Shane isn’t opening her eyes. Her beautiful eyes. I swallow back bilious nastiness, willing myself not to vomit, pressing my thumb against my lips. Bucknel fingers open Shane’s eyelid and flashes her light. I step closer, bite my lip when I see the pupil dilate, but only a bit.

I stare at Shane’s eye, like the eye of a frog for dissection, mute under the harsh lights. The horror of it seeps into me like ice water into my veins, and with it, the spell over me breaks. I move.

“Shane! It’s me, honey I’m here!” I take her good hand and squeeze, tight. There is no response. I can see the cyanotic gray blooming on her eyelids like a perverse species of flower. So cold. I smell blood. Should be inside her, not permeating the air with its iron scent.

Oh god oh god oh god.

Her lips move but she doesn’t speak.

“Shane, open your eyes. Who did this to you? Was it Steve?”

“Darah! Darah!” Someone is shouting at me. I think it’s Darrell. Run my fingers up Shane’s arm. Have I forgotten gloves? So cool. Her skin feels like death. Was it just this morning that she held me? Came so vigorously, so alive, as she ground fiercely into me?

“Darah!”

“What?”

“Listen to him,” Darrell says, pointing to Alex, the EMT.

“Police were on the scene. They got the guy who did it.”

“I paged surgery,” Brittany says.

“Right,” I say, and just like that, I snap back to reality. Snap on a pair of gloves.

I begin pulling rings from her fingers, put them in the pocket of my scrubs. I remove her necklace, latex gloves fumbling in her messy bloody hair at the back of her neck for the clasp.

The IV site done by the medics doesn’t work and I fumble to get another one started. Darrell is glancing from me to Shane to Bucknel. Brittany hands me the needle and I feel for the vein, barely there, sink it into her skin. As I take blood for the cross match it makes me want to scream – she’s losing all of her blood and we’re taking even more. My hands are shaking and it’s very hard to stay in the vein. Not a good vein to begin with, seeing as all her blood is soaking into the sheets.