Title: Waiting
Author: Brynn H
A/N: Thanks to Punky for the lightning beta.
A/N: NOT a death story, don't worry. I drew a picture of a beat up Blair for dues on the Sentinel Angst list, and several people asked me to write a story to go with it. Here's the start of that story. A good bit of violence involved in the story, but not necessarily this part. Even when it shows up, it won't be all that graphic. This part is REALLY short, but more should be coming soon.
Waiting
Prologue:
He pulled his robe tightly around his shoulders as he sat in a wheelchair beside Blair's hospital bed. He had obtained the doctor's permission for only a ten minute visit since he, himself, was injured. He went in for surgery tomorrow morning to repair the bone damage caused by a through and through to his lower leg. He had gotten off easy compared to Blair. He gently clasped his friend's limp left hand, careful of the pulse-ox monitor and the IV. Blair's face was practically unrecognizable. His eyes, cheeks, and nose were masses of blue, purple and black; his jaw was broken and wired shut; and, his tangle of curls was completely obscured by a stark white bandage.
Jim stared, almost zoned, on the rise and fall of Blair's chest that matched the "whoosh-chunk" of the respirator. Blair's lungs had collapsed, having been punctured by some of the many broken ribs. Blair had undergone surgery to wire and pin his ribs back together, and to repair his lungs, and he was now on a respirator while his weakened lungs healed. Due to Blair's wired jaw, the doctors had had to perform a tracheotomy to provide the assistance his lungs so dearly needed. Jim's gaze moved briefly to the offending object at the base of his friend's throat, but quickly moved away.
There was nowhere the sentinel could look that didn't remind him of just how completely he had failed his guide. The cast on Blair's right arm, the splints on two of his fingers, the bruised chest peaking out from the bandages, all seemed to scream to Jim, "Some blessed protector you are," and "He wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you," and a thousand other epithets that the sentinel didn't want to hear.
He closed his eyes, lowered his head and waited. Waited to be whisked away by the nurse when his ten minutes were up; waited to rise in the morning to find that this had all be a nightmare; waited for his friend to forgive him. But mostly, he just waited for his friend to wake up.