They ate from takeout containers in the waiting room, infecting it with the smell of Thai food. They'd asked but Booth wasn't allowed any additional food to what the hospital had already supplied because of his medications. Dr. Brennan still hadn't awoken, something everyone was trying hard to ignore. Everyone except Zach.
"It's been nine hours." He didn't consult a watch to tell him the time, relying on some kind of internal timer that had been ticking since they'd been given the news, had rushed to the hospital.
When no one answered he tried again. "She should have woken up by now. In the case of severe trauma-."
"Zach, shut up." Hodgins' words worked for a few, blissful seconds.
"But if she dies-." Again he was cut off.
"Zach, I will punch you in the face. It's going to hurt. Your nose may never look or feel the same again. If. You. Say. One. More. Word." Hodgins glare made Zach put down his takeout container quietly and leave the room. He and Brennan were the same; they were missing the internal filter that alerted people to the correct behaviour and words in certain social situations. Angela had always thought it was a trade off – people with intelligence that high needed to lose something from their brains to fit in the extra IQ points. Subsequently, she to remind herself every time Brennan said something that made Angela want to grab her and shake her that it wasn't their fault.
Angela put down her Pad Thai and touched Jack on the shoulder, letting him know she didn't blame him for threatening Zach. Even if it wasn't their fault, they were freaking geniuses – couldn't they just learn that there was bad luck in talking about the death of someone who was currently hovering in limbo. And that superstitions were taken so much more seriously when there was a life in the balance.
"Zach." He was in the hallway, leaning against the wall. In his suit he looked older than she'd ever imagined him to be.
"I don't know why he's so angry. I was merely-." This time it was Angela's turn to cut him off, but she tried not to do it unkindly.
"Zach, there are some things people don't want to talk about. Even if we're all thinking about it. Talking about it might make it more real."
"But it is real. She's been in a coma for over nine hours. Her internal injuries were severe." Angela shut her eyes and leant on the wall next to Zach, trying to appear impervious to his words, hoping he wouldn't continue. Unfortunately, he did.
"If she dies, I can't continue my work."
"What?" Angela looked incredulously at Zach. Was hyper-rationality really a trade-off for sensitivity or humanity?
"She's the best in the field, the best in the world. I can't learn from anyone else. I'll have to change specialties." He was mulling now, getting that panicked look he got when it didn't take him two tenths of a millisecond to work something out. "And I couldn't work at the Jeffersonian if she wasn't there, even if someone else took over because..." He had been muttering the last line to himself and, finally, he looked up at Angela.
"Oh." He said at last, coming to the same conclusion everyone else had arrived at as soon as Cam had brought them the news.
Angela looked, then motioned down the hallway to where a female doctor was entering the waiting room. She pulled Zach along the hallway to hear the news but met a breathless Sully coming out.
"She's awake."
xXx xXx xXx
It had been a slow fade from black back into lighter colours; white, beige, light blue. Then shadows had lengthened and added more hues, so much grey she wondered if red was a colour at all. But there it was, being fed into her arm through an intravenous line.
"Dr Brennan?" The voice was unfamiliar, detached and professional. Brennan looked up, saw a doctor standing over her bedside, a nurse flanking her. With the increasing awareness came the pain, waves of it that started somewhere deep inside. Her sudden intake of breath was the only concession she made to it, which allowed her to feel the breathing tube she had in place. She gasped against it, unable to control her breathing, trying to breathe around the tube; failing. The doctor came towards her with gloved hands and slowly removed the tube.
"We've given you some morphine but we can't risk giving you too much in case you need neurosurgery. The final check from the neurosurgeon will be in," a quick check of her watch, "two hours. Until then, I'm sorry, but you'll have to live with the pain though it should be minor, nothing the morphine shouldn't handle."
"Booth." His name came to her without conscious thought, tumbling out of clenched teeth. The doctor looked up from the chart she was making notes on. The nurse continued checking the machines around her, adjusting things, providing movement to Brennan's periphery.
"Agent Booth is okay. He needs to be kept in overnight for observation but he escaped serious injury. His right scapula is fractured and he has several broken ribs. One of his ribs punctured his lung but we operated earlier and got that under control. He's going to be fine."
Brennan shut her eyes, surrendering to the pain that made focusing on anything other than the dark red shapes that danced behind her eyelids excruciating. The doctor continued, her voice soothing, tethering Brennan to consciousness.
"You've got a lot of people waiting on news of you. I'm going to let them know you're awake but I won't let any of them see you until we've cleared you for more morphine."
A door opened and closed twice and Brennan knew she was alone in the room again. The machines that she was attached to had their own cacophony of sound, one steady bleep reassuring her above the rest; as long as she could hear her heart still beating she would know she was alive.
xXx xXx xXx
Booth's plan was to get dressed out of the stupid gown that hospitals always put you in and make his way to Bones' room. Then he would sit outside it until he was allowed inside. When he was allowed to sit with her he would remain there until she was discharged.
He knew Angela had lied to him. It had only taken five minutes with Zach to get the whole story; everything everyone else had been hiding from him.
She'd been in a coma for almost ten hours. She was missing a spleen and they'd thought they might have to take a kidney out, too. Her brain had bled into her skull. One of her ankles was injured, her pelvis was fractured and her wrist was broken. The list went on, and its length was something he reminded himself of frequently; all this damage that he was the cause of.
xXx xXx xXx
Cam still wasn't sure when she'd become so attached to Dr Brennan. She'd seen her as a threat at first, to both her job and the man she was seeing. But it had been necessary to win her over, because without Temperance Brennan no one at the Jeffersonian would have remotely considered listening to anything Cam had to say. Correction – they would have listened, nodded politely, then gone to ask Dr Brennan what she wanted them to do next.
As to Booth; Cam had never lost him to Brennan simply because she'd never had him in the first place. She'd convinced herself they could be a couple but, as it turned out, Booth was simply distracting himself until Dr Brennan was ready to be with him. Then Cam had been endangered and Booth had done the right thing, in his mind; severed all ties between them. It was something Cam couldn't blame Brennan for since the woman was still oblivious to Booth's feeling. The woman didn't do well with hints, no matter how obvious. Now all the squints, a group Cam considered herself on the periphery of, were waiting to see when Booth would finally man up and tell her.
Now, waiting her turn to see lay eyes on the woman who she'd come to admire far more than she expected to, Cam couldn't even fathom what the loss of her would do to Booth, to all of them. That's why she had to see Dr Brennan herself, even if only to convince herself she would recover, and things could be the way they were. Because, despite her misgivings about coming into such a tight knit team, Cam couldn't imagine working anywhere else.
xXx xXx xXx
I'm trying to rotate POV's without drawing it out too much... Started this fic so long ago that I'm just mixing and matching stuff from episodes that came after season 2, while still trying to keep the timeline loosely based around then in terms of character relationships and development. But some things from later may sneak in. Hopefully it still reads okay.
I'm still not that big on Cam – is anyone else? She provides some comic relief but I was hoping it would be a rotating character – someone else would come in for season 3 to give new character dynamics. At least they're doing that with the squinterns now. She just doesn't seem to have her character firmly established yet – she's funny, then stern, then she doesn't know something, then she knows everything...
Thanks for the reviews so far, I do try to reply to every single one so if you've got a question or suggestion send it on through.
Special and huge thanks to mendenbar who corrected me on the last chapter (new version now in place). Curette (the instrument they use to perform the procedure) has now been changed to dilation and curettage. Told you – I suck at facts. So thanks for that, and for your message. xx