Author's Notes: I'm back! Guess what? Guess what? I went to my first Star Trek Convention! It was really, really cool! Enough about me. Sorry it took me so long to get this out. Thanks for all your reviews! I hope you like this chapter. Tyler WILL be in the next chapter I promise and that chapter will the last. Happy reading!
What You Leave Behind
Chapter 4
Hank was looking through the students trying to get to safety to find one of his friends or someone that could use his help, but so far he hadn't seen any of his friends and all of the people that he had seen that had been shot were beyond help. Then he saw her. She was huddled almost in a little ball at the end of a row of lockers, rocking back and forth, her eyes were shut tight as if she was a little kid trying to block out the image of a scary movie.
Hank knew he couldn't leave her there, she was too vulnerable, she looked too innocent. So he went over to her crouched down beside her.
"Attention staff and students the school is going into lock-down. Please proceed to the nearest classroom," Hank heard Mr. Carlson say over the PA system. He turned to the girl who hadn't ceased her rocking and still had her eyes shut tight.
"You need to get up, okay?" He told her as gently as he could. His voice got her to stop rocking and she opened up eyes and looked at him. Her eyes had the same scared and frightened look as Sam Revere's had been the night of the accident. "Come on," He told her as he stood up. When she didn't follow him, he reached down and helped her up. When he did this she grabbed tightly onto his arm and didn't let go. He could feel her shaking and quick rasps of breath as she leaned against him. "It's going to be okay," He told her mostly to clam her down, but he wasn't sure if anything was going to be okay again.
Hank was about to open up the door and helped her into the closest classroom, when the girl suddenly stopped, her whole body going rigid. Now Hank really didn't know what to do. He didn't want to force her into the classroom and it was quite obvious that she didn't want to go in there, but Hank knew that they needed to get out of the open. Suddenly he spotted it. It just next door to the ill fated classroom was another door with the word "Janitor" on the door. It would be the perfect place for them to hide until the shooting, it was probably not unlocked, but it was worth a try.
With the girl still attached to his side he walked over to the small janitorial closet. Hank reached out for the doorknob and prayed that the closet was unlocked and it was. He let himself and the girl in an then shut the door. The closet was small and dark. He began to fumble along the wall closet to the door for the light switch. After knocking down what seemed to be a mop, he found it and flipped it on. As the yellowish light swept over the small space he was reminded of the storage closet at the EMT station. There were boxes piled up in one corner and variety of cleaning equipment more or less scattered through out the rest of the room.
"Have a seat," Hank told the girl, pulling out a box for her to sit on and one for him to sit on.
Just as she sat down gunshots could be heard resonating from the side of one of the walls. The girl quickly jumped from her seat and ran to the quiet side of the room. Hank followed her and bent down to where she was crouched. He wanted to tell that it was going to be okay, but didn't want to lie. So he just sat there with her.
"We haven't introduced ourselves yet," Hank said breaking the silence and trying to take the girl's mind off of what was occurring in the next room, "I'm Hank. And you are?" He asked hoping to get a response.
"Jenny," She said in a voice full of fear. She pulled her legs closer up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, "I just want it to stop,"
"It will," Hank said trying to reassure her, "It will,"
