Chapter 7
The first thing Donna saw when she opened her eyes was a blinding white light.
Am I in heaven?
No, it’d be warm and gentle, not freezing cold.
Then, Dawn’s face swam into view, and Donna felt a pair of warm, gentle arms embrace her, causing the cold to fall away from her body.
Maybe this is heaven after all.
But two seconds later, Dawn angrily shoved the light out of her face, bringing the interior of the medbay into Donna’s sight. No, definitely not.
It was only then Donna noticed the expression on Dawn’s face. A mixture of anger, fear and relief. Seeing it would’ve made Donna cry again if she had the energy to do so.
Fuck. She deserves to smile. Fuck you, she echoed to herself in her mind.
Before she knew what was happening, the blonde grabbed her by the shoulders in a firm yet surprisingly gentle way.
The next words that Dawn spoke left her lips in a choked up whisper. Each word broke Donna’s heart more and more.
“Why...would you… do that?”
There really wasn’t any point in Donna trying to lie or hide it at this point, and she knew it.
She tried anyway.
“Do what?” she murmured, trying to avoid her gaze but failing. She slowly sat up on the bed.
Dawn raised a shaking hand. Clasped in her fingers was the empty pill bottle.
Before Donna could open her mouth to speak again, Dawn threw the bottle at the floor in visible rage.
“First you become an alcoholic, now you have a drug problem? Are you trying to kill yourself?”
“Dawn, I--”
“Why would you even fucking do--? Is this all because of that one person? You can’t deal with unrequited feelings like this!”
“It isn’t--”
“No one, and I mean no one, is worth this shit you’re doing to yourself!”
“That’s not true--”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s you!”
The words exploded from Donna’s mouth in a strangled mix between a scream and a sob.
And then there was silence in the air.
Dawn stared at her, taken aback by her words.
Tears streamed down Donna’s face as she felt all the emotion overwhelm her.
“There isn’t ‘that one person’, it’s just you, Dawn! It was always you, and--”
Her voice disappeared upon seeing Dawn’s shocked expression. And then it hit Donna-- she just confessed her feelings to her.
She closed her eyes and let her head crash back onto the pillow.
Well, THAT was simple enough, she thought to herself with blunt sarcasm.
Donna wished the bed would just randomly become a sinkhole and swallow her up at that moment.
“Hey, you’re awake! I was wondering what all that shouting was...”
Donna opened her eyes and turned her head to the doorway, where Dick was standing, with a relieved smile on his face.
Thank god, a distraction.
“I just need to check your vitals, and then you should be good to go. Dawn, you wanna come back later, or…?”
Dawn seemed to break free of her shell-shocked state for a moment. She gave Dick a quick nod, and then hurried out of the room without another word.
Every footstep that reverberated against the floor of the medbay and the corridor broke Donna’s heart more and more, as she tearfully watched Dawn go.
Dick had heard the conversation from down the hallway. Well, the parts where the two of them started yelling anyway. Oof. Glad he wasn’t in the room to see it.
He snuck a glance away from the screen monitoring Donna’s vitals to look at her. Her eyes were filled with tears and she was sniffling. She had tilted her head away from Dick, as if that would make her heartbreak any less evident.
In all the years he had known her, he had never seen her so vulnerable and upset before. He had only ever seen her confident and smiling. “Older, smarter, prettier,” she’d say with a smirk.
And now, here she was, bed-ridden after a drug overdose, crying over a girl she had known for less than two weeks.
She must really love Dawn, Dick mused to himself.
He’d talk to her about it, except that she looked as though she was teetering on the edge emotionally, and anything he’d say might’ve caused her to start bawling her eyes out, which Dick didn’t really wanna see.
But if he didn’t do something, Donna would never truly recover.
And then it hit him.
He knew who he had to bring in.
Excusing himself from the room, he pulled out his phone and made a quick phone call.