A/N: I wrote this piece primarily as an exercise in description. It is a one-shot, so there will be no more to it than what is written here. Hope you enjoy it!

I stepped out of the back door of the vampire bar and walked across the small employee parking lot. A single yellow-bulb security lamp beamed down on the gravel. The beam reflected on the hood of Eric's fire-engine-red Corvette, the patent-leather black door of Pam's fishtail Cadillac convertible. The gravel skittered around my low kitten heel sandals, rolling to either side of me as I trotted awkwardly across the lot. I fidgeted in my clutch, searching through the extraneous rubbish for my car keys. I found them attached to a small metal Fangtasia key chain, and extracted them from the purse. The chain caught on a string inside the red satin lining of the bag. I tugged gently at the key chain, trying not to rip the seam and unravel the entire bag.

It was a cool evening in early autumn. The nights were getting longer, the days shorter, and a breeze flew up from the gulf and winded through the slender willow leaves. Unfortunately, the bar was at least as chilly, perhaps even more so than the weather outside. I'd left my cashmere cropped sweater in the car. I'd folded it neatly over the passenger seat.

Finally, I yanked the keys free of the bag. My cherry red cellular phone popped loose as well and dropped, end over end, to the ground. I hissed through my teeth and crouched down to retrieve it, my thighs parting awkwardly in a black pencil skirt.

Never see me coming. Never see me coming.

A thought whispered through the night and assaulted my mind. My gaze jumped up to the thick oleander bushes that surrounded the parking lot. Their leaves rustled, first in response to the brisk draft, and then with purpose. A young, skeletal boy emerged from between two waist-high bushes. He skipped into the lot with surprising speed. He wore black, all black. His black tee-shirt hung loose around his skinny ribcage, and the crew neck hung awkwardly as though his shoulders could not hold up the material. His black jeans were torn at the hem and around the knees. His skin had a sallow pallor, and his veins stuck out like bright blue road maps, crisscrossing his spindly arms. Bright purple bruises had developed in the pits of his elbows. His long black hair was limp around his shoulders, and it shone like a grease stain under the security lamp. His eyes were bloodshot around the pupil and the whites stained yellow like the teeth of a cigarette smoker.

I took in a deep, gasping breath (scream, Sookie, scream!) before his gangly fingers closed around my throat. He dragged me down to the gravel with all the strength of a vampire. His heart pumped blood through his veins at an erratic pace, and I could hear the sound of it, feel the sensation of it through his skin. His thoughts strangled my own.

Purse purse purse purse purse. Grab the fucking purse! Don't get caught. Don't get caught. Gotta get a fix. Fix. Gotta get a fix.

Despite his size, his lanky, hungry body, his arms were heavy as lead. He yanked me down on the rocky floor, shoving pebbles into the flesh of my knees. His palm throbbed and he clutched me tighter, harder. I could just make out the flash of light that rippled across the blade of a Bowie knife. Oh God, how I wanted to scream, how my lungs burned to scream. His fingers stiffened.

Gotta get a fix gotta get a fix a fix a fix a fix a fix.

A blade does not slide through the flesh. It ruptures it. This is not a hot knife through butter situation. I could hear my skin split open to accept the weapon. My tissues cleaved around it. He put pressure into the hilt and forced the blade into the left side of my chest. Steel grated against my rib and the sound echoed through my insides. The urge to scream filled me, but I managed only a soft grunt. The air in my lung seeped out around the wound like a pinhole in the skin of a balloon. It wasn't a quick spill, but a slow, painful deflation. I opened my mouth to gasp for air like a fish out of water. Tears welled up in my eyes and streamed down my face, leaving mascara-tinted deltas on my cheeks. Blood pooled into my white striped dress shirt, and soaked into the waist of my skirt.

The boy dislodged the blade, creating a kind of sucking noise. Blood splashed from the wound, spraying his clothes and the ground and my shirt. He held it up, and I watched blood drip down the handle and coat his thin fingers. Black hair sprouted from his knuckles. He bent down over me and ripped my clutch from my loosened hand. Gravel kicked up around his ripped Converse shoes. He stumbled forward before leaping over me.

Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit. Gotta get a fix. A fix. A fix.

My lips quavered as I gasped, searching for air to replace what was rapidly escaping. A choking, gagging sound escaped my esophagus. I sputtered. The back of my tongue was bitter, as though I'd gargled pennies. Coughing and retching, I spit a foamy blood and felt it spring up and fall back into my mouth. The taste turned my stomach, and bile coiled up the back of my throat. Still, I couldn't manage to scream.

"Eric," I wheezed pitifully. No one would hear me if I kept that up. I could barely hear myself. Overhead, the beam of the security lamp flickered. Moths darted to and fro under the light, flapping their dusty wings in time to the rapid beating of my heart. I leaned back, my shins tucked under me. Everything was pins and needles. I was cold.

Would I die here?

Somewhere outside my field of vision, a door creaked open and slammed shut. The gravel sprinkled aside as feet trotted near. Each pebble flicked and dropped down again. Each sound was a booming echo. I listened to the ancient ligaments in his knees pop and crackle when he knelt on the ground at my side. His arm dipped under me and lifted me upward. I contorted my features to express the pain of it, but I could not cry out. Oh God, how I wanted to cry out. Eric's face bent over mine, and I could see a faint white glow, like the distortion around the full moon in the black midnight sky. His striking white-blond hair framed his head like the halo of a saint. His lips moved. The sound followed like a cassette out of synch.

"Sookie," he said. His face was oddly pale, as though all the color had drained away. His sapphire eyes radiated anger and fear. His thin, ashen lips opened again to speak. I could see the tips of his fangs. His tongue was rosy.

"Pam," he growled, tossing his head. There was movement, and the ground shifted to allow it. "Felicia, call the police."

Beep. Beep beep. 9-1-1. Felicia spoke rapidly into the phone, a hint of an accent on her lips. She paced, tossing pebbles around with the heels of her shoes. I turned my head, raised my eyes to see Eric's face hovering above mine. His blond brows knitted together, shadowing his fierce eyes. His pallid mouth was stained red, and he lifted his arm over my head. Blood dripped from two puncture holes in the white flesh of his wrist. A bead of brilliant red plunged toward me. I rolled my head to one side. The drop landed in my hair, dampening a few strands. His voice was slow, filled with a mix of fury and despair.

"Drink, Sookie," he snarled.

I pursed my lips for a moment, sucked in air through my nose. No more blood.

"Lover," he pleaded, though his voice was still stained with frustration, "Drink it. I don't want to lose you."

I opened my mouth for another breath, but kept my head turned away from him. Pain thudded in my chest, my back. My knees quivered. My skin was cold and clammy.

Sirens resonated on the horizon; somewhere out beyond the world that I could see. I squeezed my eyes shut as though it might block out the sound. The gravel depressed under the wheels of the ambulance. Waves of blue and red light discolored Eric's face. He licked the blood on his lips absently. The holes in his skin had disappeared.

Finally, from deep within my deflated gut, a scream of pain welled up and escaped me. Eric lifted me up from the ground and laid me out on the scratchy fabric of a gurney. The wound stung my chest, and the pain of it sent ripples of ache through the rest of my body. I wept anew. Eric's arms and chest and voice rumbled deeply as he roared at the paramedics. Foreign hands tilted my head back. A mask pressed heavily against my mouth and nose. Air trickled over my tongue.

I held my arms out to Eric, but they dropped like lead weights.

The sirens wailed, and the wheels on the gurney smacked the underside of the bed as they pushed me up into the back of the vehicle. I could hear the Viking protesting, the engine of a vehicle, the male and female voices of too many new people. Police, probably. I considered closing my eyes, but there was too much going on around me to ignore.

"Eric," I whispered hoarsely. The paramedic had deep brown eyes with flecks of gold in them. His unkempt brown hair fell over his forehead. I wanted to brush it away so it wouldn't tickle his skin.

"He'll meet us at the hospital, Sookie," the man told me. He had a brass name badge on his white shirt. His name was George. His face jumped away, and he addressed someone else. How many people were crammed into the vehicle? I stopped thinking in order to gasp for another breath of air.

"Bill, I need that cannula, now!" George's hands moved so quickly that I couldn't make out their direction or purpose. I watched him with wide eyes. "I've got the local in her. Hurry up!"

I wheezed with every possible thread of concentration. Warm air tickled the edges of the hole in my chest. Pain made me spasm.

There were words shouted that I had only heard on old episodes of "E.R." I tried to imagine George Clooney and Anthony Edwards rummaging around in sea foam green scrubs, checking my vitals and shouting out orders to awaiting nurses. My eyes closed.

The emergency room was in chaos when I marched across the room and leaned over the desk. It took every ounce of self-control not to reach over and strangle the small-framed receptionist. She was clearly over the age of sixty, and her salt and pepper curls framed her crown like sprigs of cotton. Wrinkles lined her aging face, around her sagging eyelids and at the corners of her mouth. Her heart-beat was slow and deliberate, pushing her through a weary life.

"They've only just brought her in, Mr. Northman. I will alert you as soon as I have more information to give you. Please, try to remain calm."

Remain calm? Was she insane? I stared at her name badge, a white plastic rectangle with embossed black letters. Her name was Gladys. Gods how I wanted to rip that badge from her and stab her with it.

"Remain calm?!" I roared, my voice filling up the waiting room. Heads turned to gaze at me. Heartbeats droned in my skull. "My love was stabbed by a heroin addict in a fucking parking lot!"

I turned around and stalked out of the electronic sliding doors. Pam and Felicia were standing on the curb. Felicia brought her cellular phone away from her ear and folded it shut. Her bright hazel eyes turned to me, rising to my face but not to my gaze.

"Bill Compton is on his way. He is bringing Sookie's friend, Amelia, and her employer, Sam. He has called her brother, but there is no answer."

"Get back to the bar." I grunted at her. She nodded shortly and walked back to her car, sitting idle in the driveway.

"Have they given you any news?" Pam inquired, her voice dripping with concern.

"None," I answered her curtly.

"Why would she not drink from you?"

Were it any other vampire, I would have snarled and attacked. Pam was a different child, a child that knew me better than any thing living or dead. I regarded her slowly, eyeing the downturn of her mouth, the bewilderment in her eyes, the slouch of her shoulders. My rage deflated. I leaned back against the concrete column to my left.

"I do not know."

"Perhaps she was in a state of shock. Her judgment was impaired. She did not know what she was saying or doing."

"I do not want to lose her." I admitted. I could only admit these feelings to Pam. This was the only time she would not berate me for them.

"You love her." It was a statement.

"I love her." I agreed.

"Mr. Northman?" A small voice called out to me. I wheeled around to look upon it. The small, wrinkled woman stared up at me with deep-seated green eyes. Though my fangs were exposed, she did not seem afraid. Her hand reached out, and I allowed her to touch my arm. "Miss Stackhouse is in critical condition. She is unconscious, and the doctor has inserted a chest tube. Please, if you will come in, the doctor wishes to speak with you."

I followed her inside, back through the sliding doors. Pam remained on the curb, waiting for Bill and his small entourage. A man in pale blue cotton clothing stood with a clipboard in his hands. Gladys walked with me to meet him. She stood by my side when the doctor spoke.

"Mr. Northman," he nodded before glancing down at the paperwork in front of him. "Miss Stackhouse was treated for a tension pneumothorax. Air escaped from her lung into the chest cavity and put pressure on her punctured left lung. We have treated her with a cannula needle that was inserted into the chest to relieve pressure. She now has a chest tube to continue alleviating pressure on her lung. Miss Stackhouse lost consciousness, and we are keeping her in isolation until she awakens."

"I want to see her," I hissed through clenched teeth.

"Mr. Northman, it is hospital policy to let only family into the room and even then only briefly."

"Do you really plan to deny me?" I bared my fangs in order to get the message across.

"It's only for a moment, doctor," Gladys said, reaching out again to place her palm tenderly on my hand. I flinched.

"Fine, but only for a minute," the doctor relented, his voice tinged with uncertainty.

He led me down the hall, past curtained spaces and moaning patients. The floor clacked under my shoes, and the banks of fluorescent lights burned my eyes. He stopped in front of a dark room, lit with only one lamp and a hundred small LED lights in reds and blues and greens. He opened the door and I walked in. The latch clicked shut behind me.

"My love," I murmured, floating to her bedside. She was stripped to the waist, and her skin was both pink and ghostly white. A square of gauze and medical tape covered the knife wound in her chest. She had two small puncture holes near the line of her breast. A plastic tube emerged from her side. I lifted my gaze to her face, and noticed how pale and sickly she looked. Her lips were gray and chapped. Her hair had been pushed back from her face. It smelled of perspiration and iodine. "You cannot leave me."

I placed a hand delicately on her jaw and parted her lips with my thumb. With my teeth, I captured the inside of my lower lip and bit down hard, drawing blood. It dripped down into the tiny wells of my gums, just a few drops before the hole began to close. I bent down over her and brushed the swell of her cheek with the edge of forefinger. My lips closed over hers, and I maneuvered my mouth to force the blood onto her tongue. She lay still, like a corpse, even though I pleaded with her to kiss me in return.

There was a knock on the door, and I stood stiffly. I exited the room slowly, turning to look over my shoulder at the one woman, the one person in all the world who had filled me with joy. She did not move. She did not speak.

If she dies, can I go on living?