Kate woke up when she heard somebody saying her name. She blinked a few times and then glanced at Drew, whose shoulder she was currently leaning on. "Wha-?" she mumbled sleepily, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.

"Oswald just got back. They're moving Lewis up to a room," Drew said, straightening up. Kate looked around in surprise, not believing she could have slept that long, but the faint sunlight visible in the window told her otherwise.

"He's feeling better then?" Kate asked through a muffled yawn, stretching after her awkward sleeping position.

"A bit," Oswald answered. He looked exhausted and worn, the furthest from his naturally childish self that any of them had ever seen him. "He's not as pale, but the drugs were starting to wear off when I left and he was starting to hurt."

"I can imagine," Eugene muttered, standing up and running a hand back over his head. Since he had very little hair this was an unnecessary gesture, but he was prone to doing it when he was thinking.

"Where are they moving him to?" Kate asked as she stood up as well, with Drew's help.

"Third floor," Oswald said. He gestured vaguely for them to follow him and then turned and headed for the elevators. Drew, Kate, and Eugene trailed him silently, the two men lagging behind enough to make sure that Kate could keep up with Oswald's set pace. They traveled up to the third floor in relative quiet with the exception of the doctor who stepped into the elevator with them and muttered to herself as she wrote on her clipboard. At the third floor they stepped out and walked to the receptionists' desk.

"Hello, how can I help you?" the secretary asked pleasantly, looking up at them from behind the desk.

"We're here to see Lewis Kiniski," Oswald said. "They were moving him to a room up here. Do you know which room he's in?"

The secretary typed something into her computer and then her eyes panned down the screen. "Ah yes, here it is," she said. "He's in room 34. But he is only permitted one guest at a time for the moment," she added, looking up at their small group.

"Okay, thank you," Oswald said. The four of them started towards the small waiting room. "Who's going to visit him first?" Oswald asked as they walked. "I've been with him for the last six hours; I think one of you should."

"Drew can," Kate said, panting slightly. "I need to sit down and rest for a moment before going anywhere." The men were all startled into reality by this statement and they promptly helped Kate down into one of the armchairs in the sitting room.

"You going to be okay, Kate?" Drew asked nervously.

"I'll be fine," Kate said, waving her hand vaguely. "Just a little winded. You go see Lewis. I can go visit him when you've finished."

Drew hesitated for a moment. "Well if you're sure you'll be okay," he started apprehensively.

"It's okay, Drew," Eugene spoke up suddenly. "We'll be here with her. Go see Lewis." Drew wavered for a second longer and then nodded, turning and heading off towards Lewis' room. Eugene and Oswald sank down into chairs on either side of Kate. They spoke little while they waited, mostly wrapped up in their own thoughts that left an anxious air swirling around them.

A half-hour later, Drew came back looking more relaxed than he had earlier but still extremely nervous. "He kept asking about you, Kate, so I figured I'd let you go see him before he gives himself a heart attack," he said with a half-hearted laugh. "You going to be alright to get there by yourself?"

"Yeah, I'm fine now," Kate said, accepting his hand to help her up out of the chair. Once she had gotten the room number from him she started off down the hall, following the signs until she finally spotted it. Taking a deep breath, she tentatively peered around the edge of the door.

The figure lying in the hospital bed made her gasp and her hands covered her mouth again. To say that Lewis looked bad would have been an understatement. He was fairly pale, although his cheeks did seem to have a little color in them. His left arm was encased in a white cast, as well as his ankle, and every other inch of his exposed skin seemed to be peppered with cuts. His left eye was closed and there was a thick cut above it that ran up through his eyebrow and into his hairline which was visibly stitched shut.

At the sound of her gasp, Lewis' head rolled to face the door and Kate saw that his right eye was still opened although the other was shut. He grinned dazedly when he spotted her. "Hey, Kate," he said, his voice hoarse.

"Hey, Lewis," Kate replied, stepping into the room cautiously. "How are you?"

"Just glad that you didn't ride home with me," Lewis answered. "Hey, would you mind coming around to my right side? Sorry, but I can't open my left eye so it's easier to see you over here. It's still numb from being stitched."

"Oh, it's no problem," Kate said and she walked around to the other side of the bed. The chair that she assumed Drew had recently been using was standing beside the bed so she sat down and turned her attention back to Lewis. "How are you feeling though? Are you in a lot of pain?"

"Not at the moment, but the doc says it's 'cause I'm on a pretty nice dosage of morphine," Lewis said casually. "I still don't feel all that great, but then I don't look so great either so I guess it makes sense."

Kate gave an almost exasperated smile at this. "Even when you're horribly injured you're still being a smart ass," she said, shaking her head. Nothing seemed to be able to damage his dry sense of humor, including his own near-death experiences.

Lewis chuckled weakly. "Some things never change." They were quiet for a moment, both staring at each other thoughtfully. "You know, you're the last thing I remember seeing before I passed out," he said suddenly. Kate furrowed her brow in confusion. "That's why I was so worried about you. Oswald or Drew probably told you I kept asking about you. I know you weren't there, but I clearly remember seeing your face before I blacked out. When I woke up and realized where I was the first thing I asked the doctors was if you were alright. Of course, they had no idea who you were and they had to convince me that you weren't there at all. But I know the last thing I saw was you." He paused and then shrugged, although the movement made him wince and he immediately stopped. "I guess maybe you were just the last thing I was thinking of or something."

Kate stared at Lewis in silence, not sure how to respond. It had been becoming more and more clear to her over time how much things had begun to change between her and Lewis. They had always been friends, even if they weren't very close, but their personalities had always rejected each other and they had a tendency to act like enemies as much as friends. Yet over the months since she had gotten pregnant they had slowly grown closer and more comfortable around each other until now Kate felt as dearly for Lewis as she did Drew or Oswald. She had to wonder if it was an effect of the hormones from her pregnancy, but she had a feeling that they played a very minimal part in the whole.

"Kate, are you alright?"

Lewis' voice startled her back into reality and Kate looked up at him in surprise. "What? Yeah, I'm sorry, I dazed out for a moment," she said, shaking her head slightly in an attempt to make herself more alert.

"What were you thinking about?" Lewis asked. His voice wasn't suspicious or prying, simply curious.

"You, mostly," Kate answered with a small laugh. "Well, I guess it was more about you and me. How much our friendship has changed over the last few months. Before, we never would have gotten along like this. We were always at each others' throats. What changed?"

"Nothing, really," Lewis said. "We're still the same people that we used to be; only you're pregnant and I'm strung up in a hospital. I think it was just that there were finally circumstances that let us see past each others' hard exteriors. I think I've learned more about who you are in the past few months than I have in all the years we've known each other."

Kate thought this over, biting down on her lower lip pensively. "You know, I think you're too damn smart for your own good sometimes," she finally said, making Lewis laugh.

Lewis' one-eyed gaze flicked over her thoughtfully for a few moments. "I never wanted just a fling."

"What?" Kate asked in confusion, lost by his abrupt change in topic.

"You told me once that the reason you never agreed to sleep with me was because you thought all I wanted was a fling," Lewis explained. Kate's eyes widened in comprehension as she remembered the conversation he was talking about. "I never wanted just a fling, though."

"Lewis, you've been trying to get me to sleep with you since high school," Kate said, her expression showing disbelief.

"So my methods were a little skewed," Lewis said with a hollow laugh. "In high school you were always mentioning the guys you'd slept with. It seemed to mean so much to you. I thought that maybe if you slept with me then maybe we could be more than friends. Even though you always told me no, I kept trying. We were around twenty-five when I gave up on you ever giving in, and by then I just kept offering to annoy you because I was bitter."

Kate sat back in her chair, chewing on her lower lip thoughtfully. She didn't want to consider the possibility that Lewis was telling the truth about all of this. That Lewis actually had feelings for her, or at least did at one time. But the way he spoke about it she couldn't tell if he still did. "We can't be more than a fling though," she murmured, almost more to herself than to him. "We are the in-betweens. We don't have those meaningful relationships. All we would do would be get together, find out it doesn't work, and break up. Then we'd be in the same awkward place that I am with Drew and Oswald now. I really love being able to talk to you now as a friend, I don't want to risk that."

Lewis kept silent for a moment, his one opened eye turned away from her and staring at the ceiling in an oddly detached way. "What if it would really work though?" he asked in barely more than a whisper. "What if it's like you said at the bar that night? That two in-betweens should be together. Maybe that's the reason neither of us has found that meaningful relationship yet, because we were looking for people too different from ourselves." He paused, grimaced and then twitched his head in what Kate assumed was an attempt at shaking his head. "Never mind, that doesn't make sense. Just forget about it. You're right, it would just complicate things. Besides, it's not like you've ever liked me as more than a friend anyway. And I've moved on. Let's just – let's just forget I'd said any of that."

Kate stared at him thoughtfully. It was such a strange sight to see Lewis so flustered, but even stranger to hear him talk about emotions seriously. There was a deeper level to Lewis that people rarely saw, and though Kate had gotten the occasional glimpse into that, she was starting to wonder how much more there was to him. Could it be possible that the crass and crude Lewis secretly wanted to find that one girl that he could spend the rest of his life with? It seemed completely insane to even consider it, but he was really making it seem that way. Or maybe it was just the morphine.

With a quiet sigh, Kate glanced sideways at the clock on the wall and she winced. "Oh, Lewis, I should probably go," she said with a hint of regret. She hated to have to walk out when their conversation was so personal, but she knew she needed to. "Oswald wanted to see you again before he had to leave to go to work, and he'll need to leave soon. I'll go and let him come see you for a while."

"You'll come back?" Lewis asked, finally glancing back at her.

"Yeah, I'll come back later," she agreed, smiling at him. She heaved herself out of the chair and placed a hand on the small of her back to steady herself. Carrying all that weight in the front was really starting to wear her down. "Get feeling better."