A Moment Read Online Free PDF Page B

“Yeah, yeah,” I say distractedly, not really hearing him just waving him off.
     
    Standing, he walks to the door and grabs a jacket. “It’ll take me about fifteen minutes. Gonna jog, helps burn off the alcohol. You like comedies?”
     
    “Actually horrors.”
     
    His eyes widen. “Really?”
     
    “Makes me feel like my life doesn’t suck so bad.”
     
    Laughing and shaking his head, he shrugs on his coat. “Fine.” Pulling out a cell from his pocket, he rattles off the numbers. “Call me if our boy starts puking his guts out, K?”
     
    Punching his number in, I nod. “Yup.”
     
    Then he’s gone.
     
    I sit on the couch for two minutes longer before I can’t take it anymore. What if I’m wrong? Maybe all the stuff at the bar had just been the result of a drunken binge and nothing more.
     
    But that doesn’t stop me from walking up to the door and pressing my ear against it.
     
    I hear the spray, but everything else is silent. One of those eerie silences too. The kind where all you can hear is the sound of your heart beating and the ticking of a clock somewhere.
     
    “Lili, what are you doing?” I mutter under my breath maybe as a warning, or even encouragement… I’m not sure, but I knock. “Ryan?”
     
    I wait.
     
    No answer.
     
    I knock again.
     
    “Ryan?” This time I say it louder.
     
    There are moments in life when a sixth sense spurs you on to consider something you wouldn’t otherwise. Like the time I’d been watching a show and Javi had been a baby. I’d laid him in his crib and he was quiet-- nothing out of the ordinary, just our typical routine.
     
    But a nagging feeling kept pressing in so hard I couldn’t ignore it any longer. I’d walked upstairs feeling stupid, knowing once I got there all I’d see was a sleeping baby. But that hadn’t been the case at all. Javi had turned completely blue. I’d placed a stuffed toy into the crib with him that morning and forgotten to take it out later. I’d not slept much the night before, I’d forgotten. The doctors said if I hadn’t checked then, if I’d left him like that even another minute, I would have lost him.
     
    I’ve learned never to ignore the feeling again, and I’m having that feeling right now.
     
    “Ryan, if you don’t open the door I’m going to have to come in,” I call louder. “Look, I’m training to be a nurse, so I promise no funny business, but you drank too much tonight and I’m worried. Please, if you’re okay let me know.”
     
    Waiting and waiting for what feels like forever, I finally turn the knob. To my surprise it isn’t locked.
     
    “Ryan?” My voice sounds unnaturally loud, even above the din of the water.
     
    The curtain is fluttering; I sneeze and then pinch my nose shut as the heat and fog tries to curl its way into my head. It’s hot in here, like walking through a wet sauna hot.
     
    “Ryan?” I say again, fearing he must have passed out.
     
    I didn’t think he’d had so much that he’d enter alcohol poisoning, I’d been monitoring his intake.
     
    Somewhat.
     
    Steeling my nerves and squeezing my eyes shut, I grab hold of the curtain and shove it aside, hoping maybe the action will get him to yell or swear at me, anything to let me know he’s okay. I expect to hear him growl any minute now.
     
    But when he doesn’t, I open them and am stunned into silence by what I see.
     
    Every molecule in my brain works furiously to try and process the sight before me.
     
    There’s so much blood.
     
    Oh my God, and now that I see it I can smell it. The metallic, sharpness of it infiltrates my olfactory and I gag.
     
    I can’t move, can’t reason through this.
     
    Ryan is still dressed, wearing the same clothes he’d worn to the club, the white shirt molds to his body. But it’s no longer just white; it’s stained a viscous red around the sleeves and edges. The water crashing over him washes away most of the blood. His skin is so red it’s nearly