His Saving Grace

Chapter 3

The blood, it seemed like it was everywhere. The rain didn’t help. It made it easier for the blood to spread out on the side-walk. Mia thought nothing could be more terrible than this horrific redness that painted the ground. Oh how wrong she was. As her eyes moved towards the man that lay drenched in his own blood, she could swear that her heart stopped beating in that moment. The guy was completely dressed in black: black jeans, black shirt, and black leather jacket. And all this blackness was stained with gashes and wounds here and there on his body. It was as if the red tore out from his body to compete with the black of his clothes. The sight was so gruesome that Mia spun around and took several harsh breaths. What kind of vile humans could do something like this to a person? Were they even human? She turned around slowly towards him. She had to help him. She had promised herself that. No matter what. She went close and knelt beside him. Surprising that almost his whole face was covered with a black mask. She needed to know if he was alive. She needed him to be alive. Placing her hand on the side of his face, she turned his head towards her. When she raised her hand, it was completely red. Even his mask is soaking in blood, she shuddered. The mask covered his whole face from forehead to his nose. The sides of the mask were such that the slopped down covering most of his cheeks. Only his lips and chin, the latter covered in light stubble, were visible. Placing her hand near his nose, she felt the tiny puffs of air that his body was weakly expelling and her whole form sagged with relief. He was alive. She could help him after all.

He needed help; immediate help. But there was no trace of anybody around them. How was she supposed to complete the task that she had taken upon herself? She took out her cell phone but there were no signals. The storm, she thought dismally. She looked towards the sky as if pleading and in the next few seconds, there was a cab turning into their lane and coming towards them. Hope flooded in her veins. The cab stopped near them as she rushed towards it and banged at the closed window.

“Please, you need to help me. Please”, she was surprised to find her voice scratchy and hoarse.

The cab driver looked at her in confusion. “Madam, what help?” he spoke in a thick Caucasian accent.

“Him” she pointed towards the half-dead man, “we need to take him to a hospital.”

The cab driver looked past her towards the man and suddenly his face lost all color. “This, this…” he stammered. Then he looked sideways as if scared that somebody saw him and looked at her with fearful eyes, “Get away from here Madam, get away. Save yourself.” And then he was gone.

For a moment Mia stood there, dumbstruck and shivering in the cold rain watching the cab speed way. Then she started yelling, “Come back. Come BACK. Please, help me, help us. Somebody please.”

And then as if a dam broke, she was crying, running towards the guy. Kneeling beside him, she shook him hard, “Wake up, wake up. Do you hear me? You need to get up. Please, please, please.” And she bowed her head almost to his chest and wept bitterly. Her hands were clenching the sides of his jacket, shaking him occasionally as she continued to cry. She couldn’t seem to stop the flow of tears and the sobs that accompanied them wracked her whole body. Her lips were wordlessly forming only one word: ‘please’ like a mantra or a form of prayer and it seemed like ages till the world finally heard her. There was a slight intake of breath near her left ear and then ragged coughing. Mia jerked her head away from his chest and looked towards his face. His eyes were still closed but he wasn’t unconscious anymore; he was trying to breathe properly but the blood, it was oozing out of his mouth and the falling rain made it look like the red liquid was bubbling out of him. For a second she didn’t know what to do, and then as if woken from a lethargic dream, she was there by his side, patting his back, helping him spit out the blood to one side, pushing his hair back from his forehead, telling him to ‘be brave’, to ‘hold on, it is going to be alright’, ‘to stay with her’.

When finally he could breathe a little more easily, she looked around herself again. Nobody still. They needed to get out of this storm. He needed to get out of this storm and get medical attention. She looked at him again. It wasn’t clear to her how much blood he had lost but she was sure nobody was supposed to lose this much. And the freezing rain was making his wounds worse than they already were. There was only one way. “Can you hear me?” she asked putting her hand on his right mask-covered cheek. A ragged sigh was his only answer. He doesn’t even have the energy to open his eyes, how will he….. she bit her lips as she contemplated. “Listen, we need to move. We need to get away from this street and find shelter. I don’t know how much time has passed but if those…those people came back, I wouldn’t be able to help you. You need to get up. I, I can’t support your weight. Can you hear me?” she shook his shoulder slightly. There was no answer. She shook him harder and he coughed suddenly. “You need to get up, ok?” she spoke to him as she continued shaking him, “You are not dying on me, do you understand? I made a promise and I am going to keep it. Now here’s what we are gonna do: We are going to stand up and cross this damn street and find a damn shelter. And I am not taking no for an answer.” At this, the man tried to open his eyes but to no avail. It was all the confirmation Mia needed.

She didn’t know how she mustered up the strength to support almost all of his weight on her or how he gathered the energy to even move; but after two failed tries they were finally able to move towards the other side of the street, stumbling and staggering as they went. He was a lot taller than her and was practically leaning on her small frame as they made it to the other side and found a darkened alleyway between two shops. The thought of making it till here filled her with such hope and happiness that she failed to notice when his feet stopped supporting his weight and his head fell on top of hers. It was when the warm blood droplets trickled down from his forehead to her cheeks that she realized that in her adrenaline rush; she was supporting all of his weight for the past few minutes. The only plausible explanation was that he had succumbed to unconsciousness and this thought only served to terrify her more. Her feet gave way under his weight and they both fell to the ground. She quickly got up, horrified at what this fall could have done to his already severely-injured body. The alley was dark and she couldn’t make out anything. Reaching out for her cell phone in her purse, she switched on the torch and hurriedly crawled towards the man. He was unconscious. Since they were in the middle of the alley, she needed to pull him to the side so that they weren’t in danger of being run over by an unsuspecting vehicle.

She put her cell and purse against the wall of the alley such that the torchlight from her phone could show her where he was. She crawled towards him and mustered up every ounce of strength in her tired and half-frozen body to drag him to the wall. It was grueling, his body dragging over the rough concrete and leaving shades of red everywhere. But it needed to be done and all she could do was pray for a miracle to happen when she was finally able to make it to the wall and slumped against it with the wounded body of her unconscious companion resting against her side.