2009-02-02 - 1:40 p.m.
For once in my life, I'd packed lightly. I arrived in the city with only my purse and a small duffel bag. I walked out of the station with a kick in my steps, feeling as light as a feather.
Outside the station, my thoughts turned to where I should go next. Eventually, I'd have to find a job (I was thinking that something in the field of demolition would suit me) but it was too early to be worrying about stuff like that now. For now, I decided to concentrate on finding somewhere I could get really good lasagna.
A pregnant women walked passed me. Have fun getting that thing out, I thought to myself (as I usually think when I see women in that condition).
The sound of a shot rang out and a tiny fire exploded in my gut. At first, I was outraged. (Who would dare to shoot me?) But my anger didn't last long. I'd been wondering for a while now how long I would be able to get away with thinking about baby-making as appallingly as I do without consequence. Somehow, I'd sensed that my luck was going to run out soon.
Happily, being shot didn't hurt as much as I'd thought it would and, thanks to Hollywood, I knew that it would take at least a few hours, and maybe even days, for me to bleed to death from my wound, so being shot really wasn't that scary either. What I was already realizing - as my thoughts turned to finding a doctor to take the bullet out, how long it would take me to recover, scarring, and reassuring friends and family that I was OK - was that being shot was going to be more of an inconvenience than a catastrophe.
People around me who'd heard the shot were already beginning to stop looking for where it had come from and assuming that they'd been mistaken. If I was going to lure someone else into helping me, my window of opportunity was closing. And, though I felt quite capable of doing so, I really didn't feel like dealing with this situation alone.
I dropped my duffel bag, closed my eyes, and collapsed.
Somebody picked me up. A heard another person calling for an ambulance and others saying that it would be faster to carry me to the nearest hospital than to wait for an ambulance to get through traffic. Apparently, the latter plan was adopted. I found being fussed over by all those people embarrassing I didn't open my eyes again until I was sure that I'd been carried at least a block away.
I opened my eyes and looked at the man carrying me. I couldn't recall having ever met him before, but I had the feeling that I'd had a secret crush on him for years. I felt dizzy and wondered if it was from my wound, or from being carried in the arms of my secret crush. I imagined him at the hospital anxiously waiting for news that I was OK. He would probably be missing some manner of extremely important business during this time, but that would furthest from his mind. He might even yell at doctors who didn't seem as concerned about my well-being as they should be. It was all very romantic.
You're bleeding on me, he said, interrupting my train of thought.
(Of course I was. Why would my secret crush make his first words to me something so obvious? Still, I felt embarrassed.)
Uh, it's probably because I've been shot, I said, I don't normally bleed on people.
