Steady deterioration was noticeable each and every day after that... And while Samar had conceded that not only was she fighting off an infection, but that such a thing put them both in a difficult position too, she continued to fight the idea of going to a hospital.
Aram didn't care if he was discovered helping her now. Samar was sick and there was little he could do about it besides clean her wound every morning and every evening, and offer some leftover antibiotics that he found in his medicine cabinet from a previous illness of his own -not that either of those things did much to help. He was adamant that she needed proper medical attention and as far as Aram was concerned, if him being caught helping Samar was the price of keeping her alive, that was a price he was more than happy to pay for the woman he loved.
Samar however, felt the opposite. No longer could she amble about the apartment as she had grown used to doing. Now, she only just managed to sit upright for more of the day than spent laying down, but still she remained as stubborn as Aram did. She was adamant that her body could fight off the infection; she just had to wait it out, and if that was what it took to stop Aram's life from being torn apart for helping her, that was the price Samar was determined to pay.
At least, by that point, the tension between them had faded away once more. Instead, there was a fearful anxiety that lingered between them, drawing them ever closer as they fought the dilemma of who was trying to keep whom safe, and at exactly what cost. At night they clung to one another in their sleep, not sure what to do, while during the day Aram's mind ran endless circles everywhere but what he was supposed to be focusing on at his desk. Each day he waited for the moment to arrive where he could go home again, not sure what he would find when he got there –or if he even wanted to know until all of a sudden, he did.
Somehow, Samar hung on longer than he expected.
But, as Aram returned to his apartment for the fifth day of her steady deterioration, there was an anxious anticipation twisting his gut into knots, even more so than it usually did.
The apartment was quiet but then again, it had been quiet each of the last few evenings when he arrived home to Samar resting on the couch.
This time, however, Samar wasn't on the couch.
Aram furrowed his brow, gently dropping his bag from his shoulder to the floor beside the counter, and turning to move towards the bedroom.
He barely made it two steps into the apartment hallway, before Aram froze in his tracks in devastated horror. His gut twisted with such intensity, it felt like he was about to throw up.
There was Samar, not resting on the couch or taking a nap in the bedroom, but instead passed out on the hallway floor.
Aram lurched towards her on the ground, his heart racing as he quickly checked over her vital signs. She was breathing, but it was slow and her pulse was weak. Aram could feel the tears already stinging the corners of his eyes as he shook her shoulders and stroked her cheek, desperately trying to wake her... But Samar didn't respond. Steeling himself, and tightly clutching Samar's hand, Aram tugged his cell phone from his trouser pocket.
Samar needed medical attention... And when faced with a criminal dilemma, there was only one criminal Aram knew to call.
He only needed to press one button to speed dial... And as the phone began to ring, two very distinct words flashed on the screen as the name of who he was calling.
Nick's Pizza.
/*/*/*/*
It was Mr Kaplan who arrived first, though every second from trying to explain the situation to Reddington and Dembe over the phone all in a jumble, felt like a blur. Aram managed to disentangle himself from being protectively wrapped around Samar's unconscious form, just long enough to answer the door and let Mr Kaplan in. After that, the blur only intensified.
Somehow, Mr Kaplan managed to extract them from the apartment building without being seen, guiding Aram towards a car in a back alley while he carried Samar in his arms, still desperately begging her under his breath to wake up. In the back of the car, his focus was so intently on her, that Aram paid no attention to where the car took them or how long they were driving. Only once they arrived at a warehouse with a full, portable, medical suite set up inside, did Aram pause to wonder where in the District they were.
By then, Samar was lifted onto a bed and wheeled away from him by a team of strangers in scrubs, their faces hidden by sterile, surgical masks.
Aram was forced to wait, pacing back and forth just on the outside of the suite's plastic sheeting walls. The bright lights from inside glared through the plastic into his eyes, and the beeping of the machines echoed in his ears. He had no sense of just how long he stood there; minutes felt like hours and when he craned his neck to glance at the clock across the room that read 9.42pm, Aram was sure time was moving backwards.
If Aram did the maths correctly in his head, remembering what time he had arrived home, and guessing how long it had taken for Mr Kaplan to arrive and then again, how long it had taken them to arrive at the warehouse, they had only been there perhaps all of fifteen minutes.
But it felt so much longer.
The rushing blur of medical staff was over quickly despite that feeling; once Samar was wheeled in, and administered both strong antibiotics and general fluids –to stave off dehydration and to try to bring her vital signs back up to normal levels- all through a drip, Mr Kaplan re-emerged, with many of the medical staff trickling slowly out behind her. Aram glanced up, almost too nervous to meet the gaze that stared back at him so sternly through her glasses.
'Samar is stable for now, dearie,' she commented softly, 'but she'll need to stay here under observation and on the antibiotics until the infection clears.' There was something about the expression on Mr Kaplan's face that to Aram, was vaguely reminiscent of an affectionately stern parent, older extended relative, or perhaps even an elementary school teacher. It was as if she cared enough to be disappointed by his choices, but wasn't angered by them or likely to scold him. It was like those moments where the controlled, gently unimpressed tone was far more frightening than any yell ever could have been.
'Is she going to be ok?' Aram asked. His voice was quiet, anxious, and if anything, he wasn't sure how he was managing to find the words at all in the face of that stern gaze. His eyes flickered for a moment, peering past Mr Kaplan through the clear walls at Samar's still unconscious form, no longer blocked from view by the medical team.
'Hopefully.' Mr Kaplan's softly warning tone prompted Aram's gaze to snap straight back to her. 'Whether or not the antibiotics entered her system early enough to stop the infection doing any further damage, is something we won't know until we see what happens next. If we caught it in time, it should start to clear soon enough and she'll be just fine.'
'...And if not?' Aram bit his lip as the fearful question escaped him. Mr Kaplan stared back at him silently for a moment, pursing her lips.
'She should have had medical attention sooner,' she observed, all too matter of factly. It failed to escape Aram's attention that Mr's Kaplan's reply barely answered the question, and for the umpteenth time that evening, it felt as if his heart was plummeting straight back down into the deepest depths of his stomach. 'There's little we can do now besides waiting and seeing,' Mr Kaplan added, gentler this time. 'You can go and sit with her now. Raymond should be here soon, and I have a rotation of nurses on standby to make sure one of them is here with her at all times in case she takes a turn for the worse.'
Aram could only bring himself to give a short, appreciative nod –not that he wasn't grateful, because he certainly was, but because he was now so desperate to be by Samar's side that he was struggling to stop himself from lurching past Mr Kaplan long enough to express his gratitude with any gesture further.
Somehow, the older woman that he towered over understood and despite her grim expression, she brushed a gentle hand against his arm, prompting him towards the door in that plastic walled suite.
And with that, she was gone before Aram even realised that she had moved. Far more focused on Samar however, Aram pushed through the plastic sheet door, gaze fixated on the slow rise and fall of Samar's chest as she breathed. According to the machine, her pulse was back to where it was supposed to be, but that did little to make Aram feel any better. Not taking his eyes off her for a second, he lowered himself onto the chair by her bedside. He reached out, gently brushing the hair out of her eyes with his fingertips and tucking it behind her ear. Next they moved slowly across, softly stroking her cheek, then finally coming to rest around her hand.
Somewhere in the back of his mind as he watched her, it occurred to Aram that he was in too deep, but that anxiety weighed little compared to the anxiety of waiting to see if Samar's infection cleared up.
He couldn't lose her now.
After all the ups and downs of the last week or so, that would be a particularly cruel twist of fate.
Though, Aram couldn't help but wonder if that was the price that he had to pay for having found her so many months earlier and everything else that had happened since then. The guilt sat heavy in his gut, wishing that he had fought harder to convince her to seek medical attention earlier –regardless of the fact that he knew Samar was stubborn and would have fought him back even harder still.
Sitting there quietly beside her now, staring into space, felt useless but at the same time, Aram was reluctant to leave her there. At some point he would have to; it wasn't as if he could take a personal day off work due to a loved one being ill. As far as his team was concerned, all in his life was normal, not filled with an overwhelming stress over a former assassin that he loved but who was sick in an illegal warehouse hospital. Aram had to go to work as usual the next day and every day after that while Samar remained in that hospital, and that meant he needed to keep some semblance of a regular sleep schedule.
Every moment outside of that and work, however, he planned to sit with her there. Even if he struggled to say it out loud at all, let alone to her face, he loved her.
And that meant being there with her as long as he could, all the while the space of empty air and beeping machines, was with endless anxious thoughts spiralling around in his brain.
'How is she?' A dry, quiet voice interrupted Aram's train of thought. His head whipped up in an instant, looking up at the doorway in the thick, plastic walls in surprise. Reddington stood there, apparently having approached without Aram even noticing.
'Uh,' Aram warily began, 'they're not sure yet.' Reddington's silent gaze in response bore into Aram's skull even more than Mr Kaplan's did, and he miserably bowed his head.
'You've been hiding a great deal of things from the people around you lately, Aram,' the older man slowly spoke again. His voice was soft, but his tone was sharp and all too knowing. 'I had a feeling you were keeping something back from Agent Ressler's investigation, but not this.' Aram was almost too nervous to look up again. Instead, without even realising it, his finger clung ever so slightly tighter, and more protective, around Samar's.
'...You mean, that she was staying with me?' His voice caught in his throat as he asked the question.
'Not that.' There it was; Reddington's trademark lip curling up with his usual smugness at knowing things people didn't expect. 'I guessed that much a while ago, though not as soon as I should have, I must admit.' The smug expression faded ever so slightly, replaced with the tiniest hint of curiosity. 'What I didn't realise, however, was just how deeply you're in love with her.' If nothing else served to prompt Aram to properly meet his gaze once more, that certainly did. He stared across the room at Reddington, eyes too wide with cautious surprise to squint at the bright hospital room lights.
'I'm not-' he hurriedly tried to counter, but Reddington cut him off.
'-Aram,' Reddington mused, 'you were already in a deep hole of secrecy and questionable dealings just by hiding her from your team-' that usual knowing expression slowly etched its way across his face once again '-but now you've called in my team to keep her alive, rather than risk calling your own and taking her to a real hospital.' Reddington paused for a beat or two, allowing that to sink in before speaking again, softer this time; 'last I checked, people only do things that drastic for those that they love.'
Aram's shoulders sank. Reddington knew everything.
Head bowed once more, and face crumpled, Aram refocused his gaze on Samar.
'Are you going to tell Liz?' He asked, his voice barely audible. If Reddington knew everything, he also held all the cards. Everything before had been dependent on ensuring that the secret of their friendship was never discovered but if Reddington now knew it as well, everything became dependent on whether or not he would choose to keep it to himself.
And every favour garnered from Reddington always came at a price.
Reddington, however, broke into a knowing smile.
'And lose the best technical analyst I know to prison for harbouring a fugitive, rather than allow him to stay on the team taking down the names on my list?' He mused, 'turning you in serves me no practical purpose, Aram-' Reddington tilted his head for a split second, contemplating that '-not yet, anyway. I once owed you a great debt... And now it's simply your turn to owe me one.' Aram's eyes widened again, but Reddington turned on his feet in the door, ready to leave it at that. The number four on the FBI's most wanted list simply glanced back over his shoulder at Aram, breaking into a wry smile as he murmured one last time; 'I'm sure I'll find a way to collect on it eventually.'
A/N: Next up; 'The Small World we Live in'.
It seems last week's round of guessing was another tricky one; all three guesses were different, but all interesting! Shoutouts to BJames and LoriRon (ao3) for guessing Red's return, and another shoutout to my BAE (ao3) for guessing Mr Kaplan's appearance as well! :D
Now for the next chapter, guess who cheats at Scrabble? The questions about the small world they find themselves in are too spoiler-y so we'll go with Scrabble instead :P