Jack woke up in a burning coffee shop in the middle of New York City. His ears were ringing and he could barely see. His head was pounding, he reached to touch it and his hand came back wet with blood. When he finally regained his eyesight, he saw rubble and fire and people screaming and running through the streets. He looked down at his body and realized he had a massive piece of glass stuck in his arm and he was losing a dangerous amount of blood. He started freaking out and a rush of adrenaline kicked in as he painfully removed the huge glass shard and then started searching for something to use as a tourniquet. He felt a table cloth beneath him and ripped it up from under the rubble tearing it to an almost perfect length. He tightly tied it on his wound using his free hand and his teeth. He became pale from the amount of blood he lost. He was fearing for his life. He didn’t want to die. He then looked outside and saw a huge plane with what seemed to be a Chinese flag on the tail wing flew right over the top of him and started dropping a series of bombs a few blocks away. The city was under attack. Jack found strength to stand and instantly started looking around for his girlfriend Maxine but he couldn’t see her anywhere. 

“Maxine!” Jack yelled. He called out for her again and agai;n, no response. He started sweating bullets, hyperventilating. He was tearing apart rubble screaming her name trying to find her. He heard a yell of desperation from the back of the shop behind the cash register. However, the yell was a man and clearly not Maxine. Jack rushed to where the voice sounded like it was coming from and called out for him. He heard his voice call out again faintly, under the pile of rubble he was standing in front of. Instantly, he started frantically digging through the rubble towards the sound of the man's voice until he saw his skin through a few layers of rocks. He uncovered his hand and held his arm as he dug the rest of the rubble away until he was free. 

“Are you alright?” Jack asked. The man was bleeding from multiple areas so Jack quickly realized it was a dumb question.

“I should be okay. Thank you,” the man replied. He was a tall, tan, Italian looking man who he assumed was the owner of the coffee shop. He had gashes in his shoulders and arms. He was also coincidentally bleeding from the same spot Jack was on his forehead in his eyebrow area. 

Jack wasted no time and asked if he knew where his girlfriend was.

“The last thing I remember was a dirty blonde woman asking me where the bathroom was,” said the Italian man.

“Well where the hell is the bathroom?” Jack yelled.

“Um… it’s over there,” The man said, pointing towards the back corner of the shop. Jack instantly sprinted over there calling her name. The entrance to the women's room was buried in rocks, drywall, and pieces of the ceiling. 

“Help me dig this out!” Jack yelled to the man. They started digging away at the rubble as quickly as they could. When they finally got through, Jack heard a faint voice struggle to say “Jack? Help.” Jack could tell it was Maxine by her voice. He rushed to help her. She had a really big gash in her thigh and was losing blood. Jack took his shirt off and ripped it into another tourniquet for her. As he was tying it, a droplet of blood fell onto Maxine’s stomach from Jack’s arm but she did not seem to notice.

“Hey Italian dude, find me something to stitch with and a first aid kit if you can.” Jack replied. The Italian dude sprinted out of the bathroom, through the store and jumped through the shattered streetside window. He rushed to his car quickly realizing that it was on fire. He went in anyways and grabbed his first aid kit out of the glove box, burning the living hell out of his hand in the process. He rushed back to Jack and Maxine with the kit and handed it to Jack. As he took the kit from the man he instantly noticed his horrible burn.

“Holy crap man, we gotta get that under control. Looks like a 2nd degree burn brotha, hold up. I’ll be right back,keep pressure on Maxine’s wound.” Jack said as he started hobbling away as fast as he could. He was desperately looking for water, any kind, like a broken pipe, faucet, hose, anything. He finally found a case of bottled water in the kitchen and rushed it back to the Italian dude. He poured water all over his burn and some on Maxine’s cut and sat down to pour some on his own. He opened the first aid kit only to find some hydrogen peroxide, some gauze pads, a lighter, some Ritz crackers for some reason, and a few butterfly bandages. 

“I guess this will have to do,” Jack said, “This isn’t gonna feel good babe,” he proceeded to douse her cut with hydrogen peroxide. She screamed bloody murder. He tightened the tourniquet and put three butterfly bandages on her cut. At this point Jack had lost a lot more blood. But again, nobody seemed to notice. Jack and the Italian dude helped Maxine up and carried her army style so she wasn’t walking on her bad leg. 

“Let’s go find some help,” said Jack. They made their way outside and Jack directed them to where his car is. His vision was becoming blurry. He was stumbling, but determined to make it to the car.

“Wait here. I’ll see if it starts,” Jack said. He left them sheltered under a balcony and made his way to the car. The car windows were all shattered but the car started. He slapped the gear into reverse and drove backwards toward them. As he got out of the car to help Maxine get in, he collapsed. He had probably lost close to a half a gallon of blood. They rushed over to him and asked him what was wrong as bled out on the pavement. He couldn’t speak and any longer, he was dying fast.

“I love you.” He said to Maxine. As he took his last breath.

He was clearly dying and he had been the entire time but they never noticed. He invested his last moments in tending to everyone besides himself. He put the health of others before his own.