The ten-minute drive to St. Jude’s Memorial Hospital stretched into a lurid, slow-motion nightmare, each second thick with a dread that was rapidly solidifying into a new, terrifying reality. The world outside the windshield wasn't just chaotic; it was unraveling at the seams, and our beat-up sedan felt like the last flimsy capsule of normalcy, hurtling through a landscape descending into hell. The ride was agonizingly bumpy, not from potholes, but from the debris scattering the road—a discarded suitcase, a shattered plant pot, a single high-heeled shoe lying on its side. Every jolt sent a fresh wave of agony through Gary, who was slumped in the backseat, his breathing a wet, ragged thing. I gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles turned bone-white, my focus divided between the treacherous path ahead and the rearview mirror, where Gary’s ashen face was a ghostly smudge. Cars screamed past us, not with the orderly panic of a city-wide emergency, but with the feral desperation of
Last Updated : 2022-09-10 Read more