hank you for reading! Sorry for the delay, a few paragraphs went missing... Hmm... O.o

God bless!

It was only a short while until the ambulance arrived, and from there, Flash watched helplessly as the paramedics rushed in, and rushed back out, with Rob. Thankfully, Flash was allowed in the ambulance, if he stayed out of the way and quiet, which he promised he would do.

So there he was, sitting silently as he watched a paramedic doing who knew what to Rob, just to keep him from dying on the way to the hospital, while Flash sat there imagining all the awful things that could be, or were happening, and why this was going on, and what exactly had caused this, and why... why did Galen have to be gone when this happened, and was Galen even all right? Was Galen even ALIVE? Because... Because...

Because if Galen was dead, then Rob was too, and no one could save him, and Flash knew that... but he wasn't just going to start believing that-ever.

Rob was in a horrible darkness. There were no hues from the Sight, no hum of the bond, nothing but a brokenness in the dark. A torn heart, a Sightless seer, a brother-less Keeper.

The smell of rotten meat and sweet sickness swirled from memories past, the greying of skin in death, a shimmering black pool surrounded by silver light, black creatures hiding in the light, quaking rocks.

A light shone into his subconscious - or more correctly his now opened eye, then the other, leaving shapes of vague colors dancing behind eyelids.

Flash watched the EMT flash a light into Rob's eyes. He was tempted to tell the medic that there was nothing wrong with his eyes, but he knew that wouldn't help. He knew he should keep his mouth shut, like he'd been told to do. So that was what he did as he sat nervously out of the medics way.

Flash could hear the siren wailing as they sped through the streets. He'd often heard the sound, but he had not often been so close to the situation, or cause of the sound. He never really thought about what the siren's on an ambulance meant. It meant someone's life was right on the edge... somewhere on a fine line between the complicated world that was life, and the darkness that was death. The sirens meant that someone in the world was trusting their life to another that they would likely never know-for one reason or another... and right then, all that thinking was just too much, and Flash hated over thinking things.

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and then letting his head drop into his hands. He breathed tensely, wondering how in the world he was supposed to get through this, and why hadn't he made "safer" friends whose most dangerous habits or happenings were going out to a bar on a Friday night and getting too drunk. But no, he'd become friends with Keepers... MONSTER hunters who were nearly always getting themselves killed, and had talking pet birds.

The ravens-he suddenly wondered were they were, because they would know. They definitely would have noticed, and those two bird-though annoying-would definitely be worried.

Rob could hear mumbling somewhere close to him, noises that sounded like unintelligent grumblings.

There was a flash of pain, and then nothing, just a timeless, hollow pit.

Then something ran through his body, it felt hot and cold at the same time, like tendrils of pure ice and fire.

Darkness.

Pressure on and off his ribs.

Things had gone from bad to worse, and now Flash was watching in fear, anger, and desperation as the paramedic did CPR on Rob-who apparently had actually died for a second, if one counted one's heart stopping as dying.

Flash found himself muttering, "You don't get to die, not today. Don't you dare. Get back here, you hear me? You don't get to die."

The medic finally stopped, and looked back at Flash with a nod and a not-so-reassuring expression, though he did state that Rob's heart had started again.

They'd already asked Flash questions about what had been happening, but he'd been so out of it that he'd not been well able to answer them. He'd done his best, but nothing had really stood out, and so... they were going to a hospital, the one place on earth that Rob seemed to hate more than everywhere else-but Flash didn't care about Rob's "Feelings" at that point, just as long as he lived.

Rob could feel something covering his mouth and nose, something that smelled of plastic and felt claustrophobic. His body refused to answer his commands, and fear shot through him in seemingly continuous waves.

Until the darkness came, and took him away once more.

Flash sighed tiredly, and leaned back, staying out of the way, and rather wishing he could restart the last week, and keep Galen from leaving, because then this wouldn't be happening.

*******TIMEWARP******

Bright light, and distinctly familiar - horribly so - smells. Hospital, some part of his brain supplied. Beeping, a constant noise, but for some reason, it sounded different this time. As if something was just a tiny bit different, barely noticeable.

A whoosh. His chest rose and fell without permission. Something was snaked down his throat, suffocating in its nature. His eyes flew open, and he attempted to move - only to find his wrists held down by restraints.

He tried to choke out Galen's name, but only managed in a horrible gagging. Panicked eyes widened, growing suspiciously wet.

Even beyond the drugs so obviously filling his system, his body ached and throbbed, a constant pressure in his back and chest, a thrumming in his head.

Flash jerked upright. He had been half-asleep, sitting in a chair beside the bed. He was pulled into consciousness by the sudden noise beside him.

"Hey, hey, easy..." Flash stated, moving into Rob's line of sight. "Chill. I called Galen. He's really mad, and freaked, and FINE... Calm down. I'll explain stuff, mkay? Just... calm down, d mnit." Clearly, Flash was worried, and trying to hide it. His hands were shaking, so he jammed them into his pockets.

Rob wanted to reply, he wanted to breathe in air probably faster than healthy, and more than that - he needed the fogginess of the drugs to leave. Flash's words were hard to understand, muddled.

All that really clicked was, Galen was fine.

Another *Click* *Whoosh*. His lungs filled. A feeding tube was in his nose, connected to one of the many machines or bags beside him.

He choked again, eyes never leaving Flash. If he looked away again, all he would see would be machinery, bags, tubes - the hospital, and every reason that he couldn't just run back out of the doors like everything inside of him wanted to do.

Flash sat carefully on the edge of the bed. "Yup, Galen's fine, and he's coming back. But he's gonna be really mad at you. Know why? I do." Flash paused to take a deep breath, as all of that had been spoken with one breath of air. "Know why you almost DIED? Yeah, you caused it. Your coffee addiction. Know what heart arrhythmia is? I think that's what they called it. But anyway... you know what that is? It's something bad, and caffeine makes it worse, or something... I'm not a doctor, but that wasn't cool."

Rob frowned, and attempted to swallow. Needless to say it didn't work. Heart Arrhythmia? Speaking of hearts, his plummeted. *Click* *Whoosh* *Beep beep, beep beep*

He stared, blinking like an owl - not like he was allowed to do much else.

Flash glanced around the room, stood up, scrubbed a hand over his face, then sat back down again. "I..." he stopped talking for several seconds, trying to decide what in the world he was going to say. What would he want to hear if roles were reversed? He sighed loudly. "I'm sorry." He knew it wasn't his fault, and that just made him feel stupid for even saying it, but what was he supposed to say?

"You scared me, know that? I was pretty—Well, I was pretty sure of bad stuff, and you better be sorry for that, because... yeah. So... yeah."

Flash really hated that he had to be the circus monkey. But he had to do it. Rob wasn't going anywhere... couldn't. He wasn't going to say anything either... also because he couldn't. So Flash was going to—because that's what friends did.

"Did you know I had braces as a kid?" he began.

Rob quirked his eyebrows, the look on his face sardonic.

"Aha! I see you judging me!" Flash stated, smiling. This didn't have to be awkward. That just proved it. So Flash jumped into his story. "Yup, little Alvin had braces. Alvin was a weird-looking kid. Flash and Alvin are two totally different people, by the way... anyway..." Flash started off his story explaining what he looked like, and what he thought of braces, and then finally got to the "good part" as he called it.

"So, when they FINALLY took those darn things off, they poured this... like... gooey, icky, clay-dough into my mouth," he pulled a face, looking completely disgusted, "to get a mold of my teeth, ya know, for my retainer? Yeah, well, it was gross... anyway. So, I have a retainer, and when you've had braces, you always have to have a retainer. You just put it in at night, before you sleep... mkay? So..." Flash grinned again.

"Okay, here's where the best part of the story starts." He leaned forward slightly. "So, I put it in... and sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night, and I PANIC! Dunno why, but sometimes, I take it out when I'm half asleep, and I HIDE it from myself! Sometimes I only THINK I hide it, when really, it's still in my mouth. ANyway, so... one time, I woke up in a fit, right? ANd I was searching high and low. Looked under my pillow, in the floor, all over... Finally, I turned really fast, about to get out of bed to go turn on the light, and it SMACKED me in the face! I hid my retainer... in my hair!" He threw both arms out to his sides and snorted, rolling his eyes at himself and smirking.

Rob gave him a sarcastic, amused look, lips twitching up around the ventilator.

Flash shrugged and smiled. "Laughing at my panic, huh?" He was the comic relief-slash-distraction . He quickly ran through other things that happened, trying to come up with a second story that would at least be sort of amusing.

"AH! Okay, so, I got another one, if you think you can handle the awesomeness."

Blue eyes rolled in response. He decided the worst part of the ventilator in the moment, had to go to taking away speech. Second went hands down to the constant-choking, and near gag-reflexes.

Flash guessed what Rob was thinking about. He had to admit, he wouldn't trade places, but he could tease... he didn't know if he should, or should hold off on that.

"Okay, so, you know Galen's band? 'Course you do. The Urban Werewolves... Don't know why he picked that name." Flash huffed, then went on. "Anyway, we were playing a gig." Flash started laughing before he could even get to the story. "Okay, this one's gonna be harder to explain." He grinned. "So, we were on stage, and let me just start out with this... never flip an electric base. It wasn't my idea, but I thought, hey, it could work, right? I mean, if you try hard enough, you can flip a guitar, and an electric base is like a guitar, right? No, wrong. So, when you plan on doing that, always find out where you are in relation to your band mates..." He paused in his story to laugh, then went on, "More specifically, your guitarist."

He started laughing, and had to give himself a second before he went on with his story. he guessed Rob could already guess what had happened, but Flash was gonna finish this story if it took all night.

"So, I flipped it, right? Had NO idea Galen was behind me... Needless to say, it was a DISASTER! I clobbered him with the base, and the entire band was like dominoes, Galen knocked over the next guy, and it just went down the line right? Needless to say, we were less of a band, more a group of comedians that day. Dang, Galen probably would'a killed me if there hadn't been so many witnesses." Flash chuckled.

Rob made a sound like a dying mouse around the tube in his mouth, eyes changing from dullness to sparkling. Air being forced into him allowed another huffing, squeaking laugh.

Flash grinned a lopsided smile and gulped quietly, feeling a little guilty-like, survivor's guilt, but more like uninjured-man's-guilt. Still, he was glad that he was doing some good, not sitting there making things worse than they already were-so he was cool with it.

"Yeah, you may think it's funny, but Galen'd probably kill me if he knew I told you-which reminds me. Don't tell him I told you. You know how he gets with that stuff." He laughed then grinned. "Speaking of stories he might kill me for telling... He's probably never told you about the..." smile "...Jeep vs. Greg Vs. Galen, incident, has he?"

Rob's eyes continued to shine. He tilted his head as far as he could, arching an eyebrow. Before Flash got to finish his story, a doctor walked inside of the room holding a clip board - a doctor who so happened to be Mike.

"I'm going to assume you both know about the Heart Arryhthmia. We had to implant a pacemaker - an artificial device for stimulating the heart muscle and regulating its contractions. The ventilator was for your lungs, they stopped working properly when your heart did. The restraints were incase you woke up, it wasn't safe for a medically induced coma, and you could pull out the vent." Mike's explanation was short.

"Now Flash - you're going to tell me *everything* about what happened to his heart."

Mike removed the restraints from Rob's wrists, then explained a few more things that he didn't catch - before leaving the room. Rob sank farther into the bed, and for a moment, he let himself imagine the bond hadn't been destroyed - that he could talk to Galen instead of being so trapped inside.

So - a bit of humor in here, lets just say staying up until four in the morning talking about Flash, retainers, and miss-communicated Bass instrument misshaps..

So, let us just end on the note that Heart Arrhythmia is bad - and that maybe one day it will no longer lurk around every corner.

Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed...