Eyes
It's the eyes that get to him. They're so utterly blank. There's none of the usual emotion there. No mischievous glint or any hint of steely determination that he's so used to seeing.
His friend lies there, his body so still that he believed the worst at first.
It shouldn't be allowed. His friend should never look like this.
It's unnatural.
Freaky.
Just plain weird.
He reads through the reports trying to understand the events that led to this. He knows he should be able to understand. He knows that the others will expect him to. When he calls them and tells them what happened they will come to him. He'll have to dumb it down for Eagle and find the right tone with Wolf.
With the strong smell of almost undiluted coffee in his face he will have to comfort them without comforting and give promises that he doesn't know how to keep. It's his role in the unit. Wolf is most often the leader, the one that makes them persist when it looks bad, and Eagle takes the risky chances and helps them remember why they are doing this, why they never ever should give up. Fox is the back up and the unit member that has the responsibility for human relations, none of the others are capable of holding a pleasant, civil conversation with a normal human being and coming out of it with just positive results. They are all broken in a way, Fox just hides it better.
They're all broken, but they fit together. It's the reason why they're still a unit.
He knows that he's close to losing control when the nurse asks him if he's alright. He gives a shaky nod and wanders past her to the window. When she leaves the room he turns and looks down at the bed.
The eyes that normally looks so dark even though they really aren't stares straight up at the ceiling. He could have looked at the bandages that crisscross his friend's chest or at the bruises that litters his arms. Two of the nails on the right hand are missing and there's a nasty half healed cut where the left arm meets the shoulder.
He knows that there is more where he can't see.
He wishes he didn't have to see this, know this, but he's an adult and it's not in his position to be ignorant. Maybe in another place, another time, they would have been at the pub now, laughing about their latest girlfriends and the last football match that their team lost. Maybe they'd dare each other to do something crazy.
That line of thought is useless and he knows it.
They're in the real world, and in the real world bad things like this happen.
There's no fair or right or anything like that in the real world.
There's no life in his friend's eyes and there probably won't be any in the near future. Perhaps that's a good thing. At least his friend won't have to deal with reality just yet.
He leaves the room and gives a much firmer nod to the nurse on his way out of the hospital. On his way home he'll drop by a store to buy more coffee. Then he'll go to his apartment, make the first cup of coffee for himself and pick up the phone.
He has the numbers memorized and he dreads the following hours.
Soon he'll have to explain why there's no light in Fox's eyes and why it might be for the better.