Chapter 4: Need
Gabriel's thin fingers slid across the keyboard making small adjustments to the searching web he'd created in his computer. Sproig, pop. His head snapped up and his weight shifted in the chair. A dull thud and clatter heard from the other end of the hall sent him bolting out of his chair.
She's gonna kill me for sneaking a peak of her in the shower, he thought briefly, hand twisting the doorknob. He had a momentary unbidden mental image of Sara in his shower. Wow, aren't you way past teen-age hormones? Stop thinking about it, Bowman, she's never going to see you that way so you might as well stop fantasizing.
"Sara, are you okay? I thought I heard something."
Steam billowed through the open door as he waited for her usual snappy reply. Gabriel's heart skipped. A tangle of plastic, metal curtain rod, leg, arm, blood.
"Oh dear god, no!"
The floor was soaked as the shower's spray reached beyond the confines of the tub. Sara lay in the tub half wrapped in curtain her head lolling against the tiles. A steady trickle of blood flowed from somewhere in her hair. Her eyes were closed and her facial features slack.
Gabriel tore at the curtain around Sara's limp form. Okay, take stock of the situation, Bowman. She's obviously bleeding and out cold. Check for a pulse and breathing, then figure out if she's hurt anywhere else. His cheek fell to her chest and he ignored the view down her lean stomach as he listened. Heart. Breath. Good. Now the rest. He started at her legs working his hands quickly across and around every inch of her body. Legs, arms, hips, ribs, chest, back shoulders, neck. His long fingers cradled the base of her skull, rotating to get a better view. Fingers probed through her hair finding a growing lump where her head had been resting against the edge of the tub. He snagged the towel blindly off the counter, placed it in the crook of his elbow, and laid her head over his arm. His other arm went under her legs as he pulled Sara's still body against his chest. Lifting her, he noted that she had been almost completely stretched out across the tub, making her a bit shorter than himself. Why have I always thought she was so much bigger than this? Always such a bad ass. Makes her a bit larger-than-life, doesn't it?
He hefted her more securely into his grasp and made his was down the hall to the bedroom. Somehow, the ironic part of his mind supplied, this wasn't the romantic moment I've dreamed about when I carried her off to my bed. Sitting carefully on the end of the bed, Gabriel leaned Sara's limp torso across his forearm to get a good look at the back of her head. He brushed the hair away from the injury and checked it to make sure the bleeding was stopped and it didn't need stitches. Thank god head injuries usually bleed worse than they actually are. Sara shifted and groaned. Her head lifted, eyes not quite focusing.
"Take it easy," he soothed. "You hit your head, Pez, you might have a concussion. I want you to follow my finger with your eyes, Sara." Her eyes tracked the point of his finger as it waved back and forth, up and down. When her gaze settled back on his face, his chest contracted hard; her pupils weren't quite the same size.
"Sara? Are you listening to me?"
"I'm here," she croaked out, pink tinged droplets of water still dribbling down her face and body.
"Can you tell me what happened?"
"Saw you coming," she mumbled.
"You knew I was coming down the hall before you fell?"
"No no no," her head jogged unevenly as it shook in negation, "saw you in the shower, body tight, hands-"
Gabriel's mouth opened but no sound would come out. The sentence hung unfinished in the air between them. What are you doing, blade? Why are you forcing things on her that she's not prepared to see?
He looked away. //SHE NEEDS YOU//
