"…yes, sir, that's correct. It's approximately $200.00 for the tuning, and the repair costs would need to be assessed in person."
"How soon can you have it done?"
"Our business hours are—"
"I didn't ask what your business hours are. What is your soonest appointment?"
"Ah—of course—let me see… Friday, at 10am. We would be able to complete the tuning at that time, provided the damage to the instrument does not prevent it from being done. We would need to schedule a second appointment for the repairs."
Edgeworth frowned. Keeping this a surprise would be much more difficult than anticipated, but not impossible. "That's fine." He made a mental note to come up with a reason for Wright to leave his office Friday morning and wondered how he might convince the man to leave it unlocked… He supposed if he were lucky enough, Maya would return from the temple with him. She was always up for a good conspiracy. Working back from memory of having been to the attorney's apartment not long ago, he offered the address to the voice over the phone, committing to the appointment even if the details weren't entirely rock solid quite yet. Just as they were preparing to read the information back to him, a gentle beep beep beep over the line indicated to him that he had a call waiting. "I'm sorry, would you excuse me for one moment? I seem to have a call on the other line."
"Of course, sir."
He pulled his phone away from his ear and noted with no small amount of surprise that it was none other than Larry Butz trying to get a hold of him. He declined the call without a second thought and returned to his conversation, confirming the address and appointment time—
Beep beep beep.
Beep beep beep.
He declined the call again, though a microscopic spark of curiosity bubbled up within him. Larry had never called him back to back before.
"We'll need you to be there to supervise throughout the appointment, of course," the voice warbled on, "it should take approximately sixty to ninety minutes of your time."
"I may not be present, but I should be able to send someone in my stead."
Beep beep beep.
Beep beep beep.
Edgeworth squinted at his phone in disbelief. Three back-to-back calls at…he glanced at his watch. Seven-thirty in the morning? Fortunately, they had covered just about everything they had needed to cover in order to confirm their appointment details, and so he bid a hasty goodbye to the associate on the phone. Curiosity was dangerously close to transitioning into full-blown concern, but he bullied it back in favor of irritation. The odds of Larry calling him for anything other than to irritate him, even in such an insistent manner, were far more likely than any sort of actual emergency. Still… He took a deep breath and answered his call this time, hoping that he was prepared for whatever it was the other man wanted from him.
"What is it, Larry, I'm quite busy—"
The voice that screamed into the phone was panicked, words slurring together in a frenzied rush to get them all out at once. Edgeworth winced and pulled the phone a few inches away from his ear, irritation immediately forgotten.
"Larry, slow down, I can't understand y—"
"It's Nick, Edgey! He's in the hospital! He might already be dead!"
"W-WHAT? What in the world are you talking about!?" A cold sweat settled over him and he crushed the phone to his ear, straining to hear the other man's voice now, praying that this was a practical joke.
"Look, man, it's a long story, and there's no time to tell it to you. Nick ran across a burning bridge and fell like a million feet, and now he's in the hospital, and you need to be there YESTERDAY!"
The prosecutor stared blankly ahead of him, processing this new information. He ran across a burning bridge? What sort of training were they up to!? Despite Larry rambling on in the background, Edgeworth hung up the call and rushed to his jacket, intent on getting to the bottom of things. If Wright really were in that much danger, he wasn't about to waste a single second getting to him. Childishly, he embraced the impudent anger that rose within him, far more comfortable to deal with than the knifelike ache of worry, at the concept of losing Phoenix so soon after he had just gotten the opportunity to have him all to himself…
Toying with the idea of driving himself, he instead pulled his phone back out of his pocket, navigating to Detective Gumshoe's number and stabbing at the call button while he rushed down the stairs two at a time. His heart was pounding harder than he could ever remember, and while distantly he still hoped that this was some sort of cruel prank thought of by his two childhood friends, he wasn't about to risk it. He snarled in frustration as the phone continued to ring and he cursed at it, the words echoing throughout the stairwell.
At long last, Gumshoe answered. "Gumshoe here—"
"Finally! Honestly, detective, this is why your salary keeps getting cut!"
The voice on the other end was more confused than hurt, but a bit of the detective's pout made its way through. "Sir?"
"Be outside the precinct in four minutes in a marked vehicle. We need to get to the hospital right now."
Without waiting for a response, Edgeworth cut the call off and continued to run down the stairs. Terrible images began to flutter across his thoughts at the prospect of what a person might look like after falling from a burning bridge and he gnawed at his bottom lip, tunnel vision honing in on the stairs ahead of him. He tried instead to focus on Phoenix's bright smile or the gentle dip in one of his collarbones or the way his hands flexed on the defense desk in the courtroom, but each image ultimately produced a terrifying alternative of charred flesh and broken bones.
His heart was in his throat as he burst out of the rear exit to the building, turning sharply toward the police headquarters which was thankfully on the next block over. Distantly he could hear the slap of his shoelaces against the pavement indicating that at least one of his shoes had come untied in the face of his unanticipated athletics but he pushed on, dodging around the herd of people at the crosswalk who were lazily beginning their stroll across the street. Thankfully, Detective Gumshoe had obeyed his abrupt order, as Edgeworth spied him up ahead standing next to a running cruiser and rubbing his head.
When he was within yelling distance, the prosecutor called out to him. "In! Drive!"
The detective sputtered for half a second but ripped open the driver's side door even as Edgeworth clambered into the passenger seat, winded and disheveled. Thankfully, Gumshoe seemed to take the hint that time was of the essence and flipped on the lights and siren, carving through the city traffic like a hot knife through butter as a result. The car danced awkwardly through the otherwise congested traffic and as the two made their way toward the emergency department, Edgeworth finally took a moment to suck in a deep, shuddering breath.
"Mr. Edgeworth, sir, what in the world is going on? Are you alright!?" Gumshoe's voice was strikingly similar to how Larry's had sounded over the phone.
The prosecutor tapped his fingertips against his knees impatiently, unable to fully ignore how sticky he felt from sprinting all the way there, and as he spoke, his words came punctuated by gasps for air. "There's been an incident of some sort," gasp, "Wright fell off of a burning bridge," gasp, "and apparently is in quite a terrible state."
"A…a burning what!? Where is there even a bridge that can burn around here?"
Tires screeched around a corner. Edgeworth could see the hospital up ahead. "Dusky bridge, I would imagine," he finally took a moment to truly begin composing himself, minutely comforted by the presence of the glowing red cross that cut through the smog hovering over the city. He ran a shaking hand back through his bangs that had become plastered to his forehead and closed his eyes, forcing himself to take deep breaths. It would help no one if he could barely explain himself. "He took the Fey girls to Hazakura Temple for training of some sort. I don't really have many details."
"Geeze, that guy seems to have even worse luck than I do… I'll drop you off up front. Let me know when you need to leave." The detective whipped the cruiser into the fire lane directly outside of the emergency room doors and cut the siren, leaving only the red and blue alternating lights to paint a terrible picture upon the glass of the hospital lobby doors.
Edgeworth exited with haste and stormed up to the entrance, nearly barging into the automatic doors as they crawled aside for him and he glared at them poisonously before rushing to the receiving desk. A young woman who looked scarcely older than eighteen regarded him coolly. "Name?"
"I'm here to see a man named Phoenix Wright. I'm told he was brought here sometime overnight after he fell from a burning bridge."
The girl snapped her chewing gum and eyed him suspiciously before typing away on her keyboard. He stared at her impatiently. "Are you family?"
He nearly rolled his eyes, frustrated with the bureaucracy. "We're—" he bit down on the next word, wondering exactly what they were now. Even so, he didn't exactly feel inspired to announce that they were dating or lovers or anything of the sort in such a public venue. "We're partners." Great job, Miles, that's practically the same thing…
If the girl caught on to his anxiety, she didn't show it. After a few more agonizingly long seconds of typing information into her computer, she nodded to herself and then snagged a clipboard from a stack of them sitting next to her. As it was handed to him, Edgeworth glared at it, then at her. She was unaffected. "Gonna need you to fill that out and hand it back to me with a valid I.D. Once you've completed that, you'll be able to go back and see him. It looks like he was moved to the ICU a few hours ago."
Relief washed over his body like a tidal wave. If he was moved to the ICU, that meant he probably wouldn't die, at least. Still, he stared down at the clipboard in his hands and tried not to lose his temper. It wasn't exactly like he had hours of time to waste. Fishing his wallet out of his back pocket, he popped the bifold open to reveal a polished brass shield and turned it toward the girl. "I appreciate the information, but can we skip the formalities, miss? I'm afraid I'm a bit pressed for time."
A flicker of surprise wafted across the young lady's face before she shrugged and reached out for the clipboard. In its stead, she handed him a laminated visitor's pass hung from a lanyard that boasted the hospital's name. "Take the elevator over there to the second floor and it'll be the fourth room on the left."
He cringed internally but nodded to her, declining to hang the lanyard around his neck unless he really needed to. A glance around the room showed no obvious signs of there being any stairs available and he grumbled to himself. An elevator for one whole floor… Steeling himself, he approached the offensive machine in question, trying to mask his mounting anxiety by looking as casual as possible. It was only one floor, he mused to himself. How bad could it be? As the seconds of waiting ticked by, however, he felt his fingers begin to tremble in anticipation and he shoved them into his pockets, irritated with himself at being unable to shake such an irrational fear.
Finally the doors split open and he waited patiently for the few occupants to spill out before stepping into the blissfully empty box. He first pressed the "2" button and then compulsively stabbed at the "close door" button probably five or six times before chiding himself and placing his hand back into his pocket, flat against his thigh. In his other hand, the visitor's badge provided a convenient tension relief and as the doors shut, he twiddled fastidiously with the swivel loop to which the lanyard was clipped. The lurch of the elevator rising caught him off-guard and he swallowed his nausea, unable to stop himself from swaying until he leaned against the wall. It's only one floor, Miles. You'll be fine.
As soon as it had begun, it was over with, and he nearly ran out of the unusually spacious elevator as soon as the doors had begun to give way. A few nurses that had gathered in the hallway peered curiously at him for a moment and then returned to their business, unconcerned. Shuddering a bit to shake off the enormity of the last twenty minutes, he counted off the doors ahead of him and made straight for the room the girl in the emergency department had indicated.
He wasn't entirely prepared for what he'd walk in on.
Phoenix Wright was reclined in his hospital bed, surrounded by machines of all sorts. An IV line hung indelicately from a bag that was two-thirds full of saline and dripping rapidly, feeding the fluid down and into the back of the attorney's hand that lay limp on top of the sheets. His eyes were closed and there was a sheen of perspiration from his hairline down that was visible even from the doorway where Edgeworth stood, unable to move. A hideous bruise that began somewhere in the man's thick black hair had traveled down over his eyebrow and temple, mottling the flesh in terrible hues of purple, green, and yellow. The prosecutor frowned, wondering what other injuries the man had sustained.
As he approached, he could see that the defense attorney's chest was rising and falling in rhythmic, peaceful slumber and he let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. Beside him was the man's beaten leather messenger bag, stuffed unusually full, waiting faithfully should its contents need to be accessed. A plastic cup of water was sat beside it oozing condensation from the ice within that was rapidly melting. Edgeworth quickly located a chair and dragged it to the man's bedside before sitting in it, unable to fully rid himself of the tension he felt even now that he could physically see that the other man was alive. Upon closer inspection, Phoenix was actively shivering even in his sleep, and the prosecutor found himself unable to resist reaching out and pulling the blankets up over the attorney's body, feeling unusually protective.
Unexpectedly, the man stirred and opened his eyes just wide enough that Edgeworth could see that they were largely unfocused. A weak, inquisitive noise escaped from the brunette, causing the prosecutor's pounding heart to sink. "It's me, Wright. It's Edg—it's Miles."
Blue eyes rolled haphazardly before Phoenix's face scrunched in on itself, taut with the effort of waking up. At long last, the injured man finally relaxed a bit and opened his eyes anew, focused properly on his guest. "You came."
"Of course I came. Larry called half an hour ago and told me what happened. Well, sort of. What in the world were you thinking?" It was all he could do to keep his voice quiet, much less calm.
A weak laugh bubbled out of the other man as he closed his eyes and rolled his head away from Edgeworth so that it was resting square on the pillow. "You should know," he took a deep, shuddering breath that sounded as though it were sucked through a drinking straw, "that I don't do a lot of that under pressure."
Despite the seriousness of the situation, the prosecutor found himself chuckling at the remark. "You'll live, then, I imagine?"
Phoenix sucked in another long, labored breath that turned into a series of phlegmy coughs that wracked his body. Edgeworth winced. When the attorney finally settled, the prosecutor reached for the cup of water and held it out to his partner so that the straw would reach him. Phoenix sipped hungrily at it for some time. After draining most of the cup, he settled back against the pillow, exhausted. "Few bumps and bruises, fever, bad cold. Docs say I should be alright with some bed rest."
"That bridge must be a fifty foot drop into the river, Wright. You escaped with only a 'few bumps and bruises'?"
Even as sick as he was, Phoenix couldn't help but smile. "Guess luck was on my side."
Edgeworth snorted. "I'll say. You're the luckiest unlucky man I know…" He found himself wanting to reach out and hold the other man's hand and, for once, indulged the urge. The attorney's hand was ice-like, prompting a frown from the prosecutor as he reached out with his other hand to rub at the chilly flesh. "What really happened?"
"Maya…" Phoenix grimaced and swallowed hard, fighting against what felt like sandpaper in his throat. "Something's happened to Maya. There was a murder. She's trapped…" Another series of coughs rippled through him and his body curled with the effort, each cough bringing forth a violent spasm and a gasp for oxygen. "I couldn't…couldn't make it across. The bridge was on fire. I had to try anyway."
Edgeworth leaned in toward his partner, trying desperately to hear him and to make sense of what he had to say, but it was immensely difficult. Between the near-whisper tone of the man's voice and the actual words he was forcing out, he wasn't making a great deal of sense. Lifting one of his hands away from Phoenix's for a moment, he pressed the inside of his wrist to the attorney's forehead, nearly recoiling at the burning hot temperature that answered his touch. With a fever this high, I'd be surprised if he even knew what he was saying, much less how much of it is true… "Phoenix…"
"Wait, Miles." Blue eyes hazy with exhaustion and illness met with a gentle gray and held fast. "I need you to do something for me."
"Anything," he murmured, surprising himself.
"In my bag, there's…there's a folder. It has my notes in it. I need you to take it." Phoenix's eyelids were drooping threateningly, and Edgeworth was half expecting the man to fall asleep mid-sentence. "Read through it. You'll need it."
"I'll… I'll need it? What on Earth for?"
Phoenix weakly extracted his hand from Edgeworth's and he reached over, searching delicately through one of the front pockets on his messenger bag. As he dug around, he continued, "the EMTs were kind enough to grab my things and put them in the ambulance for me, isn't that neat?"
Edgeworth waited patiently until Phoenix apparently found what he was looking for, not wanting to risk further derailment by answering him. The brunette sagged against his pillow, spent from even that much effort, and pressed something small into the prosecutor's waiting palm. Instead of pulling away, Phoenix then curled his fingers around Edgeworth's closed fist and squeezed gently. "You'll…need that, too."
Even before he opened his hand, he had a sinking feeling that he knew what had just been handed to him. Staring down at the glinting pin, he shook his head. "You aren't seriously suggesting—"
"There is no one else, Miles." Phoenix waited until Edgeworth grudgingly slipped the pin into his pants pocket and placed his hand back on the bed, then laced his fingers with his lover's. The contact was chaste and reassuring, even though the prosecutor was pretty sure it was he who was supposed to be comforting Phoenix… The defense attorney squeezed gently once more and smiled at him, warm and genuine even through the fever blazing throughout his body. "Once upon a time, you wanted to be a defense attorney. Now's your chance. I know you can do it."
"A young boy's dreams that died long ago. I'm a prosecutor, Wright. A rather well-known one, might I add. Who in this city—in this entire county—is going to believe that I'm anything else?"
Phoenix chuckled and lifted Edgeworth's hand, placing a gentle, fire-hot kiss against his knuckles. "You'll think of something. I know you will. You always do." Blue eyes rolled anew with the effort of staying awake and Edgeworth could feel the man's grip weakening with each passing second. It must have taken a great deal of energy for him to discuss even that much. Before Phoenix knocked out entirely, Edgeworth glanced over his shoulder to ensure their privacy, then leaned forward to press a kiss against the man's too-hot forehead. By the time he leaned back, the defense attorney was out cold.
Sighing dramatically at how complicated his life had become since returning, the prosecutor rubbed at the bridge of his nose, wondering what it was that he could do to resolve this situation. There was no chance of going in front of the usual judge assigned to criminal affairs, although the old man was often so daft that Edgeworth would almost believe that all it would take to convince him that he'd switched sides would be a few well-placed suggestions and perhaps a complicated analogy. All things considered, he'd rather not risk it, either way. He could distantly recall that the judge had a brother who was involved in the courts circuit and wondered if he'd be able to convince him to oversee the case until Wright's return.
More pressing, however, would be his opponent. There wasn't a single prosecutor in the state who didn't know his name, and a great deal of the local ones had actually mentored underneath him for some period of time. Name after name filtered through his thoughts as he watched Phoenix sleep peacefully, still holding onto his hand, chill ebbing slightly from Edgeworth's body heat. The longer he pondered, the more dismayed he became as it was apparent there was only one possibility to pull this off. Even then, it was a long shot.
Shaking his head at it all, he used his free hand to pull his cell phone from his pocket and quickly navigated to the speed dial. Selecting the one name he never would have predicted he'd need to call for something of this nature, he waited patiently for the stern, feminine voice on the other end.
"Yes, hello, Franziska. I have an enormous favor to ask of you."