#so finally

It’s not like she’s hiding from Ms. Fraser or anything. It’s more like she’s just…waiting. Biding her time. Totally different.

There’s a stupid and stupidly expensive gift shop teddy bear in her hands and Deena nearly strangles the life out of it when she finally sees Ms. Fraser leave the hospital room that Deena has been lurking outside of for so long the nurses on the floor have stopped glancing in her direction. Thankfully, Ms. Fraser also fails to glance in her direction, disappearing down the hallway and out of sight with a clicking of her heels and Deena exhales, her grip loosening on the unfortunate bear’s neck. She has no idea how long the room is going to be empty, how long she has before Ms. Fraser returns and sees her and does God only knows what, but still Deena finds herself rooted in place, unable to step closer to the hospital room.

It's ridiculous, the hesitation that creeps over her, sinking its claws into her muscles and making them useless. All she’s wanted for hours -nearly twenty four of them, but who’s keeping track- is to be in that room. And now Deena can’t bring herself to take even the first step in that direction. Because what if…what if…what if.

There’s a distinct possibility that she’ll just sit outside in the hallway until Ms. Fraser returns and sees her and makes the decision for her and it’s that idea, the idea of being banished and turned away, that finally makes Deena stand. The stitches in her side protest the sudden movement, tugging against the fabric of her shirt with every step but Deena presses on, undeterred now that she’s in progress, that she finally has one foot moving in front of the other.

The hospital room smells exactly like the one Deena had sat in yesterday, perched on the edge of an examination table and waiting for the nurse to return with the needle and thread to put her back together. It smells exactly like the one that Josh had been in, wobbly from painkillers and sporting a cast in the most annoying and garishly ugly color possible and when Deena had finally seen it, seen him, she’d teased him about it until their laughter had suddenly turned to something else and she’d had tears tracking their way through the grim and sweat and blood on her cheeks. And it smells exactly like the hallway Deena has been waiting in for the past few hours, and the one where she’d met Ziggy and Martin yesterday, stunned to see them hanging around and waiting for her and Josh to be discharged.

And it smells like the room she’d walked into a few days before and seen Sam, fragile and pale and small, propped against a mountain of pillows that seemed to be the only thing keeping her upright. It’s a little bit like how Sam looks now, except this is almost worse than that, because this Sam now has cords and wires connecting her to an impressive array of machines on other side of the bed and a bandage against the side of her face about the same color as her skin. With her eyes closed and her hands settled across her stomach, Sam looks exactly as she had there on the floor of the supermarket, lips parted but still, skin already growing clammy and cold beneath Deena’s hands.

The sight is startling and it makes Deena want to run to her, to shake her awake, to press a hand to her chest until she can feel the beating of Sam’s heart beneath it.

Or, worse, it makes her want to turn around and run and never stop, until she gets somewhere the panic and fear and desperation can’t follow.

Deena forces herself to take a step forward and it seems like a terrible idea to wake Sam, when she so clearly needs all the rest she can get, but the shuddery breath that passes through Deena’s clenched teeth is enough to do that anyway. Sam’s eyes flutter and she squints against the blare of the fluorescents overhead and when she turns her head in Deena’s direction, the relief that crosses her features is enough to make Deena regret ever having considered leaving.

“Deena.”

“Hey.” She steps closer, tentative and cautious, like Sam is the dangerous one when Deena knows full well that isn’t the case. “I…brought you this.” She holds up the teddy bear, which is looking more and more pathetic by the second, and she crinkles her nose. “It’s…dumb.”

“No,” Sam says and there’s a smile at the corner of her lips and she holds out a hand and Deena can still see the marks around her wrist, the raw red impression of the plastic bindings. “Let me see.”

Deena hands over the bear, trying not to stare at Sam’s wrists, at the proof of what she’s done, watching instead as Sam’s faint smile seems to grow as she brushes her fingers lightly against the bear’s fur, the button eyes, the stupid red ribbon. “Thank you.” She looks up, eyes finding Deena again. “I was wondering if you were going to…stop by.”

There’s a question in Sam’s words, in her tone, that Deena couldn’t possibly miss, even though she can tell that Sam is trying not to ask it. It would be easy to assure Sam that she’s been desperate, wild, to get here ever since confusion had descended upon Sunnyvale and a pair of briskly efficient EMTs had whisked Sam away in an ambulance and out of sight. That every second without being able to reassure herself that Sam was fine and here and stable had been making her nearly crazy. But there’s enough doubt, enough weight crowding its way through Deena’s chest, that she can’t bring herself to say the words, to admit to the panic that has made her nearly feral over the past twenty-four hours.

So, she says the only other truth that she knows, the other part of it that has been turning over in her mind, making it hard to breathe, to sleep, to think. “I…wasn’t sure you wanted to see me.”

Sam looks at her like Deena is a perfect stranger, almost like she’d looked at her that night when Deena had broken up with her, lie after lie twisting itself out of her mouth with a startling efficiency. And it’s enough to twist Deena’s heart up now, just like it had been then, enough to lend truth to the worry that has been crushing the breath from her for hours. “Why wouldn’t I want to see you?”

Deena swallows and it would be easier to look somewhere other than Sam, except everywhere else there’s a reminder of where they are and how they got there. “I…” Deena gestures toward her, the wires and machines, the bandage and the bruises. “This is my fault.”

The words are soft, as loud as she can make them around the panic threatening its way inside her once more, full of the reassurances that this is her fault. That voice in her head, the one that never hesitates to point out all the worst parts of her, is reminding her of the way it had felt to press a hand to the back of Sam’s head and force her beneath the water and to fit her hand to that spot again and force Sam’s head against the unyielding rocky floor beneath the Shadyside Mall, how easily Sam’s body had seemed to give way against the stone.

Sam exhales, closing her eyes and letting her head rest back against the pillows. “You know…this whole time I’ve been sitting here thinking that you didn’t want to see me because you blamed me for what happened. That you thought that I…that this…that it was my fault and-”

“Sam.” Deena shakes her head, closing the distance between them without even thinking about it, and the incredulity that she’d seen in Sam’s face moments earlier seems a lot easier to understand now. “None of what happened was your fault.”

Sam opens her eyes, lifting her eyebrows. “But it was yours?”

Deena’s fingers shake slightly as she reaches out to brush Sam’s hair back from her face, brushing against the bandage there on the side of her face, proof. “I did that.”

“I tried to kill you.”

“That wasn’t you.”

“Well you only did what you had to do. I was-”

“But it wasn’t your fault, you-”

Sam reaches for Deena’s hand, twining their fingers together. “This is kinda stupid, isn’t it?”

Impossibly, Deena wants to smile. She does, can feel it tugging up the corners of her lips the way the stitches on her side tug at the skin as she shifts, moving closer toward the bed. “Kinda, yeah,” she admits. “I…I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner. I wanted to…but I wasn’t sure…”

Sam shakes her head, just once, before she seems to reconsider the gesture. Instead, she just gives Deena’s hand a faint squeeze. “But you’re going to stay, right?”

“Yeah.” Deena doesn’t even have to think about the answer, doesn’t need time to consider it. It’s the question she’s always wanted to be asked, the one she’s wanted to ask in turn, and it feels good to have the answer now, to know it. “I mean, if you think your mom isn’t going to…”

Sam grimaces, sighing. “Somehow my mom is a lot less scary now,” she mumbles. “Besides, I want you here.”

Really, what more could Deena ask for?