Ch. 14 Deafening

Several minutes later, Eliot was following Savannah's gurney up to the treatment lab as she'd refused to let him leave. He helped put her in the chair, and she immediately started shaking as soon as she touched it. As the straps, pads, and needles were being attached, he saw her chest rising and falling more rapidly. Her breaths were wheezy as she was still suffering lung damage.

He knelt in front of her, taking her face in his hands. "Hey, look at me. Savannah, look at me. It's okay. You're going to be okay. This is going to save your life. This isn't here to hurt you. Dani's here. I'm here. Breathe normally, okay? You're hurting yourself right now. There we go. Hey, when you're done, we can go to the springs. You remember?"

Savannah nodded, struggling to breath normally. Dani put her hand on Eliot's shoulder. "Alright, we gotta get started. You need to go."

Eliot scowled. "No, I'm staying."

"It's not that I don't want you here. You're a big help. But you don't want to see this."

"I can't leave her in here."

Savannah shook her head. "Dani's right, Eliot. This isn't going to be pretty."

"I don't care. I've seen plenty of ugly things."

"I don't want you to see this." Savannah was almost begging.

"Eliot, you need to leave before I have you escorted out."

"Excuse me?"

"Please, go, Eliot. The longer you two argue, the longer I have to sit in this thing, and I don't-"

"Fine." Eliot marched out to the hum of the machines attached to the chair starting. As the door closed behind him, he caught Savannah's dread-filled whimper.

Dani poked her head out and directed some milling Van House girls. "Get him upstairs. She's going to be loud."

"What?!"

"Don't make this harder on yourself."

Two girls that he most certainly outweighed, took hold of his arms with oddly gentle grips and began guiding him down the corridor to the stairs that lead to the main part of the house. Savannah's tortured cries began piercing his ears. When he tried to turn, the girls' holds turn to vice grips that would make a cobra jealous. As much as he wanted to get to Savannah, he didn't want to hurt the girls, or admit to himself that Dani may be right.

Over an hour later, Eliot nearly bit Dani's head off when she finally came upstairs. "What's going on?"

In a restrained tone, she explained, "The treatments take about thirty minutes, and she's in surgery now. It looks like the treatment did what it was supposed to do."

"Then why is she in surgery?!"

"Will you calm the hell down? The treatment was meant to bring her to a point that surgery was viable. It sped up the healing; it did not seal the hole in her side."

"And then what happens?"

"She'll be kept under observation for forty-eight hours. If she remains stable, she can go."

The next day, Eliot found himself in an ice cream parlor with Parker. Dani and Savannah had insisted that he go out and do something that wasn't pacing around Van House for two days. He shook his head as she scarfed down what he nicknamed "Chocolate Diabetes"; it was everything chocolate you could put on a sundae. She ordered it every time she came to this parlor. She and Nate usually went together once a month, and then there'd be an irate call from Hardison because she'd come back than night more wired than a crack addict. But Eliot wasn't going to stop her from ordering it. Not like he could. He stared down at his half-finished banana split. His mind slipped to Savannah. She would've ordered something like cookies and cream or something with nuts.

"So you're not mad at me anymore?"

Parker's concerned questioned pulled him out of his thoughts. He looked up at her licking her spoon. "Huh? No. Why would I be mad at you?"

"The whole Savannah thing."

"What whole-Oh. That. No, I'm not mad at you. I don't think I was ever really upset with you. Maybe I was. More with Savannah though. Then I felt guilty."

"Why?"

"Because Savannah and I aren't together. I had no right to be upset with her."

"You were, what's the word, jealous. It's okay to be jealous. Like when Hardison was dealing with that girl when we did the job with the killer medicine. Sophie told me. You can feel things. You just gotta be honest with yourself about them."

"I have to say, you telling me about how I'm feeling is not a conversation I ever pictured having."

"So are you guys going to be a thing now?"

"I don't know. I want to. It feels like she wants to. But then this whole thing with Dani. And after the explosion. Just seems like there's a lot to deal with. Maybe it's not the right time. Or maybe I'm just wrong and we're not supposed to be a thing."

"I don't think you're wrong." He looked up at her, but she was focused on scraping the chocolate out of her dish.