My hands checked him over. He had a bullet wound on his lower back, three inches from his spine. Blood oozed up through the hole and spilled out onto the sidewalk.

Thomas whispered something, and I bent down to hear him.

“What?”

“Exit wound,” he whispered.

I pulled him back to look at his front. He had matching gunshot wounds, one on each side of his lower abdomen. One was on his right side from the first time Grove had shot him, and another was on the opposite side.

“This one’s clean,” I said. “Went straight through.”

I paused. An exit wound.

Pain blazed from my midsection, and I looked down. A red stain had spread on my shirt. The bullet had gone straight through Thomas and into me. Yanking at my shirt, I pulled it up to reveal blood oozing steadily from a small hole on my right lower chest, just beneath my ribs.

My blurry vision hadn’t been from tears but from blood loss. I slumped next to Thomas, still keeping pressure on his wound with one hand and on mine with the other.

The sirens seemed farther away instead of closer. The neighborhood began to spin, and I collapsed onto my stomach.

“Liis,” he said, turning onto his back to face me. His skin was pale and sweaty. “Stay with me, baby. They’re coming.”

The cold sidewalk felt good against my cheek. A heaviness came over me, an exhaustion unlike anything I’d ever felt before.

“I love you,” I whispered with my last remaining strength.

A tear fell from the corner of my eye, crossed the bridge of my nose, and then dripped to our concrete bed, mixing with the red mess beneath us.

Thomas let go of the T-shirt, and with a weak hand, he reached for me, his eyes glossing over. “I love you.”

I couldn’t move, but I could feel his fingers touching mine, and they intertwined.

“Hang on,” he said. He frowned. “Liis?”

I wanted to talk, to blink, to do anything to calm his fears, but nothing moved. I could see the panic in his eyes as life slipped away from me, but I was helpless.

“Liis!” he cried, a weak yell.

The corners of my vision darkened, and then it swallowed me whole. I sank into nothingness, a quiet loneliness where I could rest and be still.

Then, the world exploded—bright lights, commands, beeping in my ears, and pinches on my hands and arms.

Strange voices called my name.

I blinked. “Thomas?” My voice was muffled by the oxygen mask over my nose and mouth.

“She’s back!” a woman said, standing over me.

The concrete bed beneath me was now a firm mattress. The room was white, making the spotlight overhead seem that much brighter.

I heard answers about my blood pressure, pulse, and oxygenation but none about my neighbor, my partner, the man I loved.