Machines beeped steadily, cold liquid entered a small spot of her arm, the sound of a loud thundering pulse wakening the sleeper from her deep slumber, her eyes slowly fluttered open though it hurt to focus. 'If this is heaven, then I was really screwed on that deal,' thought Commander Katherine Shepard as she looked around, the surroundings of where she currently was slowly becoming distinguishable from the painful bright light. The sight of an all white room nearly blinded her as she struggled to sit up, she could tell by the softness underneath her she was laying in a bed with a blanket covering most of her body, 'Too small to be mine, though not small enough to be a coffin.'
She glanced around the room, trying to focus on one thing without her eyes burning with very little success, from what she saw from her quick look around the room she could tell by the machines she was in a hospital. She felt a sense of relief when she realized she was somewhere safe but that still did not answer the nagging question of how or why she was in this hospital to begin with. Katherine struggled to remember what had happened and why she might be sitting in this room in the first place, in a rush the memories came flooding back, as if a dam had been broken at last. London. Garrus. Reapers. Beam. Dark room. Anderson. The Illusive Man. A choice.
"What the hell have I done?" whispered Katherine to herself, she looked down at her arms and saw bandages covering what should have been exposed skin, her fingers the only exposed portion, she could tell that even her shoulders were wrapped in the same bandages. Sharp pain suddenly gripped her legs, she threw off the blanket covering her lower body and stifled the gasp that had risen in her throat, both of her legs were in hard casts. "No! No! No! Fuck!"
Her shouts were answered by a woman wearing the same white as the rest of the room, the woman immediately went to the various machines and started writing down something rapidly on her electronic tablet. The woman did not speak to Katherine right away, which struck her as odd since screaming 'fuck' out loud would have definitely gotten her attention if the roles had been reversed.
"How are you feeling?" asked the woman Katherine could only guess was a doctor of some sort.
Katherine balked at the question, was this woman really so dense she had to ask her how she was feeling? "How am I feeling? Are you fucking serious?! I can't feel my legs! How the hell do you think I'm feeling?!"
The doctor barely looked up from her electronic tablet, "Scared, confused, and probably in a great deal of pain."
"Well Miss Know-it-all, maybe you can fill in the blanks in my memory?" asked Katherine not even bothering to control the malice that dripped from her words as she glared at the doctor who merely ignored the look.
"No, actually I think that's a job I leave up to your crew members," replied the doctor coldly as she read the ticker-tape from what must have been a heart monitor.
"My crew members?" repeated Katherine trying not to sound too eager at the idea of seeing her family again.
The doctor looked down at her from over her glasses, "Yes, they've set up camp in our waiting room, rather noisy bunch you serve with, Commander."
"Send them in," said Katherine, glancing at the door as she spoke, thinking that her friends were going to come charging through any moment now.
"Not yet," said the doctor, she pushed gently on Katherine's shoulder indicating that she needed to lay back down, "You can see them after we run a few more tests. How bad is the pain right now?"
Katherine rolled her eyes, she knew she was going to have fun dealing with this woman, "Let me see, not as bad as when Thresher Maw acid landed on my neck but worse than the time when I was slammed up against the wall by a hormonal Korgan."
The doctor did not crack a grin, instead she pressed a needle into an attachment on the IV that was feeding into Katherine's arm, then she stood there and stared at Katherine as if she were observing an experiment rather than looking at a human being.
Katherine felt her arm tingling shortly after the injection, the sensation ran up her arm and into her back, an overwhelming urge to fall asleep overcame her as she sat there watching the doctor not breaking eye contact for a moment until her eyelids cried out in protest.
"You win this round, bitch," she managed to mumble before giving into her body's desire to sleep.
When she next awoke, her vision was bleary and everything she looked at were fuzzy shapes of varying sizes, only one shape did she truly recognize.
"Garrus," said Katherine, her voice was weak and scratchy but she knew he heard her. In her groggy state she felt him press his mandible against her forehead in a soft kiss immediately sending a heat through her body that awakened all of her senses. "Where's the rest of the crew?"
"I see your memory as bad as the doctor said," said Garrus, chuckling warmly, kissing her forehead again before sitting down next to her hospital bed. "In the waiting room still, your doctor said only one visitor for right now and everyone agreed I should get to see you first, like they actually had a choice in the matter."
"Let them live in illusion that they had a choice," said Katherine as she looked at him, her vision slowly going back to normal. "How long have I been out?"
"Before or after you cussed out the doctor?" asked Garrus, reaching over and taking her hand in his.
"Surprise me," said Katherine, smirking at him the best she could.
He ran his talon across the back of her hand, when he spoke his voice was so quiet she nearly missed his words, "Almost a month total."
Katherine felt bile rise in the back of her throat as tears stung her eyes, she turned her head away from Garrus not wanting him to see her this vulnerable, 'A month? I've been here a month?'
"Kat," said Garrus, the sound of her nickname bringing her back from her thoughts, "don't go back to sleep, not yet."
Katherine felt a small smile creeping across her lips, his words comforting her more than any painkiller, "I won't, and I wasn't trying to anyway, God knows I've slept enough as it is."
Garrus snorted in response, "That's for damn sure." He paused for a few moments before speaking again, "How are you feeling?"
At this Katherine laughed, she could not resist, "Right now I'm numb all over, but I'm sure that'll change in a few minutes."
"The doctor mentioned that you were overcoming the anesthetics faster than most humans," said Garrus, his mandibles flexing in a smile, "which gave us hope that you'd be conscious sooner than now."
They sat in silence for a few minutes, neither one wanting to address the Elcor in the room, Katherine finally mustered up the courage to ask what he knew she was going to, "What happened? Did we win?"
"Yeah, Kat, we won," said Garrus, squeezing her hand tightly as he remembered how the war ended, "Whatever you did up there with the Crucible worked, you saved the galaxy."
She leaned back against the pillows, relief filling her body at the news she had beaten the Reapers, she had done the impossible yet again.
"I saved the galaxy and end up in the hospital," sighed Katherine, looking at her bandaged arms and her useless legs, "I didn't even get a celebratory beer."
"I think I can grant you that wish, Kat," said Garrus, letting go of her hand he reached behind him and soon she heard the familiar sound of beer bottles clanking together, "I thought since we didn't meet up at the bar in Heaven, we deserved a drink."
Katherine immediately brightened up, accepting the ice cold beer from Garrus's hand,"I couldn't agree with you more, Garrus, damn am I glad my fingers aren't wrapped in mummy tape." She took a drink of the beer and moaned loudly in appreciation.
"I thought I was the only one who could get you to moan like that," teased Garrus, watching as her cheeks turned a bright crimson red.
She moved the mouth of the bottle from her lips and stared down at it as if it were the last of its kind in the entire galaxy, "Garrus, when was the last time I told you I loved you?"
"About a month ago in London," replied Garrus as he peeled away the label from his dextro beer, "after I said something about a human-Turian baby."
Katherine chuckled softly, "Now that I remember clearly, that's actually the last thing I can recall for sure, the rest is pretty fuzzy at best."
Garrus leaned forward and rested his talon on her forearm, "Let me put it to you this way, Kat, you don't need to remember everything that happened that day. What matters now is that you're alive, we both are, and we finally get to enjoy that overdue beer."
Katherine raised her bottle as high as she could and Garrus clinked his against hers, "To the future, whatever it may bring."
Garrus smiled at her, his eyes shining brightly with the thought of a future with the woman he loved, "I'll drink to that."