Week 472 – As Sasha was being put to sleep for surgery she thought she saw a dreaded familiar face

Everything hurt. Her body hurt, her mind hurt, even her hair hurt.

It was hard to focus on anything else through the pain, voices chattered, people touched her without her permission, and she couldn’t seem to remember where she was or what was happening.

Fear gripped her.

Where was Dylan?

Was he here? Was he coming? Was it Dylan and his friends who were touching her?

Thought the haze was one thought. One face.

“Graham?” she cried out, trying to open her eyes but everything was blurry, she couldn’t see, and she needed to see him, needed him to tell her everything was going to be okay, because when he said it, she believed it. “Where are you? Graham!”

“Stop holding me back and let me go to her,” Graham yelled from somewhere nearby. Was Dylan hurting him too?

Someone said something, but she didn’t know what, and then she saw him.

Graham.

Here.

Immediately relaxed.

“You’re okay,” she murmured.

“You are too, honey,” he assured her as he ghosted a hand over her hair. “You’re in the hospital, you got hit by a bullet, so they’re going to take you to surgery.”

“I don’t want to leave you,” she mumbled, her voice weak and slurring even to her own ringing ears.

“Don’t want to leave you either, but I’m not going anywhere, okay?” he asked as he brushed the backs of his knuckles across her cheek. “I’m going to walk up with you to the surgical floor, then I’m going to wait right outside until you’re done, and I’m not going to let anyone make me leave.”

Somehow she smiled at his firm words, and the scowl he shot someone she couldn’t see. If the worst happened she needed him to know how she felt. “Thank you, for everything, if I-“

“Hey now, don’t talk like that, you’re going to be fine,” he insisted.

“If I’m not then I want you to know I forgive you for sending me back, you didn’t know, and you came for me, stayed with me, fought for me, I’m so grateful, and I want time to get to know you better, but if I don’t have it then at least I want you to know that I like you, Graham, could maybe even come to care deeply about you. You literally saved my life.”

“Then let’s keep it that way, you keep fighting for me, okay, honey?”

“Okay,” she agreed, because there was nothing else to say. Her energy was waning, and all she wanted was to soak up what could be her last moments with this man, and she didn’t want to spend them arguing about whether she was going to survive surgery.

“Okay, honey, they’re going to sedate you now, okay? But I’m going to be right here with you.”

“Kay,” she mumbled her eyes already fluttering.

As Sasha was being put to sleep for surgery she thought she saw a dreaded familiar face as movement behind Graham in the door to her room caught her attention.

Was that one of Dylan’s friends, or was she only imagining it? There was no time to figure it out, or warn Graham if she was right, because whatever had been pumped into her system had her floating away.