The walls have been reduced down to their studs, and I can see to where the explosion had come from, which appears to be the room across the hall. None of the furniture is still there.
"Oh my god." I whisper.
"Are you okay?" Zayn asks me.
"I think so. Are you?"
"Yeah, I think so, but um, there's uh a closet on top of our legs. We have to wait until authorities get here." Zayn says.
I start laughing hysterically.
"What?" Zayn asks, sounding concerned for me.
"Nothing, it's just- it's just my luck isn't it?" I keep laughing. "First I get deported. Then I get sliced up by glass. Then my wound reopens and everyone sees met insides. THEN a rapist explodes the hospital, and a freaking closet is my biggest worry right now!" I keep laughing, and Zayn eventually joins in.
It dies out after a minutes and things get serious again.
"What do we do?" I ask. "Should we try to move it?"
"No." Zayn says. "We don't know if it's holding pressure on something or not, we should wait."
"And burn to death? I don't think so." I argue. "How 'bout we lift it a little, and if birthed of us feel pain then we continue to mov sit off of ourselves so we can try to find a way out?"
"Sounds like a plan." Zayn agrees. "Wait!" He shouts, as I'm about to try to move the closet.
"What?" I look back at him.
"Cover your mouth with the blanket so you don't inhale any smoke." He tells me. I do as he says and try to lift the closet.
I succeed in lifting it about an inch above our legs. "Any pain? Or blood?" I ask.
Zayn leans around me to look. "Nope I think we're good!"
I proceed to lift the closet up a little more, and once I get it high enough, Zayn slips out from under me and helps me move it all the way off of us.
"Hey, your face is bleeding- are you okay?" Zayn tells me. I lift my hand to feel for what he's talking about.
"Oh that was scabbed over the scan probably just fell of its fine." I tell him. Thank god, I thought it was serious.
The one bad thing about having my hair pulled back is that everyone can see my scars. The majority of them are on my back and legs, but there's a couple on my face/neck. And I'm not exactly proud of them.
"You sure?" Zayn asks.
"Yeah, I'm okay." I tell him. He cocks eyebrow, not believing me. Ugh, now I have to explain it to him. "It's from my last set of foster parents. I wasn't exactly their favorite, if you know what I mean."
I stare at the floor. I can't bear to make eye contact with him.
"Hey." He tilts my chin up to look at him. "We all have our own baggage. This is yours. And you know what?"
"What?" I ask.
"That's what makes you beautiful." He whispers.
My eyes tear up, and I bury my face in his chest as his arms surround me. No one's ever said that to me before. Not even Joe. We stand there for a minute, and then I pull away, saying "We should get out of here."
"Yeah we should. If only I knew how." Zayn mutters.
"Huh." I say, looking down.
"What?" He says, turning back towards me.
"That is a large splinter." I tell him, pointing to the 3-inch long piece of wood sticking out of my leg.
"Come here." Zayn holds out his hand, and I hop on one foot over to him, not wanting to move the wood. He helps me sit on the ground, and rips off a small chunk of his shirt. "Ready?"
I nod, and squeeze my eyes shut. He quickly pulls out the wood, and ties the piece of his shirt around my leg where the wood was.
"You okay?" Zayn asks.
"Yeah." I nod. Zayn picks me up again, and this time I don't complain. It'll be the fastest way out of here since I can't walk well. He picks up the blanket and wraps it back around the two of us as we make our way out of the room.
"Try going to the staircase, if the fire hasn't spread that far we might be able to go down." I suggest.
Zayn does as I say, and we turn to head back to the staircase we entered the hallway from. It was full of flames.
"Damn it." I say. "We'll have to go the opposite way."
We turn around and go to the other door at the opposite end of the hallway. It's unlocked, but there's a lot of flames.
I start to panic, and my breathing becomes short, when Zayn points to something on the other side of the door. It was Dr. Murphy, and there was a firefighter with her.
Thank god. I probably would've walked into fire or something if they hadn't shown up at that exact second.
"Come on!" Dr. Murphy yelled to us. "We have a safe way out!" Zayn picked up the pace, and met Dr. Murphy and the fireman. "Are you guys okay?"
"He's fine. I had another sharp object stuck in my skin but I'm okay now." I tell her.
"Oh, um okay then." She says hesitantly.
"We should keep moving." The fireman speaks up.
We turn and follow Dr. Murphy and the fireman down the hallway, to a set of staircases that led down to the 1st floor. We then ran to the other side of the building before exiting into the parking lot where other doctors and nurses were helping get everyone else situated. Dr. Murphy leads us over to some empty gurney's as the fireman goes back into the hospital.
"Thank you!" I call back to him.
Zayn sets me down on one of the gurney's, and then lays down on the empty one to my right.
We lay there silent for a while. Staring at the sky. There's no clouds out tonight. It would've been so pretty if it hadn't been for the smoke. Wait- it's night? We must've gotten knocked out by the explosion for a while. That would explain why there wasn't much fire left when we got out.
"Zayn?" I roll over on my side to face him. He rolls over to face me. "Thank you."
"For what?" He asks.
"For everything." I smile at him. "You've been so good to me these last few weeks, especially today and the day with the rock, even though you didn't have to be. So just, thank you."
He smiles back. "Anytime. And for the record, I'm nice to you because I wanna be. You're the best person I know, Briella Sloanne." We laugh, for a second. "And I meant it, what I said earlier." He tells me, his face all serious. "You are beautiful."
My eyes tear up again, and Zayn holds out his hand. I reach out my hand to grab his, and he intertwines his fingers with mine. We lock eyes, and we just stay there. Hand in hand. Some nurses came by at one point to check on us. We were fine so they went to go check on other patients who were hurt more badly. But before they left they did push our beds together.
Zayn scooted a little closer to me, and I did the same. He put his arm around me, and I settled into his side, which was surprisingly comfy.
A while later, the fire was all put out, and we were still waiting on a doctor to come and give us clearance to go home. It's been 4 hours- you'd think that would be enough time.
"Hey." A voice nearby says.
I turn to look at who it is, and my jaw practically drops to the floor.
You have got to be kidding me.
Of course this happens. These have been the worst almost 3 weeks of my life, (probably if anyones life honestly) of course this happens to me.
I turn and look at the guy in the face. Maybe it's not really him. Maybe I'm just dreaming.
I pinch myself to check.
Nope.
Not dreaming. Damn it.
It's him. I really really wish it wasn't. But it is.
It's Joe.