The door behind him banged against the plaster, and it is a sound he has heard many times before. He knows it has to be his neighbor, Janoos, because only Janoos would kick the door that hard as he exited his apartment. The noise doesn’t make him jump like a jittery cat, but he does look in its direction. He tells himself it is just in case his assumption is wrong, for all he knows it really could have been the roommate instead. He widens his eyes and looks again.
His mind didn’t quite register the red liquid that seemed to be spurting past too white clenched fingers pressing hard on the black tshirt. His jaw ran dry and he stood uselessly amazed that so much of the stuff can be flowing out of a living body and said living body could still stand erect.
Janoos staggered as he stepped down and looked at him. His jaw, too ran slack, and he glanced down at his chest. His brows met as though he looked at a mess of sick, rather than a grevious wound, and Sven watched him swallow before their eyes met once more.
“She stabbed me.” Janoos says in his rich baritone, disbelief winding through his quickening breath. At his spoken words, it’s as though the spell freezing Sven in place is broken. Something in his mind whispered his nearly forgotten lessons in first aid he had to endure years back. He knew wounds like that needed pressure to contain the bleeding. The books he dully copied the answers from said so, and the test makers had agreed with the books. Back then it was all just clean black and white, written down on crisp clean paper.
But this is real life. Messy. Bloody. And that bleeding man certainly wasn’t a client, nor some stranger who happened to have a bit of bad luck. No. That was Janoos. This man was his neighbor for well over five years, and more. This man was a good friend.
He never was one to want to loose a friend, and he certainly feared loosing one this terrible way.
In a blur of movement, Sven too pressed his hands against the wound, and to his horror, the blood spilled over his useless cage made of his fingers. “She..she stabbed me. Help..”
Sven gritted his teeth, and Janoos, his body teetered over to the right. Sven dove to catch him as his knees suddenly buckled benigth his tubby body. The weight was too much for Sven, and he nearly joined Janoos as he landed heavily on his behind, like a sack of potatoes.
“Hey. Hey..” Sven said, mind whirling and blank at the same time. He knew it’s lame to speak, but he didn’t like that unfocused quality he saw in his neighbor’s gaze.
“She stabbed me. Help…don’t wanna …”
“You’re not going to.. just stay with me…” Sven said, careful to keep his tone even to mask his own rising panic. “Not in this day and age. “ Sven remembered his cell phone. That’s right, he thought.Call 911. Call 911 stupid stupid stupid..
He looked down at his hands, and reached into his pocket with the one that… oh hell he guessed it didn’t matter. There was soo much blood. Too much blood. He reached into his jean pockets and fished the thing out.
“hold on,” Sven said, and looked at the slacked fingers beneath his free palm. He gripped what digits he could and gave a calm, “..press hard. I’m calling an ambulance, ok”
“She stabbed me.” Janoos whispered in reply. “I’m gonna die here, aren’t I..?”
“shhh. Calm down. Shh..Not today. No. Shh.”
He quickly pressed the three buttons with shaking fingers at the same time, and cursed that he had to hold the thing to his ear. He wanted to stop the bleeding. There was too much dripping to the pavement. He looked to the steady rise and fall of his friend’s chest as he listened to the phone ringing into the ether.
He was still staring at the darkening fabric as he spoke with the calm voiced woman as she said, “911 emergency. How may I help you?”
“Send someone quick.” He said. “We need an ambulance right away. There’s been a stabbing.” He realized that there was no way the woman could know where he was, and took in a steadying breath. He added lamely. “The address is…”
He heard the sirens in the distance, and stared dully down. He abandoned his cell in favor for this task. His jaw quivered with his effort to keep calm. His neighor’s chest heaved up once, then fell under his hands about five minutes ago. He squashed the thought that told him it didn’t move much since, and he knew he didn’t know much about medical stuff anyway. He hoped Janoos was still breathing somehow, by some miracle, and maybe he had a heartbeat that danced in chest cavity. Sven just knew he didn’t dare remove his hands from that dribbling pool of red.
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