Relief, dread, sorrow and fury came and went, with dull shock gradually crowding out the rest.

She was just starting to double back and ponder her baby’s ominous stillness when, with a loud report, a bullet suddenly tore apart what was left of Jake’s head. He dropped limply. Tina looked at his still body, in that moment powerfully aware that this was as final an end as could be. Jacob Michael Cumberland, electrician, husband, father to be, decent pool player and indifferent lover, would walk the earth no more.

Tina saw that a man was pointing his gun through the window. About Jake’s age, he wore the uniform of a firefighter and looked shaken by what he’d just done.

A second official, more authoritative or just benefiting from not having pulled the trigger, knelt beside Tina and gave her legs a critical look. He was in his mid-20s as well and had the decisive manner of an experienced auto mechanic. The name on his blue coverall was “Felton.”

“Gonna need the jaws of life here.”

The gunman nodded, inexplicably paused to stare at Tina some more, and rushed off. If she twisted her neck as far as it could go, Tina could see their fire truck parked nearby. It wasn’t a full truck, the kind that came with ladders and Dalmatians, but one of those red minivans with flashers. A two-man crew. 

“Thank you,” Tina said, meaning for saving her from what Jake had become, but Felton didn’t seem to hear. Her voice was weak, but she felt sure she’d spoke audibly. Anxiety crept into her as steadily as the tide.

“I don’t have it,” she said, trying to speak clearly and strongly. “He didn’t get me. He couldn’t reach!”

The other fireman returned empty-handed. They conferred in an urgent whisper, just out of Tina’s earshot. At one point the more self-assured one raised his voice and she made out the words. “Un-fucking believable.”

Tina, as surreal as it seemed even to her, started trying to free her legs all by herself. It hurt terribly, and only made the blood spatter her face more rapidly. She realized that she had quite a bit of her own plasma on herself now, and stopped.

“I’m gonna be fine,” she said. “You can v-test me right now if you want. Just get me out of here!”

“Give me your arm,” Felton said, with the bedside manner of an infirmary doctor at Chino. Tina thrust it out. Felton looked at her forearm gingerly, reluctant to touch her. At last he carefully drew her blood with one of those new, nearly instantaneous syringes the government had issued to its various agencies.

He handed it back to the first guy — “Isley,” his badge said — and glanced up at her imprisoned legs. 

“Please,” Tina said, fear wrapping itself around her body like a coat of ice (or was it the blood loss? She was growing light-headed). “I’m pregnant!”

Felton shook his head, as if denying the validity of the statement. He hadn’t looked her in the eye. Not even once.

Isley trotted back. “She’s clean.”

Felton stared into space, the expression of a man lucidly weighing options in his mind. “What’s the ETA on the truck?”

“They got a house fire in Renton. We’re waiting on 54 to finish up on 3rd and Stewart.”

Felton nodded at this new piece of information.