Carry her downstairs.
So much fucking blood.
I can’t lose her.
“Stay with me, baby. Please, stay with me.” I plead and beg but I don’t know what else I can do. I’m lost, scared, fucking beside myself.
My mind fucking whirls out of control with what I need to do and what’s most important … but the one thing I know more than anything else is I can’t leave her. But I have to. I pull her out of the small room housing the toilet, my feet slipping on the blood all over the floor, and the sight of it smearing—dark marring the light floor—as I drag her to the rug causes new panic to arise.
I lay her gently down. “Phone. I’ll be right back.” I tell her before I run, slipping again to the nightstand where my phone is. It’s ringing in my ear as I reach her and immediately bring my fingers to her neck as it rings again.
“9-1-1—”
“5462 Broadbeach Road. Hurry! Please—”
“Sir, I need to—”
“There’s fucking blood everywhere and I’m not sure—”
“Sir, calm down, we—”
“Calm down?” I scream at the lady. “I need help! Please hurry!” I drop the phone. I need to get her downstairs. Need to get her closer to where the ambulance can get to her faster.
I pick her up, cradle her, and I can’t help the fucking sob that overtakes me as I run as fast as I can through my bedroom to the stairs and down them. Panic laced with confusion and mind-numbing fear runs through me. “Sammy!” I’m screaming. I’m a fucking madman, and I don’t fucking care because all I can see is her blood coating the bathroom. All I can think of is being a little kid and that fucking doll Quin used to have—Raggedy Ann or some shit like that—how her head and arms and legs lolled to the fucking side regardless of how she held her. How she’d cry when I’d tease her over and over that her doll was dead.
And all I keep thinking of is that fucking doll because that’s what Rylee looks like right now. Her head hangs back over my bicep completely lifeless, and her arms and legs dangle.
“Oh God!” I sob as I hit the bottom of the stairs, the fucking image of that doll stuck in my head. “Sammy!” I scream again, worried that I told him to go home last night like usual, rather than sleep in the guest room because the press were so out of control.
“Colt, what’s wrong?” He runs around the corner and I see his eyes widen as he sees me carrying her. He freezes and for the odd moment I think how mad Rylee would be at me right now for letting him see her like this—in just a tank top and panties—and I hear her voice chastising me. And the sound of her voice in my head is my undoing. I drop to my knees with her.
“I need help, Sammy. Call 9-1-1 back. Call my dad. Help me! Help her?” I plead with him as I sink my face into her neck, rocking her, telling her to hold on, that it’s going to be okay, that she’s going to be okay.
I know Sammy’s on the phone, can hear him talking, but my shocked brain can’t process anything other than the fact that I need to fix her. That she can’t leave me. That she’s broken.
“Colton! Colton!” Sammy’s voice pulls me from my hypnotic panic. I look up at him, the phone held up to one ear as I’m sure he’s getting instructions from the 9-1-1 operator, and am not even sure if I speak or not. “Where’s she bleeding from?”
“What?”
“Look at me!” he shouts, snapping me somewhat out of my fog. “Where is she bleeding from? We need to try and stop the bleeding.”
Holy fuck! What is wrong with me? I open my mouth to speak, to tell him, and I realize that I’m so panicked I have no fucking clue.
Sammy’s eyes lock on mine as if to tell me I can do this, that she needs me, and he’s able to break through my slow motion mental state. I immediately lay her down—as much as it fucking kills me to because I feel like she’s so cold that I need to keep her warm. I start running my hands over her body, and I start shaking I’m so fucking mad at myself for not thinking of this, so fucking scared at what I’m going to find.
I cry out in fear as I realize blood is still running down her legs, and I can’t even begin to process why. “Her accident. Something from her accident,” I tell Sammy as I lift her shirt up her abdomen to show him the scars that mar her skin as if that will explain it. And then I grab her and pull her onto me again—her cold body against my warm skin—as Sammy starts talking again to whomever’s on the other end of the phone.
“Hang tight, sweetheart. Help’s coming,” I tell her as I rock her, knowing that there is no way I can stop the bleeding—hers or my heart’s.
I hold her tight and I swear I feel her move. I scream out her name to try and help her come back to me. “Rylee! Rylee! Please, baby, please.” But there’s nothing. Fucking nothing. And when I sob in despair her body shudders again, and I realize it’s me moving her. It’s my body shaking and begging and pleading that’s moving her.
“Oh God!” I cry out. “Not her. Please not her. You’ve taken everything good from me,” I scream into an empty house to a God I don’t really believe exists any more right now. “You can’t have her,” I yell at him, holding onto the only thing I can because everything else I hold true is slipping through my fingers. I bury my face in her neck, the sobs ruining me as my warm breath heats up her skin cooling beneath my lips. “You … can’t … have … her.”