It was a long time before dual-colored eyes flickered open again, and I bit my lip, wincing in pain at the harsh light shining above me. There were voices around, though all of them distant.

None familiar.

There was the static whir and beep of hospital machinery, the smell of death, glossed over by sanitizer. The air-conditioning was on too high, and - I couldn't see out my window.

Couldn't see if it was day or night. Couldn't tell how fast the world was running around me.

The fear stabbing in me was far more real than the now-dulled pain in my chest, the bandages making my shoulder itch.

My shoulder.

It was just now that I'd realized that I'd been shot in the shoulder - the pain had been there previous, but I'd thought it much worse, thought I wouldn't wake to see the detached sterility, the white noise of a hospital room.

I open my mouth to speak, to protest at all of this, but no one notices.

I wonder if it's over. If he's dead.
If everyone's dead, if I've done it...

For nothing.

"...is it over?" I whimper, mostly to myself, though a passing nurse overhears me. Overhears something. Maybe it's simply that I'm awake now, and hadn't died through the night.

Something about an obscene amount of blood loss

"I want to go home." A tiny murmur, and I move to sit up, ignoring the way the room tilts, my blurred vision. "I don't wanna be here, they'll catch..."

I don't finish my sentence, as I'm hushed and told to stay where I am, that I won't be permitted out of the room until the doctors grant me such.

I don't feel I can wait that long, honestly. My skin itches, soul burns - there are the tiniest fragments of tears glittering in pools of iced-over eyes.

Helpless.

I'm not connected to anything right now; apparently, I've been stable enough in the morning that they deemed it unnecessary. Or maybe someone thought it was right for me to die.

Perhaps it was. Die, or simply...disappear.

"Is he all right?" My voice, taking a tiny bit more volume, posed one question, one which would have awaken me sooner if I hadn't been thrown into false slumber.

"...the man th'found y'with?" The nurse looked confused for a moment, but shook her head. "Two gunshots to the chest. He didn't have much hope of.."

"No." I shook slightly in my bed, biting my lip, almost trying to convince it to split - the acidic taste of my own blood reminded me I was alive.
"...is..R.."

"Y'friend." The nurse looked familiar now, and I'm almost certain that she'd seen me in the hospital the day before.
Only...less than fourty-eight hours. That's how long it had been since I'd felt safe, content..

"He's not dead, is he?" The tears slip down; I let them fall.

She doesn't answer for a moment, but sighs softly.
"...fell into critical when y'left, darlin'. Ain't sure what's gonna happen t'im."

"I want to see him." I demanded, "I want to know that he's not dead. See for myself."

"Let th'doc come in here an' get a look atcha, first."

I wait with baited breath.