Waiting...
He didn't understand why people were so scared of hospitals. They should have seen the medical procedures from a couple of centuries ago, now *that* was something to be afraid of.
However beneath the pristine cleanliness and forced pleasantries of the staff lay an edge of morbidity. The bleakness of the stark white waiting area where he stood alone conveyed better the worry and fear of all those people who had waited here before him, hoping for some news of their loved ones from the I.C.U.
Even with his Zen patience he was starting to get irritated. After an hour of sitting on the flimsy, plastic chairs he had stood up and begun to pace back and forth in front of the hospital's garish vending machines, out of place in their brightness. He knew he should go and find Cordelia or Gunn but he couldn't risk leaving in case there was news.
He had finally settled at the edge of the waiting area, looking at the tastefully decorated reception at the end of the hall. He watched the small, skeleton staff of doctors and various other hospital workers, hurrying in and out of rooms or with their heads buried in charts. Other than that he was the only other person here, even in a large hospital like this, in a city like LA, Tuesday nights were pretty slow. He checked his watch for the hundredth time in the last 30 minutes. 2 am, still a few hours till sunrise.
The smell of human blood smeared down the front of his shirt and on his palms, imperceptible to most, was starting to drive him to distraction. Despite this he had refused to change clothes or even wash his hands. And despite the quietness of the corridor he was pretty sure that in a makeshift operating room down the hall there would be half the staff from this branch of the hospital, working to replace the leaking fluids from that he'd heard two excited med. students describe as "the best case of the night!" One of the waiting room's now splintered chairs showed the evidence of his attempt to restrain the impulse to relocate the young mens' mouths to the other side of their faces.
His minds eye once again returned to the image of doctors barking orders to nurses and orderlies over a body rapidly bleeding out onto the linoleum. Or maybe they had already called it...
Shaking himself to physically remove the thoughts from his mind as he turned around and almost banged into Cordelia and a young female doctor.
"Angel! I've been looking for you all over," Cordelia exclaimed. "Gunn's waiting in triage, you wouldn't believe how long we've..." she trailed off, seeing his sombre expression, realising maybe this wasn't the time of the place for complaining.
"How are you doing?" Angel asked, his gruff tone softening. She reached up, subconsciously rubbing the single suture over the shallow gash in her otherwise flawless face.
"Not too bad," the brunette replied. "But note to self, if you ever drive through a warehouse wall in a convertible, remember to have the hood up."
He remembered the wooded shrapnel that had showered Cordelia and Gunn who had been sitting in the back seat of Angel's old Mercury when they had careened into the old building and smiled apologetically.
"Ummm, excuse me," the young female doctor's weary voice filtered into their conversation. She paused to check her chart, "Did you come here with a... Wesley Whyndam-Price?"
The two of them nodded and leaned forward expectantly. Cordelia knotted her fingers nervously in front of her, "How is he?"
"Well, Mr Price suffered quite a bit of blood loss. He has been beaten quite badly and one of his arms was fractured. From the circular contusions around his wrists it would appear he was tied up..." the doctor said suspiciously.
Angel spoke quickly before Cordelia could. "We found him in the street a few blocks from his apartment," he lied, "we didn't recognise him at first. We have no idea who did this to him or why." Well he wasn't lying about the why part. And although they weren't sure who the man who kidnapped Wesley was exactly, they knew *where* he was. During a struggle with Angel for the handgun the assailant had been carrying the gun had went off accidentally. The man was left where he fell, they had more important things to worry about than *his* safety.
"We have bound his injured arm," the doctor continued, "and given him a script for painkillers. Other than that he can do nothing else but rest at home, we see no reason to detain him further." This was when she paused. She looked down at her soft-soled trainers, obviously not accustomed to giving out this kind of news. "Ms. Mancini on the other hand..." the doctor fixed Angel with a sympathetic gaze, sensing he'd be the one hardest hit by what she had to say. "She suffered massive cardio-vascular trauma. Her heart stopped while we were working on her and we could barely get enough O-neg into her to keep up with the bleeding."
Cordelia deflated visibly, from both guilt and shock. Guilt because she didn't like 'Ms. Mancini' very much, and shock because in her concern for Wesley she'd completely forgotten about the girl who's life hung by a thread. The girl even younger than she was.
The doctor took a breath before continuing. "It's through the grace of God that she's still alive, realistically she should be dead..." Realising her words weren't the most comforting she started again. "We've cleared an OR for her upstairs and there'll be some orderlies coming to get her in a few minutes. However you can see her if you wish, but only for a short while," the young doctor stressed.
Angel read in her eyes what she hadn't said through her lips. 'Because she isn't going to survive the procedure'. That was why they were allowing him to see the her. This was unusual, as under normal circumstances they would have taken a patient into the OR immediately. But they wanted to let her next of kin see her while she was still hanging on. It made him infinitely regretful that he was the closest thing to family she had, but he had let him know in her own way how much she appreciated their all too seldom chats.
The doctor left as quietly as she had arrived, her expression on of silent sympathy. Cordelia stood beside him, her expression stuck in a frown of disbelief. The doctor's movement jolted her back to reality and, unsure what to so, stared at a point somewhere past Angel's shoulder.
She took a step forward without saying anything and touched her hand to his arm in a gesture of sorrow. "I'll go see how Wesley's doing," she half whispered in the again empty hallway. And with something resembling a comforting smile she turned around and walked back in the direction from where she'd came.
*****
"So English, you beat me again. What is it now, 5 to 1? What, you plannin' on card playin' for the Olympics or something?"
Cordelia heard Gunn's deep voice filter down through the corridor before she actually entered the hospital room, suprised he had found Wes so quickly. Stepping cautiously over the threshold she walked over to the bedside, flashing Gunn and the bed-ridden Wesley a quick, uncomfortable smile.
"Did you find him?" Gunn asked, shuffling and dealing the playing cards in his hands in preparation for another thrashing at his friend's hands.
"Yeah, Angel's waiting in the I.C.U. for news," she answered, attempting to distract herself by tiding up the items that lay on the nearby table.
Finally Wesley joined the conversation. "Well, what did he say?" his clipped British accent slightly rough with discomfort.
"Gunn," Cordelia turned to their companion, "why don't you put those cards away? I'm sure Wes wants his rest."
Gunn's brow furrowed. Not at the prim request but her none too subtle attempt to avoid Wesley's question. She finally risked a glance at the two men and immediately regretted the decision. Gunn hadn't been the only one to pick up on her aversion. Wesley's mouth hung slack, his eyes to cloudy orbs of unfathomable guilt and horror...
"She didn't make it, did she?"
*****
It was the longest walk Angel had ever had to take in his life, but somehow he wished it was longer. Somewhere his brain registered the loud thud of his feet on the hospital linoleum. Pounding like morbid background music, like a reckoning. Rounding the corner of the doorway he immediately pinned his eyes to the pale wall opposite the small bed, unwilling to look anywhere else. The only thing that enabled him to even enter the room was the fact that, with the aid of the respirator, she was still tenaciously clinging to life by her fingertips. Anyway, he knew what he would see after all. The surprisingly slight figure of a girl who, when awake, always appeared larger than life. The slight figure of a girl, beaten and bleeding, her flawless skin marred by the effects of such a tragic life, fatal wounds and doctors' equipment.
He walked to the foot of the bed, still avoiding looking at her face and picked up the patient's chart.
'Gunshot wound to the chest
03/08/01
Mancini, Faith S.'