[A/N: I don't own these characters, but I missed them a whole lot. Takes place in the Worst Season of Television Ever.]
We'll Go Back
Emily clocked in and sipped her first coffee of the night. These shifts were lucrative but depressing: the night shift on the mental ward. Slower than her usual ER shift, this 6-week stint while she covered a friend's maternity leave presented its own challenges.
Some patients had endless streams of visitors who needed to be turned away or reminded of the strict one-visitor-at-a-time policy. Others had no visitors and passed the days in silence.
Then there was the blonde patient, granted her own private room and a laundry list of privileges she never took advantage of. The woman was of some intrigue on the ward. Obviously wealthy and of some prestige, she nevertheless had no visitors or family who checked up on her regularly.
That is, until two days ago when a British man in a suit arrived clutching flowers. Her forms clearly indicated she was single and she knew he wasn't her brother, who'd called once, and yet the dutiful way he sat in the visitor's lounge and waited patiently bespoke a strong connection between them.
Emily sighed and drank her coffee again. Normally the ER didn't allow for such interest in patients, but this ward was slow.
She'd had to be the one to inform him that she couldn't have visitors yet. His crestfallen face had nearly broken Emily's heart, but his choice to instead stand outside her door had nearly broken her.
The no-visitor embargo had broken yesterday but he'd arrived too late for visiting hours. Whatever job he had clearly prevented him from getting here earlier, Emily assumed. It wasn't too hard to imagine, considering she always saw him polished and in a nice suit. Once again it had fallen upon her to inform him he was too late; he'd given a lopsided smile and reluctant nod.
Here he was again, like clockwork, and judging from the harried look on his face, Emily knew he'd rushed here to try to be on time.
He stopped at the nurse's station and glanced at the large clock on the wall behind it. "I'm too late again, aren't I?"
"You are," she replied, not unkindly. She'd bet good money that he'd known he wouldn't make it on time, and yet he'd tried anyhow. Emily tapped her coffee mug and thought for a moment. "Go on in."
"Pardon?"
"We have extended visiting hours on Tuesdays," she lied smoothly.
"It's Wednesday," the British man responded with a wry smile.
Damn these night shifts. With a sigh, Emily tapped her pen against her clipboard and looked down the hall pointedly towards the blonde's room.
Niles nodded once and his smile changed to one of gratitude. "Thank you."
Emily returned the nod and made an effort to appear busy. She could only imagine the eye rolls she'd get from her husband when she told him about this. He'd been the one to suggest the ER rotation, suggesting that the less time she had to get to know her patients, the better. Clearly he was right.
The next half hour passed quickly: doing rounds, checking vitals, distributing medication. She arrived at the blonde's room last: C Babcock. She entered with a small plastic cup of pills that jangled against each other.
As she checked the woman's vitals, she noticed the woman seemed more awake today. Perhaps she'd adjusted to the veritable cocktails of meds they'd pumped into her upon her arrival.
"She's more lucid today," the man said from the chair next to her bed.
"She seems to be," Emily replied. She offered C Babcock the little cup of pills; the woman opened her mouth like a baby bird and accepted the medicine.
"What will that do?" the man asked curiously. Then he looked at her a little bashfully. "Sorry, you probably can't answer that."
Emily smiled at him forgivingly. "It will help calm her down and settle into sleep."
"Can she...is she aware of what's going on?" he asked.
Emily glanced down at her chart. In the strictest sense of the word, C Babcock was probably aware of very little. "Maybe a little. But it would probably help if you spoke to her."
"Really?" he asked, eyeing the woman's glazed eyes.
"Of course. She may not remember much but some part of her will know you're here," Emily replied.
"What...what should I say?" the Brit asked, clearly embarrassed by the question or perhaps the situation.
Emily smiled. "Anything. A story, the weather, what you did today at work. I bet she'd like to hear that."
At that, a smirk crossed the man's face and he looked knowingly at the woman in the bed.
Not her husband, but not far from it, Emily decided. She noted the patient's heart rate, blood pressure, and time of last doses before she left the room.
-—
Niles sat in the chair next to her and tried to decide what to say. Truthfully, he'd been grateful that she hadn't been allowed visitors. The idea of CC Babcock, the strongest woman he'd ever met, his favorite playmate and companion, the woman he'd so mistreated this past year, in a mental hospital was too painful for him to consider.
But she'd been there at his lowest point a year ago when he'd had his heart attack, and he needed to harness some of his own Babcockian fortitude to do the same for her.
Miss Grace had been the most helpful, patiently explaining depression and medication and hospitalization to him. He knew embarrassingly little about mental health or about her diagnoses, if she had any. But he knew she'd been in therapy, had in fact suggested Dr. Bort for the youngest Sheffield, and so he'd sat across the kitchen table from the young woman while she educated him.
Grace had been sympathetic and kind, and Niles suspected she alone of the entire household understood how sad he was that she was gone. He'd kept up appearances for everyone else, continuing to insult her even though it made him feel slightly sick, and silently missed her even more than a few years ago when she'd quit.
But now here he was and here she was, prone in a hospital bed with restraints on her arms and legs. Were they truly necessary?
What could he say to her? Could he say sorry? Would that even cover the huge guilt he felt? And what sort of a cad was he, thinking of his own feelings when this woman just suffered some sort of mental break?
"I don't think you care to hear about what I did at work today," Niles said as an ice-breaker. CC was awake but not wholly alert. Her glassy eyes had a fog of medication in them, but she still turned towards his voice.
"Niles," she said quietly and gravelly.
"Hey, Babcock."
"Wha...where…?" She turned her head from side to side, looking around. Her usually pristine head of shiny blond hair currently stuck to her scalp in a tangled, greasy mess. She'd hate to be seen like this, Niles knew.
"You're...you're in a hospital," he told her.
She turned to him again, brow furrowed. "Why?"
"You'll be ok," Niles responded, ignoring the question.
She shifted slightly in the bed and he saw her eyes look down at the restraints. Her eyes widened and she began moving her arms, testing how far she could move. Her movements became more frantic when she realized her feet were restrained as well. She turned to him helplessly and questioningly, her eyes slowly filling with tears.
"They're just so you won't hurt yourself," he explained. "You're on a lot of medications and you could…if you tried to leave, you could fall."
She calmed a little but he saw her still twitching her wrists. "I don't...I want to leave."
"You will soon," he promised. In reality, he had no idea when she'd be released. Even Miss Grace hadn't known; she simply told him that recovery had no timeline and it would take as long as it took.
She looked him in the eye, her gaze fierce and so familiar that Niles nearly formed tears himself. Slowly, the fog came back and Niles knew the sedatives were beginning to take effect.
"I brought you flowers yesterday," he said lamely. But then he glanced around and didn't see them. Switching the subject, he made another promise, one he knew he could keep: "I'll come visit you every day, ok?" Like you did when I was sick, Niles silently added.
They locked eyes again and he knew she was sizing up the likelihood of that. Even ill and drug-addled, she was still Babcock. Then she nodded and her eyes filled with tears again.
Impulsively, he reached out and grabbed her hand. When was the last time he'd held her hand? Too long, clearly. But then he remembered.
"Do you remember the Bahamas?" he asked, scooting the chair closer to her bed.
She gave a vague nod.
"When we took separate vacations to the same place?" Niles clarified. "I was so irritated that you were there. But then it wasn't so bad, was it?"
CC stared up at the ceiling with a slightly dreamy look on her face, so he continued.
"We should go back," Niles told her, leaning forward and resting his chin on their joined hands. It was a far more intimate gesture than he would have risked in any other situation. But he remembered the loneliness of his own hospital stay and didn't want her to suffer similarly.
"Do you remember the restaurant right on the shore? The grilled fresh fish. And the local beer? You nearly spit it out at first," Niles said, grinning at the memory. "But then you had two bottles and were almost sloppy drunk. A much more pleasant version of yourself," he teased gently. He looked over at her and saw a half-smile on her face. When he felt her gently squeeze his hand, he continued.
"We tried to avoid each other at first, then kept running into each other everywhere," Niles went on. He could still see the strong island sun glowing off of her bare shoulders, the curve of the smirk on her face as she turned away from him. "Then it was just, sod it, let's give in, and we spent the rest of the trip together."
"The walkways," she said suddenly, her voice a little hoarse and a little slurred.
"Yes! The walkways over the water. Do you remember? I pretended I was going to push you in, then I tripped over the loose plank and fell over?" He grinned at the memory of her loud, gleeful laughter. That was when they'd held hands: she offered hers to help him up and he just hadn't let go after he'd stood up. They'd never discussed it, of course.
"We must've walked those paths a hundred times. We could see the ocean beneath us, the colorful fish swimming by, the breeze all around us." It had been, perhaps, the first time he'd realized how much he genuinely enjoyed being around her. Why hadn't he told her? If things had been different, would she ever have ended up here?
He glanced up and saw tears silently dripping from her eyes. He reached over and wiped them away carefully. "Don't cry, Babcock."
"I don't...I want…" It sounded like she was trying to speak around a wad of cotton, and she clenched her hands in frustration. She clamped her mouth shut stubbornly and shut her eyes tightly. Another tear leaked out and Niles swiped it away with his thumb.
"You'll leave here soon," he said, accurately guessing what she was about to say. "Then we can go back to the Bahamas. Remember the swim-up bar at the resort pool? We spent so much time in the water you said my wrinkles were going to fill up with water and revert and I'd look like an ugly baby again."
A small, sleepy smile crested her face and Niles suspected she'd fall asleep soon.
"We'll go back soon," Niles promised. "Everything will be different. It'll be better, ok?" He lifted his head from their linked hands. Her heavy-lidded eyes were nearly closed and his voice filled with an even greater urgency. "It will be better. I'll be nicer and...and I'll look after you better and it'll all just be better, ok? I promise. I promise. I'm so sorry, Miss Babcock, I'm so sorry."
Her eyes closed and his voice died. He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead.
-—
Emily leaned her head against the wall outside C Babcock's room. She'd settled here with her second mug of coffee, listening to the British man's soothing voice talk about some trip they'd taken together. It wasn't what he said but how he'd said it that she found so captivating; it reminded her of how her husband had spoken to her when she'd been in labor. Hushed, reverent, painfully full of affection.
Calling the woman 'Miss' Babcock gave Emily pause, but then the man's voice cracked during his apology and Emily became choked up. She heard footsteps inside the room and stood up quickly, sloshing lukewarm coffee on her wrist.
The man exited the room wiping his eyes, and Emily had the good grace to look away while he did so.
"Thank you," he told her. "Not only for letting me visit past hours. For the advice. Telling a story helped."
Emily nodded, smiling kindly at him. "When you come back, even if it's late, I'll let you visit her."
His smile was so full of gratitude that his next words were practically redundant. "Thank you."
He left the ward then, and Emily walked back to the nurse's station slowly. It was, perhaps, not the most depressing shift after all.