the biggest thing before he went into the light?
    “I…”
    Everett’s hand went limp in mine, and the alarms on his machines starting bleeping. There were so many, and I was trying to figure out which one it was coming from.
    “Get out of the way, girl! Get her out of here!” The doctors had rushed in, and a nurse was trying to pull me aside.
    “No! He can’t go! I didn’t tell him I love him! I need to tell him I love him!” I was fighting the nurses so hard that I didn’t realize Ryker, as well as Ben and the other boys were outside the doors, hearing my every word.
    “I need to tell him I love him! That’s all he wanted! Let go of me, goddammit!” I screeched at the nurse, and it took Splinter grabbing me to let the nurse guide me away from the scene. Splinter pulled me into a tight hug, and with my face buried in his shirt, I fell into horrible chest-racking sobs. He didn’t seem to mind that I was getting his shirt wet or that I was a complete mess. He just held me, and when I heard the doctors calling the time of death, everything stopped. Only, it didn’t. It only slowed down.
    Ben wrapped an arm around Ryker, who was sobbing. Everett was his only sibling that had hope for a future, and now he was gone.
    Rian and Grayson stood in solidarity together, and I was trying to remember how to breathe and how to think. I was unaware of what I was doing, and when Splinter pulled me away from the scene, I tried to collect myself.
    We were outside on a balcony, and there was still a hint of rain falling from the darkened skies.
    “Do you love him?” Splinter asked after he was tired of the silence.
    “I don’t know anymore.”
    “Did he love you?”
    “Yeah, he loved me. He loved me for a long time.”
    “Were you two together?"
    “It’s complicated.” The steady fall of soft rain kept my face damp, and I couldn’t tell what was rain and what were tears.
    “Bea, if you need anything, I—”
    “Just shut up, and tell me about the show. I want to think of something happy. How did it go?”
    He told me every little detail of the show. He knew exactly how I needed to hear about it, and with every small detail that he gave me, I felt farther away from the situation I was in.
    When we got back to the bus, we were all silent. We were in our prayer circle stance, except there were no prayers or chanting.
    “Everett is gone,” Dean started. “It’s a great loss, and we will write a formal letter to notify the masses. We have canceled the remaining three shows for this leg, and will continue to cancel shows as we see fit. We’re going home,