The trip to the hospital went as quickly as they could get it to go, they got treated by a bunch of nurses directly as they came in, he got brought away to a room to get some things 'fixed', as they chose to call it, and the other three got told to sit in the waiting room.
They had now been there for over two hours without getting any information; the waiting area was a horrible place, and not even consuming coffee could be the savior this time. There was just too much time to think about everything else in here. The fact that everything was painted in the white color of the sky didn't help that much either.
God, someone sure wanted this to get worse, didn't they?
But heaven wouldn't be touched in this case.
Absolutely not.
He nervously started drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair. He knew that Marco and Carl looked at him, but he couldn't care less for the moment. They couldn't have chosen a worse time for it, but how could they have known? He's just glad they can't see more than what the eye shows. Other people here didn't seem to judge his behavior. They didn't know about his situation and he didn't know about theirs; that's how it worked out in this area.
He wondered how he would explain to him that the threat wasn't over yet.
Did he feel it himself?
He had been so close to just telling him those small words with a meaning that would be far too inappropriate in that all too inconvenient place.
He let his feelings take over, and he had some punishment to deal with for it.
A part of him still wished he would have done it, though.
"Christopher Redfield?"
He had never flown up from a seat as fast as he just did before, but the middle-aged nurse seemed to wait for him to sit down again, so he did.
"Mr. Nivans' medical condition is stable for now, but the doctor wants us to keep an eye on him, so he will stay here for a while. You are free to go see him, it's the third room to the left, but please be gentle with him."
She gave a meaning look to those other two before she turned around and waited for a few seconds while Chris hesitated whether or not something should, or should not, be said from his side.
He pulled a deep, but discretely made breath before deciding that he really needed to know. He was overwhelmed to hear that everything had went well, but this was very important aswell.
"Have you been taking blood samples?"
He stared down at the ground, Marco's motions froze where he sat on his right side as if he felt that something was wrong and the nurse's eyes looked at him with a worried expression in her eyes. It was probably because of the way he reacted himself, but he couldn't help it.
"Cap'n?"
"No we haven't done that yet, Mr. Redfield. Does the patient have any blood disease that we should be aware of?"
"I- I don't know. I don't think so, no."
The nurse's pager interrupted the moment and it couldn't have been a better, nor a worse time for it to happen. She pulled it up, looked at it for a few seconds and Chris took the opportunity to turn up his own gaze.
"I'll report in for a blood sample on Mr. Nivans. I'll have to go see a patient now, but I'll be back later."
She disappeared from the waiting room before one of them had the time to do more than blink a few times, and Chris made the decision to go visit Piers in his room as soon as she was gone.
He could hear a slight objection from Marco and Carl but he didn't make the effort to turn around to hear what they had to say. He went around the corner, stopped outside the room the nurse had said belonged to him and carefully opened the door.
"Come in."
Chris did as he was told, but did so very slowly, he had been afraid to wake him up at first. Piers was lying on the bed on his side; facing the wall, making it quite difficult to determine whether he was asleep or not, but his voice revealed him.
He found a chair to sit on beside the gurney, so he did it; he was going to give him time.
"Hey kid, how are you feeling?"
"..Chris?"
He turned around where he was on the bed and they made eye contact after just a few seconds of searching. Seeing those pieces of gold for eyes now was a higher price than it had ever been before. It had been far too long since last time.
These eyes were enough to catch him off guard, to lose himself to this moment and he had almost forgotten about nodding, but he did eventually; just in case it would be necessary.
"I was wondering when you'd show up."
"Really? How come?"
"Well..," Piers' eyes wandered past Chris' facial features before they flickered once and went back again. "I wanted to thank you."
"For what?"
"You saved me."
The words ran over the older man like a wave, but he didn't want it to be thought of that way for him. He had been rescued by the man who was lying in front of him; facing him, not vice versa. He had made him realize so much in life in such a short amount of time.
Didn't he notice it?
"You didn't expect me to just leave you there, did you?"
"I appreciate it."
Piers embraced the power and traveled a bit on his head; the corners of his mouth turned up slowly and formed did that little smile of his.
It was so unlike a captain to lose control of himself, but he almost had to put restraints not to push further and throw himself over those soft cushions for lips and kiss him already.
Why was he always so damn beautiful?
Suddenly guilt flew over him; a need to explain the actions he had brought himself to do earlier in the facility to him, but he didn't know what he wanted it to come up as yet.
He didn't regret a single bit of it, but he had practically scared him away, and that was something that wasn't even lying upon the list of things he wanted to do.
"Look- about what I said back there.."
"What? Oh- Chris.. It's just normal if you were thinking of someone while in that shithole. I know it wasn't meant to me."
Somehow, he had hoped that it wouldn't have been those words that would have come out of his mouth, but now that was the fact, and the game would have to be played after his rules.
Not even his heartwarming smile could save the intoxication the blood gave his whole body to feel right now.
He hesitated in his own response while giving his emotions enough time to get annoyed at himself in an invisible self for being such a coward he never thought he would be.
"I guess."
But it seems he was.
Piers nodded with a quick motion of his head, turning his gaze downwards and holding it there for a few seconds before starting to change his position and half lie on his back instead of on his side.
His smile had become stiff, he seemed to turn his gaze at everything except Chris, and the feeling of rejection was back at its right place.
What did this mean?
He just didn't know anymore.
"I think I want to be alone for a while, you know.. just rest a bit."
The younger man wouldn't have had to tell him anything to get him to understand it; as a matter of fact, he had almost finished standing up before he had said it.
He didn't understand everything, but he understood this one thing.
"Of course."
Everything else apart from that went very quiet from Chris' side; he turned around and walked towards the door but stopped by it when he heard a hoarse voice coming from behind again.
"Chris, wait- You'll come back later, right?"
"If you want me to."
"Yeah, thanks."
Chris walked out of the room, relieved to have been told that he was expected to come back later but weighed down that things weren't exactly as he wanted them to be.
He walked through the hallway, passing by a couple of doctors, nurses and patiently waiting people before he found the familiar faces in the same spot as they had sat on when he left earlier.
They waved at him to come and sit with them, so he did; it was not like there were many other choices to choose between anyway.
"So, Cap.. Nivans is doing alright?"
Carl set his eyes on his captain, Marco pretended to do something else and Chris alternated between watching Carl and past him to give him the conversation he seemed to have started.
"Yeah, I hope so, pretty much."
"Yeah? No HIV or any other blood disease then?"
"Carl."
Marco made an effort to make it into the conversation as he always did, but it never used to be of any use, so he never did anything more.
"It's nothing like that."
Chris chose to look past him completely, he often said stupid things, but to do it about him in this way was just to go overboard.
"Ya' sure?"
He shook his head, stood up, and walked away without giving any answer in return; something in this style was really not needed right now.
It was getting quiet at the hospital, and what always tends to be dazzled white began to be dimmed. It was still light, of course, but still a bit darker. Chris had found a sort of a balcony on the same floor as the waiting room lie on, so he had chosen to spend his time there for a while.
He waddled himself back and forth; something that seemed to be the only escape from the cold nowadays.
Behind him he heard the tempo beginning to increase; emergency alarm, people running the floor, and generally just panicking.
A nurse's voice that he somehow knew chimed in behind him before he had time to wonder to himself what was going on.
"Mr. Redfield? Oh, there you are! Could you please come with me?"
"What's going on?"
She was stressed, her cheeks were red and his eyes were wide open. She looked worried; like she had done earlier.
"Mr. Nivans is acting quite strange, and, well, he wanted you to come."
"I'm coming."
None of them followed each other's step as they walked, nearly ran, toward Piers' room, Chris couldn't stay behind her when it came to this.
What could be wrong?
The emergency alarms weren't because of him, were they?
"We got a few samples before it started at least, so we're just waiting for the test results now."
He swallowed hard, nodded quickly, watched as she opened the door and followed her gesture to go in first.
The first thing he saw was Piers lying on his back, staring up at something that seemed to be very interesting in the ceiling. At least that looked as good as normal.
He decided to go to the bed, to see what she meant by saying that he was behaving strangely.
"I'm sorry."
He clenched his jaw, his voice was very low, and when his face turned to Chris, the gaze was empty and staring.
"What?"
"I- I should have-"
All he had in his body strained it looked like, he pressed his arms against himself and Chris doesn't really know why, and he surely doesn't know that himself either, but it was probably just to have something to do with them.
"You should have..?"
Suddenly he grabbed Chris' shoulder while he started shaking lightly all over his body; it was visible, and it looked like it hurt him.
"I'm scared."
"Why?"
"Y-you.. ugh."
His eyes rolled back, the grip on his shoulder came loose, he fell back into bed and he began to whimper in pain before a strain of blood ran down his lower lip.
"Piers?"
Chris gently stroked his lower lip with his thumb and looked if it was from there the blood came, but that was not the case.
Luckily, the nurse came back to the room again, this time she had a sort of mask in her hand that got connected to a machine as soon as she saw Piers' medical condition.
"Breathe through this, honey," She looked towards Chris direction while she put the mask on Piers and explained;"I'll be right back."
Chris sat on his right side of the bed and waited until they had eye contact, he looked at him for a while before he realized that Piers had to fight to keep his eyes open, so he realized that it was the mask that did its job.
"You know, Piers, I'm scared too. Terrified, actually, if I'd lose you."
And this was the only time he dared to say something like that.
But considering how he managed to make his eyes look so big for a few seconds before he closed them, maybe it even arrived.
Suddenly she was here again, and she was in the panic she used to be in.ยด
"You'll have to leave now, Sir. We have to bring him into surgery."
