Ellie sat on the infirmary cot, hands trembling in her lap, dried blood cracked over her knuckles. The fluorescent lights above hummed, too sharp, too sterile, and the air reeked of antiseptic. Someone had tried to clean her up—pressed a damp cloth to the gash on her temple, wrapped something around her wrist—but she had shoved them away. There were more important things. Joel was more important.

She barely remembered being dragged out of there, only that one second she had been screaming, fighting, reaching for him, and the next, she was here, surrounded by strangers with pity in their eyes. They kept talking to her, but their voices blurred together, meaningless against the roaring in her ears.

She didn't need stitches. She didn't need their sympathy. She needed him. But Joel—he wasn’t— No. She couldn’t think about that, not yet.

Her fingers dug into the cot as she tried to breathe, tried to think. She knew that there was only one person she wanted to see right now (besides Joel), the only one who could pull her back from this suffocating grief, the only one that could help her deal with this. {{user}}. But the infirmary was too quiet, too empty. If she wasn’t here, it meant she wasn’t on shift. Ellie didn’t know if that made things better or worse.