More Miracles Chapter 2

About an hour passed before a doctor, Fred, stepped out and tracked me down, unfortunately looking very solemn.

"Mr. Moseby?" he asked, tapping me on the shoulder, "the results are in about your friend." I looked at him anxiously at him and waved Marshall, Robin, and Lily over and they hurriedly rushed towards me. The doctor, seeing the group assembled, continued, "when you found him at 11, he had been out for about three hours with no blood flow to the brain. The scans have shown there was no damage to the internal body structure, but the condition is critical. We have determined that if Mr. Stinson wakes up within the next 24 hours, he should return normal with no side effects. If he wakes up between 24 and 48 hours, there may be some permanent brain damage. Sadly, if your friend doesn't wake up within 48 hours he probably never will."

I felt like collapsing onto the ground and never standing up again, and Lily was already tearing up. No, no he can't die. Then I pivoted to see Robin walking quickly away to an area where she couldn't be seen, because her façade was quickly fading. I followed her, to try and comfort my friend. We were all now worried and sad. The deal was supposed to be 'he's up and running and everything is fine' not 'he might die!' When I finally got to Robin, I could see the silent tears were already streaming down her face, scrunched in the corner of the entryway.

I slid down next to her and wrapped my arm around her shoulder, trying not to look at Robin's face so that I could stay strong for her. None of us believed that this could happen, and we would later find out this was so much worse for her.

"Robin, none of us wanted this to happen… and as much as we want to blame ourselves, even Barney had no idea he had epilepsy."

"I'm sorry Ted, but you just don't get it," her puffy, slowly dripping eyes pierced into mine, making me want to hold her and never let go. This wasn't supposed to happen; wasn't the plan. I understood that much.

I looked over to see Dr. Fred Charles gesturing us over to the doors that led into the wards. I helped Robin stand up and we led her over there to get whatever news may be coming. Hopefully the second round of news wasn't as horrible as the first bout. "I just wanted to say you guys would be able to come see your friend, even though he hasn't woken up yet," the doctor told us, "Technically, it shouldn't be allowed, but I'll say your family. You seem like you are as close as that." If you looked closely, you could see Robin giving a sarcastic roll of the eyes, but I didn't have any idea what it meant. Not yet, I didn't.

We slowly paced into the room and could immediately understand what all the doctor chatter was about. It was obvious to see that this had been fatal. Our friend, practically our brother, had no color to his aura. His face had gone ghostly white and his skin looked pale and frigid, except there was a hug purple bruise across his forehead where he must have fallen and hit it. Almost like there was no chance of survival, crushing our hopes like a tiny wine grape. Still in disbelief, this couldn't possibly be happening, not to Barney Stinson. I could feel the salty tears forming in my eyes. All of us were either crying our eyes out (Lily), looking away from the group with quiet drops falling down the face (Robin), or trying to stay strong for the criers even though the water was being pushed up to the bridge of our eyes, threatening to fall out (Marshall and I).

It had been 13 of the 24 hours taken up for our friend to be his normal, fun-loving self again. It was 4am, long past the end of visiting hours, but none of us had any intention of even leaving the room. Whether laying on the padded bench or slumped over in a chair trying as hard as possible to win the battle against sleep, and not succeeding.

I was awakened 3 hours later to a whispered "Oh my gosh" and my eyes slowly fluttered open, taking a few seconds for my sleep-deprived brain to try and comprehend what I was seeing. He was awake. He was really awake…

Looking at Barney, he appeared more half-stoned than anything, but that was probably just from the grogginess. I read that was one of the aftereffects of seizures and strokes, of which he had somewhat experienced both simultaneously, and beside the fact had been unconscious for the past 20 hours in total. His dark blonde hair was crumpled in the back and his sharp baby blue eyes were half-closed. And then I did a double take on one crucial detail I missed on the look-over, because of my own exhaustion. He was kissing Robin.

Wait, what? Was I still dreaming, was this the crazy antibacterial and latex glove smells getting to my common sense. I reached over and inconspicuously pinched my shoulder, and let out a small wince. My eyes discreetly darted back and forth, making sure that I hadn't been caught. It took a couple of seconds before the mindset came in that this was reality.

"Where am I? What happened?" I heard him ask in a slow, barely audible whisper to the girl who was lying by the side of him with a warm smile on her face.

"Honey, you've been in a coma for the past 20 hours. You had a seizure-induced stroke and you nearly died." Her voice cracked near the end as she pulled him into a gentle embrace.

"Now we couldn't have that happen. It would ruin our awesome, legendary plan." This was weird. It as if I was living inside of a movie. Like these were total strangers talking.

"And what would that plan be?" I finally intervened, causing both heads to jolt to where I was now sitting upright, and I gave a small, sarcastically innocent, wave. Both looked like they had an answer that they couldn't give me yet. To move things along, I shook Marshall and Lily so that they were awake too. "Hey guys," I told them as they slowly sat up, evidently not happy they had been woken. Boy if looks could kill… oh wait, Lily's can. I'd better watch out.

"What is it Ted?" Marshall moaned.

"Guys, Barney's up…"