There was a roar as I got to the front, just feet from the cage. I looked up at the action. Hunter was covering up his face as his opponent hit him with several punches. His opponent was so fast that Hunter could barely defend himself. A shiver of dread crept up my spine, suffocating me and rooting me to the spot. No, this couldn’t be happening!

“Hunter, no!” I cried. “It’s me, Lorrie! Stop fighting! Please, stop!”

His arms blocked most of the impact, then he hit his opponent with a left jab. The punch stunned his opponent momentarily, giving Hunter enough time to back away.

“You don’t have to do this!” I yelled.

Hunter let his hands fall and he looked around with his mostly open right eye. His gaze came to meet mine. Dim recognition flickered across his face as his opponent approached and wound up a right hook.

Hunter tried to dodge at the last second, but the punch landed right on his nose, crushing his face grotesquely with a sickening snap. His body went limp as the blow reverberated through his body. There was a half-second of silence as everyone in the room gasped at once.

My stomach dropped and I felt an intense pain in my chest. “NO!” I screamed, my hands in my hair.

Then the crowd exploded in screams and cheers. I stood stunned, watching Hunter hit the mat stiff as a board. The referee crouched over him and waved his hand over his head. Hunter continued to lay there motionless. His nose was bleeding badly and looked crooked. I couldn’t tell, but I was pretty sure it was broken.

I stared at the cage numbly, overwhelmed. My head seemed to float away. This didn’t feel real, but I couldn’t wake up. The bell was ringing and the other fighter was running around the cage with his arms raised. Hunter didn’t move except for the rise and fall of his chest. The referee hovered over him, concern etched on his goateed face.

I tore my eyes away from the scene in the cage, flooded with emotion. Hunter looked badly hurt. Could I have done something different? People were clapping around me, ecstatic at the knockout. They didn’t care at all about Hunter’s well-being. One figure stood out, stone-faced. He was the only one who looked the way I felt. It was Gary.

He stood by the cage’s entrance about ten feet away, looking in. Two medics rushed past him and into the cage with a stretcher. I watched them begin attending to Hunter and was gripped by sadness.

Time passed as I kept my eyes locked on his prone body, trying to grab ahold of reality. He still wouldn’t move.

“. . . fault,” a voice said.

I turned and saw it had come from Gary. He’d apparently walked over to me. His brows were angled sharply downward and his eyes were burning with anger. “What?” I asked.

“This is your f**king fault,” he spat.

“My fault?” I said, shocked by his accusation. “Are you nuts? How are you thinking about fault right now? Hunter’s hurt!”

He scoffed bitterly. “Trust me, I know. I’ve been playing this scene over and over in my head since I heard he took the fight. I rushed here to try and stop him but it was too late. I know what a wreck you made of him. For that and a ton of other reasons, there’s no way he should’ve been in there just now. This is your fault!”

I shook my head, confused over why he would think I was the one who made Hunter a wreck. “I sat at his apartment for hours last night waiting to talk to him. It’s not my fault he never showed up. What’s wrong with Hunter, anyway? He didn’t look right in there at all.”

Before he could answer, a shout came from above us in the cage. “Make way,” a man’s voice yelled.

I turned and saw it was one of the medics helping Hunter. They had put him on a stretcher and were trying to get through the crowd to what I guessed would be an ambulance waiting at the front entrance to the bar. People were still packed in tightly, so they put the stretcher down at the top of the steps while one medic went to clear space. The other stayed behind and watched over Hunter.

I peered down at the stretcher and got a clear look at Hunter. My heart sank to the pit of my stomach. His left eye was swollen nearly shut and his right wasn’t far behind. Bruises and cuts marred the area around his cheeks and eyes.

The worst was his nose. The medics had wiped away most of the blood and tried to clot it with gauze, but there was still plenty smeared around the lower half of his face. The way it was turned awkwardly to the left made it clear it was broken.

Tears formed in my eyes. Seeing the man I loved so horribly injured crushed my heart. “Hunter, I’m sorry,” I said, my vision a blur. “I’m sorry about this whole mess. I just wanted to see you one last time and talk to you. I’m sorry Hunter.”

His eyes fluttered open and he looked toward me unfocused. He opened his mouth slightly but no words came out. The small smile that crept onto his lips made me sick with sorrow.

“Dude,” Gary said unsteadily next to me, “are you with us? What’s your name?”

His eyes slid over toward Gary; they were badly dilated. “Hunter,” he slurred.

My heart leaped at the small positive sign. Even if he was slurring his speech, at least he knew who he was.

I looked up at the medic that had stayed with Hunter, desperate for any sliver of hope. “He woke up. That’s good, right?”

The man whose nametag said his name was Nick nodded. “Yeah, that’s good. If we can get him to the hospital quickly he should be okay. You never know, but waking up is positive.”

He should be okay. The thought that Hunter might not be okay—that something might be permanently wrong with him—nearly paralyzed me. Hopefully Nick was right and Hunter would be fine now that he had woken up.

“Lorrie?” Hunter said softly. His eyes darted from my face to the lights at the Bearded Squirrel and back to me lazily. The in and out movement of his breathing had slowed down to a normal rate, which seemed good. It was another sign he would pull through.

The thoughts that had rushed through my mind when I saw him on the mat—that I loved him, that I was leaving him, and that he was badly hurt—finally caught up to me. I began to cry. Sob after sob seized my body so hard I could barely breathe. How had things gone so wrong so fast in our lives?

I wiped my eyes with my sleeve, trying to calm down. “Hunter,” I choked out. “It’s not your fault I’m leaving. I’m so sorry. I wish I had a choice.”

“Lorrie no,” he slurred. He opened his eyes as wide as he could, but they had swollen so badly that it wasn’t much. It made me feel ill to watch him struggle.

He finally pulled his eyes into focus and stared at me through the purple and black of his bruises. “Lorrie, don’t go,” he muttered again.

I blinked away fresh tears. “I’m sorry, Hunter. I have to. If I don’t take care of myself right now, I’m afraid of what’s going to happen to me.”

“No, no no no,” he trailed off. His eyes drifted unfocused then shut.

My stomach dropped. What was happening to him? I thought once he had woken up he would stay awake. I looked up at Gary, who seemed to be in shock.

“Help!” I yelled. “His eyes closed again.”

Nick, who had been watching his partner clear a path to the exit, looked back at us over his shoulder. “Keep talking to him,” he said. “We’re almost done clearing a path.”