My heart thumps as I drop to my knees, pulling Leo out from under Annie’s body where he is a shaking mess, but alive and physically unharmed. His small hand is still clutching onto Annie’s as I look down at her limp body. I rip my shirt off and push it tightly into the gunshot wound in her chest, praying that it missed her heart. There is blood all around her, and I feel it seeping into my jeans.

“C’mon, Annie. Fuck!” I yell as anger, stress, and fear sweeps through my body, and my fingers press on her neck. I feel her pulse which is still strong and see the rise and fall of her chest so I know she is still alive.

“Stay with me, Little Red. Fucking stay with me,” I demand of her as I put pressure on her wound, the blood loss is so severe I feel the dampness seeping through the ripped fabric of my shirt and onto my hands.

“Annie?” Leo says in his small quivering voice, breaking my heart in two as he starts to sob next to me. I have waited years to hear his voice and to hear it now pained cuts me to my core.

“Fuck,” Sebastian says as he comes and kneels next to me. Grabbing Leo, he tucks him into his side, a move not dissimilar to the hold I saw Little Red have on him moments ago when I stormed through the door.

“Doctors are on their way up. I will call an ambulance!” Carter yells from behind me, and I can barely hear him from the thumping in my chest that is vibrating around my body.

She protected my boy… she protected my little boy with her own body. I look at my son, who’s now standing next to me. “It will be okay, Leo, it will be okay.” Tears streak his cheeks as his little hands cling onto Sebastian white-knuckled, trying to remain strong. The words I say I drill into my own mind as well as I look back at Annie whose skin is even more pale than usual.

“She is losing too much blood,” I grit out to Sebastian, before I realize that the gunfire has stopped, and the room is full of activity as our doctors rush in.

“She needs a hospital,” our doctors order, already scurrying about, getting bandages out of their kits and applying pressure onto the wound.

“It's a gunshot. Can’t you treat her here?” Sebastian asks quickly.

“She is losing too much blood. She needs to go now,” they reply as they work around me, checking her vitals and trying to stem the flow of blood, even though my hands are still firmly on her chest.