Fan Fiction ❯ Fade to Black ❯ Fade to Black: The End ( Chapter 10 )

Chapter 10: Fade to Black(the end)

Sarah's blood-soaked car sat in the parking lot of the Emergency Room. The door chimes went off ceaselessly. I had stopped the car and carried Sarah into the building. When the duty nurse saw me walk in, she asked me what happened. I simply told her that she'd been shot twice and I was grazed once and that she needed a lot of help. They took Sarah from me and got her into the OR to repair the damage, and I could breathe a sigh of relief as I was led back into a room to get my shoulder cleaned and stitched up. Afterwards a cop had come to take my statement. I told him that Sarah and I were driving along a stretch of road, out for a little drive after school, and Sarah was turned looking out the window. Then all of a sudden she was shot twice and I felt a pain in my shoulder and heard a third shot whiz by. I stopped the car, realized what had happened and drove as quickly to the hospital as possible. The officer asked where this happened and I told him where. He left to check it out. He had no idea what he was about to find.

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A few minutes ago the doctor had came out and told me Sarah was fine and she'd be awake in a few hours. He contacted her father and I went to call John. We were on the second floor of the hospital and we walked out onto a balcony-typed waiting area they had set up. John quietly asked me if I had any cigarettes. As I dug through my pockets, I spotted Janey in the waiting room, frantically looking around. I tapped John, who was in thought at the moment and pointed. He looked at me apologetically and ran out. I continued to dig around in my pockets. Of all the days to run out of fucking cigarettes…

I reached into my back pocket and pulled out a half crushed box of smokes. I pulled one out and lit it up. I breathed the smoke deep into my lungs in the receding sunlight and blew it out. In a few minutes it was dark and I was done smoking, so I lit another one. Sarah would be up in a few hours and I would have to go tell her the story I fed the cops so our stories would blend. About an hour ago, I saw a newscast on the television coming live from the site of a gang war that ended in twenty-seven dead. The fight, the report said, took place outside of an old abandoned factory which had no findable entrance to the building, and therefore wasn't being search for evidence as it seemed the doors were locked for a while. That meant no one would be finding my little hideaway. The police estimated that all the guilty parties in this crime were dead and that the investigation would only last a few days. By Tuesday of next week, the captain on the scene said, the scene would go back to being an abandoned factory.

I sat out on the balcony, smoking my cigarette, and reflecting on the past few months. They had all seemed like parts of a movie: finding a girl, surviving high school, getting into college, hanging out with friends, surviving a gang war. I certainly didn't have a very quiet life this past year or so, but it was starting to quiet down. If this was a movie, I believe this would be the part that the camera does a sweeping aerial shot around our protagonist before pulling away. Then, everything would fade to black and normal life would resume.