"We're so busy watching out for
what's just ahead of us that we don't take
time to enjoy where we are."
- Calvin & Hobbs -
"Riley Poole," Ben said when the nurse looked at him. "I'm looking for Riley Poole."
He and Abigail had been criss-crossing the city for hours, wandering from police station to morgue to hospital on the hunt for their friend. They were exhausted and their bodies taut with the tension of the worried – Riley had been missing for hours, his home vacant and the coffee shop he preferred devoid of his presence. The staff there had at least been able to tell them that he'd left in the early morning, his laptop secure under his arm and his bag slung over one shoulder.
The police were less than helpful, telling them he had to be missing a minimum of thirty-six hours before they could accept a report and it had only been twenty-seven hours. "How do you know he didn't just go to his girlfriend's or something?" they'd been asked by an officer who looked fresh out of college and Abigail herself had wanted to slap him.
"Are you a relative of Mr. Poole?" the nurse asked and the two breathed a sigh of relief. If she was presenting that question, then they'd found him.
"I'm Ben Gates," he answered, glancing back at Abigail. "I have his medical proxy... his power of attorney."
With a nod, the nurse clicked away at her computer. When she told them he was in the ICU, room 431, and directed them to the elevator bay, Ben felt his heart plummet through the floor: ICU meant critical. "The staff upstairs will allow you in to see him, but it will only be for a few minutes."
They didn't even say thank you as they turned and made their way from the front desk, minds running through scenario after scenario. Where had he been? What happened to him and lord, why hadn't he come over like they'd asked?
Dinner on Sunday, it was a tradition. Even after Abigail and Ben had broken up, they had remained friends and the trio always sat down to a night's meal together. That day he had begged off - "The museum is on my ass over this. I'll be there next week, I promise." - needing to take the extra time to catch up on the work he'd skimped on while he'd had the flu.
The nurses' station was in the center of the ICU, a few feet from the elevators and Ben only needed to look past the staff lingering against the counter to see Riley's room. It was dim-lit and quiet, and he hated to think that for once in his life, Riley was involuntarily silent.
He snapped out of his reverie by a nurse calling him sir twice. Abigail ended up explaining why they were there when he couldn't make a coherent sentence, guiding him to a gang sink and helping him to disinfect his hands. By the time they produced the face masks, he was able to think again and Ben asked how bad it was, still hoping he would wake up from this nightmare.
"Mr. Poole," the woman started in a dry, clinical voice, "was beaten severely. He sustained multiple broken bones, tears in his liver and kidneys, and a fractured skull. There was some bleeding on his brain as well as swelling so the doctors were forced to operate to remove a piece of bone, allowing the tissue to have somewhere to go. As of right now he is in an induced coma until he is stable."
"He's not stable?"
"His lungs aren't functioning properly. We've had to resuscitate him twice now when he stopped breathing."
Ben only nodded at her words, not speaking out of fear of what he'd say to her. She was a nurse, for fuck's sake, and she was talking like Riley were an object. She'd said everything with no inflection, so monotone – so devoid of emotion. And he wanted to shake her in anger because Riley was worth more than indifference.
"We're trying to limit his exposure to outside bacteria right now, so we can only allow you ten minutes with him. One of us will come get you when time's up," the nurse (Lynda J. her name tag read with I'm here to help written beneath in neat script)told them.
"Thank you," Abigail said.
The door to Riley's room slid open with a hydraulic hiss, the medicinal scent in the air hitting them almost immediately. It was sterile white walls and the steady beep of the heart monitor that greeted them.
On the day they had met, Ben had thought to himself that Riley was like an organized hurricane. He had wild hair to contrast his work-appropriate clothing and his speech was quick, words running together when he got excited, which differed with the order of his work station. Three computers labeled with their jobs had been running behind him, programs he'd written displaying his genius without him saying a word. What he'd lacked in stature, he'd made up for with a personality that was more vibrant than a Monet painting.
Now, though... Riley lay against crisp sheets, the bruises even more noticeable against the backdrop of white. Tape hid the normally mischief-filled blue eyes, and his lips were covered by the device holding the endotracheal tube in place. His head was swathed in clean gauze with only one spot of blood showing through and Ben paused to regain control of his emotions before noting the casts and pins that were holding his bones in place. One leg was in traction and his left arm was elevated on pillows, all five fingers in splints.
"Oh, Riley," Abigail breathed after her own shock wore off and she reached out to stroke the only available patch of skin. She wanted to tell him it was going to be alright, that she and Ben were there, because she was sure he could hear them despite his unconscious state, but she couldn't make her throat co-operate and instead she stood there at his bedside.
For his part, Ben remained rooted to his spot by the door, scared to get any closer than he was. He didn't trust himself to be able to let of Riley when they were ejected if he had a chance to hold his hand, touch his forehead. He wasn't even sure he was going to be able to leave the room as it was. What else would happen to Riley if someone wasn't there to watch him?
Somehow, they both managed to make themselves leave when the nurses came though. It was late and they were told they could return tomorrow. "His doctors will be here in the morning," it was said, "They'll be able to answer any more questions you have."
They thanked the staff by rote and on autopilot made their way from the hospital, never really comprehending where they were going until Ben opened the door to Riley's apartment, stumbling inside. Neither remarked when they crawled into Riley's bed and clutched at his pillows.
"One measure of friendship consists not in the
number of things friends can discuss,
but in the number of things they need no longer mention."
- Clifton Fadiman -
Doctors were incapable of explaining anything to the general public, Ben decided two hours after he and Abigail had arrived.
They'd walked in to find Riley's primary care physician (Dr. Joseph Kayes, GP) waiting at the nurse's station for them along with a neurologist, pulmonologist, Intensivist, and cardiologist. There were others apparently missing; Ben had sarcastically wondered how many 'ist's were working to keep Riley alive.
He'd been found, apparently, in an dirty alley between 18th and Champlain by a passerby only a few hours after he'd left the coffee shop. The police would want to talk to them, want to know if Riley had any enemies – Ben snorted as he thought of the hate mail and the obsessed letters they'd all received – and if not, who would be so angry with him they would assault him with a baseball bat?
"Look, Riley's a good guy. He's a little thick sometimes and he's pretty focused on his computer work, but he's not someone who sleeps around or tries to steal someone else's partner," Ben snapped. "We had thousands of people tell us we were fucking stupid or they hoped we died under our 'piles of cash' or that they wanted to marry us. It could be any number of people."
Abigail reached out to grab his wrist and pulled Ben back against the seat. "We can't tell you what happened, we really can't. Look, we just want to know if he's going to be alright."
Kayes leaned back, fingers resting on his clipboard and he looked almost bored as he told them, "As of right now, Mr. Poole is still in critical condition. Until the swelling in his brain reduces we can't say much of anything except that he's alive right now. If he can get through the next few days without too much trouble, he may make a full recovery, but until we bring him out of the coma we cannot safely say that he's escaped brain damage."
He half-tuned out after that, letting Abigail field the rest of the questions and hoping he didn't look as numb as he felt. God, Riley was only twenty-eight. No one should be talking about brain damage fifteen feet from his ICU room, where machines were keeping his lungs breathing, his heart beating, and his kidneys functioning. He's too young for this, Ben thought as his head fell into his hands.
They were telling him that youth was probably the only thing in Riley's favor when he muttered the sentiment aloud, but it brought him no solace.
It was after the doctors finally finished their spiel that they were given the clearance to spend thirty minutes with Riley, contingent upon their changing into sterile scrubs, and led away from the waiting area. They changed without a word or so much as a look at each other, their minds wrapped around the fact that the Riley they knew may have been gone forever. And if he was, who would care for him? His parents were both dead and his brothers had been lost in the mire of paperwork that accompanied closed adoptions – Riley had them and the money in his bank account, nothing more and nothing less.
The door opening sounded less mechanically than it had the night before, perhaps because they were both more awake or maybe because they were both focused on the man in the bed. It didn't matter and yet for some reason, Ben couldn't let go of it, standing there in a daze until Abigail called him softly.
She'd gone without pause to Riley's side and resting up against the railing, arms crossed over each other with one hand petting his forehead gently.
"He can probably hear us," she told him. "At least come say hello to him, Ben. He needs to know we're here."
Logically the handful of steps between the door and the bed only took a few seconds to cross, but it felt like hours when Ben dragged himself over. His fingers twitched as he clasped them around Riley's wrist, his head coming down to rest against the mattress. His breath ghosted over Riley's bruised fingers, around the IV site, and Ben wondered if somewhere in his mind Riley felt the tickle of it.
Later, Abigail would tell him that he'd told Riley that they were there with him and they weren't going to leave him. That they would be beyond the door when the nurses kicked them out and they'd be back as soon as they were allowed.
But at that moment, Ben didn't acknowledge that he was speaking. His mind was trapped in a horrific nightmare, a movie he'd made himself out of his own concepts that played like a black and white every time he closed his eyelids. He could picture Riley, his dark-wash jeans and Old Navy tee-shirt beneath a blazer from Target Clearance, with his laptop in hand and a coffee cup in the other, walking home. Ben didn't know for sure that the iPod's headphones had been settled in his ears but it was more than likely they had been.
It was that image of the younger man – innocent and unsuspecting – that had formed in Ben's brain. Riley, just going on with his life, caught in the crosshairs of someone else's rage and Ben choked to realize that his friend had probably screamed and begged and no one heard a thing. Riley had probably called for help between two apartment buildings, but no one even picked up a phone to call emergency services.
The feminine hand in his hair brought him back to present day. "Half an hour's up," Abigail told him quietly, unsettlingly, like she wanted to stall for time and knew she couldn't. They had to leave for two hours while they cleaned up Riley's bandages and linens, then they could stay for an hour.
Increasing the time with him didn't soothe Ben at all, not in the face of the realization that there had to have been someone who heard Riley or seen something. It had been early morning, people had to have been home in bed or watching infommericals on how to enlarge their undersized penis.
Ben managed a few bites of a sandwich Abigail brought him by closing his eyes and ignoring that the cheese was the wrong color, sipped at the flat soda he pushed toward him. He tried to not make it obvious that he was checking his watch almost continuously; time did not care if he wanted it to speed on, but how he wanted the seconds to flicker by until it was time for them to return to Riley's side.
Lost in thought, he didn't notice the two officers who sat down in four-top's empty chairs. It was Abigail's groan that made him take notice of their new companions and he looked down, steeling himself to answer the questions he knew would be asked.
"Mr. Gates, Miss Chase," the larger man said. "I'm Officer Rhodes and this is Officer Owens. Dr. Kayes said you would be available to talk for a few minutes."
He nodded, though he cursed the doctor under his breath, and as expected, they asked the same questions the doctors had asked earlier: was there someone who'd want to harm Riley? "Only everyone who wanted the Knights Templar treasure to never be found or wanted it for themselves." Was there someone recently who'd wanted to harm him? "We get, minimum, two dozen letters a month telling us we're dead people walking."
Rhodes' patience was clearly thinning and when Ben gave him another sarcastic reply ("There might be someone who didn't know about our connection to the treasure in Siberia. Of course they probably think the czar is still in charge."), he stood up. His hands clenched around the notebook he carried, pages of light paper sullied with writing. "You clearly don't want to help your friend so we'll just be on our way," he said, starting to turn away.
The sigh stopped him and he looked back to see Ben waving him toward the chair. "I can't tell you anything more about who would come after him, because I don't know who would, okay? Riley's smart, creative, and dedicated to his job. He likes to write fiction books for kids even though he'll never admit to it and he's a great cook."
It felt like the flood gates had opened and Ben felt like his heart was pouring out of his mouth with each passing second.
"He likes to dress nicely since he couldn't as a kid. His parents were poor as fuck and couldn't afford the good stuff so he lived on church handouts until he had a job of his own and when they died, he got himself emancipated, got an apartment, and took care of himself. He went to college on money he worked overtime for, got a job at a good company, and left it all behind because I asked him to. He left his boyfriend to come hunt treasure with me on nothing other than my word – who could look at a guy like that and want to beat him to death?" Ben asked, unable to fathom it himself.
Finding out Riley's past hadn't been an easy task. It had entailed many nights of beer and poker and Ben had told him flat out that he hadn't thought his friend had suffered through a lost childhood. He'd been an adoptee and known it as long as he could remember; his two brothers had gotten adopted as well but he had been too young to know their names or their faces, content with the fact that they had their own families to love and be loved by.
"You said he left his boyfriend?"
Ben shrugged. "Yeah, but they were having problems anyway and it was amicably." He'd been there at the move out, helping Riley to carry boxes from the old apartment to his new one.
Owens made a face and ran a hand through his hair, looking at his partner. He was definitely agitated, but to his credit remained there while Rhodes set about telling them that the case would be transferred to the special victims department. "If there's a reason to transfer it back to our unit, we'll continue with it, but until it's ruled out that this wasn't the result of a hate crime, the SV unit will follow up."
"Wait a minute, he's gay so it gets thrown to another department?" Ben felt his blood start to boil in his veins. The world tried to say things were changing, that equality was the norm instead of the exception, only to slap them all in the face with the reality; he clenched his hands on his lap, wishing he could shake sense into people.
"Actually, there's been a few incidents previously with some guys going after members of the gay community. We don't particularly know how they're getting their targets 'cause there's no commonalities, but they've been beating the crap outta people with pipes, canes, sticks, and bats." A minute slipped by and he added, "SV has been handling the case since we realized the pattern."