No Escape

Changes

Emily woke up to darkness. She was slightly disoriented when she did, especially when she heard the small beeping in the background. Slowly the events of the past day came to her and she relaxed on the bed, albeit not completely since it wasn't her own.

She was only given a local anesthetic during her operation so she wasn't as disoriented as the last time she was in the hospital. She tried to press over the last operation she had when the doctors had taken the bullet out of her and tried to repair the part of her intestines that it had punctured. She was told she was lucky because no other major organs were hit, but she had been put into antibiotics for a while. With all this in her mind she forgot that she couldn't move the arm closest to her last operation.

She looked down at her arm and saw that it was in a brace. The doctor said it could be removed as soon as two weeks, but to be sure he wanted it on for a month, especially since she wanted it to be well enough so she could perform in athletics. She stared at it for a while longer feeling the familiar fear of her finding out months from now that she wouldn't be able to swim again. She lifted the hand of her good arm and pressed it to her head, forcing herself to think about something else.

Naturally it shifted to thoughts about Alison.

That brought a smile to her lips, and she dropped her hand, closing her eyes. She felt tired, but oddly not up to falling asleep. She knew Alison wasn't there because she wasn't family, although from how they'd been acting the past few months, it almost felt like they were. Whenever she thought about the situation as if they were a couple who were living together, it terrified and excited her at the same time. She was young and still had a lot to llok forward to so of course she was excited. But also terrified because so much could happen to break the two of them up.

She banished those thoughts from her head because they weren't helping her go back to sleep. Instead she thought about the previous night when Alison had been so sweet and considerate. Emily had nearly pounced on her girlfriend, wanting to be intimate, she remembered feeling her cheeks burn with a blush. But Alison had stopped her and Emily knew her girl only wanted their first time to be special and not borne from the worries of a horny teenage girl. Emily frowned at herself embarrassedly, even though there were no one to notice it.

So they had ended up just lying in bed, and Alison had held her until morning. Alison actually refused to let her get up for her morning run, because she said Emily would just run until she couldn't anymore with how tense she was. Then Alison proceeded to provide her with another way to stop stressing about her upcoming operation. After Emily realized it would involved being under Alison for a significant amount of time, she decided it was a better way to start her day.

Emily sighed, because thinking about Alison and her kisses weren't helping her sleep either. She was just thankful that her parents had come home so they would be there for her surgery. She was glad to have both of them with her, and it was even better than Alison didn't have to spend the night away from her alone in her house. She knew Alison would have to deal with the lights closed. Emily had been able to convince her to put the lights off downstairs whenever they slept, but all the lights were still on upstairs because the dark still made the blonde antsy. And they were still sleeping with the light on. She wondered how her girlfriend would fair for the night.

With thought of Alison in her head, Emily fell back asleep.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"You look kind of like a cyborg, Em."

Emily looked up at Hanna, and despite feeling helpless about not being able to use her arm for a while, she grinned. "It was exactly the look I was going for."

The brace wasn't like a sling because the immobilization was for her shoulder. It was significantly more stable which also meant Emily wouldn't be able to move her whole arm for weeks and taking a shower will be ten times more difficult.