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Fourteen

Dinah walked further into the room and quickly ran to Ally, taking her hand and intertwining their fingers together. Dinah felt relief course through her as she looked at Ally's skin return to normal and her breathing was constant. She was still asleep, the doctors putting her on bed rest for the rest of the day, an IV stuck in her left hand, hydrating her body. Dinah touched her forehead, and smiled a small smile of relief as her hand met cool skin.

"Ally?" Dinah whispered, the act of speaking in her normal voice being to loud in the silent hospital room except for the continuous beeping of Ally's heart monitor. "I was so scared."

Dinah let the sentence sink in as she ran over it again. She had been terrified, completely and utterly terrified and she hadn't shed a tear, trying to stay strong for the others, to be their rock - she had been determined and she had succeeded, they had been able to get to the hospital safely and get Camila to calm down. She had been the one to take action, but she had been terrified.

There so many things that had coursed through her mind - never seeing Ally again, never hearing her laugh and the small giggles when she was doing something adorable or she was messing with the other girls, never having Anna see Ally again, and forgetting her.

Dinah's biggest fear was forgetting, always hearing people talk about their family members as old acquaintances after years of their loss. She couldn't forget, she knew she couldn't, but she also knew that that was out of her control. She was aware that she was protective over her girlfriends, especially Ally, her small stature causing her to want to protect her more often from others.

Helping Ally was out of her control, helping anyone from dying was out of her control, and Dinah hated that. She should be able to control who stays and who goes in her mind, who she can protect and who don't deserve her attention.

She detested it.

She touched her cheek and looked at her fingers, the offending digit retreating wet with a salty tear. She was breaking down and she knew there was no way of stopping it, she had been surprised it hadn't happened sooner. 

"I was so scared and I tried to do what you would do, I swear I did, but," Dinah began to whisper, scooting closer to the smaller woman's sleeping form, tears now gathering around her eyes, still not falling, "I don't think I did well, I mean they were all crying and scared, and I felt like I couldn't do anything."

She hadn't been able to help, she had just bossed around and stayed in place, secretly looking for someone to embrace, to let her emotions out through physical contact. She was a very touchy person - not that it was a secret - but anyone who wasn't the girls wouldn't know what Dinah did when she was upset. She would curl into your side and hide her face in the crook of your neck, hoping the monsters would go away, the girls knew, but sometimes they would forget. Dinah had been okay with that, because most of the time she didn't want to talk about what was causing her to be upset, but that's what she did, she hid and she had done that today. When she cradled Anna into her and when she wrapped her arms tightly around Normani - that had been her trying to hide, even if part of her was trying to get them to feel better, she had been hiding.

"I'm sorry, I know you would have probably done some kind of CPR stuff and saved our lives or something, but I - " Dinah let a sob out, bringing her hand that had been running through Ally's hair to her mouth, trying to keep her sobs in as tears rushed down her face. She had been weak hadn't she? She should have been able to help Ally better, to make Anna feel safe and okay, to help Normani cope, but she hadn't. The weary look Normani had when she had exited the restroom told her she hadn't helped, the look running through her mind like an old black and white movie.

"Silly."

Dinah's head shot up as she heard the raspy whisper, her brown eyes running over Ally's body quickly, only stopping when she saw Ally looking up at the ceiling, squinting her eyes a bit as she adjusted to the light.