“Oh, shit!” The tardy thought of calling an ambulance suddenly hit Aaron like a dozen oncoming trains. Hands shaking, he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, only to find that he had turned it off earlier to save the battery. He let out a moan through gritted teeth, sounding somewhere in the middle of utterly panicked and completely terrified. One of the store phones hung on the wall in the back room, so he reluctantly left an unmoving Lily on makeshift pillow bed and ripped the phone off its reciever, dialing 911 as quickly as he could. 

“911, what is the emergency?” The tinny voice of the operator met his ear.

“Uh, a girl was attacked- uhm, beat up outside of my store. I got her inside, but sh-she's unconcious.”

“I'm sending an ambulance now, where are you now? What is the address of the store?”

Aaron rattled off Food 'n Stuff's address, eyes locked on the small bruised form in his stock room. The bandages he used might've helped, maybe, but he didn't know...didn't know...

“Okay sir, do you know if the she is breathing?” 

“Yes.” Aaron saw the rise and fall of Lily's chest. “Yes she is. She's got lots of cuts, and-and she threw up earlier, but I got bandages around most of the cuts. I just... I don't know what to do!”

Aaron turned his nervous gaze to the front of the store as the operator calmed him down. He took deep breaths and tried to see Ashley's counter, but couldn't from this angle. There wasn't anything else to do but wait for the ambulance, and it wasn't fair to keep her in the dark, especially after yelling at her so much. 

“I need to put the phone down. It's uh, on a cord.” Aaron told the operator, briefly marveling over the fact the corded phones still existed. “I'll be right back.” He checked the girl again, making sure that she wasn't getting worse, before jogging up front to let Ashley know what was going on. 

Before the counter came into his view, Aaron shouted, “An ambulance is on its way!” He turned a corner and saw that Ashley's counter had a line of customers, all of whom had just heard what he had shouted and were now staring at him. Aaron shrugged it off. It didn't matter that they knew now, as long as they didn't get in the way or cause a panic.

“What happened?” Ashley asked tearfully as Aaron moved past everyone in line to talk to her. 

“I think some people just...beat her up and left her outside.”

“Why?”

Aaron shook his head, eyes darting from floor tile to floor tile. “I don't know. I-I need to get back there.” He was about to run a hand through his hair when he saw that both of his hands had blood on them from his earlier ministrations. Aaron stared at them, not blinking. “Oh...oh.” He breathed deeply again, calming himself down. He was about to say something to the group of customers they had been talking in front of when he heard the front door jingle open.