Hostage

I heard footsteps on the hard wooden floor above the concrete staircase. I glanced up as the door creaked open and light flooded the room. I appreciated the warm air gliding into the chilly concrete basement as a man's silhouette darkened the doorway.
'Madison, Joshua, come here.' The man's booming voice echoed through the room. He was the leader, making that clear by his black leather jacket.
My heart pounded hard against my chest as I followed my boyfriend up the stairs. The concrete was cold against the soles of my feet and sent Goosebumps up my arms.
'Where are we going?' my boyfriend, Joshua, demanded to know. He was 13 like me, but he was so different from me. He was brave and emotionally and physically strong, while I could barely stand being a hostage.
The man didn't answer as he grabbed my arm and led me into the abandoned warehouse.
I looked down at myself. Four days in captivity with no bathing and no toiletries was not helping my self-esteem issues. I looked like a mess. My honey-coloured hair was tangled, my wide-set baby-blue eyes had black rings around them from being so sleep deprived, my skin had a layer of filth on it and my clothes were ripped and dirty. They seemed more like rags then clothes.
By the time we reached the warehouse, I was close to collapsing. I was really fit and thin, but I was so weak and tired. My stinging eyes scanned the room. There were five other men in there with chains of ammunition around their necks and AK47s in their hands. There were two trucks being loaded with cardboard boxes of guns by two of the men. Everyone wore black clothing and ski masks, like something you'd see out of a terrorist movie.
'Get in,' Leather Jacket man ordered, pointing the end of his gun towards a black Hummer.
Joshua and I linked hands as we passed by the two trucks towards the Hummer. As we walked, two more trunks backed into the warehouse.
I froze and looked over when I heard the doors slam. They hurried towards the back of the truck and opened the doors. In a split-second, everything changed. The whole warehouse erupted into gunfire. Everything began going in slow motion as five men jumped out of each of the trunks, holding sniper rifles and wearing black hoodies. A bullet whizzed by my head, narrowly missing my ear. I screamed in horror as it hit the wall behind me. Joshua shoved me to the floor and jumped down beside me, putting his arm over my back.
'Crawl towards the Hummer, then we can escape,' Joshua had to scream over the gunfire.
I nodded as my heart pounded quickly and my head ran fifty times normal speed. I wondered if it was possible to have a heart attack at my age.
The world seemed to be collapsing around me as the smell of gunpowder filled my nostrils and smoke blurred my vision. Screams and moans of dying people came from all around me and gunshots whizzed through the air before either piercing through a human body or slamming into a hard concrete wall.
When I reached the Hummer, I opened the first door that I reached and climbed inside. I realized I was in the driver's seat when I spotted the steering wheel. I crouched under it in case a bullet shattered the windscreen. I heard the jingle of keys fly towards me then hit me in the shoulder.
'Drive!' Joshua shouted.
I looked at him with eyes wide with terror. I was 13. I'd never driven in my life! Except when my dad took me to the outback of Australia when I was 9 and he let me drive the Toyota. I only barely knew the difference between an Automatic and a Manuel because Mum's teaching my 16 year old brother how to drive.
But I knew this was our only hope, so I put the keys in the ignition and turned them. I put one hand on the steering wheel, still crouching under it, then I slammed my foot on the first pedal it reached. It was the accelerator. I had no idea if I was going to hit a person or slam into a wall, but I tried to push the thought out of my mind. In the end, I realized I had no idea where I was going or where the exit was, so I climbed up on the driver's seat and glanced over the dashboard, terrified about a stray bullet smashing through the windscreen and shattering through my skull.
The tires screeched and the smell of burnt rubber filled the air as I sharply spun the Hummer around and drove through the open garage door. I sped down the dirt road, dust and rocks pelting up from under the back wheels.
'Faster! Faster!' Joshua screamed urgently, looking over his shoulder at the car following us.
'Unless you want to die in a car crashed by a 13 year old girl, I suggest you shut the hell up,' I screamed back, spinning around abruptly when I spotted the gate out onto the main road.
'They're catching up,' Joshua yelled anxiously, completely ignoring my suggestion.
The thought crossed through my mind that we weren't wearing seatbelts and that Mum would have a fit if she could see me now. My breathing increased rapidly and sweat drizzled down my forehead as the Hummer sped down the main road. I screamed as we turned a blind corner and saw a dump truck coming straight for us. Joshua turned to see the cause of my scream and screamed too.
I quickly pushed the steering wheel left, not realizing how quickly the Hummer would spin and speed into the outback before crashing into a ditch. The airbags erupted. My head bounced off the airbag before slamming into the iron bars holding up the head cushion that my head was meant to hit, but because I'm only a petite 13 year old, it hit the iron rods. I fell unconscious.

When I woke, I was lying in the baking sun on the hot red desert sand. I shielded my eyes from the burning rays of the sun with my hand, then I looked around and saw Joshua standing in front of the Hummer, assessing the damage. He didn't look injured. I looked down at myself and saw that I wasn't injured either, apart from the concussion.
Joshua saw me propping myself on my elbows and ran over to me to help me stand up.
'Where are the...?' I could only manage to say these 3 words before bursting out in a fit of coughs. Dust and dirt left my airway and exited out of my mouth as I coughed.
'They saw the crashed Hummer, assumed we were dead, and made a run for it,' Joshua said. 'The police were called shortly after the gunfight. We're safe.'
'Not yet we're not,' I said, as I watched a car come around the blind corner. I watched it carefully for any signs that it was dangerous. The windows were heavily tinted; I couldn't see if there were masked men inside. I watched the back window wind down. Everything seemed to slow down as a gun pointed out of the window towards Joshua and I.
BANG!!
A shockwave shot through the air. Joshua and I both screamed for second before an invisible force threw me to the ground. The gun was pulled back inside the car and the car sped away.
'Oh my God,' Joshua gasped, looking down at me on the floor. 'M-M-Madison. It's going to be okay, I promise.'
What's he talking about? Why does he look so scared?
Joshua knelt down beside me and pulled his sweater off, then scrunched it up into a ball. I realized that my hand was on my stomach and it was being soaked by a warm liquid. I looked down and lifted my hand to see what the liquid was. I gasped when I saw a fountain of blood spurting out of a bullet wound.
'It's going to be okay, Mo. I swear. Just stay with me,' Joshua said nervously, pressing the T-shirt on my bullet wound. 'Keep your eyes open. Don't go to sleep.'
I started feeling tired and weak - nothing out of the usual from the past 4 days - and my arms and legs started feeling freezing cold.
'C-C-Cold,' I shivered.
Joshua pulled his T-shirt off and wrapped it around me. 'It's the middle of the day and we're in the baking outback sun, Madison. This isn't a good sign.'
'No s-sh-shit,' I stuttered. My heart pounded against my ribcage and my hands felt clammy and sweaty. My arms were getting paler and paler and I was getting even more tired.
'Stay with me, Madison! Please!' Joshua begged through waves of hysterical sobs.
My eyelids were getting unbearably heavy as ambulance sirens wailed off in the distance. I finally just let them fall when I spotted the ambulance and two police cars.

Joshua’s point of view.
I sat on the hard plastic chairs in the waiting room of the Hospital. I watched as a small family that consisted of two younger children and a mother sat in the corner of the room, carefully trying to hide the tears in their eyes. Apparently the mother’s father was on his deathbed and the doctors had come to the conclusion that he may not make it through the long, long dark night.
On the other side of me sat a bouncy mid-twenties lady;her excitement and eagerness made everyone else feel a little bit awkward. Her sister was in the Labor and Delivery room; in the middle of giving birth to a baby boy. It’s crazy the things you can learn about people just by sitting near them.
But what’s even crazier is Hospitals in general. A hospital can hold both the saddest moments in life and the happiest. It sees both death and birth; at the same time an old man is dying, a new man is being born.
I, myself was having problems holding myself together; since the moment Madison had been admitted into the Hospital, the doctors had her in surgery under intensive care. They wouldn’t allow me to go see her and neither would they tell me how she’s doing. All they told me is that I shouldn’t keep my hopes up, that Madison was badly injured and had stopped breathing for fifteen minutes in the ambulance. Even if she did survive, they’re saying she’ll have unfixable brain damage.
The doctor had come out earlier, but when I asked him how Madi was doing, he told me he needed to speak to a family member. Madison's parents weren't here yet. Mine weren't either.
Everything just seemed like a horrible nightmare. I kept closing my eyes and hoping I would reappear back in my room next to Madison, but it never happened though. I’d reopen them to see the saddened faces of the small family across from me.
I had gotten to the point where I couldn’t even cry anymore.
Before I’d met Madison, my whole life had seemed dull and pointless. I never had any reason to live. I had friends who cared more about their own popularity then me, parents who were workaholics and only spoke to me about my future and never once asked me how I was and a big brother who hated me and who was constantly bouncing in and out of jail. Then everything had changed the day I met beautiful, stunning, intelligence, amazing, brave, cheerful, perfect Madison! We became best friends at age 5, then boyfriend and girlfriend at age 12. We've never cheated on each other, had feelings for anyone else or even had a fight before.
A tall dark haired doctor walked into the waiting room. He had been one of the many doctors that had been walking in and out of Madison's room since she got here
'David and Debra St. Claire?' he called while looking around the waiting room. I jumped quickly to my feet.
'They're coming. How's Madison? Is she okay? Please tell me!' I begged.
The doctor looked at me skeptically at first. 'I should really be speaking to a family member.'
'They're on their way. Please just tell me if she's alright,' I pleaded.
He cleared his throat before motioning me towards the hallway. I followed him into the hallway until we were away from any noise, then he stopped and turned to me.
'She's lost a lot of blood,' he began; instantly the tears broke free and began to roll down my face.
'But she's okay?' I managed to blurt out.
'For now,' the doc. nodded. 'We've stabilized her. Luckily the bullet missed all the major organs and arteries. The bullet pierced right through the side of her stomach before exiting through her back. It was only a flesh wound, but like I said before; she did lose a lot of blood.'
She lost a lot of blood, what did that mean? I just stood there, staring at the doctor as the tears slowed for the moment.
'At the moment she is unconscious. Due to the amount of blood loss, her body went into shock; we've tried everything possible, but we can't say whether or not she's going to wake up.'
'What? What do you mean!' I screamed.
'Shh,' the doctor said gently. 'Her body reached a high level of shock called Hemorrhagic shock; it prevented her cells from getting enough oxygen, forcing her organs to fail. Her body has gone into the comatose state. It is now the waiting game. There is nothing more we can do. I'm sorry, son. You may go visit her,' the doctor said. He turned around and disappeared down the hallway.
I stood there, staring at the empty spot where the doctor once stood. It felt like he had just ripped my heart out and stomped on it. I didn't even notice the mass amount of tears flooding down my face until I began choking on my own saliva. I fell hard to the cold white hallway floor of the Hospital. My head fell into my hands as the tears continued to flow. It was getting much harder to breathe as I began to hyperventilate, choking on my tears as I gasped for oxygen.
Instantly, a few nurses were at my side helping me, though, all I wanted was Madison.

I sat by Madison's bedside. It had been a month now. I'd been taking turns with her parents, brother and sister to sit at her bedside and watch her, so then someone was always with her. I squeezed her hand.
'Madi,' I sniffed. 'Please wake up. I miss you. Your parents are beginning to consider pulling life support. I stand a day on this planet without you. Please just wake up, or give me some sort of sign that you're okay....Please...'
I watched Madison's face. Her long eyelashes began to flicker to life against her cheeks....
Her eyes opened...