Together

77. Don't Break

And tell me how to crawl outta love
Oh-oh-oh-oh
Tell me how to-
Now I gotta crawl outta, crawl outta love
Tell me how to-
Now I gotta crawl outta, crawl outta love
Oh-oh-oh-oh
-ILLENIUM and Annika Wells

Kiara watched Shoupe head through the doors and waited until they were fully closed before she allowed her eyes to wonder the now familiar waiting area. It was just her now. Even the nurse that was originally at the desk was gone. Probably checking in on something else.

She feels incredibly lonely in this instance, worried. What if JJ was seriously hurt? She didn't know what was going on with him or how long Shoupe was going to be. And she was alone.

She still can't bring herself to sit so she walks in circles around the moderately sized waiting room. Can't really call it pacing but she's definitely not keeping still. If she stops moving her mind will go to dark places and there is nothing she can do with that right now.

She feels her phone vibrate in her pocket and she picks it up, seeing a couple texts in the Pogue chat from earlier in the day asking how JJ did for the final leg of the competition. Pope asked first and then Sarah chimed in with a bunch of nervous emojis. When they got no response John B made a joke about them being too "busy" celebrating their own way to text their friends. Now Sarah is texting her directly asking if JJ did poorly and if they were being insensitive in the chat.

Goddamn it.

They don't know what happened. Kiara hadn't even thought about telling them, it literally never passed her mind until this second. She was just a tad more focused on wanting to know if JJ was alive than anything else at the moment. The thought of being the bearer of this kind of news doesn't thrill her either now that she's faced with realizing it lands to her to deliver.

She scrunches her face, closing her eyes as she thinks about what to say. They have to know. She starts to type out an explanation but she still can't use her dominant hand so it's slow and frustrating. She grunts, letting it drop at her side when she misspells a bunch of things and autocorrect doesn't catch it, giving up for now.

Kiara looks over her shoulder towards the doors that Shoupe entered. The longer it takes for him to come back the more concerned she grows.

She thinks about all the things she's heard the last couple hours and it makes her stomach twist. What if something was seriously wrong?

It was aggravating that she wasn't being included in seeing him right now. Frustrating that she couldn't get an answer unless Shoupe was the one asking. Even the information she did catch she couldn't make complete sense of it. It was incredibly hard to concentrate and sort through what was factual and what was fantasy or nightmare.

She looks at her phone again. This isn't really a text conversation anyway.

Kiara: Are you with Pope and John B?

Sarah: Yeah, what's up?

Kiara takes a deep breath and let's it out through her mouth, hitting the call button over Sarah's contact.

"Hello?"

"Hey, it's me," Kiara starts, sucking up a breath.

She can hear laughter in the background. John B and Pope are messing around with something or each other. It sounds fun, normal. Safe. Not at all the nightmare she was experiencing hundreds of miles away.

She wishes she could pretend for a minute that this was a friendly check in. Actually contemplates letting that be the case for a few seconds. But Sarah knows her better than that to let her do so.