And now she felt guilty for making it sound like she was telling him how to feel. "I'm sorry," she muttered, looking down again and sniffling. "I shouldn't tell you how to feel, and I'm being such a contradiction right now, too, by saying that you have the right to be as mad as you want at me and then, like... doing this when you tell me how you do feel." She laughed a single, humorless laugh and ran a hand through her hair.
Being that important to someone—someone other than her family, obviously—was a humbling feeling. It had been, even back when Elliot had told her how important she was to him, but here she was, lucky enough to have it happening again. "I didn't mean to..." she hadn't meant to worry him. "I didn't want to worry you. That's why I didn't say anything. That and because I thought..." she trailed off. She thought that he'd leave. "I just don't want want to lose this." Lose him. He reassured her that he wouldn't leave, and she pressed her lips shut, feeling her eyes welling up all over again. Why hadn't she told him again? He always had this way of making her feel better without even trying. She should have told him. Maybe she wouldn't be feeling like this now. "I'm glad," she whispered when he told her that he couldn't leave.
As soon as his arms wrapped around her, she leaned into him, hugging him tight and burying her face in his chest. Safety. Normalcy. For the first time since she'd gotten back that day, she felt safe and okay and normal. "Thank you," she whispered, half-stifled against his chest, but still audible in the silence of the room. "I'm... thank you," she repeated.
She nodded. "I went to the infirmary when I got back," she told him. "Dragged Bea with me." She breathed in deep and shook her head no when he asked if that was the worst of it.
Hesitantly, she stepped out of the hug and reached for the zipper on her jacket. "It's not," she told him. With her jacket off, he could probably plainly see the bite on her shoulder, and as she pulled her left glove off, she revealed the wrist brace, from where he'd wrenched her wrist. "I got bitten on the leg, too. The guys... when they..." she paused, instead of saying what they'd wanted to do, "when they tried to, you know, they were loud. And they pretty much called a ton of infected to come. I had to make Bea run, because she hasn't been bitten, and I had to take on three runners and a climber." By herself, she didn't add. "But... but I'm okay. It's not the worst that I've been hurt." That didn't make it fun, but it wasn't anything she hadn't experienced before.