I checked my watch. It had only been two hours since I first brought the kid to the hospital, but I felt like i had been waiting for two days. Every minute was excruciatingly long and only left me more worried. The doctor wouldn’t let me stay with him since I wasn’t family, but it didn’t feel right sitting in the waiting room while the kid was all alone. In fact nothing felt right at all. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I kept shifting nervously in my chair, bouncing my knee up and down, biting my nails, trying to do anything that could distract me from not knowing anything. I kept waiting for a doctor to come out and give me an update or status report, anything at all that would at least give me some information about how he was doing, but so far I hadn’t heard anything. I didn’t understand how the doctors could just leave me here. Right now, I was all the kid had and even though I had never met him before in my life, I carried him through the hospital doors and I felt a responsibility to look after him. I started sorting things out in my head, everything had happened so fast I hadn’t had time to process what really happened. It’d happened around early that night around 7:30. I had just got off work from my crappy job at the supermarket and started walking to my crappy second floor apartment just a couple of blocks away. It wasn’t much, a bit small which I liked to think of it as “comfortable”, but it was also close to a large park. As I was walking down my building’s street I saw a large group of kids, they looked teenagers, but they couldn’t be older than seventeen. It looked like they were arguing, but I didn’t pay much attention to it because this sort of thing happened on a fairly regular basis. I walked up to my building and was about to walk through the door when the loud crack of a gun ripped through the air like a clap of thunder after lightning strikes. I dropped to the floor covering my head with my arms and waited for the shots to end. I listened to the ringing fade out of my ear and as I sat balled up on the steps of my building I realized that there had only been one shot. I looked up and saw the group of kids sprinting on the other side of the park, scattering in all directions. Then I saw someone writhing on the ground in the middle of the park. I ran to the kid on the ground and pulled out my cheap pay-as-you-go flip phone and dialed 911. When I reached the boy I was shocked to see how young he was. He couldn’t have been older than fifteen. I knelt down next to him and froze up. I didn’t know what to do. Blood had already soaked through his shirt and jacket and was beginning to pool around him. I pulled up the boy’s shirt, he had been shot right in the gut. I quickly whipped off my hoody and pressed hard onto the wound, but it wasn’t enough, he was still bleeding. My phone was still pressed to my ear, but I couldn’t hear it ringing. I looked at it and saw an error message displayed on the screen. Of all days I could’ve run out of minutes it had to be this one. The kid was already unconscious and I didn’t know how much longer he could hold out without medical attention. Suddenly I became very angry, where was everyone?! Was I the only one who had heard the gunshots?! No one was coming and I couldn’t carry the kid by myself. There was a hospital only three blocks away, but it could take to long to run all the way there and back. I had to find someone who could help. I got up and sprinted to the nearest busy street at the other side of the park. I was screaming for help, but cars kept passing me up. How could they just drive past me!? I need their help! On the fourth car I jumped in front of them and demanded that they helped me. After I brought him back to the boy we drove him to the hospital. I carried him in and the doctors immediately took him into the ER. Still sitting in the waiting room a nurse finally came up to me. “How bad is it? Will he live?” I asked.
“He showing positive signs, but the doctors say he has about a fifty-fifty chance. He lost a lot of blood you know, he’s going to need a transplant.” She said.
“He can have my blood, I’ll donate right now.” I was a little surprised I said that, given that I didn’t even know the kid, but it felt right.
“What’s your blood type?” She asked.
“Umm, I think A negative, yeah definitely A negative.”
“Sorry, he needs a O negative blood.”
“Oh.” I said. I sat back down feeling defeated.
“I’ll let you know if I learn anything and if you need something else please come get me.” She turned to walk back down the hallway towards the emergency rooms. I had no idea how long I was going to wait here for so I sat back in my chair and closed my eyes.
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