"I'm so sorry, Professor."
Those are the first words out of Tracey's mouth when Professor Oak comes into the hospital room to see him. The platitude sounds hollow and pointless in his own ears, every bit as worthless and broken as Tracey is, but he knows that he has to say it anyway. After what he inadvertently put the professor through today—after drawing him to the lab, after so many years when Tracey had honestly believed that he'd finally escaped that man—he understands Professor Oak deserves nothing less than to live the rest of his days in peace, without ever laying eyes on the wretched, good-for-nothing liar who had the nerve to call himself his assistant ever again. And even that allowance would never be enough, on Tracey's part.
Instead, Oak is here, at the hospital. He's staying with Tracey while the boy recovers, sitting patiently with Ash's mother outside his door and worrying, because the professor is simply too kind and wonderful a person to abandon someone as undeserving as Tracey in his time of need. Professor Oak is even paying for Tracey's hospital bills right now, because Tracey has no one else, has nothing of material value to his name from the years he's spent as a watcher on the islands. The only money he has is what salary the professor agrees to give him, and of course, Tracey should never have accepted that. He doesn't deserve money from Professor Oak. He doesn't deserve to know Professor Oak.
Even the name on his hospital chart is a fabrication. The boy called 'Tracey Sketchit' doesn't legally exist, never did, and even this lie that he's built for himself throughout the years is still worth more than the boy who came before. The same boy who sits, now, before Professor Oak's discerning gaze, raw and exposed, lying helplessly in the hospital bed with too many injuries to count and too little self-worth to care. Tracey belatedly wishes that the bullet the doctors removed from his leg two hours ago had actually killed him. It would have been better, he thinks sadly. Better for the professor. Better for everyone. That horrible man would have gone to jail, either way.
As Tracey stares bleakly at the professor, in the wake of his pitiful apology, the professor's haggard expression morphs from concern into something resembling sadness. Tracey watches, as Professor Oak roughly clears his throat, walking toward Tracey in his hospital bed.
"Tracey, don't—please don't apologize, for what that man did at the laboratory," Oak says, stopping a few steps away from the bed like he doesn't know if he ought to come closer. "I can't imagine what you must be going through right now, but...please believe me, when I say what happened today was not your fault. He's a criminal, and he is going straight to jail where he belongs. You have my word."
Tracey lets out a laugh that comes out as more of a sob. "Y-You're wrong about the first part, Professor," he manages to say, voice shaking as badly as his fingers in the sheets. "N-Not about him being a criminal, b-but...it was my fault. I-I knew him. I s-should have known, that he would come for me—"
"Tracey—"
"N-No. That bastard, he—I once w-watched him, kill a baby K-Kangaskhan, just because its poor mother tried to escape the enclosure she was being held in...s-s-she, she just wanted to see her baby, and he..."
"Oh, Tracey..." The professor looks faintly ill at this, but Tracey isn't done.
"The b-bastard," Tracey continues tonelessly, in the same shaking voice, "the b-bastard skinned the baby Kangaskhan alive, and killed its mother, after, j-just for trying to—to get away from him. He m-made me watch. The whole thing...h-he made me watch. He killed them both."
Oak crosses the final steps to the hospital bed and puts his hands on Tracey's shoulders, trying to diminish a measure of the self-loathing he senses festering beneath the surface. "Tracey, that was his fault. His crime, not yours," Oak says clearly, trying to make his assistant convinced of the truth in his voice. "He was a monster, and I'm so very, very sorry you had to see the terrible things he did. But you couldn't have stopped him, even if you tried. He was too powerful. It was never your fault."
Tracey doesn't hear the words, well-intentioned though they are. He's practically not in the hospital room with Oak anymore, not Tracey Sketchit at all, but the worthless child he had been when he was trapped at the pokémon ranch.
Still with him.
"H-He made me watch," Tracey hears himself say, the words slow and horrible. "Th-The whole thing, and w-when I tried, t-to stop him, he—he g-grabbed me, and he...I'm so sorry, Professor. I should've known. For god's sake, I took his pokémon. I should've known he w-wouldn't let me get away, that he'd do anything to f-find me...and he did. He followed me here; he'd have hurt you, he would've done anything...I'm so sorry, Professor Oak. I'm so, so sorry..."
And then Tracey's crying, uncontrollably, and he can't stop. And the professor holds him steady by the shoulders, with the same concerned look as before, telling him it's going to be all right, even if it's probably a lie. Then the Joy on-duty rushes in, gives Tracey an injection of something to make him sleep, and then the hysteria fades and the world simply drifts into nothing.
And so Tracey survives his first day, after the nightmare.