Page 65 of Spears and Shadows (Defenders of the Light)
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Nora woke with a stifled gasp,drenched in cold sweat. She shoved down the panic from the acute sensation of being suffocated, discovering that it had been caused by her lying face down on an overly soft pillow. Still, she shuddered in the chill air of her apartment as her dream faded. The images of perfect skin peeling back to reveal the blackness beneath melted into the familiar sight of her cramped bedroom.
At her stirring, Drew sprang up from the window seat where he had been dozing. Nora had offered to let him sleep in the bed, considering that they had shared it nightly less than a year ago, but Drew had insisted he would sit up for a while to make sure she was all right. Although she was loath to admit it, she was glad to have somebody watching over her as she slept.
“Does anything hurt?” Drew asked as he perched himself on the bedside next to her, obviously inspecting her with the keen eye of a physician looking at a patient with a head injury. She could just make out his narrowed eyes as he scrutinized her in the dim light coming through her window, signaling that sunrise was not far off.
Nora shook her head, and Drew moved to her hand. He picked it up gingerly to check the bandage he had placed on the burn encircling her wrist.
He had tended to her wounds the night before after practically carrying her, numb and incoherent, up the stairs to her apartment on the third floor of a brownstone. She was endlessly grateful that he didn’t ask her what had happened and simply let her indicate where her injuries were. Drew’s presence was solid and familiar enough to be reassuring, even if she wasn’t sure she wanted to be around people right now.
Drew moved to the bandage around her scorched foot to check on it as well, saying, “I’m glad your head feels okay. If you take one more blow to the skull, I may have to force you to go everywhere wearing a football helmet.”
Nora smiled at him weakly, somewhat revived after a few hours of sleep, but still not up to full-on laughter.
“What woke you up? Was I snoring?” Drew asked.
Nora finally spoke, her voice a croak from the combination of sleep and the fact that she had barely spoken a word since getting in the cab with Drew last night.
“You know you don’t snore. I’m just used to waking up before sunrise so I can get to work early.”
Drew swung his legs onto the bed and folded them so he could sit cross-legged, facing her. “You sure that’s the only thing that woke you?”
Nora only paused a moment before shaking her head, knowing it was no good to try and lie to Drew.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not particularly,” Nora answered, toying with a loose thread in the sleeve of her pajamas. “But I suppose you think I should.”
“I think I’m a friend who’s here to listen if you decide you want somebody to listen to you.” Drew gave her shin a soothing rub. “I also happen to be a doctor who has seen enough patients come in after horribly traumatic experiences to know that it’s perfectly valid to not want to talk about it right away.”
Nora heaved a sigh, running her hands through her hair, which had become hopelessly tangled from her tossing and turning during the night.
“I do actually think it might be…cathartic to talk about it. I just don’t know how to explain how unbalanced the whole thing made me. You’re going to think I’m crazy for how I reacted when you found me.”
“I already know you’re slightly crazy and I like you anyways, so I wouldn’t worry too much about that. Besides, you talking about this is for your benefit more than mine. And I’m not one to question your methods for staying sane immediately after going through something harrowing.”
Nora grabbed the pillow from the spot next to her and hugged it to her chest. She looked at her own twisted thoughts and decided it might not be the worst idea to pick them apart out loud, so she dove in. Once she began to talk, it was if a faucet had been turned on, and the story poured out of her—from the moment she walked into the museum until the moment they found her on Michigan Avenue. Drew didn’t interrupt her once, letting her follow her own streams of consciousness, never asking for an explanation.
When she finally fell silent, Nora felt both deflated and light, as if the weight that she had released by sharing what had happened had also been what was propping her up. She also realized that most of the blinding rage from the night before had drained away, only to be replaced by an aching deep in her chest.
Drew’s only comment was, “I want you to know that you are incredibly strong for being where you are right now and making it through what you did.”
Nora snorted. “I don’t feel strong. I feel like a used Kleenex.”
“You know what I mean,” Drew said with a roll of his eyes. “Even heroes have to go home and feel like a used Kleenex sometimes.”
Nora offered him a rude hand gesture in response, and the pair enjoyed a few moments of levity before growing serious again.
“So what do I do now? About everybody at the Sanctuary?” After a slight hesitation, Nora added, “About Adam?”
Drew gave her a knowing look. “Well, I think you have to decide how you feel about him first.”
Nora looked down at the pillow she was still hugging to her chest.
“I think you know how I feel about him. But how can I, in good conscience, feel that way about him if he’s been lying to me this whole time?”
“I’m going to tell you a few facts I think you should consider, but at the end of the day, only you can decide what you are going to do.”
