Universe: The Following present, post-1x15, alternate
Rating: PG-13, language
Pairing: Claire Matthews/Ryan Hardy
Summary: Post-1x15, Ryan wakes up in the hospital.
Author's Note: I recently scrolled through the Ryan Hardy tag on tumblr because apparently I like to make myself miserable. However, this is actually (SURPRISE!) a happy fic! It is an attempt to turn pain into joy, instead of just turning pain into more pain, as is my MO. It's kind of like a "What if this damn show didn't kill off all its most intriguing characters before their storylines were fully played out?"-type of scenario. Please enjoy!
(PS: I am working on the next chapter of Cheers, I really am! It's just taking some time.)
. . .
. . .
It was very hard for him to wake up at first. There were a lot of voices in his head telling him to go back to sleep, to rest, to leave it all for another day. And he almost did. He almost let himself slide back into that simple, inviting blackness, but then he remembered what had happened the last time the world around him went dark, and his eyes opened with a snap.
The room around him came into sharp focus at once, but then the blinding light hit him after so many hours asleep and he had to force them shut again. He scrunched up his face, barely peeking out from slits beneath his forehead.
He was in a hospital, he could tell that much, as his eyes slowly adjusted to all the fluorescent light in the room. He was in a hospital, lying in a bed and dressed in one of those flimsy gowns. He could feel an oxygen line wrapped around his nose and ears, and—God, there it was—a dull but incredibly present ache in his abdomen. He guessed it didn't hurt too badly yet because he was probably still doped up on painkillers. He dreaded the moment when they'd stop giving them to him, and tried his best to fall back asleep before anyone noticed he was awake.
When he closed his eyes again, however, Molly's face appeared before him—as suddenly as she'd appeared in his apartment—with that eager look in her eye and that long, sharp knife in her hand. She whispered things about vengeance and her rights and how she'd waited so long for this moment as she drove the knife into his abdomen…
His eyes flew open again when another woman's face replaced hers.
His vision skipped around the room, but after one turn it was clear he had it all to himself. There was no one here, she wasn't here, Did that mean—?
"Hey, look who's finally awake."
Ryan jumped at the voice—he recognized it at once, but hadn't known anyone was here—and then there was Mike Weston, getting up from a chair he'd been sitting in in the corner of the room. Ryan didn't know how his eyes had passed over him before, but he didn't care any longer.
"Claire—" he began.
"She's alive," Mike answered before he could even ask. Ryan took the slight smile playing on the edge of his lips as a good sign, instead of the naïveté that had been the younger agent's exasperating trademark up until just a few weeks ago.
"Why isn't she here?" Ryan asked, the words scratching at the inside of his dry throat as he forced them out.
Mike's smile faded at that question. He took a couple steps towards Ryan, and stared at the mismatched linoleum floor as he answered, "She's in the intensive care unit right now." He said the words as shamefully as if he were detailing a personal character flaw, or as if Claire's situation were his fault. "The doctors said that—"
"The ICU?" Ryan interrupted. Just the thought of that place made his heart beat faster. He'd never liked hospitals, and he hated ICUs even more than operating rooms. Too many people suffered and died in them. Too many people never came out alive. "What's she doing in the ICU?" he demanded to know, even though the answer was quite obvious. Taking a chef's knife to the back tended to require one to be put under twenty-four-seven care.
He didn't bother waiting for Mike's reply before he started sitting up and untangling himself from all the devices that kept him strapped in bed. If she was somewhere else, he was going to find her and make sure she was okay—once he got all of this off him. There was an oxygen line around his head and a heart rate monitor on his finger and a number of other wires placed all around his body and connected to a handful of machines that surrounded him. He pulled them all off without a second thought.
The IV stung as he ripped it out of his arm, but he didn't care. Mike was running towards now, shouting at him with words like Stop and Clam down, but Ryan ignored him just like he ignored all the shrill beeps and alarms that had started going off the moment he'd began discarding wires. He was more concerned with the footsteps he could hear hurrying towards his door. He hoped he could make it out into the hall before whoever was coming showed up.
But Ryan wasn't even on his feet by the time by the time the door burst open and a heavy-set woman barely a decade older than him rushed inside. When she realized that it was his fault the alarms had gone off and she had been called in—and that this was not, in fact, a legitimate medical emergency needing her immediate attention—she put her hands on her hips and ordered, "Sir, lay back down right now" so loudly Ryan half-expected the walls to shake and collapse around him.
For a second, he froze, too shocked to even say anything. No one had talked to him like that in a very long time, and he wasn't even sure how to respond.
The nurse took advantage of his surprise, bustling over and pushing him back into bed before he could say a word. "Lay back down," she ordered, "and watch your stitches. No, watch your stitches," she snapped as he tried to twist his body to the side to move. "If you rip them out, neither your doctors or your wallet or your stomach will be very thankful." She scowled at the array of discarded tubes and wires he'd cast off in his hurry to leave. "And nor will I," she warned in a tone that made Ryan think it would be tempting his long-awaited fate to anger this woman.
Ryan watched her in silence as she busied herself with reattaching all the leads he'd ripped out, and finding a new vein to insert his IV into. He frowned at the resulting pinch but didn't complain. He doubted any patients ever complained to this nurse and lived to tell about it.
After she hooked up back up to all the machines, she pulled out the chart that had been hanging off his bed and examined it. He listened to the scribbling of her pen on the paper for a quiet minute before deciding to push his luck. He couldn't sit here and wait any longer for news on Claire, especially if this woman was going to keep him confined in bed.
"Excuse me," he began, making a very forced attempt at being polite in order to win her favor, "but there was a woman I was brought in here with. I need to know if she's okay. Her name's—"
"Yes, I know her name, Mr. Hardy." She eyed him over the chart she was writing in as if she was looking at something incredibly displeasing. "You two are quite infamous around here—you're the reason we've got armed guards patrolling this hospital 'round the clock and paparazzi and TV crews clamoring outside our doors for days." Her eyes narrowed down at him like he was the one who had ordered the gun-toting personnel and called in the news agencies. "I do enjoy being frisked for knives every time I come in here to check on you. Really, I do. It doesn't disrupt my day at all."
"Well, it's a hell of a lot better than being stabbed with one," Ryan muttered under his breath before he could catch himself. Luckily, the nurse didn't reply, even though he knew she must've heard. He softened his voice a second later, not caring that he was begging: "Can you please just tell me if she's all right?"
The nurse pursed her lips for a moment before answering, as if she was actually weighing whether or not she should tell him. Ryan fought back every urge to forcibly procure a response from her.
It felt like an eternity to him before the nurse answered crisply, "She's doing okay so far as I know." Ryan closed his eyes in relief, and felt his whole body relax at the news. "But," the nurse added, making the word sound like a warning in a way that made Ryan wonder if she'd been reading his mind and was now playing into his fears, "I'm on your case, not hers, so I'm not the supreme authority. You'll know the situation when I know it—which will be after she's released from the ICU, and not before."
Ryan sat up a little straighter, nervousness and excitement making his hands feel weak. "When will that be?" Please say today. Please say today. Please say today.
"I don't know," the nurse replied. "Just be patient and you'll know when you know."
Ryan stared at her, open-mouthed, as she turned around and walked away. He didn't even have time to compose himself before she headed for the door, telling him that the doctor would be in in a moment.
"What the hell?" Ryan called out the second the door closed behind her, his head swiveling to Mike. "This is why I hate hospitals! Since when did nurses get so bitchy?"
"Since they had to deal with you, I'd bet," Mike replied.
"I've been awake for two minutes!" Ryan protested. "What have I done in the last two minutes that set her off?"
"Well, you pulled out all your tubes, for one," Mike replied. He sighed, a second later, scuffing the edge of his shoe against the floor. "And, like she said," he began heavily, "you brought a lot of problems with you. No one's happy about all the agents around. The hospital staff eyes them like they're part of some sort of police state." He shook his head. "Honestly, they're just here for protection, but apparently that's a concept too far from people's grasp."
Ryan was about to ask something more—he wanted to know about those journalists the nurse mentioned at the doors, and if anyone had said anything to them—but before he could speak, the doctor came in.
He looked to be in his late fifties or early sixties, but his strong handshake and warm voice made up for his graying hair and oncoming wrinkles. He introduced himself breezily as Dr. Mark Kapuski and began by asking Ryan how he felt—to which he answered, "Alright," not knowing exactly what else to say. His own well-being was not his primary concern at the moment, but the doctor kept up a steady stream of questions and information and small talk that Ryan didn't get a chance to ask about Claire until Dr. Kapuski had turned and headed for the door.
Ryan called out to him, hoping he'd have better luck with the doctors than the nurses. Kapuski seemed friendly, cheerful—he seemed like one to bend the rules in this particular situation, and so Ryan tried his hand as best he knew how.
"Doctor, excuse me, but I had a question—if you have a second?"
"Of course." Dr. Kapuski turned around with a smile. "What can I help you with?"
"Well, I was wondering…" Ryan licked his lips, praying this would actually work this time. "I was brought into the ER with a woman—her name's Claire Matthews. She has blonde hair, she was—she was stabbed in the back." He swallowed; his stomach twisted at the memory and his stitches burned. "I'm sure you've seen her on the news," he added, hating to capitalize on that fact.
The doctor's eyebrows had begun furrowing the moment Ryan started speaking; by the end, his face was clouded over as if a storm was brewing above his head. "Yes," he murmured, his earlier cheer subdued, "Pam mentioned you were asking after her earlier…" Ryan waited as the doctor paused, hoping to gather some real information here, but all Kapuski ended up doing was grimacing. "I'm sorry. I understand your situation was very dire, but—I am sorry—I can't give personal information out about patients unless it's to their family member. Especially with all these reporters around, we can't afford to let anything slip. The FBI officers that visited with our hospital administrator were very clear on that front. And it's not only her," he added, as if it were a comfort, "your status is to be kept under lock and key as well.
"I really am very sorry," the doctor said again when he saw the crestfallen look on his patient's face. "I would like to tell you in detail about her condition, but I've been informed more than once that I will cease to be an employee at this hospital if I spread any information about either of you to anyone."
The doctor tried to apologize again, but Ryan shook him off. The poor man looked as pained as Ryan felt; he didn't deserve to have this pressure put atop him along with everything else.
"It's fine," Ryan muttered, shaking his head His eyes fell to his bed sheets. "I understand." He forced himself to meet his doctor's eyes. "Thank you for everything."
Dr. Kapuski nodded, but Ryan could tell his smile was faked and not genuine anymore. He left without another word.
The second the door closed behind him, Ryan turned to Mike. He'd made up his mind minutes ago, when Kapuski was detailing all the reasons why he couldn't help in the least. "You gotta get me out of here," he demanded at once. "I need to go see her. I need to know how she is."
"I told you how she is," Mike replied. "And the nurse told you—"
"I don't mean to be an ass," Ryan began.
"Too late."
"—but I need to see her to believe either of you. I heard you, I heard both of you, but I need to know she's alive, know that she's still breathing. I have to see her, Mike."
The agent seemed to waver for a moment, and again Ryan felt hope rising in him, but then Mike shook his head resolutely. "I can't. Like the doctors said, we've all been given very specific instructions. The Director of the FBI was here, Ryan. He said to keep you—"
"Fuck whatever Franklin said," Ryan growled. He looked Weston in the eye, trying to judge his luck. He couldn't get into the ICU alone—he couldn't even get out of bed alone—so he'd need Mike's help if he was going to get anywhere. But he knew better than to try begging on the younger agent. Mike knew him too well for that. "You know if you don't help me, I'll still get out anyway," he warned. He glanced down at his abdomen. "I'll probably rip these stitches open trying to get to wherever she is, but you know I'll do it."
Mike stared at him for a long time, weighing his options. Ryan could tell by the look in the other man's eyes that he was remembering the last time they'd argued like this over his getting to Claire. Ryan had pointed a gun at the agent's face and threatened to shoot him dead if he took another step to follow him. He hadn't been joking then and he wasn't joking now. Finally, Mike sighed heavily, muttered, "Wait here," and disappeared out the door. He returned just a few seconds later, pushing a wheelchair through the door. Ryan almost opened his mouth to say he could walk fine on his own, thanks, but then he felt the ache in his side and realized that he probably couldn't take even a step without that wound flaring up with debilitating pain.
He didn't say a word as Mike helped him out of the bed and into the wheelchair, but watched him closely as he scribbled something on a scrap piece of paper. Mike folded it half width-wise and left it sitting in the middle of the deserted bed. Ryan caught a glimpse of it just before Mike pushed him out the door: In room 206. Sorry, couldn't stop him.
"What happened to the nurse?" Ryan asked as the moved into the hallway, his eyes scanning all the people rushing around them and trying to pick out the woman who so resented him. He kept his voice quiet so not as to court fate, as if just mentioning her would cause her to appear.
"Nurse Pam dealing with another patient," Mike replied, moving the wheelchair smoothly but quickly through the crowd and towards the elevator. "I'd say be thankful that there's someone choking on the other end of the hall, but I won't because I know you would be thankful."
Ryan didn't say anything, though he silently thought Weston had made the right decision.
"We're headed to the second floor?" he asked once they came to a stop in front of the elevator. He couldn't help himself from looking over his shoulder for pursuers, even though it irritated his stitches. He drummed his fingers impatiently against the armrests of the wheelchair.
"That's where the ICU is," Mike answered.
There were a couple of doctors in the lift with them, and a man and a woman—those two were clearly visitors—and though none of them had gotten on on the same floor as he had, he kept his head ducked down in case any of them might recognize him. He wasn't getting sent back to that room alone just a minute after he got out.
"How'd you know the room number?" Ryan asked quietly after they'd gotten off the elevator and moved onto the ICU floor. The number had been rolling over and over again inside his head since he'd seen Mike write it down. 206. 206. 206. 206.
"Because I've visited her before," Mike replied patiently. "She's in room 206."
"Well, what if they've moved her?" Ryan asked, suddenly panicking. They moved people around hospitals all the time, especially people in the ICU. People needing round-the-clock treatment came in all the time. What if she'd been moved to a different floor, or a different wing, to make space for other? "We should ask someone," he decided. "If she's been moved, we need to know the room—"
"She hasn't been moved," Mike interrupted.
The finality with which he spoke rubbed Ryan the wrong way for some reason. "How do you know?" he demanded.
"Because I was with her a half-hour ago," Mike replied, sounding very much like Ryan's questions were grating on his patience. In any other situation, that would've made the former agent laugh at the irony, but right now he was only confused.
"Why were you with her?" he asked, unable to hide the incredulity from his voice.
"Because I wanted to be," Mike answered simply. "She's got no one here and neither do you—everyone's in DC. So I'm with you mostly at night, and her mostly during the day. But I check on you after lunch—like I was doing when you woke up—and look in on her around one or two in the morning."
Ryan swallowed, struggling to process all that. Had Mike really been at their bedsides constantly since they'd been admitted to the hospital? Not only his, but Claire's, too?
"It wasn't easy at first," Mike continued, "since the hospital's pretty strict about their visiting hours. But the guys at the doors knew me, and I have my badge to show off if I get any other questions. Most people don't argue with a federal agent, not even Pam."
Ryan wanted to ask him why he had gone through all that trouble, but before he could, another question came to mind that was much more important. She's got no one here—everyone's in DC. "Is Joey okay? Did anyone get to him?"
"He's fine," Mike answered at once. "He's still safe in Washington. As is your sister, by the way. They flew her up just after they heard about what happened to you and Claire. They thought the worst, so everyone circled the wagons, so to speak… But there haven't been any more attacks."
"How long has it been since… since it happened?"
"About a day and a half," Mike answered. "You were in surgery for part of the night, and you've been sleeping it off ever since—aided by some morphine, too, I think. But they started weaning you off earlier in the day, and here you are."
"And Claire? Is she awake too?"
Mike shook his head. "No. Well, not completely, at least," he corrected himself. "The nurses said she went in and out a couple times—not long enough to say anything—but they upped her morphine just in case. They said it'd be better if she slept off the pain a while longer."
Ryan swallowed, trying to digest that news in any way that wouldn't spell disaster. "That sounds dangerous," he finally concluded. "All of that sounds dangerous."
Weston remained calm behind him. "Not really, according to the doctors. She's on a lot of pain meds, like I said. Some slipping between consciousness and unconsciousness is to be expected, apparently. They just don't want her waking up yet because of how bad the pain will be, I guess." Mike didn't sound like he wholly believed it, and Ryan tried not to let his tone make him any more nervous.
"How is she doing, otherwise?" he asked softly, quietly bracing himself for the worst. She had been stabbed in the back; maybe she was paralyzed now. Maybe she'd never walk again. Maybe she'd lost an organ. Maybe she was going to slip into a coma. Maybe she already had.
"She's good," Mike surprised him by saying. He actually sounded chipper, and Ryan tried to turn around to look at him, but his stitches hurt too bad when he turned so he faced forward again. "I mean, considering," Mike added a second later, sounding a little embarrassed. "It could've been a lot worse than it is."
"And what is it?" Ryan asked, impatient now.
"A lot of blood loss, mostly, from what I heard. Like, a lot, a lot. She was lying on that floor for a long time, and you know how fast blood—" he broke off suddenly, as if realizing again who he was talking to.
Ryan let himself be wheeled past a couple more doors so he wouldn't yell when he replied, "I know she was lying on that floor for a long time. I was right there with her. I passed out before I ever heard the sirens."
Mike stayed silent as he pushed Ryan down the hall, not even bothering with an apology this time. They both knew it wouldn't be appreciated. "She's going to be okay," he finally said. "The stab was really deep, but it didn't puncture anything. So she has some stitches and she'll have a lot of soreness and pain, but after she goes through recovery, they said she'd be as good as new." He stopped pushing, and Ryan realized as Mike reached for the doorknob on his left that they were here. "She's going to be fine, Ryan," Mike said as he wheeled him inside.
That was a better apology than any Ryan had ever received.
. . .
He expected to see her bloodied and bruised and cut up when he walked in—irrational, he knew, since she hadn't been attacked like that—but she'd been so close to death that he thought there should have been some outward marking to acknowledge it. But she looked perfectly fine, lying in that hospital bed, as he rolled over to her. Her face was spotless, her arms clean and unbandaged. It even looked like someone had taken the time to comb her hair.
He came to a stop beside her bed, and for a long time, he just stared at her, reveling in the fact that no one had lied to him and that she actually was alive. He reached out for her hand, ignoring the pain that flared up in his abdomen as he bent forward to be closer to her.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, finally breaking the silence, which felt so oppressive and damning in the room. He felt like he'd suffocate if he didn't break it and apologize for everything he'd done wrong, all the pain he'd caused her. His voice was hoarse and his throat was tight; tears that had previously just threated to marshal themselves started to fall as he apologized again and again. He wept for a while, grateful that she wasn't awake to hear him.
. . .
He must've dozed off sometime afterwards, because the next thing he knew, a door was opening and a woman was yelling at him.
"You do know that no one's allowed in this ICU except expressly permitted, don't you?" she called out, somehow sounding both authoritative and nervous at the same time. "We have an armed guard at the door to stop everyone and anyone who comes through. You need a slip from the FBI and those do not come easy." She paused, and Ryan could hear her gathering her breath in the silent room. "Can I ask how in the hell you got in here, wheels?"
Ryan shut his eyes, reluctantly turning his head around to meet yet another nurse who seemed hell-bent on keeping him away from Claire. He didn't even have to say anything, however, because the twenty-something brunette nurse he was met with recognized him immediately and stopped yelling.
"Oh," she murmured, looking into his face for the first time. The annoyance in her voice had disappeared; all was left was quiet awe. "You were the one that was with her."
Ryan nodded, but didn't offer any more information. He didn't want to have to go through it all with this stranger. Especially not when there are more important things they could be discussing. "Do you know when she's going to wake up?" he asked, watching her. With all his time in hospitals, he'd learned that the way doctors looked when they spoke was nearly as important as what they said. He assumed the same applied for nurses.
"We aren't sure," the woman answered. She glanced over to Claire as she spoke, but Ryan was relieved to see no anxiety apparent in her expression. "Hopefully sometime later today or tomorrow. We're going to start weaning her off the stronger pain meds as of tonight, so we're hoping she'll surface soon. Things weren't looking too good there for a while, but all the doctors seem confident that she'll pull through, so off the meds it is."
"And you? Do you think she'll pull through?" Ryan questioned, sensing that she didn't hold the same mindset. He could already feel himself sweating. What if this woman was right when all the others were wrong? What if Claire wasn't as safe as they thought, even with armed guards outside?
A sick thought flashed in his head: What if this woman was out to finish her off?
Molly had been a nurse, too, and she had worked in an intensive care unit just like this one. If she could work in a place like this, how many other people were here—people who liked killing, torturing, and hurting others for amusement or power?
"I do," the nurse answered, and for a second Ryan almost screamed, thinking she was answering his unspoken question and not his spoken one. It took him a minute to calm down and come back to earth; thankfully, the nurse busied herself with writing some tings in Claire's chart so she didn't notice. "I do think she'll pull through," she finally answered, tucking the binder away and turning to him. "I've worked in the ICU for about three years now, and she is nowhere near the worst I've seen. We're just keeping her here as a precaution, mostly because we're worried about how painful it will be for her when she wakes up. You were pretty cut-and-dry when you came in—horrible injury, of course—but the surgery wasn't too bad. It didn't take too long to repair. Hers was another story."
"Tell me what happened?" Ryan surprised himself by actually asking instead of ordering.
"Well…" The nurse seemed to debate with herself for a moment before giving in: "Your wound was more straightforward—once and done. Whoever went after you did it quick and relatively clean—"
Only because that was supposed to be the first stab of many, Ryan thought to himself but didn't say aloud. It was only quick and clean because she wanted to take her time killing me.
"—but hers was a good deal more ragged. The knife didn't come out so easily; it tore up a lot of skin and muscle on its way out, did some real damage. She was lucky it didn't puncture anything or hit her spine—really lucky about that—but even so, just because it didn't nick anything major doesn't mean she's not going to have to go through a long recovery. Even after it heals, she'll still feel it." She eyed him apologetically. "You might, too."
Ryan didn't say anything to that—he'd expected as much; he knew he'd feel this injury for years to come even without the pain—and the nurse thankfully didn't press the point. Quietly, she introduced herself as Maggie, and he appreciated that she gave him a chance to say his name as well, even though they both knew she'd known his name the minute she'd looked at him. Conversation petered out after that, and for some time, they just stood in silence and watched Claire as she lay unmoving in her bed.
"Is it true what the papers said?" the nurse finally asked, long after Ryan had lost track of the time. Her voice was quiet, worried—so unlike the others that had always been eager and boisterous and seeking a thrill. Maggie just sounded sad. "Is it really true that one of those crazy cult people broke into your house and tried to kill you both while you were sleeping?"
"We were about to eat dinner, actually," Ryan replied without a second thought. He paused, wondering if it was okay to say these things to this woman. But what did it matter if she went to press with that information? It was too inconsequential to make any difference. "We ordered Chinese," he murmured, remembering the meals that had been delivered but never eaten or even opened. "There wasn't any food in my place so we ordered."
The nurse nodded. She never took her eyes off Claire. "The attacker came with the delivery, then," she concluded quietly.
"Actually no," Ryan replied, not able to stop talking for some reason. It actually made him feel good to get it all out. He tried telling himself this was a dry run for the debrief in DC later, but it honestly just felt good to relieve himself of the information. "The delivery guy was just a really convenient distraction for her. Claire was showering, so I went to answer the door, and Molly slipped in…" He laughed ruefully. "God, I don't even know how. I don't know how she did it." He wondered if the agents had figured that out yet. "It seemed like she appeared out of thin air." He'd be unable to believe his own horrid luck if he hadn't been living with it for so many decades now. "Sorry," he muttered, shaking it off. "I should be telling you all this." He thought of what the Bureau would say if they knew what he was saying to another civilian. How much of that information he'd just blurted out was classified and hidden from the public? "I really shouldn't be telling you all this."
The nurse turned to meet his eye, giving him a small smile. "It's okay, I won't be spreading it around."
Ryan sighed, grateful. "Thank you," he told her.
"I'd be careful, though, with what you say," she added, moving around the room to straighten some things up, "because there are a lot of people that would spread it around, given half a chance." She tilted her head towards the window, which a shade had been drawn very tightly against. "There's a lot of press out there and they've been telling our staff in pretty explicit terms how much money they'd be willing to shell out to anyone who's got the 'real story.'" She grimaced. "And pictures. You know how people love pictures. We have to check our cell phones outside the door when we come in here, and we get searched for cameras daily." She shook her head, her eyes drifting back to her patient in the bed. "You have no idea what some people will pay to see someone else suffer. It's sick."
Ryan swallowed, realizing just how much his and Claire's presence was turning this hospital upside down. He wished Pam were there to hear it when he said, "I'm sorry for all that. You know I didn't ask for—"
Maggie smiled easily, brushing off his apology. In his head, he imagined Pam, with her hands on her hips, waiting out the entirety of his apology until he awkwardly stuttered to a finish. "It's okay. It isn't your fault—the guards and the precautions, I mean. They're here to protect you guys, and after what you've been through, I don't see a problem with it. But sometimes it can be a bit aggravating. Especially for some of the older nurses," she added. She threw a knowing glance Ryan's way that made him wonder if she actually did know about Pam. "They don't like disruptions; they like the hospital to work the way the hospital has always worked, and I understand that. But I haven't been here too long—I can adapt."
"Lucky she has you, then," Ryan told her.
"Lucky she has you, too," she replied easily. Maggie looked him over for a minute, and he could see her brain working behind her puzzles expression. "How long have you been together?"
"Uh, it's…" Ryan smiled awkwardly. He still wasn't sure how to explain their relationship to himself, let alone someone else. "It's kind of complicated between us."
"Well, I wouldn't exactly expect it to be simple, with her history." Maggie smiled at his imprecise response, offering kindly, "Somehow I don't think it'll be so complicated when she wakes up and sees you here, though."
"Yeah, if I don't get dragged back to the fifth floor before that happens."
The nurse laughed. "Ah, you've got a real stickler watching you up there, do you? There's a lot of them here, and they're only made worse by the guards. Everyone's scared of making a wrong move and thereby giving the FBI reason look into every nook and cranny of their life." She grinned. "Don't worry; I'll vouch for you if someone comes to cart you away."
"Thank you," Ryan replied, meaning it.
"Well," Maggie sighed, looking at her watch. "I should get going. If you need anything, or is she wakes up, there's a button beside her bed." She indicated a small red button labeled CALL placed into the wall to the left of Claire's bed. "Just press it and I will come running."
Ryan nodded in thanks, and watched her head to the door for a moment, imagining someone else in her place. He knew Sarah had been a doctor, not a nurse, but he pictured her as being just as comforting and kind as Maggie when she dealt with patients. He shut his eyes, rubbing his hands over his face. If Claire were awake, she'd tell him not to dwell on the past; what's done is done. With a sigh, he tried to accept that, and wheeled himself closer to her bedside to settle in for the rest of the day. There was nothing he could do for Sarah anymore, but he could still help Claire. No matter how long it took, he was going to be here waiting for her when she woke up.
. . .
. . .
Author's Note: Reviews are most graciously welcome! I should have the next part up either tomorrow or the next day! Thank you SO MUCH for reading! (Huzzah for AUs!)