"Can anyone help me find Logan Huntzberger?" Rory flew through the automatic doors and looked around the hospital waiting room wildly. A doctor barely looked up as she walked by. Maybe she wasn't even a doctor. Could be a nurse. Or an intern. Or heck, it may not be anyone in the medical profession at all. It didn't matter—she just needed someone to tell her where to find Logan.
"Rory!" She turned as she heard familiar voices call her name. "Rory, thank god you're here, love," Finn said, as he and Colin ran up to her, their faces white. Rory could see the fear in their eyes... it probably mirrored the fear in her own.
"Where is he?" she asked them.
Colin placed a hand on her elbow and led her to Logan's room silently. As they entered, Rory had the sudden, disconcerting thought that this was the first time he had been this quiet since she met him. She gasped when she saw Logan... bruised and battered, and deathly still. She swayed slightly as her knees began to buckle beneath her. Colin and Finn, who were standing abnormally close to her the entire time, each grabbed one of her arms and helped her keep her balance until the room stopped spinning around her.
She turned slightly to face them. "What happened?" she asked, then interrupted herself quickly before either of them could speak. "No. Wait. I don't think I want to know details yet."
Colin nodded soberly, his face still white and his mouth pinched.
"Did you guys come back with him?" she asked.
"Yeah—they tried to tell us that there was only room for one in the helicopter, but we didn't want..." Colin's voice trailed off, but Rory filled in the blanks mentally. 'We didn't want him to die on the way without us there.'
"We couldn't leave him alone," Finn finished for him, "so we both came."
"They haven't told us anything yet," Colin offered without being asked. "We keep asking doctors... Finn even tried flirting with the nurses, but all they say is 'We're doing the best we can,' or some crap like that."
"He's lucky to have you," Rory whispered, and the room fell silent once again as the irony of her statement hit all three of them at the same time. If Logan hadn't had Colin and Finn, they may not have gone cliff-jumping in the first place. Someone else might have taken the raft in his pack. The measurements might have been one hundred percent, without a doubt, correct. Someone might have suggested a different, less life-threatening stunt. But, if Logan hadn't had Colin and Finn, they might not have gotten a helicopter in as soon. It may have taken a few crucial seconds longer for someone to notice that the stunt had gone wrong. He may have been flown back alone.
The possibilities for finger-pointing, blame, what-ifs, and recriminations were endless—each person standing beside Logan's bed realized it. Unsaid thoughts swirled in each of their heads and Rory knew that for as much as she wanted to have someone to blame, so did the others; the difference was, they looked at his injuries and saw themselves reflected in his tubing, his bandages, his scabs. She saw it in their downcast eyes, in their hunched stances, and in the absence of the joking and constant teasing that made Finn and Colin the pair that they were. This wasn't them, and she knew without a doubt that, as terrified as they were now, their guilt would be unbearable if Logan didn't recover. They would never admit it out loud, but this had to have shaken them to the core.
Rory sank into the chair beside the bed, fidgeting with an edge of the blanket for a long time before finally allowing herself to look at Logan. The silence was oppressive, and it struck her that she'd never heard Colin and Finn this quiet before, either, and that scared her more than anything. Slowly, her eyes travelled up the length of the bed, taking in the still form of his body under the covers, the wires and tubes poking out and attaching him to too many machines, and finally, his face much too white, bruised, broken. She'd never seen him broken before. Not like this.
She took his hand in both of hers, and her own eyes finally filled with tears as she stared hard at his eyelids, willing them to open. They never even twitched, and a fresh wave of terror washed over her. She let out a whimper that caught in her throat and turned into a full-out sob, and she finally collapsed forward, falling into herself, forehead resting on the bed beside his hand.
Eventually, Rory felt a hand on her shoulder, not rubbing it, not hugging her, just... there. A solid warmth anchoring her to the room—a room she didn't want to be sitting in. Suddenly, she couldn't take it any more. She sat up and pushed herself out of the chair, running towards the door.
"Rory?" she heard Colin's voice call as she exited into the hallway.
"Love?" Finn echoed a second later.
Rory didn't know, nor did she care, whether they followed her or not. She just needed to get out of there.
With shaking hands she reached for her phone, needing to talk to someone—someone who knew her, who would understand. She dialled the number she didn't even realize she had memorized and a fresh batch of tears started when the familiar voice answered.
"Hello?" The voice on the other end of the line was thick with sleep.
"Jess?" Her voice broke and she wasn't sure why she was doing this, but she knew it had to be him.
"Rory? What's wrong?"
She drew a shaky breath. "It's Logan...he's hurt, really hurt—and no one knows anything, I don't really know how bad it is."
There was a pause on the other end of the phone, then he spoke. "Why did you call me?"
"Because..." Rory trailed off. Why did she call him, especially in the middle of the night? Why should he care about Logan? Actually, of all the people in the world, he was probably the least likely person to care about Logan. "You were the first person I thought of."
Jess made a non-committal sound, something like "Hmm." He cleared his throat and went on. "Are you okay? What happened?"
And there it was. Why she always went back to him. No matter what happened between them, good or bad, he always wanted to be sure of her safety. "I'm fine, I wasn't with him. He... fell off a cliff." Even as she said it out loud, she realized how ridiculous it sounded and was struck by an inexplicable urge to laugh out loud—an urge she quickly stifled, even though she knew Jess wouldn't think anything of it.
Jess laughed wryly. "Idiot."
That, Rory could certainly agree with. "Yeah." Rory's tears dried up slightly, and a comfortable silence fell between them until Rory broke it. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to call you... I didn't want you to worry... I know I don't usually call you."
"No, don't be. You can always call me." He sighed, and Rory could swear she heard him rubbing his jaw over the phone.
"I just... I'm really scared."
"So you called me." She could tell he was still trying to wrap his mind around this fact.
Rory nodded, even though Jess couldn't see her. "I don't know if he's going to make it... and I didn't even say goodbye before he left!"
There was that laugh again. "You've got something about that word, don't you?"
Rory knew exactly what he was referring to. "It's not about that. I was mad at him... I didn't tell him to have a good trip, or be careful, or anything. I knew he was going to do this dangerous thing and I was so cold to him! What if he dies, Jess? What if he dies and he doesn't think that I care about him?" She glanced around her at the tall walls of the atrium that she had somehow found herself standing in. They were tall and solid and very, very intimidating. She knew Colin and Finn were up there, with Logan. She wondered if he knew somehow that they were all there...and here she was, outside, not with him. "I left the room...I just couldn't stay there anymore, I felt like I was suffocating."
Jess was silent, but his steady breathing on the other end of the line comforted her more than anything he could have said, and her ragged breaths finally slowed down to a normal pace, matching his.
"Are you going to be okay?" he finally asked.
Rory sighed. "I don't know. I think so. I just want to go home and sleep until it's all over and everything's fixed." She shuddered and drew in a breath as a realization hit her. "This isn't going to be over for a very long time, is it?"
Jess didn't answer for a long time, and when he finally did, it wasn't with the reassuring platitudes that they both wished he could give. "No."
His minimal response sent a fresh wave of panic washing over Rory, and her eyes began burning, sending the first cold fingers of a tension headache into her temples. "I mean, what if he doesn't wake up for weeks? Or months? And then when he does wake up, he'll have physical therapy, and rehab, and doctor's appointments, and... oh god, I wonder if Mitchum will still make him go to London. He can't do that, can he? I guess that's a good thing, if it means he gets to stay here... but this isn't a good thing at all, and what am I thinking?"
"Rory." Jess interrupted her quietly.
She kept rambling. "How can I do it all? How can I juggle school, and the paper, and Mom, and everything else, and still help Logan get better?"
"Rory!" Jess almost shouted into the phone. She stopped, mid-thought. "You don't have to figure it all out today."
"But—" she began.
"You don't need to figure it all out today," Jess repeated firmly, then sighed. "And, as much as I hate to do this to myself..." he paused for so long that Rory wondered if he was going to finish his sentence.
"You still there?" she asked.
"Just making sure I want to finish that thought."
"Oh." She waited a few seconds longer. "Let me know when you decide."
"As much as I hate this," he began again, "my offer still stands. You can call me whenever you need to. Even if it's because you're stressed out because of... him." He said the last word like it was a sour grape that needed to be spit out.
Rory smiled slightly, feeling some of the tension drain out of her body as her stance relaxed slightly. She leaned against a wall, feeling suddenly weak, like she was going to melt into a puddle, but it wasn't the helpless mess that she had collapsed into in Logan's room with Finn and Colin—instead, she felt like she could relax and melt, because someone would be able to prop her up.
"I should get back in there," she said quietly, warmth in her voice.
"Okay."
"Jess?"
"Yeah?"
The word seemed far too simple, but it was all she knew to say. "Thanks."
"Good night, Rory."
"G'night, Jess. I'll talk to you later." She pulled the phone away from her ear and slowly flipped it shut, then turned back down the hallway in the direction she had come, back towards Logan's room and all that was waiting for her there.
