Chapter 3 - Blood on the Vinyl Sofa
The rain fell in sheets, washing rivers of grime over the cracked windshield as I pushed my sputtering Civic through the industrial graveyard of the South Side. Every shadow looked like an ambush; every set of headlights behind us sent my heart leaping into my throat. But after a labyrinth of erratic left turns and unlit side streets, the black Escalade was nowhere to be seen.
""Take the exit for Brighton Park,"" Dante rasped from the passenger seat. His head was lolling against the glass, his skin glowing with an unnatural, feverish pallor under the dashboard lights.
""I can't,"" I said, my knuckles white against the steering wheel. ""There's a clinic on Western Avenue. I'm taking you there. You need real surgeons, Dante. You're bleeding out.""
""No clinics,"" he growled, the command cutting through his weakness like a serrated blade. ""Any medical facility reports gunshot wounds directly to the precinct. The precinct captain is on my uncle's payroll. If you take me to a hospital, you're signing both of our death warrants before sunrise. Take me to your place.""
I stared at him in disbelief. ""My place? I live in a shoebox with peeling wallpaper and a landlord who wants to throw my belongings into the gutter tomorrow morning! It's not safe.""
""It's invisible,"" Dante countered, his breathing turning into a wet, shallow whistle. ""Nobody knows who you are. Nobody knows I was in that market. It's the only place in this godforsaken city where they won't look tonight.""
Ten minutes later, we were staggering up the creaking, warped wooden stairs of a run-down three-story walkup on 35th Street. The smell of stale cabbage and damp mold hung thick in the stairwell. I held Dante's waist with both hands, my shoulder wedged firmly under his armpit, practically carrying his dead weight up the final flight.
I unlocked the warped wooden door to apartment 3B and kicked it shut behind us, throwing both deadbolts and wedging an old wooden chair beneath the handle. The apartment was freezing; the radiators clanked uselessly, producing nothing but cold air. My entire life was contained within these four peeling walls: a battered brown vinyl sofa, a small laminate kitchen table, and three cardboard boxes containing the few belongings of my father's I hadn't been able to bring myself to sell.
Dante collapsed onto the sofa with a muffled groan that sounded like a dying animal. The expensive fabric of his overcoat was ruined, soaked through with lake water and thick, dark blood.
""The supplies,"" he wheezed, his eyes rolling back slightly. ""Get the hydrogen peroxide and the tape. Boil water if you have a stove.""
My hands shook violently as I ripped open the brown paper bag from Miller’s Market. I pulled out the cheap medical supplies I had bought with my rent money. I grabbed a clean kitchen towel, brought over a bowl of warm water from the sink, and knelt beside the couch.
""I don't know how to do this,"" I whispered, tears of exhaustion and panic finally spilling over my eyelashes. ""I'm a cashier, Dante. I ring up cigarettes and lottery tickets.""
Dante reached out, his bloody, calloused fingers catching my chin. Despite his fading pulse, his touch was surprisingly gentle. ""You're doing fine, Maya. Look at me. Cut the shirt away. The bullet passed through my side. It's a through-and-through. It didn't hit the liver, but the artery is leaking. You need to pack the wound with gauze and wrap it tight enough to crack my ribs. Can you do that for me?""
Looking into his piercing gray eyes, the sheer terror inside me settled into a strange, cold resolve. I nodded. ""I can do that.""
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I took a pair of kitchen scissors and sheared through his hundred-dollar dress shirt. The wound was horrific—a jagged, blackened hole in his lower right flank that wept dark blood onto the cushions. For the next hour, working under the flickering light of a single bare bulb, I cleaned, disinfected, and packed the wound while Dante clenched a rolled-up washcloth between his teeth, his muscles knotted like iron cables. He never cried out once. When the last strip of athletic tape was secured around his torso, he collapsed back against the cushions, drenched in cold sweat, his breathing ragged but stable.
I sat back on the faded linoleum, covered in his blood, utterly exhausted. Dawn was already creeping through the grimy window blinds, painting the room in shades of gray. That was when a violent, thunderous pounding rattled the apartment door, making the wooden frame groan.
