When a good man is hurt, all who would be called good must suffer with him.

-Euripides-

"I need you to wake up and come home to me." Erin said, hating the way her voice cracked with wayward emotion; she wanted to blame it on the hormones coursing through her veins but the truth was she was absolutely in love with the comatose man in front of her. The way things stood, he may never know it.

An odd feeling came over her as she sat at Dave's bed side, far off memories invaded her head. Time seemed to crawl to a halt in the hospital, she watched his face for a moment the movement under his eyelids told her he was in the deep stages of sleep. She gripped his hand and entangled their fingers. "I remember the first time you held my hand. That was a big step for me." A slight chuckle bounced past her lips, "you know I didn't do relationships." She avoided love and it was common joke that she was just like him. Until he met Carolyn and got married.

She was at his first wedding, the whole department had been invited but she was the one of the few who came aside from Jason Gideon and it was the first time she met Mark Strauss.

"How ironic." She snorted, considering their situation. Carolyn's death and her divorce from Mark; in a way; the beginning of their separate lives had brought them together again.

"I always thought that it was your divorce that made you chase after me." Her hand covered her belly protectively. "But that's not true. "

Whether their children could hear her or not, she wanted to shield them from any possible cosmic jinx that claimed James.

"You needed me, when James died and Carolyn left, you needed me and I came, David. I put my life on hold for you and now," her voice broke again, "and now I need you." She said.

Once upon a time she would have sooner turned herself inside out than admit that she needed anyone.

Her pride would have found a way to keep the words from spilling out. "Your children need you. The doctor says you'll make it, don't make me sue him for lying to me, " she said, only half in jest.

He was on the rebound on their first date. He'd already had and lost Carolyn after James' death, she just sat next to him as he drank his sorrows away. If he had asked her out she would have turned him down.

She didn't date at all, she drank beer at the bar and waited for the men to come to her. Reeling them in like fish in a net only to cast them off at the last minute. But not Dave.

" All of a sudden you put your drink down and pulled me on the dance floor. The jukebox was broken, we were stuck listening to Bon Jovi all night.

We'd dropped at least fifty dollars in quarters into that thing trying to fix it."

She let her monologue trail off. The awkward feeling of talking to a wall, returned. Maybe it never really left but she talked anyway.

"And when the bartender announced last call, I was just about to leave; you grabbed my hand.

We got a cab and we rode around town until the sun came up." A sigh escaped broke through the otherwise quiet room. Things were so good between them back then. Before sex and kids and spouses.

"We skipped work, well you skipped work." She corrected, " and I ditched three of my afternoon classes."

Where had the time gone? The years between them seemed like only minutes now. Just snapshots of their lives, intersecting at the key moments.

"Don't you dare give up on us now."

She entangled their hands again, waiting for a sign that he'd been listening. When she found none, she sat back in the recliner and waited. For what, she didn't know; for the drugs to wear off? She would wait forever, in that plastic covered chair and rain soaked clothes, if it meant she could see his eyes open again.

And he would wait, in that gray medicinal haze of the sedative, listening to her velvet voice reminisce and feel her warm hand against his. He would come back to them he would claw his way back from the shadows of whatever drugs they had him on, and come home.

He was working on it as she spoke.

His lips parted, and he prayed she could hear him. She needed to hear him, no matter how much his voice shook or rasped.

"I love you, Erin."