The roads were clear of all the snow from just days ago, but the plows had pushed it all into the corners, making each turn slightly more treacherous. Parking lots had been overtaken by small mountains of the white stuff, now tainted by exhaust fumes and dirt that turned large clumps of it brown.
Gabe was extra careful, watching for patches of black ice or anything else that might have caused Zelda's accident. The doctors hadn't disclosed much to him other than her current state in the hospital. How long had she been there before they started going through her things to find an ID? Was she really okay?
"Link?"
"Hrmm?" was all he could manage, leaning against the window.
"Have you prepared yourself? We're not going in there with much information, and I need to know you're ready for whatever."
"I'm fine."
Gabe let it go, seeing that Link wasn't ready for anything yet. Instead he focused more intently on the road than he ever had in his life.
Link, on the other hand, couldn't breathe. He could smell the stinking burn of crushed metal and the reek of the engine. He'd gotten over that smell years ago when he started working for Gabe, but the first time he'd breathed it in, he'd nearly fallen apart, pressing himself against the wall just to remind himself that there wasn't a piece of metal lodged in his back. He had to do it now, straightening up so he could feel every inch of his shoulder touching the seat behind him.
He cursed his brain for its insistence on reminding him of an event he couldn't remember. His brain didn't. His body did.
Distantly, like a whisper, he thought he could hear the remnants of a scream, and when he closed his eyes, he couldn't place if it was his, or if it was Mikau's voice. But the memory hurt his throat, so he figured it had to have been his.
Link shook his head to try to wipe the fragmented memories from his mind. He could feel the air that Gabe had turned on, despite the cold air outside. It was aimed straight at his face. He hadn't even noticed, but the car had stopped moving, and they were in the hospital parking lot.
"You ready?"
Link ran his hands through his hair, fisting it for a moment before letting it all go. "Yeah. You coming?"
"As far as they'll let me."
"Okay."
Gabe hurried behind Link, waiting as the automatic doors opened far slower than either of them would have liked. But he was surprised when Link didn't run straight to the desk to ask where Zelda was.
Instead, Link turned to Gabe. "What if they don't let me in?"
"We'll get you in."
Leaning on the info desk, Link felt his whole body shake, remembering the words "deceased" being repeated to him over and over as he laid in his own hospital bed. Doctors trying to make him hear what they were saying to him for the fortieth time.
"Ze—"
He swallowed, unable to do it.
Gabe rested a hand on Link's shoulder and gently moved him aside. "Hello. Could you direct us to the emergency department?"
The man behind the desk gave clear instructions, none of which made it through to Link. Instead, he blindly followed Gabe until they reached another desk. "We were called regarding Zelda Harkinian?"
The woman looked between them and then typed something into her computer. "Follow me, and I'll find one of her nurses. Are you her father?"
"No. I'm… his father," he pointed to Link. Better than saying he was his employer. "He's her boyfriend."
"Okay," she said, stopping in front of a drawn curtain. "She's in here. I don't think she's conscious yet, but you can wait inside, and I'll grab Celia for you. She'll explain more."
The nurse left, and Gabe waited for Link to move. "Need a minute to do this alone?"
Link shook his head. "Actually, can you go first? Just… make sure she's not dead."
Gabe went to logically explain how they'd have been in the room with her already if she was, but he could tell Link's brain wasn't really in the mood for logic, so instead, he nodded and headed inside.
Link paced for a few moments, hearing Gabe say something to him. He wasn't exactly sure what it was, but he knew Gabe would've come out if she wasn't okay.
So, Link pushed the curtain aside and stepped in.
He held his breath when he took her in. There were bruises on her face: one under her eye, a red nose, a large one on her chin. Her lip was split, and there was a large red line that disappeared into her hospital gown, one that was clearly from her seatbelt. Her arm was propped up on a pillow, bruised as well, especially around her wrist.
But the beeping on the monitor looked steady, not that he really knew for sure. It didn't sound too slow or too erratic. And her blood pressure was a little low, but it didn't seem like she was ready to crash. He wasn't sure if her heartrate numbers were normal, but there were no alarms going off.
Link spun around at the sound of the curtain jingling, and a nurse stepped inside. She had dark hair tied back into a tight bun, but there were loose strands sticking out wildly, and there were dark circles under her eyes. She walked with a slight limp, but it was one distinctly held in her back from standing on her feet all day rather than from a physical injury. Despite all that, she greeted them with a smile, as if she were fresh on her shift. "Hi, nice to meet you. I'm Celia, I've been taking care of Zelda today. Which one of you did I speak with on the phone?"
Gabe extended his hand. "That would be me. I'm Gabe. This is Link; it was his phone."
"Okay, have a seat. I need to go over a few things with you. First off, do either of you happen to have any of her identification? Not that we don't trust your word, but we'd like to have that to confirm her identity."
Link couldn't look away from Zelda, even when he spoke. "No. She works here though."
"Oh!" Celia gasped. "Do you know her ID number here?"
"No. She works for Impa Sage though, in that program you guys have where high schoolers can work here around their schedules."
Celia wrote that down. "Okay, I'll see if I can get ahold of her. In the meantime, can you verify what information we have from her past chart?"
Link glanced once at Gabe before moving closer to Zelda. "Can you tell me what happened?"
Celia smiled, a soft comforting thing rather than anything of joy. "Not much, hon. She was in a car accident and the ambulance brought her here. She was unconscious when they got to her, she woke up for about a minute, and then we gave her something to help her sleep when she got here. The results did just come back for her arm, so we're just waiting for the doctor to finish with other patients before he comes in here to get her into a cast."
"Cast?"
"Yeah, hon, she'll need a cast. We're waiting on the rest of her lab work now, but I can't share any of the results with you without her permission."
"But she's okay? She's going to wake up?"
Celia set her chart down and looked Link squarely in the eyes. "Yes. She will. We haven't even had the chance to ask her anything. We don't know the whole story yet. Only what the labs, witnesses, and the bruises are telling us. Are you okay to help me verify a few things?"
"Yeah," he breathed out, taking the seat beside Zelda. She separated him and Nurse Celia, allowing him to keep Zelda in his peripheral vision. He wanted to hold her hand, but one was broken, propped up on the pillows, and the other had needles taped to the back of her hand, and he was too afraid to jostle them.
Celia asked questions like Zelda's birthday, her address—which he fumbled over at first before giving her actual home address—her cell phone, and emergency contacts, which, as it turned out, one had been Link. He wondered if she'd done that when she got the job at the hospital. It made his hand itch for hers even more.
Some of the questions, he struggled over. Her medications, which she was less forthcoming about, consisted of vague descriptions from him of what he knew. "She has birth control in her arm. When she has a bad headache, she takes something. She takes salt pills sometimes. I carry some. Do you need to see? Will that help? I know she takes a few more, but she's private about it."
"That's fine," Celia said, "You did a great job. This is perfect until we can ask her. I'll be back soon with the doctor for the cast, okay?"
"Can…" He looked away to control his breathing. "Can I hold her hand? Or will that do something to all the… stuff."
"I think it'll be good for you to hold her hand. Everything is in there nice and tight, so you don't need to walk on eggshells. I'll try to get ahold of Nurse Impa, okay?"
Link was already in the seat, maneuvering his hand into hers around the tubes.
"Yeah, thank you very much, Nurse Celia," Gabe said, taking the second seat on the other side.
Link closed his eyes for a long moment before opening them, making sure that everything was how he imagined it, and that he wasn't holding a cold hand, but a warm one. He needed to remind himself to listen to the steady monitors, and watch the blanket move up and down with every breath she took.
Gabe watched him closely. Red eyes, fighting back tears that he couldn't bring himself to control. Hand shaking, despite holding hers. "Link," Gabe said, leaning forward until Link managed to make eye contact. "She's asleep right now. She doesn't need you to be calm or strong. When she wakes up, she might need you to be, but she doesn't right now. So do what you need to do. Goddess knows I won't judge you. You've seen me break down enough times."
"Not in years," Link said, running his thumb over Zelda's skin. "I'm a fucking wreck all the time."
"You're not. You went through enough shit in an incredibly short time. If I were you, I'd have ended up back in jail for lashing out. But you chose a different path, and you're sticking with it. Sometimes, things boil over. Even the best chefs leave the stove on too high sometimes. Things spill over the edge. Doesn't mean anything's ruined."
"Poetic."
"I'm a damn poet laureate, don't you know?"
Link managed a chuckle before biting his lip. "Did I see them after?"
"Mik and your dad? Yeah. You saw Mikau's face in the hospital just before they took him away. And you saw your dad a few times until they took him away too."
"Were you there the whole time?"
"No. I was running things back home during a lot of it. I was back and forth, here and there, you know?"
Link nodded and tentatively ran a finger away from one of Zelda's bruises. "Did we all look like this?"
"Worse."
With a sharp breath, Link felt the cool line of a tear on both his cheeks and sniffled. "I just want her to fucking wake up. She just looks… I mean, I can see her breathing, and that machine isn't rigged, but I can't stop shaking. I need to see her wake up to know this isn't some fucking nightmare. It's like… I can't separate today and that day."
Gabe set the box of tissues down beside Link and returned to his seat. "What do you need from me?"
"Nothing. This one's on me." He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against their joined hands. With his other arm, he tucked it under his eyes so any tears would get soaked into his sleeve before making it down his face.
Some time later, they heard as the chipper voice of Nurse Celia returned. "Hello, this is Dr. Borville. He's on Zelda's case, and he's going to wrap her wrist in a brace, okay? If you just want to step over here while he works."
"Come on," he heard Gabe whisper, hand on his shoulder to guide him away.
Celia noticed Link's red face, and hers dropped immediately. "Hey, hon, she's going to be okay, you know. She's banged up a bit, so it looks scary, but she'll be alright."
Link pinched the bridge of his nose and nodded, wiping any remaining tears from his eyes. "She wants to be a nurse."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. She'll have to deal with crazy people like me."
Celia made a face and placed a hand on his arm. "You're not crazy. You know something, you're my favorite kind of family member to 'deal with' because I know how loved my patients are at home. Sometimes, when they're here alone and they go home alone, I want to just give them a hug and let them know that we're here, but they leave us and go back. At least when she leaves, I have the peace of mind knowing that she's going to be well cared for while she recovers."
There was a ringing sound then, and Link's eyes darted to her monitor. He tried to remember all of the numbers, to see what changed, but they all looked the same. His heartrate picked up, and he stumbled backwards towards the curtain.
But Gabe had his arm. "It's her phone. It's just her phone."
"Makeela?" Celia said, glancing at the screen.
Link reached out his shaking hand, and Gabe gave Link the phone.
"H-hello?" he said, stepping out of the little makeshift room, still able to see Zelda, but far enough to not disturb anyone.
"Oh, Goddess! She's with you!? I was so worried, and she went to see you!"
"What?"
"She said she was going to come back for her wallet and never did! I was like 'maybe she went to Hyrule Energized and saw someone' but she has no wallet! Then she called me and I missed it, then I called back and she missed it. Ugh. Let me talk to her please?"
"M-Makeela," Link tried, breathing deeply before finding his voice again. "She's… she's with me, but we're not home. We're at the hospital."
"Why? It's her day off."
Freezing up, Link wasn't sure how to answer that. How had Gabe told him?
"Makeela, she got into a… a car accident. She's okay. She's banged up, but she's okay."
"Oh gods, let me talk to her."
Link's hand shook harder as he held the phone to his ear. His eyes were glued to Zelda, where the doctor was working on her arm. "They gave her something to sleep. They won't tell me much other than she's okay. I'm with her now though. Me and Gabe. The hospital went through her phone and called because she had no ID."
"Oh gods!" He could hear the jangle of keys. "Which hospital?"
"Mipha's Grace. Bring her ID. Just go into the ER and they'll tell you her room. Or call my phone and I'll just bring you to her."
"Okay."
The phone beeped in his ear as the signal cut out. Link took a breath and watched Zelda.
What was the one thing she wanted more than anything else? What more could he do for her?
He bit his lip and scrolled through her phone before tapping on a name and holding the phone to his ear.
The line rang and rang until there was a brief click. "Hi, you've reached the office of Arina Harkinian. Please leave your name, number, and a brief message, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can."
Link cursed and hung up, scrolling a little further. He tried again. "Hi there, you've reached the personal phone number of Arina Harkinian. I'm probably in a meeting, so please leave a brief message and I'll get back to you."
"Fucking hell," Link muttered, hanging up again, scrolling a little more in her contacts and tried again. And it rang and rang. "This is the office of Ramus Harkinian. I'm not available at the moment but your call is important to me. Please leave your name, number, and the reason for your call and I'll call you back as soon as possible."
No wonder Zelda felt frustrated. It wasn't even like Link was calling from a strange number; it was their estranged daughter's phone. Suddenly, he realized why he was one of her emergency contacts, and not her parents. With his next shot, he tried her father's personal phone. And was unsurprisingly met with: "Hello, you've reached the voice mailbox of Ramus Harkinian. Please leave your message after the beep."
Link shoved the phone into his pocket and went up to Gabe. "Makeela is on her way over. She has Zelda's ID. Looks like she left it at Makeela's house and was headed back to get it when she got into the accident."
Gabe noticed Link's different posture and crossed his arms. "What else?"
Shoving his hands into his pockets to feel at her phone, Link sighed. "I tried calling her parents. Do you think that's a terrible idea? Should I keep trying them?"
"Do you think she'd want them here?"
"I do. And if they're not here and she finds out I called, I don't know if she'll forgive them. Should I erase the calls on her phone?"
"Every family is different. I don't know the right answer, but I think you do."
"I've never had to do this before."
Gabe rested a hand on Link's shoulder, both of them watching Zelda's wrist being wrapped up and then braced. It wasn't a cast that anyone could sign, which had him at least hopeful that it might be off faster than the other kind would have been.
"No, you haven't. But you're doing good. No matter what, you're doing good. Maybe I'll make you my emergency contact too."
Link snorted and swallowed hard. "Who is yours?"
"My brother. You know where his number is in the shop, right?"
"I do. Pip does too."
"Well, let's hope you don't need to use it. Though, he does like to donate money, so use it if you ever need to fundraise or something."
Chuckling, Link crossed his arms tightly across himself. His smile fell as he watched Zelda and the doctor. "She's not Mikau."
"No, she's not."
Fisting his hair again, Link groaned. "I need a cigarette."
"Don't we all?"
Link's hand climbed up his arm to rest on the patch beneath the fabric of his shirt, tracing its outline absently.
"I don't know what to do."
"You will, Link. If you want a cigarette, if you want to call her parents… you'll know what to do as soon as you go to do it."
Shifting from foot to foot, Link let out a long sigh.
Gabe threw his arm around Link's neck comfortingly. "Adulting is fun, isn't it?"
"Oh yeah, so fun."
A/N: I'M FINALLY ON VACATION! I MADE IT! THAT MEANS THAT THERE WILL (most likely) BE FASTER CHAPTERS! I should have the next one done before Christmas Eve, and then after the holidays, things will be able to calm down to a point where I can actually write like I used to! Watch me be jinxing myself and I just can't write because writers' block or something!
Reviews: Scarlet Curls: Yeah, I definitely went the red herring route! Didn't want to give that one away too soon! Oracle: YASSS I HAVE BEEN MISSING THE ANGST SO MUCH! DK21 XcL: Hahahaha me too, honestly! But yassss bring on that tension! Things have been too happy here for too long! ElenaGilbert24: Yeah, poor Zelda just wants her parents! And she's at an age where they're still around, as in she could still go to them if things hadn't gone crazy at home. And she's been fairly sheltered up to now, so she's overwhelmed with it all at this point. And Link! The poor thing, as a writer, he's so easy to torture! CriticalOptimist: Let that wound BURN! But YASSS Makeepit! lol! Roanjonker184: Thanks! I super swear, I am going back to On a Cloud and a Dream! I'm going to finish this one first though, because terrible things happen to my fics when I try to write more than one long fic at a time (my Ao3 page has the proof with a story I started almost immediately after going on hiatus with Cloud/Dream and am only on chapter 14 all this time later after working on three other long fics in the meantime! Bad things, I say!)
