White sheets, on white mattresses, on stainless steel racks, that wheel along shiny shiny white floors.
The sound of wheels as he moves along. He passes other patients in their white medical beds. As he wheels along.
He comes to the door at which he must stop. He knows the nurse who stands by the door in her white uniform with her red hair done up in a neat bun in her white cap. He nods to her and she nods back. A simple, "I know you, you are welcome here." nod. She helps him with the door which creaks open reveling the room before him. He knows the room all too well, for he himself had stayed in the room in his time.
The doctor is there, but he is finishing up. The doctor leaves with but a nod his head toward him. A simple, "I know you, you are welcome here." nod. The graceful and artful dip off his head as he walks out the door which gives off a silent breeze that stirs the ends of the doctors white lab coat around his brown leather boots and black dress pants.
After the doctor leaves he does not speak to the patient in the bed whom he has come to see. Instead he looks around the room. Across from the bed is a bookshelf which is filled with all different kinds of books. Many old and dusty in their ancient casings. There are many red books but not nearly as many as black. And greens and blues scattered among them.
There is a flowering plant which withers in the corner. Most of the leaves have dried a sickly ash yellow and have fallen to into the pot and rest on dry soil the color of coffee. The shriveled flowers hang desolate from the drooping stems. They were once a vivid yellow the color of saffron and cream when he had stayed in the room. Now their pallid faces turn from the light which they once sparkled in and had become the color of fallow and champagne of a dinner party long gone.
In the end it was the man in the bed who spoke up first. "Jean."
He spoke his name so clearly and with such confidence that Havoc knew it was no stab in the dark but utter and true belief that he was there.
"Roy." Havoc said. How easily he could breath his name even in the state they were in. They said nothing beyond the simple exchange of names. For so long words had never been necessary for they had been able to talk just by looking.
Yet now Roy could never see Havoc's blue eyes and all Havoc would ever see in his was a empty stare as he tried to focused on unseen objects.
"White." Havoc began still not able to face Roy. "The color of the sky today. Red. The color of your blood when I first saw you in this hospital bed. Yellow. The color of the scrambled eggs which you have not yet eaten. Black. The color of-"
"Havoc." Roy cut him off. "What are you trying to say."
"What am I trying to say?" Havoc closed his eyes, took his cigarette out of his mouth, and wheeled himself over to Roy's side. "What I'm trying to say, Roy, is this; I can't protect your back like our friend Ms. Hawkeye can, we've already proved that. And I can't be your legs." Havoc rapped his knuckles on the steel frame of his wheelchair to make his point. He sighed and looked into Roy's empty gaze. "I can't do any of that, but I can be your eyes, Roy. Now and until the day one of us dies, cause you are going to be one grand Fuhrer and you gotta see what a grand nation this will become."