Four or Dead by G O A

Yesterday Night

“Are you serious? You want us to bring her here?” Jayden asked Asher as he paced the living room.

“You didn’t see it, Jay. She has scars all over her… the one on her stomach…” Asher’s jaw clenched in anger. “

That was Andrea’s fault!”

“Okay I get it, but she would never stay with us after how we treated her,” Jayden said falling back onto the couch.

My mind drifted to that day as the others bickered…

* Flashback – Two days earlier *

Emma was standing in front of us with tears falling and a gun pointed at me. I loved her once maybe still did, and I watched her put a gun to her head making my whole world low. Everything we had done to her began to flash through my mind and my heart broke realizing we had led her to this point. I barely thought and rushed toward her, but I reached her only in time to make her flinch and pull the trigger. Then I watched her body fall forward and she hit the desk hard and I caught her before she hit the floor. There was blood everywhere and I started to panic. Asher grabbed her from me and laid her gently on the floor to examine her quickly. My ears begin to ring as I looked down at her blood on my hands. Asher brushed her hair aside carefully and tried to see the bullet wound but there was just so much blood.

“She’s still breathing!” Asher yelled to Logan who was talking to someone on the phone, I assumed 911.

“They are on their way! They said to lay her flat in case she has any other injuries.” Logan explained, his voice frantic.

I looked at each of the guys, and I wondered what they could be thinking. Did they believe this was our fault like I did? We had led her to this moment, and she could die because of it. She wanted to get away from us so badly that she was willing to take her own life. How had it come to this? I saw Logan pacing and pulling at his hair as we waited for the ambulance, while Asher knelt beside Emma and watched her carefully. Jayden stood by Emma with his hands clenched tight to his sides, his eyes squeezed shut. He out of all of us had seen too much death in his life, but we had no idea what we were walking into when we followed Emma here. If we had known we could have tried to stop her sooner, now Jayden was reliving his past as Emma bled out right in front of us.

Asher moved to pick her up, but Logan held him back.

“They said to leave her man.”

“I have to do something! She’s dying!” Asher yelled.

Just then the paramedics came rushing in and the three of us moved away but Asher wouldn’t budge.

“Sir, we need you to move aside so we can help your girlfriend, okay?” One of the paramedics said.

Asher looked up at him with eyes wide but nodded and moved away. Everything moved so quickly as they rushed her to the ambulance, but we were right on their tails. We loaded into our cars and took off behind the ambulance as fast as we could. When we reached the hospital, we parked and ran after the paramedics as they rolled her into the emergency room, even though I was pretty sure we weren’t allowed to go in those doors. No one stopped us though because all their attention was focused on Emma. They wheeled her into a room and a nurse pushed us back, but we pushed forward trying to see what was happening. They had to call help to pull us away and escort us to the waiting room. Time passed so slowly as we waited to hear the news on Emma’s condition, and we all took a collective breath when the doctor emerged into the waiting room.

“How is Emma?” I asked stepping forward first.

“Are you her family?” He asked.

I didn’t know what to say…what could I say? That it was us who made her do this? That to her we were the enemy? We were nothing close to family.

“Her father hasn’t come yet, but I’m her boyfriend.” I turned and gaped at Asher as he stepped forward.

What the hell was he doing?

“Well, your girlfriend is stable now, but she is still unconscious. You said after the gun went off, she hit the desk nearby?” Asher nodded.

“Well, she has a good amount of head trauma due to the impact, we need to keep an eye on her to be sure it heals properly but we don’t know what conditions could be a result of it until she wakes. Thankfully the gunshot wound was a surface wound and did not penetrate the skull, so we were able to stitch it up and she should recover well from that. She is still not awake yet, but you can come to see her now.”

“Thank you, doctor,” Asher said.

There is however another matter I must bring up. We all fell silent and waited for his next words, and by his body language, I could tell it wasn’t good.

“The matter of her long– time injuries. I need to ask if you know how she acquired such extensive bruising and scaring.”

We all looked at him like he had just grown two heads.

“What do you mean?” Asher asked.

“You are not aware of her scars?” The doctor asked.

“No. She is shy about her body.” Asher lied.

“I can understand why she is. Well, she has scars covering almost her entire back and a long the tops of her arms. I imagine it was intentional so that it could easily be hidden under her clothing. She also had bruising around her stomach and ribs that look pretty recent. Also…scars and bruising from what looks like a very violent  assault. With this information, we had to contact the authorities as per the law. They will want to ask you some questions and speak to her father as well when he can be reached.” The doctor said with a sigh.

“We also contacted Psychiatrist because this was a suicide attempt, they need to monitor her mental state when she wakes. I’m sorry, I know this is a lot to take in but with help, she should be able to recover.”

We nodded but remained silent. The doctor turned and left us alone.

“God. She was this bad?” Logan asks, his face riddled with guilt.

“We did this to her,” Jayden said pacing.

“We didn’t know about the other stuff, how could we?” I said trying to make them feel less at fault, but I wasn’t feeling any better. She had trusted me all those years ago and I had turned my back on her.

“What the hell was that man? Calling her your girlfriend!” Logan said turning to face Asher. Asher looked back at him with his usual coldness.

“The paramedics already assumed I was her boyfriend, and it was the only way we would be able to find out what was going on. None of you stepped up.” Logan scoffed.

“Yeah, but if Andrea finds out what you said she will come after Emma worse than before. Watch yourself, bro.”

Asher rolled his eyes and walked toward the door where a nurse was now waiting to take him to see Emma.

“So, what do we do?” Jayden asked when the rest of us say back down to wait.

“I don’t know but I don’t think I can let her go back with her father. He is the one who has been hurting her. I remember her saying that he was pretty strict, so he wouldn’t let her be around anyone he didn’t know. She told me that she wanted to keep our friendship a secret from him because he wouldn’t like it.” I recalled.

“How well did you know her, you never told us,” Logan asked looking at me.

“We were friends the whole last year of middle school. She would sneak out so we could hang out during summer, but during the last month, she started acting weird. She wasn’t able to meet me much, but I didn’t make a big deal about it because I had just met you guys then. Then after that first day freshman year, we never spoke again.” I said lowering my head.

“We drove her away,” Jayden added.

I nodded.

“It was my fault too. She had no one else and I left her.”