TOO LATE : CHAPTER 41 – 50
Chapter 50
LUKE-POV
You know what they say dying feels like?
No. You don’t know what they say, because no one says it. The people who die aren’t around to tell us what it felt like when it happened.
The people who lived never died to begin with, so they’re unable to describe it.
But I’m in it. So let me tell you about it while I still can.
There’s a moment-a split second right before you close your eyes for the very last time-when you can actually feel yourself embracing death.
You can feel your heart as it begins to slow down, preparing to come to a halt.
You can feel your brain shutting off, the circuits slamming shut like doors.
You can feel your eyes closing-no matter how hard you try to keep them open.
And you realize that whatever you’re looking at in the moment you close your eyes-that’s the last thing you’re ever going to see.
I see Sloan. She’s all I see.
I see her screaming.
I see Asa pick her up and throw her on the bed.
I see her trying to fight him off.
I see her giving up.
That’s why I refuse to close my eyes.
I look down at the bI.ood pouring from my chest-the life seeping out of me and onto the floor.
I’ve made enough mistakes that caused Sloan to be in the position she’s in right now. I refuse to die without correcting a few of them.
It takes everything in me-but I stretch my arms out until I’m able to reach the gvn at my ankle.
There’s bI.ood all over my hands, so I struggle getting a grip on it, but finally manage. I may not be the best at my profession in a lot of areas, but I have one h’ll of an aim.
Right when I lift my gvn, Asa points his gvn at himself.
No way is he getting off that easy.
I refuse to close my eyes as I wrap my finger around the trigger and squeeze, watching as the bvIIet penetrates his wrist, sending his gvn several feet across the room.
I refuse to close my eyes when the sound of three more shots penetrate my ears, this time coming from the direction of the bedroom door.
I refuse to close my eyes as I watch Ryan kick open the door and rush in, followed by several other men.
I refuse to close my eyes until Asa is on the floor-several feet away from Sloan-being handcuffed.
I refuse to close my eyes until they meet Sloan’s.
She’s off the bed, across the room, on her knees, pressing her hands to my chest, doing everything she can to keep the rest of the life from seeping out of me.
I don’t even have enough energy left to tell her it’s too late.
close my eyes for the last time.
But it’s okay, because she’s all I see.
She’s the last thing I’ll ever see.
TOO LATE : CHAPTER 41 – 50
Sloan-POV
This feeling is nothing new to me. I’ve experienced living through the death of someone I’ve loved before. Horrendous, heart-wrenching, soul-crushing death.
It was one month before I turned thirteen.
I had twin brothers, Stephen and Drew. From early on I basically became their caretaker.
Both my brothers had a lot of medical issues, but my mother used to leave all hours of the night, regardless of their needs. She would go through spurts where she could be the mother she needed to be.
She’d get them to their doctor’s visits for the medications they needed in order to convince the state she was a decent mother.
But then she’d leave the majority of their everyday care up to me while she went out and partied or did whatever it was she did until early hours in the morning.
The night Drew died, my brothers were in my care. I can’t remember all the details because I try not to think about that night too much, but I remember hearing him fall in his bedroom.
He had seizures frequently, and I knew he had more than likely just had a seizure, so I ran to his room to check on him.
When I opened the door, he was on the floor, his whole body jerking from the seizure.
I dropped to my knees and held him as still as I could, but since he had turned ten, it became increasingly difficult for me to help him due to the fact that he and Stephen were already bigger than me. I did my best, holding his head until it was over.
It wasn’t until the seizure had stopped completely that I noticed the bI.ood. It was all over my hands and on my clothes.
I started to panic when I saw the gash on the side of his head. BI.ood was everywhere.
When he had fallen from the seizure he hit his head on the door hinge going down.
We didn’t have a phone, so I was forced to leave him alone in the room while I ran to a neighbor’s house and called 911.
By the time I returned, he was no longer breathing. I’m not sure he ever took another breath after the moment I had left him.
I wasn’t aware at the time that he had died from the blow to his head, but I realize now that he had probably died before I even dialed 911.
I changed after that night. Before that moment, I still held on to a little hope for my life.
I knew that no one could be cursed as a child with such awful parents, only to then go on to have an equally awful adolescence and adulthood.
Until that point, I thought maybe everyone’s life had an equal balance of good and bad and the only difference was that the good and bad luck was dispersed to each person differently at different points in their lives.
I had hope that all my bad luck had been dispersed early on in my life and that things would only get easier.
But that night changed my way of thinking.
Drew could have fallen anywhere in that bedroom other than where he did.
In fact, the doctor said the location of his injury was so unfortunate, he could have fallen a mere six centimeters to the left or right and he would have been fine.
Six centimeters. That’s all that separated Drew from life.
The impact to his temple klled him almost instantly.
I obsessed over that six centimeters for months. Long after my mother had stopped pretending to grieve his death.
I obsessed over it, because I knew that if he had fallen six centimeters to the left or right, his survival would have been referred to as a “miracle.”
But what happened to Drew was the opposite of a miracle. It was a tragic accident.
A tragic accident that made me lose my belief in miracles altogether. By the time I was thirteen, anything labeled a “miracle” pissed me the h’ll off.
That’s one of the main reasons why I never partook much in social media. The amount of “miracles” seen in my Facebook newsfeed would make my eyes practically roll out of my head.
So many people “cured” of cancer, thanks to the prayers of all their Facebook friends. “It’s benign! Hallelujah! God is so good to me!”
There were so many times I wanted to reach through my laptop screen and grab those people by the shoulders and scream, “Hey! Guess what? You aren’t special!”
Lots of people die from cancer. Where was their miracle? Did their Facebook friends not pray enough? Why did their chemotherapy not work? Because they didn’t post enough public prayer requests on social media?
Why didn’t they get their miracle? Does God think less of their lives than those whose lives he spares?
No.
Sometimes cancer is cured…sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes people hit their heads and die, most of the time they hit their heads and survive.
READ ALSO : SHE HATES ME BUT SHE IS MINE
And any time you hear of a person beating the odds…that’s all they’re doing. Beating the odds
…..
TOO LATE : CHAPTER 41 – 50
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TO BE CONTINUED
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