I Got You. |A Norminah fic|

Chapter 23

~NORMANI KORDEI~
I stormed out of Dinah's hospital room in confusion. There was so much to take in that I couldn't even focus on one thing. Missing persons report? Foster parents incident?

Homeless?

Yeah that was the biggest one. She said she was homeless even after she turned eighteen but surely she couldn't have been homeless while I knew her. I mean she seemed less fortunate but not homeless. How could I have known that she was homeless?

I continued to walk down the hospital hallways with my mouth agape. I didn't know where I was going I just need some time. I was overwhelmed. I was overcome with shock about what happened to Dinah. I knew that what happened to Dinah last night was terrible but hearing it was a different type of horrifying.

How could someone do that to her? To anyone? 'You're one of the lucky ones'. Those words continued to ring throughout my head along with plenty of other ones. What would I have done if she wasn't so lucky. Even after only knowing Dinah for less than a year she had made such a huge impact on my life and I knew for a fact that if she was gone it wouldn't be the same.

I really should've been more focused on what happened to Dinah but a part of me kept going back to the fact that she was homeless.

I was busy rushing through the lobby when I ran into someone. I looked up ,more like down, at who I had ran into.

Upon seeing the short blonde I immediately felt my dam of emotions breaking as tears began to flow openly. I held onto Ally's shoulders while I sobbed as she rubbed my back comfortingly. My emotions were so out of wack. I was heartbroken about what happened to the blonde but I was also angry at the same girl for keeping such a huge secret from me.

It seemed like Ally and I stood there embracing each other for the longest when in actuality it had only been a few minutes. After Ally and I pulled apart she pulled me towards a more secluded area of the hospital so we wouldn't be so in the open.

'What happened is Dinah okay?' Was the first thing Ally asked.

I wiped the remainder of my tears 'Dinah's fine well at least as fine as she can be after all of this.'

'Then why are you crying?' Ally asked while caressing my upper arm.

Why was I crying? At this point I was confused about everything.

'I don't- I don't know.'

'Are you overwhelmed?' Ally interrogated trying to determine what was wrong with me.

'I think so, it just... I don't know.' I sighed in defeat at not being able to voice all the thoughts that were currently going through my head.

'You might be a little overwhelmed but just think about Dinah okay? Dinah's okay so just forget about all the other stuff.'

I nodded. She was right. Dinah was okay and she was going to make a full recovery. Soon as I let those thoughts settle the other one sprung back up like a hose. She lied. Dinah had lied to me.

All the times she told me she was going home to her apartment she wasn't. She was going to some dirty Alley to lay on a stack of cardboard and I had no idea. How could I be so oblivious? How was I supposed to know?

I didn't grow up in a bad neighborhood there were little to no homeless people around and the ones I saw definitely didn't look like Dinah. I was sheltered so I guess when I saw Dinah it wouldn't raise any red flags. My family and I volunteered at soup kitchens when I was younger but I was too young to even process that they're were homeless most of the time. Even traveling for the past eight plus years I haven't had the chance to outright see true poverty up close since I've always been in the nicer parts of wherever I was at that time.