Page 30 of Little Ballerina
That was intended to soothe her, but it seemed to have the opposite effect. She grew more agitated, attempted to get out of his arms, and her gaze kept darting from her burning home to the direction the sirens were coming from. “No. Don’t need help,” she croaked.
“What are you talking about?” He easily kept his grip on her despite her uncoordinated attempts to stand.
“Sam, don’t let them give me a sedative. Please. Promise me,” she begged.
He most certainly would not make any such promise. Why was she worrying about that anyway? She needed to be treated and that treatment would be whatever the paramedics deemed necessary. “You're having trouble breathing,” he pointed out.
She was getting increasingly hysterical. “No sedatives. Sam. Promise.”
Panic had his voice coming out harsher than he intended. “Calm down. Hyperventilating isn’t going to help your smoke inhalation.”
Her brown eyes were glassy, and he didn’t think it was just the effects of the fire. “They were screaming. David and Eli. Begging for help. I could hear them. I wanted to go back for them, but they stopped me. Said the fire was too fierce. I didn’t care. They were so little. They needed help. I tried to get back in the house, but they held me back. They gave me a sedative. When I woke up in the hospital the next day, they told me David and Eli were dead. If I had gone back in, they’d still be alive. If they hadn’t put me to sleep, I could have saved them.” She related the story haltingly, between fits of coughing, by the time she was finished fire trucks and ambulances were pulling up in her driveway. “Please, Sam, don’t let them give me a sedative.”
Because it was Naomi, and he cared about her, and she had already been through so much, against his better judgment he nodded. “Okay. No sedatives. But, Naomi, there’s no one else in the house. Okay? This time is different, we both got out, no one died, no one is going to die.”
Her eyes were red and watery, but she wasn't crying. She wouldn’t cry. She was Naomi. Instead, she just turned her face into his chest. He tightened his grip on her, he could feel her heart racing, his was too. He wanted to do something to help her, he just didn’t know what that was. He couldn’t bring back her brothers, he couldn’t erase her guilt over not being able to save them. He couldn’t bring back her friends, and he couldn’t stop the man from harassing her because he didn’t know who it was.
The only thing he could do for her was make her feel safe, even just for a moment. Settling down on the snowy ground he set her in his lap, wrapping one arm around her to keep her close. Cradling her head in his hand he held it against his shoulder and brushed his lips across her hair.
“It’s okay, Naomi. We’ll make it okay. Together.”
At his words, she burrowed closer against him. As paramedics approached them, Sam kissed the top of her head and silently promised her that she would never be alone again.
* * * * *
6:31 A.M.
She was sitting on the sofa, wrapped in three blankets that were doing little to keep her warm, and staring vacantly at the people hovering around her. Naomi felt weird. Disconnected, numb, and kind of like she was floating aimlessly through the sky, adrift with no way to anchor herself. She was in shock. She knew she was, she just didn’t know how to snap herself out of it.
Sam was sitting beside her.Closebeside her. He hadn’t been more than about a foot from her side since he had carried her from her burning home. Cradled in his arms, crushed against his chest, she had felt safe and secure. When the paramedics had arrived, Sam had reluctantly handed her over to them then stayed with her, refusing to be treated until she had been. And even when he’d allowed the medics to examine him, he’d made them do it in the ambulance with her so that she wasn't alone. That comforted her a whole lot more than she wanted him to know.
If Sam hadn’t been there, she’d be dead right now.
Her concussion combined with the smoke had really knocked her out. She wouldn’t have woken up in time to get out of the house before the fire claimed her. She would have met the same fate as two of her brothers had so many years ago.
But Sam had been there, and hehadsaved her life. Now she was here in his home and feeling surprisingly comfortable here. That wasn't the place she was feeling the most comfortable though. Sam wouldn’t let her walk. When the paramedics had finally accepted that she wasn't going to go to the hospital, Sam had carried her from the back of the ambulance to his car to drive her to his place, then he’d carried her from the car inside. Just like they had in her yard, being in Sam’s arms made her feel safe in a way she hadn’t in a very long time.
“I think you should have let the paramedics take her to the hospital.” Jonathon sat down on her other side. “What were you thinking? She’s still shaking, and I can hear every breath she takes.”
“She didn’t want to go to the hospital,” Sam’s voice was still a little hoarse from all the smoke.
“I don’t care what she wants. I'm taking her there now.”
Naomi didn’t want to go to the hospital, so she clawed her way through the fog she was trapped in. There were too many horrible memories there, and right now everything that happened twenty-two years ago was too fresh in her mind. “I'm all right, Jonathon,” she said. Her throat felt like it had been covered in sandpaper, just swallowing was horrendously painful, talking was pure agony.
“That’s just stupid, Naomi,” Jonathon raged.
She didn’t take his anger personally, she knew he was just scared. She was scared too. Not that she would admit that to anyone any time soon. “Iamokay. I just feel kind of detached,” she admitted.
“You're still in shock,” Sam said quietly.
She gave a distracted nod. “Do they know what started the fire?”
“One of the kitchen windows was open,” Allina told her.
“But Sam made sure all the windows were closed,” she protested.
“Right,” Jonathon said.