Free Witches & Werewolves: A Sacred Oath by Bella Raven Page A

engine red paint lines the side of the shopping cart as it emerges from between the vehicles. My jaw drops at the sight. This is bad. Really bad. But it gets worse.  
    The door of the fire engine red sports car flings open and a six-foot-six hulk of a man bounds out. He’s not happy at all. He’s shouting obscenities and has a semi-automatic handgun pointed at my face. It’s so close I can smell the metal mixed with gun oil, and a faint smell of gunpowder—this gun has been fired recently.  
    I see his finger grip tighter around the trigger.  

CHAPTER 12

    IT SUDDENLY COMES to me, and I remember the last time I was in Haven Hill as a child. It was my grandfather’s funeral. I had been trying to pinpoint it since we got here, but I guess I was having a mental block. It’s amazing the kind of clarity of mind you can have when staring down the barrel of a .45 automatic hand gun.
    Noah was just a baby, and I was barely six. What had been a foggy, distant memory is now crystal clear. I watch the events replay in my mind as if I were back there right now. I don’t know why I’m thinking about this presently. My attention should be focused on my impending doom, but I’m somewhere else completely. Maybe this is my way of escaping? Maybe this is my life flashing before me before I die?
    I remember my dad waking me up in the middle of the night, telling me to pack some clothes, that we were going to see grandpa. I was excited at first, but that changed quickly. I could see the concern on my dad’s face—I knew right away that this wasn’t going to be a trip to file away in the happy moments jar.  
    Our flight had gotten delayed, they lost our luggage, and we finally arrived at the hospital late the next evening. It was agonizing. We just felt trapped in that airport, desperately wanting to get to grandpa as fast as possible. I did’t have any real details of what was going on, and all dad would say was, “Grandpa’s not well.” I could see the tears well up in his eyes every time he said it.  
    Grandpa wasn’t really awake, and he wasn’t really asleep, when we first saw him. The nurse was giving him a breathing treatment when we arrived. Grandpa had a clear oxygen mask strapped to his face, the elastic bands were grooving into his cheeks. Wearing a pale green hospital gown with little snowflake patterns, he looked disheveled. He was covered in electrodes monitoring his vitals. IVs poked into his arm, and his wrists were wrapped in ID bands--one of which read in bold letters, “DNR.” Do not resuscitate. He didn’t look comfortable, and certainly not the way I remembered him from our last visit. I started sobbing instantly.  
    The doctor told us that he had the Old Man’s Friend . Pneumonia. But there didn’t seem anything friendly about it. They call it that because it is supposed to bring a peaceful death. CO2 levels rise in the blood, brining a supposed euphoria as the vital organs shut down in a cascade of system failure. The doctor said grandpa likely had twelve to twenty four hours to live, but they would do everything within reason to save him.  
    One person’s definition of reasonable can be very different from another person’s. And there seems to be a general attitude in the medical community that as a person ages, their life becomes less worth saving. I believe everyone’s life has meaning and is worth saving, whether you are eight or eighty. And this was my grandfather. Everyone who’s dying in a hospital bed means something to someone, and he certainly meant something to me. Here was a man who had fought for our country in WWII to protect the very freedom we enjoy today. He deserved to have someone fight for him.
    With each breath, the fluid in his lungs gurgled and rattled, and it sounded like he was drowning. It was painful to see. And even more disturbing when they had to suction the fluid out of his lungs—either by ramming a suction tube down his throat, or through his nasal cavity.