Spotlight |h.s|

Eighty Six

The only pause she took was to eat a cheeseburger that I forced into her hands and made her eat, and she surprisingly devoured it faster than I've ever seen her eat before. After all, she was starved for over a week, but still. I was expecting more of a fight, but given what she's been put through, there was no fight to it.

She stood over Elora's hospital bed while taking her last bite of it before chugging down a water bottle as well, her shaky weakened legs holding her up as she asked her sister if she was okay nearly a million times before finally believing her answer of, "As okay as I can be."

That takes me to now, Zayn and I being seated in chairs beside Elora's bed while Jade and Aubrey eagerly stand beside it and tend to her every need as if she's as fragile as glass.

Given the length of her time with Ian and Thomas, though, she probably is nearly that fragile.

She's so malnourished that she's on a feeding tube. She also has an IV in her arm pumping her with fluids constantly in order to restore her necessary levels of hydration. She's on painkillers like Aubrey, and also had an untreated broken arm when she came in. It has apparently been broken for months, meaning it healed incorrectly and is now being surgically fixed tomorrow.

I don't want to know what else that poor girl has been through. Due to the aspect of kidnapping and the fact that both of the captors were fairly young and attractive women then held captive by a much older man, forensic testing on both of them has taken place to see whether or not either of them has been assaulted. They took many samples, saying the tests would indicate if something has happened to them in the past 72 hours.

I'm begging the universe that the answer to that question is no, but knowing Thomas, that seems far too good to be true. Aubrey swore to the doctors that nothing like that happened to her, but they're unsure of the reliability of her memory right now, so she was happy to still take the test. Elora was silent through the whole thing, according to Aubrey, leading us to assume the worst.

Aubrey is still standing by Elora's bed and talking to her every few minutes, asking her if there's anything else she needs like nothing happened at all. Like her face, arms, and clothes aren't stained with blood. Like her body isn't severely bruised and scarred for everyone to see and try to avoid looking at for her sake. Like she and her sister didn't nearly die throughout their time in that horrible building.

We can all see that Elora is a bit freaked out by the blood still on her face, but we don't know how exactly to tell Aubrey to wash it off without upsetting her. We can sense the thin ice we're all walking on, one wrong word most definitely threatening to lead to a breakdown of some sort that will be catastrophic. The walls of denial she's built up are bound to crash down, and I'm trying to prepare myself to be there for her in the best way possible.

"Charlie! That's who I forgot about! He's okay, right? You'll get to see him again, too." Aubrey speaks to her as she tells her all of the people she's going to get to see now that she's in the real world again. I nod in response when she looks my way before turning back to Elora and telling her more.

Her moms are on their way here, and telling her that is how this conversation began. I called them, simply saying that we found Aubrey since I think that they need to be told in person that the daughter they mourned for nine months is still alive. I don't think that important information should be shared with them by someone who isn't even family over a phone line. It didn't feel right, so I simply left that part out for the time being.

Due to the fact that Thomas is still out and about as a result of my anxiously shaking hand, Ruby and Niall are on their way here, too. Niall is coming as a personal bodyguard since I don't trust Ruby walking around alone. I insisted that her moving nearby would be pushed to now instead of summertime, calling her school myself once she gave in to my request and convincing them to change her to online schooling mid-semester.