Bad Sun Rising

     It wasn't really something that I planned to do, or wanted to do, instead it was kind of a knee-jerk reaction. I guess it's good to know if I had to die, then it was because I was good down to my core. Even in the couple of minutes after it happened, when I passed out, I didn't regret it, I just regretted that I couldn't pay the service back.

 

     I was dying without knowing if Mrs. Jones got into that medical clinic I tried to get her into, or if Abby and Dwayne stayed together and kept that baby. Next week, I wouldn't be giving anyone flu shots. I was also dying with the knowledge that the stupid criminal who shot me was going to go on bullying and hurting the people in my neighborhood forever and I really wanted to take the bullet out of me and shove it into him.

 

     I'm a good person, not an angel.

 

     It doesn't make sense that I lasted so long. A shot like that would have killed most people within five minutes. I had just said goodbye to my boyfriend, though I didn't know how he just happened to be there when he was supposed to be delivering a custom made bookcase. I wasn't too sure that we would last anyway, because Ben always seemed to be holding back. Mostly, we stayed together this long because he made me laugh and he was hot. I mean that both physically and physiologically. That is to say, he had a really high natural body temperature, so man could heat up my Friday night in more ways than one. It was a quality I appreciated, because my toes are insanely cold. I know it's typical of a woman to always complain about being cold, I'm one of those people who would grab a sweater in the summer 'just in case' air conditioning in the restaurant or museum is too cold. I blame it on my protein allergy, but I'm just saying, being naturally warm worked in Ben's favor.

 

     Even though he made me feel warm and he made me laugh, he seemed so far away sometimes, so I didn't get that attached. Well, I didn't let him know I was thinking white dress, white fench, and thirty year mortgage. If I knew I wasn't going to outlive my thirties, then maybe I would have let him know. Or maybe I would have confronted his distant attiude.

 

     This is all because I didn't live in the best neighborhood. The area was overrun by organized crime, but I followed my mentor from the hospital we worked at to the clinic he founded. Still, I couldn't imagine working at another clinic. The worst part of being a doctor is discharging patients who can't afford their care, even after subsidized healthcare. I didn't go to medical school to not treat people. When my mentor lost one of his cancer patients due to this insanity, he lost it and walked out the door. As you know, I followed him. 

 

     Strangely enough, so did one of the hospital's richest patients and supporters, a billionaire family whose son's dangerous medical condition was misdiagnosed. By chance really, I discovered the misdiagnosis and people are oddly loyal after you save their lives.  I hate long commutes, so I lived within walking distance of the clinic, which put me on the edge between two gang territories. I lived next to the Taylors for years. When I was a medical student, they basically fed me in exchange for some day care and babysitting. 

 

     Her oldest son was a little bit younger than me and was incarcerated and that was Mrs. Taylor's biggest regret. She had Jim too young and couldn't stop him making the same mistakes that led his dad to getting killed in a gang territory shoot out. He was a nice man, but he had lived a life that made him believe being apart of a gang was the right thing, the safe thing and it was sad to see his divided loyalties bury him. He left a family with eight kids, but he died while I was still a medical intern. Now they ranged from their mid twenties to their preteens. The gang always kept tabs on the Taylors, since the way Mr. Taylor went out made him some kind of gang royalty, but they got upset at the way Mrs. Taylor kept a strong hold on her other kids. After all, a gang needs new troops every year. One of these days, the confrontation went out of control. From what I gathered as I reached the stairs to my first floor apartment was that Bobbie, her thirteen year old son, had tried to join the gang, but Mrs. Taylor wasn't letting that happen.

 

     DK didn't just have the stupidest name, he was the local gang leader for what he called the front lines, which was this little area between his gang's territory and the next. From the sidewalk, he was going on and on about her messed up loyalties and somehow the whole thing had escalated. When she chased him away from her son with a meat cleaver, he pulled out his gun. DK tried to grab onto Bobbie and Mrs. Taylor wasn't afraid of dying for her son. Though he moved his gun to the side so that he wouldn't shoot Bobbie or Mrs. Taylor, he didn't drop it and in the struggle, it went off. I don't know how I knew the gun was going to go off or that it was aiming at Mrs. Taylor's youngest daughter, Tara. She had been playing on the street with her bicycle and stopped to stare at the commotion. I saw the gun point her way and I leapt from the stairs to push her behind a parked car.

 

     The next thing I knew, I was flat on the ground and feeling very cold. More cold than usual. Before I knew what was happening, I felt the blood drain from my face, hands and toes, the way it does whenever something terrifying happens. You know, that split second of fear that makes you blanche and quake? Except those shivers were coming from the shock your body goes into after it gets shot and loses a massive amount of blood. It felt as if a jackhammer had gone through my rib cage and it was hot, so hot, but the rest of me was still cold. It felt like being lit on fire and dumped in ice at the same time. My hand found the wound, even though I knew it was useless. I guess human survival goes on until the end.

 

     Although it was me, I found myself diagnosing me like any other patient. I guess it was the shock. I knew I had a chest wound. If it hit an artery I had less than two minutes. If it didn't, I still probably wouldn't live past five minutes. The light was getting more and more narrow. I heard someone scream. I felt hands on me. Someone was asking me what to do. Hands were covering mine. You're a doctor, tell me what to do. I saw Mrs. Taylor and she looked really sad. How many gun shots went off?

 

     "Tara," I breathed.

 

     "Avery." I could see Ben leaning over me. I looked up at him and said, "I loved you." I knew that I was going die and I already accepted it. I didn't have to like it, since my liking it wasn't going to change the medical fact. And just like that, it all became dark and I knew that darkness was the last thing I was ever going to see in life.