Everthorne

Stay With Me

Katniss's POV
     I'm on my way to the school Prim, Vick and Rory go to. I try to meet them everyday when school gets out and walk them home because it's too far for them to go on their own. It's the dead of winter and the Hawthorns have moved in with us to stay warm, so I get Hazel's boys too. Just as I get within sight of the school, I hear the sirens go off, the sirens from the mines.
    I take off running towards the entrance of the mines, hoping to see Gale. By the time I get there, a crowd of worried family members has already formed. I push through to the front and survey the group that has just come up on the elevator. He's not there. I feel Hazel and Rory come and join me.
"Where's Posy?" I ask them as soon as I come to my senses, not wanting her to see Gale hurt. Since the Hawthorne's have been with us more, Posy has almost become like a daughter to me. I carry her with me to get Gale from the mines each evening and sometimes bring her to get Prim and her brothers from school. She loves Gale like a father, unfortunately she never knew hers, and I'd hate for her to see him hurt, or worse, dead.
     "She's at the house with Prim," Rory says, "we didn't tell her what happened."  I sigh in relief, but my breath catches in my throat again when we see the next elevator coming up with more survivors. This group is even worse off than the last. Bloody and half-conscious, they stumble out of the elevator. Once again, Gale is not among them.
        Minutes, hours even, seem to pass with no sign of Gale. I didn't notice I was crying until Hazel wrapped an arm around me and wiped the tears off of my face with her scarf. "Hey, he'll be okay. He's probably down there helping get the others on the elevator first. You know how selfless and stubborn he is," she says to me reassuringly. I smile and lay my head on her shoulder and continue waiting in the cold.
       Finally, someone shouts that the last elevator of survivors is coming up now. I let out a sob and run forward to the doors as they open. I see two men hauling Gale's body out of the elevator and start running to our house in the Victors' Village. Hazel, Rory, and I run after them, trying to keep up.
     I can tell it's serious because all the men said was "We need to get him the Mrs. Everdeen's quickly." My mother is the "doctor" in our district. People come to her when they cannot afford to go to the small hospital we have here in 12.
   I see my mother hurry out of the house and usher the men in with Gale. They lay him on our table before hurrying out to help others. I rush over and grab his hand and hold on to him tightly as my mother and Prim begin examining him. He has cuts and scrapes all over from the explosion, but the worst is on his side. He has a massive gash extending from the bottom of his ribs down to his hip on the left side. My mother says he's alive, but the loss of blood made him pass out. Hazel goes up to tell her two younger children what happened while Rory just goes outside "for a walk," leaving me alone with Gale as my mother and sister work on him.
       They begin to clean the dirt and coal dust from his cuts and scrapes with alcohol making him moan loudly. I grip his hand tighter with mine and run my other hand through his hair, trying to calm him. When they finally get around to his gash, my mother says "Katniss I'm going to need you to hold him still-"
"Will it hurt him I ask?" I cut her off. "Well yes, but we need to make sure he doesn't get an infection," she says trying to calm me now.
      I do as she says and hold his hand tight and run my finger through his hair in an attempt to keep him calm, but he cries out in pain and tries to inch his way away from her, tears streaming down his cheeks. "You're hurting him!" I yell at her, "Can't you give him something for the pain?"  "I don't have much medicine left and I was saving it incase a child came in hurt," she trails off. "Give it to him! I'll buy more, but I can't stand to see him hurting like this!" I demand. Prim gets up from fixing rags for his wounds and gets the vile of medicine from the cabinet. My mother hold his head still and injects it into his neck.
      Within minutes, Gale has settled and she is able to continue to clean his wounds. Once she's done sewing up his gash, Hazel and I carefully change him into clean clothes and wash his face and hair. We aren't allowed to move him back to a bed upstairs since he's still unconscious, so I pull up a chair and lay my head on the table next to him.  I sit and stroke the back of his hand with my thumb and continue running my fingers through his hair. I know he can't feel me, but right now, I need the contact with him.
      My mind wanders into the awful possibilities that could happen. He might never wake up, or he might die from and infection. The worst is that he'd wake up and wouldn't remember me. I've almost cried myself to sleep when I hear his groggy voice ask, "Will you stay with me Katniss?" I instantly spring back to life. "Always," I say kissing his forehead and laying my head back down on the table next to his.

Thank you to everyone who stuck with me and is still reading this after I didn't update for a month. Lol sorry!! Thanks again for 140 reads!  I love you guys!!!