"HEY!"
Matt's muffled voice greeted Leila before she had even noticed him standing there, causing her to jump in startled surprise as she unbuckled her seat belt in the parking lot of station house fourteen. Turning her head to the left, she managed to summon a forced, strained grin as her friend's animated face appeared on the other side of her car window. His black sunglasses glimmered in the afternoon sunlight, displaying a slightly distorted version of her reflection as he waited for her to get out.
Leila looked terrible; there was truly no other way to describe her. She had not attempted any semblance of effort toward her appearance that day. Her hair was still wavy and tangled from her hurried, distracted shower the previous afternoon, and it sat knotted and tied in a messy bun at the back of her head. Dark circles of exhaustion lay beneath her eyes, evidence of her lack of adequate sleep the night before. She had not bothered with applying any makeup in an attempt to hide them. Her boss and colleagues had been told she was too sick to work, so Leila figured she might as well look the part.
If Matt thought she looked bad, his body language did not indicate it, nor did he mention it verbally. Instead, he opened her car door and held it, smiling widely at her as she climbed out.
"Feeling better?" he asked brightly, but continued without waiting for an answer. "We were worried about you yesterday! You've never called in sick before."
Leila turned her back to him momentarily, clearing her throat as she leaned into the car to retrieve her bag. She wasn't sure why, but at that moment, she sincerely wished Matt would leave her alone.
Once again forcing a grin to display an emotion she did not feel, she nodded, swinging the messenger bag over her shoulder. "Yeah, I'm a lot better today," she lied. "Thanks."
No, she did not feel sick physically, but the low-hanging cloud of shame and anger lingering over her made Leila strongly regret coming to work that day. It was her job, her career, to be calm and kind under pressure, understanding and decisive toward her patients, but how could she be any of those qualities when all she wanted to do was scream and hit something until her knuckles bled? As she pretended to listen to Matt telling her about some bizarre call she'd missed the previous night, Leila wondered whether she ought to go straight into the office and tell Mitchell that she still did not feel well enough to work, ask if she could go home. He would probably consent, seeing how she really did look sick...
But then again, what would she do if she went home? What good would it do her to simply sit on her couch and stare at some mindless show on TV, or lay in her bed, wallowing in self-pity? She had already done those things the previous day and all it had left her with was crushing emotional exhaustion and what she could only assume were the early symptoms of depression. No, she had to stay at work, not only for her physical well-being, but her mental health as well. Leila could not afford to shut down. Being at work, doing what she loved, surrounded by two of her favorite people could only help, if not to lift her spirits, then as a distraction. She would accept a distraction in whatever form she could get it.
After putting her bag away and laughing politely at the conclusion of Matt's story, the two stepped back out into the docking bay, where Jay was climbing down from the back of the ambulance, bald head shimmering with beads of sweat. His countenance brightened notably when he spotted Leila.
"Hey, girl!" he practically shouted, throwing his arms wide and stepping forward to envelop her in one of his bear-like hugs. Leila felt a small drop of comfort flow through her as she returned the gesture. "How you feeling?"
"Better," she answered truthfully. "I hope you guys weren't too busy last night without me."
Matt and Jay both shook their heads, making dismissive gestures. "No, not at all," Jay replied. "Just a few calls, nothing we couldn't handle."
Matt nodded his agreement, motioning to Leila. "We're just glad you're better already!" he said, before his face morphed into a questioning sort of expression. She felt her stomach sink. "Any idea what you came down with?"
Leila supposed her medically driven profession was a curse at that moment as she quickly scrambled for an excuse for her absence. She shrugged. "Not really," A tendril of stray hair swung down into her face as she climbed into the back of the ambulance, an avoidance tactic to forgo having to look at her friends as she lied to them. "Probably just one of those twenty-four hour bugs...You know how those are."
Behind her, Jay let out a low whistle. "Boy, do I ever. Kyle had that twenty-four hour stomach flu a month or two ago." He said, pausing to shake his head. "Never seen a kid puke so much in my life..."
Matt groaned as he climbed into the ambulance behind Leila, where she stood absentmindedly and pointlessly 'organizing' a row of medicine bottles in a cabinet. She wished he wouldn't stand so close. "Great story, Jay," he commented sarcastically. "I'm sure that's really what Leila wants to hear about right now." Leila's back teeth met together inside her mouth and clenched tight. Whatever slim, dull sense of peace she had felt only moments prior was ebbing with startling rapidity. She wished Matt would shut up.
Fortunately, their first call came within a few minutes and the ambulance was pulling out of the bay, lights flashing, sirens deafening. Normally, Leila would have asked Jay what the call was for, or even bothered to listen to the radio to give herself some sort of an idea of what kind of scene was about to unfold, what fresh medical situation was in store for her team. But this day was different. She found herself not caring where the truck was going or what they were destined to treat. It didn't matter in the slightest. Any person with a crisis they deemed an emergency was worth her time and attention but at this point, she was simply glad for something, anything to focus her mind on.
As the ambulance bounced along uneven city streets, Leila stared blankly at a wheel on the stretcher before her, eyes unfocused, beginning to sting, protesting her lack of blinking. She was not sure whether it was a culmination of her aggravated mental state or if Matt was purposely going out of his way to be as obnoxious as possible, but as a pair of latex gloves smacked lightly against the side of her face, she jumped, scowling as she looked over at her colleague, where he sat wiggling his freshly gloved fingers. His movement slowed, his eyebrows relaxed and he shrugged, nodding his head at the blue latex in her lap.
"Sorry," he said pointedly, grinning. "You're usually supposed to catch something when someone tosses it to you."
A flare of anger licked at Leila's insides and for a very brief moment, she considered throwing the gloves back at him as hard as she could. The muscles along her dominant right arm even tensed in preparation for this motion, but she resisted, using every ounce of patience she could muster. What had happened to her to was not Matt's fault. Venting her frustration on him was not fair in any way and Leila would not allow herself to be that type of person; the type to take their aggression out on those around them. Maybe she would go for a long jog after work, if the current shift did not help to quell some of her pent up irritation.
As misfortune would have it, their first call turned out to be nothing more than an overly emotional mother whose eight year-old son had recently swallowed a quarter. Leila did not feel she possessed the proper temperament to deal with such a hysterical woman at that time, so she silently allowed Jay to take the lead and explained that there was no need for the boy to be rushed to the emergency room in the back of an ambulance. She stood in the doorway of the kitchen, listening quietly while Jay sat on a chair across from the anxious mother.
"If he's eaten a full meal within the last few hours, there is enough in his stomach to prevent the coin from doing any real damage," he explained gently, displaying all the peace and calm tranquility that Leila was normally so adept at portraying. The mother nodded, gripping her son's hand tightly. Jay smiled kindly. "Just get in your car, drive to the emergency room and explain to them what happened."
"But-" the mother started, hiccuping slightly. "But- he-"
"Ma'am," Leila stepped in at this point. Jay was being a little too soft and doing a poor job of making the point this woman so dearly needed to understand. "We would be taking him to the exact same place you would if you took him in your own car," she explained, taking a step further into the kitchen and raising her eyebrows, searching the mother's face to be sure she was listening attentively. "And a ride in our car is a lot more expensive than a ride in yours."
Jay turned his head to look up at Leila but she did not meet his gaze. She could picture the look of confused surprise on his face at hearing her use such a direct and blunt tone. Instead, she kept her eyes fixed on the mother's face until the woman finally seemed to deflate, her shoulders relaxing. She nodded, dabbing her moist eyes with a paper towel.
"Alright, that makes sense," she breathed, patting her son's hand and rising from the table. "We'll leave now then. Thank you so much."
As the woman and boy prepared to leave, Jay and Leila exited through the front door, letting themselves out onto the front steps of the brownstone apartment. Leila sniffed nonchalantly, pushing that one strand of hair back away from her eyes again. She had nothing to say about the exchange that had taken place inside the house but it seemed Jay did not share the same feeling. Rather annoyingly, his tone was calm when he spoke.
"That was a little harsh, dont'cha think?" he asked, glancing to his left up the sidewalk as they stepped down onto it. Despite the evenness to his voice, Leila knew Jay well enough to pick up on a hint of carefully disguised scorn in his words.
"She was freaking out and you were being too soft," Leila answered baldly, eloquently, as though she had rehearsed this conversation. Perhaps her agitated state was making her more direct than usual. She stopped on the sidewalk, turned toward Jay, and looked up at him with a bold, but professionally respectful expression on her face. "She needed to hear the facts. A non-emergency ride in the ambulance would've cost her at least one to two thousand dollars, which, judging by the state of their house, she didn't have to spare." Leila turned, stepping down onto the asphalt to load the bag of equipment into the back of the truck. "I did nothing but tell her the truth and save us some time."
With that, she climbed into the ambulance and shut the doors, forcefully ignoring the strange look from Matt as she took her place on the bench seat. From the awkward clearing of his throat and the way he immediately took out his phone to begin flipping through Facebook, he had obviously decided it was in his best interest to not ask what had occurred in the brownstone. A wise choice on his part, Leila thought.
After the regretfully uneventful first call, which turned out to not really be an emergency at all, Leila's shift hit a long, annoying lull. Typically, she viewed these intervals of radio silence as a blessing, thankful that she was not attending to a dying elderly person or some unfortunate soul trapped in a burning vehicle after a horrific accident. But alas, there was only so much restocking and cleaning in the ambulance she could do before she was left woefully and aggravatingly bored. An almost shameful part of her wished that someone would run a red light, spin out and hit a lamp post, or some obese citizen's heart would finally give up, or something, anything would happen that would require her team's immediate attention.
Since the department cutbacks, the ambulance was no longer allowed to drive about their district and was instead confined to the docking bay of Station House Fourteen. And that was where she sat, pretending to read a magazine while Matt and Jay bickered about some bad call on the previous night's basketball game. It seemed both of them had recognized and come to terms with the fact that she was not in the mood to be toyed with that day, and since her rather curt words at their call earlier in the shift, they had both kept their distance, for which Leila was grateful. She could only hope that they attributed her foul mood to nothing more than the fact that she was recovering from her supposed 'twenty-four hour bug'.
As her eyes drifted along the words on the page at an almost mechanical, reflexive pace, Leila thought back to the Casino fundraiser at the hospital, where Matt had 'discovered' her new 'boyfriend'. Of course, the situation that directly followed that event had driven the memory of the exchange completely out of her mind until that very moment. She looked up from the magazine, over to Matt, where he sat flipping through his phone. She wondered if he too had forgotten that bit of information. Maybe her abrupt departure from the hospital that night had also caused him to forget what she had told him. Or was he perhaps simply staying true to his word and keeping silent about it? Whatever the circumstance may have been, Leila felt she owed him some sort of thanks for not bringing it up...Assuming of course that he had not already told Jay the day before while she had been absent from work. Her teeth ground together, her hand flicked upward to push that damn piece of hair out of her face again.
A burst of static crackled from the radio clipped to Jay's pocket, followed immediately by a calm female voice. Leila's heart soared; finally, something for them to do.
"Possible choking incident at 1013 West Innfield Avenue. Thirteen year old male presents-"
This was all the team needed to hear before they were on their feet, into the ambulance and pulling out of the bay, on their way to save a life, finally.
Leila was the first of the two paramedics to slide her hands into latex gloves, trying, without success, to deny the surge of excited adrenaline flooding her veins. Yes, some poor boy was apparently choking to death and would likely be turning blue by the time the they got there, but she was ready to save his life. She had always been an advocate of CPR and the idea that every person, young and old, should be certified in how to administer it correctly, but at that point in time, she was far from pointing a finger of blame. If she couldn't save her own life from ruin, perhaps she could at least save someone else's.
The address the team had been given, to their mild surprise, belonged to a restaurant, where, even from outside, upon jumping down from the back of the ambulance, Leila could see a crowd of people through the glass windows, all gathered around who she could only assume was her patient. As Matt jumped down behind her, she shook her head.
"There's no use trying to treat him in there. Not with all those people," she said hurriedly, turning back to the ambulance and pointing inside it. "Get the stretcher down so we can bring him out here."
At that moment, a shrieking voice split the evening air, muffled at first, then as shrill as a whistle as a woman came tearing out of the restaurant and onto the pavement. Tears were streaming down her face as Jay rushed over to her.
"PLEASE!" she screamed, waving her arms in hysterics as though the medical team could not see her. "You have to help him! His lips are blue and-"
Leila and Matt ignored her for the time being, moving as fast as they could to pull the stretcher down and unfold the legs, while Jay seized the woman by the arms gently, moving her back toward the doors to the restaurant.
"Ma'am, we're gonna do everything we can but we need you and everyone else to give us some room, okay?" he asked her calmly, releasing her arms once she was successfully moved out of the way and holding open one side of the glass double doors so the stretcher could be wheeled inside. Leila was at the back of the gurney with Matt at the head, attempting to maneuver between the tables, rapidly approaching the mass of people all standing around, staring baffled at the suffocating boy on the floor. While Matt struggled to wiggle his way through the crowd, that increasingly familiar flicker of rage flared up within her like gasoline poured onto fire.
Before she could stop herself, Leila felt her throat tense, her fists clench and suddenly she was shouting at the top of her lungs.
"OUT OF THE WAY! NOW!"
The restaurant silenced with such rapidity that, for a moment, Leila wondered if she had gone mysteriously and abruptly deaf. Every face in the crowd turned to look at her but she ignored them, pushing the stretcher forward and turning it parallel to the boy on the floor, laying on his back, his lips turning blue. In unison, Matt and Leila knelt with the durable plastic board, laying it next to their patient on the hardwood floor and glancing at each other simultaneously.
"One, two-"
On the count of three, the medics easily transferred the boy to the plastic board, where he lay quite immobile, unresponsive. Leila's heart sank. How long had he been unconscious? With a great heave and with help from Jay, the team lifted the boy onto the stretcher, before immediately moving through the frightened patrons, all of whom had since parted like the Red Sea, giving them a clear path to the front doors.
Leila shook her head, glancing at Jay as she pulled the foot of the gurney out into the warm night air. "Did anyone say how long he's been unconscious?" she asked, gritting her teeth and huffing irritably when he indicated no with a vague shake of his head. "Well, here's hoping we beat hypoxia."
Once the doors had been slammed shut and the boy's parents hurriedly informed to which hospital he would be taken, the ambulance was on its way at once, sirens blaring as it bounced along the city streets. The back cabin was a flurry of movement as Matt used his hands to position the young man's neck and head, straightening his airway and tilting his chin toward the roof of the ambulance. Leila, at the head of the stretcher, quickly tore open a sterile package, pulling a plastic tube from it and unfurling it to it's greatest length. A metal instrument was thrust into her hand in preparation for endotracheal intubation but in a moment of suspicion and random curiosity, she hesitated, instead pulling her penlight from the pocket of her uniform shirt. Using one thumb on the left side of his jaw, she forced his mouth open, using the thumb and fore finger from her opposite hand to feel the line of his trachea through his neck.
"What are you doing?" Matt asked urgently, a balloon type device placed at the ready in his hands, in preparation for force-administering oxygen directly into their patient's lungs. When Leila did not answer him immediately but instead continued to rub her fingers along the boy's throat, shining her penlight into his mouth, Matt spoke again, his voice raised. "Put the trach in!"
Leila shook her head, rising from her seat at the head of the stretcher to reach above her head, into the cabinet of medicine bottles she had been organizing earlier that afternoon. "No," she answered, surprising even herself with the level of calmness in her voice. "He isn't choking. The trach tube won't make it down his throat." The glass bottles jingled as the ambulance wheels hit a particularly deep bump in the street. Behind her, at the side of the stretcher, Matt seemed stunned. He tossed his hands in the air as the heart rate monitor began to emit a rhythmic, beeping alarm, indicating that their patient was going into cardiac arrest.
"Leila! He's tachycardic, pressure is dropping because he ISN'T BREATHING!"
"This is anaphylaxis," she explained hurriedly, using her teeth to wrench the cap from a sterilized needle, something she would never have done if the situation weren't so dire. "He must have eaten something he was allergic to-" Clear liquid drew into the needle as she pulled the plunger.
"Leila, he's suffocating because he's choking!"
She wasn't sure whether it was the fact that time was slipping away from them at such an unbearably fast rate, or because a thirteen year old boy was about to die in her ambulance, or perhaps because Matt was being so impossible to deal with that day, but suddenly, all she could see was red. Using all of her strength, Leila shoved her friend and colleague to the side, so hard, he fell off of the bench seat and onto the floor of the ambulance. Ignoring him and the look of utter shock and indignation that had formed on his face, she drew her fist back, then stabbed the needle into her patient's thigh, forcing the plunger down and administering the dose of epinephrine. The empty needle then fell to the floor of the ambulance with a soft clatter as she sat back, limp, breathless, eyes glued to the heart monitor's screen.
Beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep-
DINGDINGDINGDINGDING
and then...
Beep...beep...beep...beep...
Suddenly, the boy on the stretcher gasped for air, his chest expanding as though life had been thrust back into him, his eyelids fluttering. Leila felt relief and a sense of halfhearted happiness flood her body as she looked down at Matt, still sitting in shock on the floor of the ambulance. She blinked, her face expressionless.
"He was suffocating because his throat had swollen shut," she explained flatly. "Not because he was choking." Turning her attention back to the breathing boy on the stretcher, she leaned forward, placing her hand lightly on his chest. "You're in an ambulance and we're taking you to the hospital," she told him, using every fiber of calm kindness she could muster and placing an oxygen mask gently over his nose and mouth. "Your parents are on their way. They should be right behind us."
Despite being barely conscious, the boy nodded vaguely, his eyelids flickering and Leila looked down as she felt her patient's arm move. His hand came to rest on her wrist, his fingers tightened, gripping her weakly; a silent 'thank you'.
Leila was not sure why, but she felt like crying.
The hospital was a scene of chaos as the parents of the boy came tearing toward the ambulance the moment the doors were thrown open, the mother in hysterics, the father, white-faced and sweating. Matt climbed down first, receiving one end of the stretcher while Leila brought down the other, the legs unfolding, the wheels making contact with the pavement.
"Is he alive?" the mother asked urgently, rushing to Leila's side and staring down at the pale but flesh-toned face of her son. She nodded, motioning to Jay to take her end of the stretcher so she could be allowed to walk with the parents into the emergency room.
"He is alive, yes," she answered somewhat hoarsely. The ordeal with Matt in the ambulance seemed to have taken every ounce of strength she possessed. "But he hadn't been choking. The doctor will explain it all in more detail but your son was having a severe allergic reaction, called anaphylaxis."
At once, the father sighed, placing his hand to his chest while the mother dissolved into more tears. With a shaking voice, the man said, "But he's alright? He's breathing on his-?"
Not wanting to be rude but having no interest in continuing the conversation, Leila cut him off, motioning to the team of nurses surrounding the couple's son. "Yes. Go be with him. Explain any and all allergies to the doctor. They may keep him for a day or two but he seems to be doing alright from what I could tell."
As the mother suddenly threw herself at Leila, wrapping her arms around her, she stumbled back a step, gasping quietly, eyes widening in surprise, her heart lurching, almost as though she had missed a step going downstairs. She was not sure at that moment what had caused such a thrill of terror at a simple and heartfelt motion, one that she had received many times before from grateful parents and spouses. Nevertheless, she returned it, smiling wearily as she patted the woman on the back gently.
"Thank you so much, doctor," the mother breathed as she stepped back. Leila felt what little expression her face contained slide from her countenance, the hair along her arms and neck rise at being addressed in that way. Anger was once again bubbling dangerously close to the surface. "Thank you-"
"I'm not a doctor but you're welcome." And with that, she walked away. Matt and Jay could find her in the ambulance on their own once they had finished transferring the boy to the care of Gotham Municipal.
To Leila's shock and dismay, by the time the rest of her team returned to the ambulance and the wheels were pulling away from the emergency room entrance, the time was rapidly approaching eleven o'clock. Only a measly half hour remained until she was due to drive home, go upstairs, stand motionless under streams of scalding hot water, then climb into bed to stare at the ceiling, eyes wide open. Only a thirty minutes until her brain would be left without a distraction, her mind free to wander aimlessly through the past forty-eight hours, trapped beneath the blankets on which the Joker had watched her ride him. It was almost as if he knew, almost as if he had planned it that way. Purposely manipulated her on her own bed, so every time she tried to sleep in it, she would be forced to think of him, tortured by the memory of it, then further tormented by how hard she tried to deny how good it had felt. Leila slammed a cabinet door shut as this thought crossed her mind and from her periphery, noticed Matt jump at the sudden noise, his eyebrows furrowing. She ignored him, rolling her eyes as she bent down to pick up the discarded wrappings from the unused intubation.
The ride back to Station House Fourteen was almost entirely silent. Save for the occasional locking of a cabinet door, crumbling of dirtied paper towels or random rustling of a uniform, absolutely no words passed between Matt and Leila. It seemed Matt was still somewhat in shock by the way she had so easily and literally shoved him to the side and Leila simply had nothing to say. She felt no remorse for what she had done, nor did she feel she owed him any words of apology, not even an explanation for her actions. A young teenager's life had been saved because she had acted instinctively, without hesitation. A boy would be dead, his parents' lives ruined if she had not acted upon her intuition. If Matt had any problems with what she had done in her effort to save the kid's life...Well, she had a few choice words for what he could do with his opinions.
Leila was the first to climb down once the ambulance doors had swung open, revealing the familiar docking bay. Matt followed her with the stretcher in tow, ready to be sprayed and wiped down, sanitized for the next shift. She accepted a roll of paper towels and a bottle of blue liquid from him without a word, without even glancing upward at his face. If she could get this done quickly and efficiently, then maybe, hopefully, she could rush inside for her bag, then disappear into her car without a word from either of her teammates.
Jay, being the wiser of her two male co-workers, seemed to understand that Leila was simply not in a good mood, as he gave her a wide berth during their last minute wipe-down of the equipment. The silence between the three of them was so absolute, so deafeningly thick with tension, and although she couldn't say she liked it, at that moment, she had to admit she was thankful for it.
Matt, on the other hand, seemed determined to try to catch her eye. He leaned further down than was necessary and Leila could feel him looking at her, stealing anxious glances as though she were a timer on a bomb. She wondered if he realized this was only making her more angry. He had always been one to pry and mostof the time, she appreciated him for it, thankful that he had the courage to try and help a friend, even when his aid was not wanted. But Leila could not wait to get away from him that night. Maybe she would feel differently the next day.
With the stretcher cleaned and reloaded into the ambulance, the keys safely stowed in their lock box, the team traipsed inside; Jay, directly into the break room to retrieve the coffee thermos he nearly always forgot, and Matt and Leila to the lockers for their bags. Normally, she would have paused to apply some lip balm or glance in the mirror to check that her hair didn't look ridiculous, but she forewent any action that might delay her departure. Instead, she grabbed her bag without hesitation, slamming the metal door shut and making a beeline to the exit. The door leading to the bay had just closed behind her when, distantly, she heard the sound of Matt's locker. Her pace quickened.
"Hey!" His voice called out to her only a split second after the docking bay door had shut behind him. Leila continued toward her car, feigning deafness. His voice rang out again. "HEY! Leila, stop!"
Gritting her teeth and sighing through them to create a low hissing sound, she stopped short of her back passenger-side door, her shoulders slumping heavily as she turned to look up at him. "What?" she asked, her brows raising above her eyes to form an expression of impatience.
Matt hesitated before he spoke, a clear look of confusion passing over his features as his gaze examined her annoyed countenance. "Are you okay? You seem-" he began, his voice rather tremulous and cautious but Leila was already interrupting him, rolling her eyes, tossing her hand and allowing it to slap against her thigh.
"Matt, I was sick all day yesterday-"
He cut in, taking a step toward her and placing his hand on the roof of her car. Leila felt that flutter of panic she had experienced earlier but dismissed it quickly. "Oh, don't give me that bullshit," he said, his tone now taking on a tone of firm sternness. "I know you better than that and I think you owe me an explanation on what the hell your problem's been all night." Leila felt her heart sink, her stomach clench. She had always been a terrible actress. As she looked up at Matt, his expression softened, his eyebrows arching in confusion. "Is it something to do with your new bo-"
"No." Leila answered far too quickly to seem realistic, but she had been prepared for that question. To smooth out her hurried response, she shook her head, rubbing the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. "No, it's not that. It's just-" She paused, once again looking up at Matt, only to find him watching her with what almost appeared to be eagerness. She sighed, shaking her head. "I've been having a rough couple of days."
"Well, is it anything I can help you with?" he asked, advancing another step toward her. This time, Leila could not stop herself from reacting physically, and she nearly flinched as she backed away from him. Matt's eyebrows nearly touched in the middle of his forehead upon noticing this sudden movement from her.
Forcing a smile and a quiet chuckle to once again disguise her previous action, Leila shook her head, reaching out to place a hand on his forearm. "No, Matt, I'm fine. Really," she answered, pouring the last of her strength into sounding as sincere as she could possible manage. "I just need a good night's sleep and maybe a glass of wine. I'll be better by tomorrow." She smiled again, wider, feeling the muscles in her cheeks working extremely hard.
Matt nodded, half-turning away from her as he readjusted his bag on his shoulder. The look of suspicion was still present on his face but had faded slightly. "Promise?" he asked.
Leila nodded, her jaw beginning to ache from her fake smile. "I promise."
As Matt drove away, Leila stared at her steering wheel, wondering if she had ever told a bigger lie in her life...and whether this lie would end up costing it.
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A/N: QUITE A LONG WAIT. First, it was the holidays. I'm a hair stylist and makeup artist IRL so I'm always insanely busy in November-December (everyone has to look pretty for the holiday parties right?) So my spare time was being pulled in all different directions. THEN I came down with a cold, which I beat, but am now suffering bronchitis. Either way, I can promise you, I am nowhere near done with this story so don't any of you worry that I'll give up on it! I think about this story and listen to the soundtrack every single day. I'm not done until I type the words 'The End' and change the status to 'complete' and I can PROMISE you that! The song for this chapter is 'Oats in the Water' by Ben Howard. Please give it a listen. This chapter was deeply emotional and heavily psychological and although it was shorter than my usual and lacking Joker, I hope you enjoyed it, because it was actually fairly difficult to write. Getting into Leila's mind was tough this time as I have never been in a situation anywhere near what she is going through. I thank everyone so much for the reviews and story-add's and favorites!(and for not giving up on me when I seemed to disappear) You all are the BEST! -QoM
P.S.- Alongside my fanfiction facebook, (search Haven Queenofmean Hunter. Add me) I have created a Tumblr for personal use. If you really want to, you can go follow me. eloquentlunatic . tumblr . com