Part 16

The night shift nurse found Walter White sprawled on the hospital room's pale floor. His i.v. stand lay across his back, the needle connection pulled out of his hand, fluid leaking everywhere. He was struggling to get up, and the nurse quelled her initial reaction to help him. Because of all the stories, she had become deathly afraid of the man, and her eyes quickly glanced at his hands to make sure they were empty. There were a lot of things in the room that could be dangerous.

"David!" she called out. The security guard, who was watching the corridor, quickly came in, almost bashed her with the swinging door.

"What's wrong?" he answered, fumbling, not immediately finding his weapon.

"Go see who's the doctor on call, and get some interns, or whatever… guys are around." She was flustered, stood far back as White stilled a moment and lay quiet. She did, however, decide not to push the emergency alarm that would have people running into the room. It didn't look like that situation yet, and she always hated disturbing the entire ward with that blasted, frightening noise at night.

"Ok, sure, I'll go to the central desk. I'll call up Steven and Tom first." He also looked at White, but he seemed just partly alert and only making slight movements. "Don't get too close to him, Selena."

Selena frowned. It was her duty to care for everyone under her supervision, but she couldn't make herself go over to him. It looked like he had pulled some things down in his fall, some drawers were opened, their contents spilled around him. She was sure he collapsed because his extremely weakened body couldn't take the pressure when he tried to stand and move around after all this time immobile, but she didn't move a muscle. She just watched as he vainly tried to drag himself across the floor to some unknown destination, sweat dripping down his face. He was muttering something under his breath.

"Don't give him…" she couldn't make out the words. "… he's allergic. It'll kill him."

…

ADA detective Tim Roberts heard the soft knock on his office door, called out his usual okay. He was surprised when Marie Schrader, looking drawn, opened the door and came in. He put on his best, warm smile, she hadn't been to see him in a while, and stood up to give her a loving hug. She stood back from his opened arms.

"Timothy, I want to see him."

"Eh, Marie?" For a moment he tried to avoid her request. "Who?"

"I want to see Him."

"Now, why would I allow that to happen?" Roberts smiled again, a grimace, and sat back down in his chair.

"I'm family. You have no right to keep me away."

"I have every right, Marie. He's dangerous, in all ways. You, out of everyone, knows that best. And now he's desperate."

"Are you questioning him about everything that's happened?" She leaned over his desk, knees against the edge, her palms on his desk pad, her face in his.

"Marie, please sit down, you'll be more comfortable. We can talk easier that way." She backed off slowly, looked over her shoulder for the uncomfortable, rolling, government-issue black chair, sat in it. She loosely crossed her legs, the back of her slim wrists resting on the narrow arms of the chair, her thumb rubbing over the tips of her nails. It seemed her substitute for biting them. She stared off through the windows that showed the outer office and the bustle of other agents. It was almost as if Tim was no longer there, and she was just waiting. He watched as her beautiful, hazel eyes kept changing color in the office's dim fluorescents, sometimes green, sometimes grey, sometimes brown and stormy dark according to her rapidly shifting moods. He tried to draw her back into the present. "Good. Yes, we are starting to get the matter going, we still have to decide who to give him as representation. There apparently was some incident, but he is awake now, and his condition is fair to poor. We still have to be a bit gentle with him."

"Incident?" Marie was curious despite her hard feelings.

"He seems to have fallen out of his hospital bed." Tim quietly chuckled, the man was supposed to be near dead for Christ's sake. He caught everyone by surprise, as usual. "We, the DEA, and the FBI have many more men guarding him now. A lot of people have questions for him, but we still have to go slow."

"I can get answers for you before any of them," Marie said.

"What, Marie? Why? How do you plan to do that?"

"He feels guilty over me. He also feels guilty over Skyler and Flynn, but I don't think either of them will go near him right now. I don't have any children. I don't have any more family to protect. I want to go see him. He'll tell me what I need to know."

"Well, yes, that might help us. He would talk to you about Hank before anyone else." He looked sharply at Marie, regretted how his last statement sounded. "I mean, Marie, I don't want it to sound like you're just a useful tool for us."

"I don't care, Tim. I just want to know. Go ahead and use me."

"Alright," he said slowly, "let me think about how best to do this. We would want everything recorded, of course. We would have to do that at the hospital, but maybe we can equip an emptier room, have it prepared ahead of time. We will also fit you out with a vest. That would be safer for everyone, and make me feel better."

"Yes, sure, that would be fine. I want to get close to him, though, be able to touch him. Don't make it too bulky or hard to move in."

"Always worried a bit about fashion, Marie? You don't have to be concerned about looking good for the camera, you always look good." Tim smiled, an old joke between old friends. "Would you like a purple vest?"

"Yes, please, if you can." Marie smiled shyly back, but if Tim knew her just a little better, he wouldn't have missed the flint hard glint in her eyes.

…

The doctor was looking at pictures of Pinkman's back. The patient was in fair condition, resting, and there were other, more pressing concerns going on in his body, but the sections of skin were just too grotesquely intriguing for the specialist. He was thinking if it would be better to re-scrape a good amount of the surface and start grafts, but first he had to figure out the exact damage, and how much stress his patient could take. It was all healed, but he didn't like the way some of the scars seemed so thin in places. There was hardly any real tissue between bone, muscle, and the outer world. Some of the back muscles might have actually been removed to get a deeper cut. Any real stress on the skin, even just the normal wear of everyday movement, day after day, and he wondered if it would all just start opening again.

He read the words carved deeply into Jesse's back, in letters an inch wide. "Arbeit macht frei," it said, the words wrought in iron over the gates of Auschwitz, made by its own captives. "Work makes you free." He wondered how the young man survived it.