The first bullet ripped through his gut. The second and third through his chest. Everything halted to slow motion as he collapsed to the beige linolium floor. The kid who shot him, stunned by his own actions, left the money on the counter and fled. The old lady who owned the store dialed 911.
At first, the pain he felt wasn’t from the gunshots, but from the thought that he’d failed. He never found her this time. This dance they did, lifetime after lifetime…finding each other, only to realize again that their blessing was also a curse.
His pulse sounded in his ears, as blood flowed from him.
The old woman, still clutching the phone to her ear stood over him. Her free hand pressed a hand towel to his chest. “Don’t worry, hon. They’re on the way. You’re going to be fine.” Into the phone she said, “How much longer?”
There was no mistaking the fear in her eyes. The one in the stomach might not have been enough to claim him, but the two in the chest… Breathing was like swimming through syrup. He tried to say something to the lady, to thank her, but nothing came out except a wet, choked gurgle. The lady cringed and went to the front window to watch for the ambulance.
He gazed at the flourescent lights on the ceiling. Hours, days, lifetimes blended together in a miasma of love and sorrow.
From his cloud of memory, he pulled their meeting on boat bound for the Americas. They were children, seven and eight years old, one Irish and one Italian. They couldn’t speak each other’s languages, but there was still a connection. Once the landed in the New World, that connection was broken.
In another life, she was a starlet that he’d loved from afar for years. He sent her letters and tried to get near her at public events. He knew if she could just see him, that she’d know that he was the one and they could finally be together. But after several years of letters and eventually phone calls, he was arrested for stalking and put in jail. She’d never shown up to any of the court dates, never had seen his face, had never guessed that it was him.
Two centuries ago, she, the blushing bride on her wedding day, he, the innkeeper’s son, shared a passionate kiss in the kitchen. The angry and jealous groom witnessed this, but didn’t tip his hand until later, when he strangled his new bride.
Another life as a circus ringleader, and she as a trapeze artist. Yet another with him as an important businessman, and she, a woman of ill-repute. Always, some circumstance brought them together and simultaneously tore them apart. After each lifetime, their memories of each other swirled in their minds, like remembered dreams. Their awareness that there was a missing piece of themselves out there, searching, germinated and grew stronger as time marched on, but it didn’t make finding each other any faster or easier.
And now, Daniel, a teacher, bleeding to death while waiting for an ambulance, because some kid decided to knock over a convenience store. And she? He didn’t know.
“They’re here!” The lady cried as three EMTs in navy blue jumpsuits wheeled in a gurney. There was such hope in the woman’s voice, but the world was already fading to gray, sounds blurred into one long drone, everything smudged together like chalk drawings in the rain.
Daniel closed his eyes. He felt the cold metal of the scissors as one of the EMTs cut his shirt away. He heard the snap of a rubber gloves and the rip of paper packets that held various bandages. Then he heard a voice, “Sir? Sir, can you hear me? Open your eyes if you can hear me.”
He opened one eye, then the other.
“Good,” she said. We’re going to get you to the hospital, ok?”
He noticed she didn’t say he was going to be fine. Just that he would get to the hospital.
“My name’s Emily. What’s your name?”
He opened his mouth, but just like before, nothing came out but a spurt of blood.
“That’s all right, sir. Just take it easy. We’re going to lift you onto the gurney, ok?”
He nodded.
Emily squatted near his head and slipped her hands under his shoulders. “Ready? One, two, three.”
Their eyes locked. Daniel’s heart accelerated, his breath quickened.
She looked down at him, her eyes reflecting the feeling he had inside of him. The best and worst moment of his life, wrapped into one.
“Let’s go!” she shouted.
They hustled Daniel into the ambulance. The two other EMTs climbed into the cab, leaving Emily to care for the patient in the back.
“You’re going to be fine,” she said as she slid a needle into his arm, and pressed down on his wounds to stop the bleeding. He tried to say something to her, but she slid an oxygen mask over his face. “Just rest. You’ll be fine. You have to be.”
Daniel scanned the monitor he was plugged into. He didn’t know much about medicine, but he knew enough to understand that the jagged, irregular green line wasn’t good. He wanted to live, but that wouldn’t be enough. The world around him started to fade away.
He heard a long unending beep and Emily’s panicked voice in his ear. “Stay with me! Dammit, you can’t die!”
Daniel tried to move his hands to her face, but he couldn’t. Then, he was looking down at them. Emily’s blond ponytail coming undone, her tears streaking her face as she compressed his chest and breathed into his mouth. A kiss he would never taste.
As the ambulance arrived at the hospital, Emily closed Daniel’s eyes and whispered, “Next time, my love. Next time.”
