This is my first venture into Leverage Fan Fiction and I hope you all enjoy this piece. Sorry it's not beta read. Mistakes are all mine. You feed my muses with your reviews… So please don't let Parker go without her fortune cookies and cereal. Don't keep Eliot away from cooking his fantastic meals. Don't let Sophie miss her tea… Let's keep Nate on the wagon and we have to keep Hardison supplied with orange soda!

A BIG thank you to my reviewers, followers, and favorite pickers so far… This chapter is for you!

I don't own the characters of Leverage. I don't own the poem by Shel Silverstein. They belong to The Powers That Aren't Me… I just wanted to borrow them for a little bit and I will return them unharmed when I am done.
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Meanwhile, up in the operating room upstairs, there was a buzzing team of doctors and nurses around Lazarus Ford trying to repair every possible injury; undergoing surgery to temporarily put metal and pins in his leg to help stabilize the bone that had broken. While they had his chest open trying to repair the four ribs that had broken and punctured both lungs, Eliot flat-lined… Immediately they brought him back with a couple shocks directly to his heart using the shock wands. The doctors began to work faster. Fortunately, of the four ribs that had broken, only two were dangerously harming his lungs. Just as they finished that repair, he flat-lined once more. It was a little longer in death the second time before they brought him back. The surgical assistant sewed him up as best he could with all the drainage tubes. The last ones to be taken care of were his fractured right arm and his fractured right leg. They were set in casts and the rest of him was bandaged to keep the stitching stable. He was immediately taken into the PACU (Post Anesthesia Care Unit). Eliot was on a breathing tube to help the nicks on his lungs heal. He had tubes coming from just above his stomach to help drain his chest and the fluid buildup in his lungs.

In the emergency waiting room a nurse finally came to the door.

"Family for Lazarus Ford," the woman announced loud enough over the mounted to the wall television across the room.

Nate and the others jumped up and went as quickly as they could to the open doorway.

"Come with me."

"How is Lazar doing," Nate asked once the door closed.

"I'm sorry, I don't know exactly. I was just sent to come bring you to the PACU waiting room on the third floor."

They all followed the nurse silently through the halls to the elevator and then into the small room with a dozen uncomfortable chairs. Old magazines and tissue boxes littered the tables around the room. Sophie walked Parker to a chair and helped her sit. She worried that Parker wasn't talking… To anyone. She worried that she was clinging to her more. She considered taking her down to the cafeteria to get her something sweet to help calm Parker's nerves. Or maybe she just needed to get herself some coffee. Nate tried to distract himself by talking with Hardison out in the hall about what they had left to do on the job that just put their teammate near death's door. About an hour later the OR surgeon in charge finally came out to talk with the 'family.' He had been busy filling out the chart and checking in on other patients that he had worked on in the morning.

"Family for Mr. Ford," he asked. Nate felt a chill run down his spine as he thought of his father and Hardison came up behind him as Sophie brought Parker.

"I'm Patrick Ford and this is my wife Ophelia. This is our niece Bethany and her boyfriend, Morgan," Nate lied as he stood next to the well-skilled surgeon, who was in his early 50's.

"Your nephew is very lucky I was at work today. We were able to repair all the injuries… He's got a fractured right leg, two punctured lungs, four broken ribs, a broken left leg, and a fractured right arm. However, he isn't out of the woods yet. He died on the table twice. The second time lasted longer than the last but we were able to shock his heart into a proper pulsation. Right now, the next twenty-four hours will be crucial. He will be moved to ICU in a few more hours."

"Can we see him," Sophie asked as she held Parker.

"Yes, one at a time and not for more than an hour. A nurse will come and get you once he is settled in the PACU. I must warn you, he has drainage tubes and he is on a ventilator to help him breathe. So far, that is only temporary. Please be careful around him. If he makes it, he will need to spend some time in a hyperbaric chamber in the RICU (Respiratory Intensive Care Unit) to help his lungs heal. Right now he is in a drug induced coma to help his body heal. We will bring him out of the coma in a few days."

"Will he have brain damage from his deaths?" Nate needed to know.

"Impossible to say at this point. We did try our best to get him back before the brain felt the blood loss."

Parker felt numb. Eliot had died twice. It just didn't seem possible. She'd heard Hardison try to tell her that Eliot was her brother Lazarus and after she'd heard what the doctor said, he was living up to his temporary moniker. She felt tears begin to form in her eyes and she turned her face away from the group. She put her head back on Sophie's shoulder. Would Eliot ever be right again? They were talking about brain damage! She decided alone that the others would see him first. Then she would go and to hell with them if they wouldn't let her stay longer than an hour. She could hide in the air ducts if she had to; even those would be as close to sterile as they could get. They had to be, to deliver the freshest air for the patients to breathe. Satisfied she'd gotten Sophie's shoulder a little wet and left a tear spot on her dress, Parker finally left her friend's grasp and hit the Kleenex box to clean up the evidence of the emotions on her face. She noticed the surgeon had left them and her three friends where having a conclave out in the hall. From what she could read of their lips, Nate was worried about Eliot and her mental state. Sophie was worried about Nate and everybody's emotional state, and Alec… Alec was just worried about the job they'd nearly just completed.

The realization shot straight to her heart. Why wasn't her boyfriend worried about her? Wasn't he supposed to worry about her? Wasn't that what boyfriends and girlfriends did for each other in a crisis? And she reminded herself that when it came down to it that money didn't come first when it came to her 'family,' not anymore; not since Eliot could have been lost for good; lost for the good they did for others. Her mind took over as her heart shut down its control board. In her mind, she and Hardison were over. She decided she needed to talk to Sophie later before she made it official. The more she pondered her decision, the further she went back in their relationship Parker realized that she had been pulling away from him slowly. She spent more time in keeping in shape and honing her skills than taking the time to answer his calls or text messages. True, she would get to them later when she was ready but the point was… Well she didn't answer them in the timely manner Alec had in his mind. Since they'd started going out, she noticed he'd become more possessive like that.

A strange question popped in her mind… Had Hardison snapped her up for himself because Eliot was his competition? She was the only single woman to be had. Sophie was taken, sort of. Tara? Well, she wasn't around much. And he knew that Eliot was a charmer when it came to the ladies…

When Eliot had lost consciousness during the fight he felt like he was falling, the air rushing into his face, and blackness surrounded his vision. He couldn't see a thing. Then from out of nowhere he heard a voice reach him. It sounded familiar… And then he had to realize that it was Parker. She was talking to him in short sentences.

"There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grown soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind."

Her words seemed to create this relaxing image in his mind to consider. She must have made the collection of words askew to add the Parker brand of crazy in.

"Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends."

The more she spoke to him, it was oddly calming. He seemed to relax and instead of floating in the blackness, he had begun to explore this world she had suggested. Pain seemed to be a distant memory. Everything seemed to be a distant memory other than her voice… Her voice kept pulling him to where the chalk-white arrows were on the street he was traveling upon.

"Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends."

As he walked measured and slow, he began to see the innocent children he'd killed for Damien Moreau. They lined up on each side of the dark street bent and twisted. Their faces were dead pale with blood stains from their injuries on their clothing and faces. They all pointed for him to go down the street. The song of Elysium played lowly in the background. Eliot kept going until he visualized Parker there, waiting for him in a pastel green sundress, one hand held out to him while the other held a bouquet of asphalt flowers; yellow dandelions. Her beautiful blond hair pulled back and yet it rested on her shoulders in wavy curls; two wavy tendrils framed her face. Her face seemed so pale but there was a light pink hue just to make her look alive. He took her hand in his; they walked together slow and measured.

He kept hearing her voice repeat the sentences until they suddenly stopped. He couldn't hear her voice anymore. Eliot began to panic a little as the gentle vision of Parker and the strange world disappeared and he was once again floating in the darkness. When he heard voices again, there were people yelling his vital signs and discussing his injuries. But then there was nothing he could do about it… He couldn't move! The drugs of the anesthesiologist saw to that. Soon those voices went away too. While on the operating table, when he suddenly flat-lined, the blackness cleared and he could suddenly see him on the slab, his chest and leg open as the surgeons tried to correct his injuries. Nurses hovered around them with the needed supplies. He didn't understand though… Why would he be looking at himself away from his body? Was he dead? The incessant cry of the heart rate monitor seemed to confirm this… He watched as they shocked his heart and then he was back in the blackness. He didn't understand what was happening… Was he still dead? Had they brought him back? Eliot began to panic once more, what about his friends? What was happening to Parker, Sophie, Hardison, and most of all Nate? He tried to force himself to believe that they were okay as air blew past his face.

Then he was back looking at himself again and he looked at the clock on the wall. He'd been in the shadows for at least a half hour. He worried as he watched them try to shock him back to life again… This time it didn't take the first few tries. Eliot found himself willing his heart to beat again. Then suddenly it began to beat again. He sighed when he went back into the black.

By the time the PACU nurse came out to get the family for Mr. Lazarus Ford another hour had passed. Parker couldn't sit anymore after her decision to talk to Sophie about her relationship with Alec, so she began to wear a rut around the small room. Hardison was out in Louise going through Parker's gear looking for the flash drive that Eliot had risked his life for. He found it and began to upload it as he thought about the cold shoulder he began to feel from Parker when she wouldn't let him stop her from her wearing a hole into the carpet. She was clearly upset but he knew her and it was wise not to push her to open up. Nate had gone to fetch coffees for him and the two women. The nurse took Sophie because Parker as Bethany told her to go first and that she would send her uncle in to relieve her when he came back. A few minutes after her, 'Aunt Ophelia,' went in to see her, 'Brother Lazarus,' her, 'Uncle Patrick,' returned with the warm caffeinated liquids. She was still pacing a rut in the floor and every step wore a rut in her mind.

"Parker, where's your Aunt?"

"With him," she replied in, 'Parker,' code, in case someone overheard them.

"Why didn't you go in first?"

"I can't."

"Why not?"