Chance and Reason

Chapter Twenty-Three

A/N: I hope you're having a great day. Here's the next chapter! If you enjoy, please tap the little vote button, because it would make me ridiculously happy, and I am so grateful to everybody who has been supporting the story so far.

Somehow, Camila found her way back to Lauren's car. Her feet had managed to retrace her steps to the parking lot despite her mind being miles away, yet she was still surprised when she looked around and realised she was in the passenger seat.

"Here," Lauren carefully leant over to pull the seatbelt across Camila's body and clip it into the buckle, "Are you okay?"

Camila opened her mouth, before closing it again and shrugging numbly.

"I don't know what's happening," she mumbled, "We're going to the hospital? For Dinah?"

The ambulance suddenly screamed past, and Lauren quickly fired up the car engine so that she could follow it. They pulled out into the main road, the car windscreen wipers battling the rain as they sped through the traffic in the wake of the other vehicle.

"We are, yes," Lauren confirmed, "It seems that Dinah... um..."

"Dinah what?" Camila pushed her, the anxiety making her voice waver uncontrollably.

"She was struck, apparently," the agent finished, "It seems that somebody attacked her,"

Everything seemed to drain away. The edges of Camila's vision blurred as reality started to tumble in around her. Her lungs began to heave as the air became too thick to properly breathe.

"Camz? Camz?"

Lauren's concerned voice sounded so distant. A hand came down to rest on Camila's thigh to rub comforting circles there, but even the sensation of the touch felt alien.

"It's my fault," she wheezed as the invisible iron bands around her chest squeezed harder.

"No, Camz. It's not," Lauren assured her firmly, shaking her head with eyes still fixed firmly on the road ahead, "This is not your fault in the slightest,"

"It is! It is!" Camila wept, "I gave her my coat. She was wearing my coat!"

"I... what?"

"They would have thought she was me!"

Lauren looked over at her, face paper white as the realisation hit her. Her lips were parted, the shock written all over her features.

"Do you mean...?"

In front of them, the ambulance abruptly swerved left and rushed down towards the hospital, where it pulled up outside the main door and staff ran out to meet the paramedics and their patient. Lauren was swiftly brought back to the present, and she wrenched the steering wheel so that they went in after it.

Neither woman shared another word as they leapt out of the car and hurried into the building hand in hand. It was bustling inside, with nurses and doctors moving back and forth everywhere. Camila found it incredibly disorientating, but Lauren successfully located the reception desk and went over.

"Recently admitted patient, Dinah Jane Hansen,"

The nurse at the desk checked the computer briefly.

"She's been put through to an emergency room on so you won't be able to see her just yet; not until the doctors have finished checking her over,"

"Is she okay?" Camila hear herself crying out.

"I'm afraid that I couldn't say," the nurse told her apologetically, "But the doctors will be doing everything they can. If you head up to the emergency waiting room on the first floor now, you'll be able to see her when she's ready,"