Now the room was darker, she felt safe opening her eyes again to check it out.
Cautiously, she opened them a slither, then a little more. Flynn was sitting in a chair that had been pulled up beside her bed, wearing what looked like a hospital gown.
A hospital gown?
She moved her head cautiously, looking past him. A stark white wall featuring the kind of horrid print you only ever found in hospitals was directly behind him. The small black TV perched high on the wall to the right of the print and the heavy looking door just beyond that on the right, confirmed this was indeed a hospital room.
Why were they both in a hospital?
‘You breathed in too much smoke when you ran into your house.’
She tried to focus back on him, noting the graze high on his temple and the redness in his eyes and ran over what he’d just said to her in her head, one word sticking in her mind. ‘Smoke?’
‘From the fire. At your house.’
‘My house was on fire?’
He flinched. ‘You don’t remember?’
She was going to shake her head when the images of flames leapt before her eyes, the reception area on fire, smoke billowing out the door, flames encroaching on the storeroom where the stores and oxygen tanks were kept. She remembered desperately trying to put the fire out, but the water that sprayed out of the hose just wasn’t strong enough. She’d dropped the hose and run, right into Flynn.
‘You saved me.’
‘I pulled you out, yes.’
‘There was an explosion.’
‘Yes.’
‘How much?’
He didn’t ask what she meant, seeming to know by the deepening compassion in his eyes. ‘Everything. It’s all gone.’
Their home. It was gone. Everything she’d worked so hard to achieve in the last two years, gone.
Oh god.
The blow was staggering, more than she thought it would be, like someone was squeezing her and slicing at her and emptying her out all at once. Then on top of this roil of sensation came the thought—How would Carter deal with losing his home? The pain emptied out of her as worry filled her up. He’d lost everything once again. Almost everything. She was still here, but she had nothing and he only had the things in his backpack. Everything was gone. Even, possibly—oh god, she hated to think it—but Machiavelli. They’d locked him in before they’d left. Was she going to have to tell Carter he’d lost his pet as well as everything else? How could she tell him that? She could only hope he’d escaped out the back door when the arsonist had broken in.
Her breath came in a shuddering sob.
‘Prita? Are you okay?’
Crap. He couldn’t know she was close to tears. She took in another deep breath, past the anguish and the hurt and the worry about what was to come. It was funny to think that pain and hurt and anguish had all been tied around him just before the fire and now none of that mattered. She was no longer angry or hurt by him and what he’d said. He’d come to find her, apparently, and had saved her life. It didn’t even matter if he’d come to continue yelling at her or to apologise. He’d said, ‘I thought I’d lost you,’ in a voice that spoke of so much loss and pain that it made her hurt. He might not want to be with her in a romantic way, but he did care.
Somehow, that made everything just that little bit more bearable now.
‘Prita?’
She waved away his help as he stood up to press the button for help. ‘I’m fine. It’s just a little bit of a shock.’
‘Of course.’
‘You got hurt.’
‘I’m fine. Just hit my head and yanked my knee. The doctor said I’ll be right as rain in a few days.’
‘Okay.’ At least she didn’t have that to worry about too. She took in another careful breath. ‘How is Aaron taking this? His dad a hero and everything?’
‘I’m hardly a hero.’ His expression was as bleak as his voice.
‘You pulled me from the fire. If that’s not heroic, I don’t know what is.’
‘I didn’t pull you from anything. I just fell down the steps with you.’
She wasn’t sure about that, but she wasn’t going to argue the point now. ‘What about Carter? Does he know?’
‘Aaron and he had a sleepover with Tilly last night and it sounded like they had a great time. When I spoke to Mum earlier, she said Nat was going to tell him after breakfast.’
‘Okay.’ She wished she could be there for that, but didn’t want him coming into the hospital. But Nat would be gentle. ‘If he needs to talk to me—’
‘They’ll call.’
She nodded and sucked in a pained breath, began to cough.
‘Prita? Are you okay?’
‘I need … to sit up.’
Flynn slipped his arm around her back and he pulled her upright, rubbing her back, perching himself on the edge of the bed. The slow, soothing strokes he made down her back shouldn’t feel so good, but they did. She decided not to let that matter so much now.
‘Do you need me to go and get a nurse?’
She shook her head—she didn’t want the fussing—and only realised then they had oxygen tubes just under her nose. At least she wasn’t ventilated or in a hyperbaric unit, so the damage was only superficial. She’d probably have to have further tests in the future to ensure there were no long-term effects of lung damage, but for now, given the treatment, it seemed they were confident she would be okay. It was stupid of her to not have wet something and wrapped it around her face before running in to fight the fire. Although, that was probably the least stupid thing she’d done. Flynn had been right. Not that she’d ever admit that to him.
She tried to breathe in through her nose, shallow breaths
