Chapter 22 – Hospital

William

Scooping her up into my arms, I ran outside.

"I need a medic," I yelled frantically as soon as I passed the front doors. One of the paramedics present came running to me with a stretcher. I gently placed her on it before helping him carry her to the ambulance. She was still unconscious, and given the amount of blood I could see on her and me, it wasn't promising.

"Are you riding with us?" the medic questioned hurriedly as he jumped into the ambulance. I wanted nothing more than to follow her and make sure she was alright.

The problem was that I was still on the clock, and I had to debrief my team.

Just then, I heard someone calling for me.

"How is she?" I heard someone ask. Turning around, I saw Logan running towards me. "Oh my god, Harmoni!" He was frantic upon seeing her, running his hand through his hair.

I wanted to scream at him, ask him what the hell happened, but looking at him properly, he was in even worse shape than Harmoni.

His lip was split, and a black eye was slowly forming itself on his right eye. He had a deep cut on his right hand and dried blood on his face.

I could see a deep gash on his forehead which was still oozing blood. He visibly had had one hell of a fight.

"I won't, but he will," I answered reluctantly while pushing Logan into the ambulance. "We'll talk later," I told him. He nodded before returning his attention to the unconscious girl.

I closed the door of the ambulance and tapped it twice, signaling to the driver that they were ready to go.

Taking my phone out, I immediately dialed the number of Mr. Pearson. He picked up after the first ring. I could hear shuffling behind while he yelled to get him his driver. I did my best to calm him down. But let's be honest, no parent is going to take the news of their child being brought to the hospital in an ambulance after a school shooting well.

Getting back to work, I spotted Cayden across the field.

"How far are we in clearing the building?" I asked.

"Any minute now. We're checking the last few classrooms," he clarified. The call came minutes later. All students had been brought out.

"How many casualties?" I asked once my team had gathered.

"There was one male student in the east wing," Freddy said. That was the one we had seen.

"One more male in the west wing," Seth continued.

This was going to be all over the news. Especially since this school was full of rich kids. Their parents would be demanding blood.

"We also found bloody footprints running away from the scene. It was just outside the west wing," Mia added. "There was quite a lot of blood, I think someone was shot there but there was nobody."

"Do you think the person running was the one who was shot?" I asked.

"I doubt it, there was no blood trail other than the footprints," Mia said.

"The footprints were adult and male judging by the size. We followed them to the street until they stopped. The person probably went into the car," Cayden continued.

"Unfortunately, there are no cameras on that side of the building, so we won't know for sure if it was a teacher running out of the school or if there was another shooter who left before we even got here," Mia finished.

"Alright, let's get back to HQ and see if the other cameras caught anything helpful. The shooter has been arrested and is now being brought there as well," I directed.

"Sorry man, I really didn't recognize her back there," Cayden said as he fell into step with me.

“It’s okay, no hard feelings,” I replied honestly. After all, he was doing his job—there was nothing wrong or upsetting about that.

***

It was already dark when I finally reached the hospital. Between the rescue mission and the school shooting, I was beyond exhausted. Regardless of how tired I felt, I needed to see her for myself.

I pushed open the entrance doors and headed straight for the desk.

“I’m looking for Harmoni Pearson.”

“Can I have your name, please? Her father has given strict instructions to only let the people that are on the list he has provided visit her.” A sudden panic came over me. What if he hadn’t put my name on that list?

“William Huntz.” The nurse looked at the paper for what seemed like ages.

“Yes, Sergeant Huntz. Here you are. If you’ll please follow me, I’ll take you there right now.” I didn’t need to be told twice; I followed her all the way to the private rooms. “Room 306, here we are.”

“Thank you,” I quickly said before reaching for the handle. Looking at her now, she had a few bandages around her stomach and arms. She was still unconscious or asleep. I didn’t know. I hoped for the latter.

“Hey,” I heard someone say. I had been so absorbed by Harmoni’s appearance I hadn’t even bothered to check if anyone else was in the room.

“Hey,” I returned. Logan was sitting in a chair in the corner of the room. His injuries had also been attended to. I wanted to talk to him to figure out what happened back at the school, but at that moment I was much more concerned with the well-being of the girl lying unmoving on the hospital bed. “How is she?”

“Doc said that the man got quite a few good hits on her.” I could feel that he wasn’t telling me everything. “What aren’t you telling me?” I asked, looking him straight in the eyes.

“She has some internal bleeding,” he sighed. “She was taken into surgery as soon as she arrived. She got out a few hours ago. They’re keeping her sedated at the moment to give her body the necessary time to heal.

“They say it’s nothing too serious and that she should be able to make a full recovery,” he quickly added after seeing my face contorted with worry. “They said she put on quite the fight and that we should see the other guy,” he chuckled, trying to lighten the mood.

That last part made me smile. That’s my girl.

“Do we know when she’ll wake up?” I questioned.

“Not yet, the doc wants to keep her overnight to monitor her condition. He’s hopeful that they can stop administering the sedative tomorrow night. Then it will just be a matter of waiting until she wakes up.” He took a deep breath before adding the words I wish I would never hear. “Chances are minimal, but there is a chance she won’t wake up and go into a coma.”

“How is that possible?” I asked. I hadn’t realized she had been this badly injured.

“Doc said that she took quite a few hard hits to the head; she also lost a lot of blood, mostly due to the internal bleeding she suffered. Again, chances are low, but I just thought you should know,” he explained, looking at the floor. Even from my position, I could feel the guilt and sadness radiating from him.

“Okay,” was all I could say. Taking a deep breath, I sat down in one of the unoccupied chairs. She had to wake up. Over the past few months, she had become one of the most important people in my life. I couldn’t lose her. It was too soon, if not for me then for herself. She had so much to live for, so much to explore and experience. This couldn’t be the end for her.

I was angry. I wish I had done more. It was hard to not fall into the ‘what if’ game. ‘What if we had driven faster? What if we had walked faster once we were there? Perhaps it would have made a difference.’ Yet, deep down, I knew that my team and I did everything we could.

I wanted to be angry at her as well. Why didn’t she stay in the closet? Why did she have to leave her safe haven? Yet, even I knew that doing that would be unreasonable.

I couldn’t bear the thought of losing her. I was going to stay positive until the very end. I needed to, otherwise, I would crumble down. I couldn’t afford that at the moment. Not when I needed to find out why the shooter did what he did and, most importantly, if he had a partner that planned to strike again. Not to mention the ongoing kidnappings.

“Where’s her father?” I asked.

“Don’t worry, he’s around somewhere,” he said, chuckling. We both knew how protective of Harmoni he was. “He said he had a phone call to make and would use this time to straighten his legs.”

That’s when I realized that there was another person I hadn’t seen yet.

“Where’s David?” his head fell and any previous joviality was gone.

“He was shot.” My body tensed at the news. Did I lose another brother in arms?

“How bad?” I asked. It had been a while since anyone around me had been shot. It brought back bad memories from the war and the time my SWAT team lost a cherished member.

“He’s in the ICU now, they took him into surgery earlier this afternoon. He lost a lot of blood. We’re waiting for him to wake up now, but the doctors say it probably won’t be for another few days.”

This was a lot to process. After a few minutes of silence, I finally asked the question that had been bothering me.

“You want to tell me what happened?” I asked him. “What happened out there, Logan? How did David get hurt? How did the shooters get in?” I asked calmly. Logan wasn’t in trouble. I simply needed to know what went wrong.

Logan ran his hands through his hair and sighed.

“We were patrolling the ground. David was on the west side while I was on the east. Everything was quiet. Until David started screaming something along the lines of ‘I’ve been shot. I repeat, I’ve been shot.’ I immediately called it in and requested an ambulance and backup.

At that point, I didn’t know what was going on. I ran to the other side of the building where I saw David on the floor bleeding. I immediately rushed to him. Only to realize it was a trap. The shooters had heard him talking to me and were waiting for me.”

He took a deep breath before continuing his story.

“I had only seen one person. David was too focused on trying to stay awake and control the bleeding to tell me about the second one. I noticed the one coming at me immediately and started fighting with him. Luckily for me, he thought he had been stealthy and hadn’t pulled out his gun yet.

“I was able to disarm him during the fight, what I hadn’t anticipated was that his partner would come from behind me and smash a rock to my head. I fell to the floor and passed out, but just before I lost consciousness, I saw the guy who had hit me in the head running away. I don’t know why, but he left.”

“Well, that explains both the puddle of blood we found and the footsteps running away. What happened next?” I asked, urging him to finish his side of the story.

“When I woke up, it was chaos. Some ambulances were already here, and I’m pretty sure I saw SWAT units. The medic was the one that woke me up, they had already taken David away, but from the amount on the floor next to me, I could tell he had lost a lot of blood. He was still conscious when they took him away. The medics wanted to look at me, but I told them it could wait. I had been completely and utterly useless.

“I needed to get inside and help. I went inside and tried to get the kids out. I couldn’t find Harmoni. I tried, but with all the running and the screaming, she could have been anywhere.” He stood up and started pacing the room while running his hands through his hair—a tick I had noticed him doing whenever he felt frustrated.

“It’s okay,” I started, trying to calm him down.

“No, it’s not okay!” he screamed back. “Can’t you see it’s not okay? My partner was shot; the person I’m responsible for protecting is unconscious with internal injuries! INTERNAL INJURIES!” he continued.

“This is my fault,” he said this time calmer while looking at Harmoni’s sleeping body. “I should have done better. I should have been more cautious and not let anyone knock me out. Hell, I’m lucky he didn’t decide to finish us off.” He continued his rant. I didn’t interrupt him, knowing he needed to get this off his chest.

Once he was finished, he sat back down.

“You saved the lives of hundreds of kids today. Yes, Harmoni was hurt, but if it weren’t for that call you made to the police reporting the shooting, they wouldn’t have been able to inform the school and start the alarm. That alarm gave these kids the time to hide, it gave them a chance to live. It gave Harmoni the time to call me and to protect herself. Without that alarm, we would have been looking at a slaughter in the cafeteria.” I tried to reason with him.

“You did your job, and you did it right,” I continued. “Could things have gone better? Maybe. What I can promise you is that things could have been a lot worse if it wasn’t for you, so take my advice, and stop blaming yourself for no good reason. I say this from experience when I tell you that it will eat you up from the inside.”

I could see how guilty he still felt, but I knew he needed time to process everything I had just told him.

“Go home. Get cleaned up, and get some rest. Come to HQ tomorrow so we can write down an official statement.” I instructed him. He looked at me before standing up and heading out the door.