Chapter Eighteen

It was morning. The nurse walking past, her low heels clicking softly on the polished floor, took a glance at the sleeping figure huddled on two adjoining, plastic orange chairs. Her eyes softened as she made a small detour and went to his side.

"Been there since last night," the tired, older woman who was just off the early morning shift commented as she walked out of the staff's room. "Might be his brother in there. Car accident."

"Oh," she nodded understandingly and smiled in thanks at the matronly woman before kneeling down and reaching out to gently shake the man awake. "Sir?"

He awoke, groggily, his eyelids opening to reveal two of the darkest blue eyes she had ever seen, ringed with fatigue and the salt of tears. He made a move to uncoil, but cringed almost immediately, his body nearly sent into a spasm.

She got up hurriedly to help him. He was stiff from the night crammed into the hard chairs, and cramping terribly. "Sir? We have a spare room for the family members of our patients if you like. It's just down the hall—"

She trailed off when he finally set his feet on the ground, pulled back his bangs with the large hands that looked deathly pale in the white lights, and stood up shakily. "It's all right."

She bowed and left.

*Flashback

"He's lost a lot of blood, and he has a severe concussion."

Upon seeing the look on the other man's face, the doctor hastened to add to his statement, "But he will be fine."

There was so much in that torn gaze, ripped between dying to believe, and afraid to accept. Sighing softly to himself, he tapped the other man on the shoulder with compassion. "It is truly nothing fatal. He should be up within the next few days or so," he said gently.

He followed the man's gaze to the ward where the victim had just been sent. It was cool in the corridor, and the lights in the ward were dimmed. Moonlight streamed down through the windows, pooling on the cold linoleum floor.

*End of Flashback

Now, standing in the doorway of the ward, he took a deep breath, before walking forward, past the first, covered bed to the second, where the curtains were pulled back and where the pale sunlight bathed a fair face in almost ethereal glows. A white bandage, heavily wound around the forehead, framed the slightly scratched cheeks. He seemed whiter than ever. But…

You're alive.

That was all he needed. He gulped and reaching back blindly, pulled the chair closer to the bed and nearly fell into it as thankfulness and joy washed over him in breaking waves. Unable to tear his gaze away from the quiet rise and fall of the covered chest, tears pricked the back of his eyelids and he groped for one warm hand, catching it swiftly and planting a soft kiss onto the palm.

Akira. Thank god.

@@@

He awoke to the sounds of a light breathing, and a heavier one, in the cot next to his. Shifting to brush back the hair that fell into his eyes, he winced at the burning pain and the swaths his hands were covered in itched and seared. For a moment he forgot how he had ended up here.

Sitting up in bed, he noted that other than his hands, his legs were also in bad shape, but thankfully felt like they would be none the worse for the wear. I'm not going to be designing anything for awhile that's for sure…

The beige curtains were pulled around his bed, but he could tell it was day. Swallowing and finding his throat dry, he slowly swung his legs over the side, biting back a squeak as his feet came into contact with the cold floor. Reaching for one of the glasses set on the pale yellow tray on the side table, he looked at it thoughtfully, still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes with the back of his hand. Better wash the glass.

Shuffling forward, he lifted a hand and awkwardly pulled the curtain aside with his arm, blinking as the sunlight flashed into his eyes, rendering him momentarily blind. Dimly, he could see someone, seated on a low-backed chair a few feet away, spin around. When his vision cleared, he found himself staring straight into a pair of shocked blue eyes.