5:07 P.M.
“Any changes?”
Sam lifted a weary head as the door to Naomi’s hospital room opened, and Clara entered. “No.”
It had been almost twenty-four hours since he had walked into the hotel suite to find Naomi bleeding to death on the sofa.
Twenty-four hours and apart from that brief twenty seconds or so in the hotel when she had opened her eyes and told him she loved him, she hadn’t stirred once.
Twenty-four hours was long enough.
She should have woken up by now.
Even briefly.
But she hadn’t.
She just lay in the bed, unmoving.
It was the unmoving thing that bothered him the most. It seemed so unnatural for Naomi to be so still. She was never still. She was his wildly spinning tornado. He wanted her back.
“You should go home, have a shower, something to eat, get some rest,” Clara suggested. “I’ll stay with her, and I’ll call you the second she wakes up.”
No way that was happening. He wasn't leaving Naomi’s side until she woke up. Until he knew for sure that she was going to make it. She had improved over the last twenty-four hours. It had been touch and go overnight, but this morning she had finally stabilized. She was still hooked up to a ventilator. Her doctors didn’t think her punctured lung was strong enough yet for her to breathe on her own. The nails had all been removed and the wounds bandaged, her right hand was more heavily bandaged and when she was stronger, she would need physical therapy to get full movement and sensation back in it.
“I can't leave her,” he murmured, his eyes glued to Naomi’s pale face. He’d seen her injured and in a hospital bed twice before. Both those times she’d had to fight for her life, but neither time had he come this close to losing her.
It still scared him.
More so because there were still no guarantees that she would survive this. If an infection got into her blood, then her weak body would struggle to fight it off.
“You have to take care of yourself too,” Clara said softly, coming to stand beside him, her own eyes fixed on Naomi’s face. “My sister needs you. And not just physically, she needs you to be emotionally strong for her when she wakes up. She’s going to blame herself for the fire worse than ever now she knows it was Andrew who set it because of his mother’s death. You know what she’s like, Sam. She’ll let the guilt crush her and she won’t ask for help because she thinks we’ll think less of her if she’s not always perfect and in control.”
“Yeah, she’s a stubborn one.” He brushed his knuckles affectionately across her cheek. He loved her crazy stubborn streak just like he loved everything else about her.
“Don’t let yourself fall apart, Naomi is counting on you. I'm trusting my sister to you, Sam.”
He looked away from Naomi to find Clara watching him seriously. “I’ll take care of her,” he promised.
She gave a small smile. “I know you will, I’m worried about you taking care of you because it’s the same thing. You're a couple now, everything you do affects her.”
That was true, and he was going to have to get used to a whole different way of thinking. He was used to his life just being about him. But now it wasn't. Now his life was the woman lying unconscious in the hospital bed.
“You’re not going to go anywhere, are you?” Clara asked ruefully.
“I can't. I can't leave her. I can't not be here beside her.”
“All right then, well I’ll go grab you something to eat, then I can keep you company for a while if you like,” she offered.
Sam appreciated the offer, but he wanted to be alone with Naomi right now. It might be selfish, but he didn’t want to share her, not even with her sister. “Thanks, but you should let Jonathon take you home so you can get some rest, you’ve got that little baby to think about now, you have to take care of yourself too.”
“Okay,” Clara reluctantly agreed. “Jonathon has been pestering me to let him take me home for a couple of hours. I don’t want to leave Naomi but at least she’s not alone, I'm leaving her in good hands.”
“I’ll call you if anything changes,” he promised.
Clara kissed Naomi’s forehead, patted his shoulder, and then left the room.
Alone with Naomi he picked up her hand again, careful to avoid the IV and pulse ox cable, and just held it. Clutched at it might be a more accurate term. He was so desperate for her to wake up, to hear her tell him she loved him again, he could never hear that enough.