Reality in the blink of an eye (Hotchner/Caderton) (Reid/Sinclair)

Chapter 4. Unexpected stay

As the taxi drove Lora to the hospital, she got out, payed and walked to the hospital door. Doctors ran to her, cause they saw, that she's bleeding. They put clean towels to her head and brought to an emergency room. They gave her many questions about where it hurts, or if she's hurt somewhere badly. They did the blood tests, MRI and X-Ray. Also gave a few stiches and cleaned her face. Sprayed some sort of thing, which of what they said „Would leave a less noticeable bruise". As she was sitting in the doctors office, he came in.

„Soo...The X-Ray scans are good, no broken bones, no split bones. The blood tests are good as well, no infection, everything seems fine. MRI..." – He did a pause and Lora looked at him waiting for his answer.

„Scans are good, but in conclusion...I would give you an advice to try not to raise your pulse, cause because of the fast pulse, you may start to feel dizziness and you will faint after. So, no running, no physical activity for at least a week.

„Okay, thank you doctor." – She stood up, said goodbye. As Lora walked out of the hospital, she turned her phone on again. She dialed Hotch's phone number to give him a call where she is as he called many times already, but then her phone battery died...She called the taxi to drive her home...

***

She reached her house, fastly changed clothes and charged her phone, while doing so. She took her phone out from charging and saw, that it's already 9:00h. She left her house and realized, that there is no time for taxi, so she started running through the pain, that she still felt. Lora saw the bus coming, so she ran and got in to drive for a few stops. She took the phone out, dialed Hotch's number again.....and then realized, that it won't change anything now, she'll come there in person, explain and take the consequences of her actions. She noticed, that Emilia wrote her as well.

Lora decided to get out of the bus and run for the last kilometer herself and to cross the corner, as it will be faster to do so. She reached the headquarters of the FBI and walked inside. She was followed by the couple stares as she headed to the elevator, but luckily was alone in it. Her heart was pounding so fastly, that she tried to catch air for one moment her head started spinning. That's what doctor had in his mind, when he said about the pulse. She tried to calm down, and to control her breathing, but she didn't have enough time, cause she reached her floor and as the elevator door opened she walked out. She took the small steps, but noticed, how the team were talking in the conference room. She raised her hand with a clock to check the time and it was 9:47h... Almost four hours after they called. She lowered her head and stared to the ground, cause she thought it will help with the dizziness....It didn't. She walked in the conference room where her team was already sitting and chatting. Lora saw a free seat and just went for it. She was sitting with her head still lowered. Even though, she felt like a total shit right now and prayed for this ground to swallow her, it didn't happen and this room was in complete silence.

„Want to explain yourself?" – She heard Hotch asking with that serious tone of his...She never heard any other man's tone to be that cold, like he was holding in all that anger and just waiting for the right moment to scream...

„I was...I didn't call...because..." – All she could think about right now was her spinning head. She tried to concentrate at some point to continue talking as the room was drowning in silence and waiting for her to speak.

„I was in the..." – She started, but Hotch interrupted her.

„Morgan told us where you were last night..." – He didn't shout, but his voice was raised a little bit.

„Listen...we're doing a serious work here, our job require full concentration and even all of our free time sometimes. We need to be able to reach 24/7 and....you clearly can't do that..." – Hotch said now with a calm, but still serious tone. The room was quiet.