"I can't remember anything
Can't tell if this is true or dream…"
He was floating in a world of utter darkness.
"Deep down inside I feel to scream
This terrible silence stops me…"
Somehow he realized he should be terrified, but he couldn't muster the will or the energy. He just knew that he was so damned tired.
"Now that the war is through with me
I'm waking up, I cannot see…"
Touch was the next thing to impinge on his consciousness. He felt the warm blankets covering his mostly naked body, keeping him warm in the chilled room. He wondered where the hell he was, and what the hell was happening.
"That there's not much left of me
Nothing is real but pain now…"
He ached. Everywhere. His eyes refused to open at his command, and he suddenly realized that there was… noise.
"Hold my breath as I wish for death
Oh please god, wake me…"
Beep………… beep………… beep…………
What the hell was that! It was deafening!
Beep…… beep…… beep…
"Back in the womb it's much too real
In pumps life that I must feel…"
Beep… beep… whoosh…… beep… beep… whoosh…
The sounds were beginning to be familiar to him, but he just couldn't place them.
"But can't look forward to reveal
Look to the time when I'll live…"
Suddenly the image of a beautiful little girl in an emerald green velvet dress violently seizing in a man's arms struck him like a hammer, and his brain reeled from the onslaught.
Beep.. beep.. beep.. whoosh.. beep.. beep.. beep.. whoosh..
"Fed through the tube that sticks in me
Just like a wartime novelty…"
He began to panic. His eyes wouldn't open, he couldn't move, all he could hear was this damned beeping and whooshing sound, and his voice…
He tried to talk, but there was something in his mouth… his throat… and it gagged him. He tried to swallow, but his stomach suddenly rebelled, and his body tried to vomit.
"Tied to machines that make me be
Cut this life off from me…"
Beep beep beep beep beepbeepbeepbeep.. DEEDEEDEEDEEDEEDEEDEEDEEDEEDEEDEEDEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…
"Hold my breath as I wish for death
Oh please god, wake me…"
Claire's head snapped up from her microscope at the shrill screaming of the life support alarms over the intercom. Her eyes widened in a strange mixture of shock, hope and despair as she quickly strode to the door of Lab 101 and activated it. On the other side, an agent snapped to attention as the doctor rapidly moved past him and down the hall to her friend Gloria's old room in Lab Two. The agent shadowed her, as he did all the time these days, and even followed her through the anteroom into the small main room filled with all kinds of monitors and machines.
All surrounding an oversized hospital bed containing the now weakly thrashing body of a tall, lanky man.
Alarms screamed as he obviously panicked and fought the ventilator forcing his body to breathe. Thin, pale arms flopped feebly, causing IV and monitor lines to twist and snap taut every time he managed to raise them higher than an inch.
Claire's expression was full of pained hope as she came to her friend's side. "Darien," she called to him softly as she silenced some of the more shrill alarms that were more than likely freaking him out even more. "Sweetheart, it's Claire. You're safe. You're at the Agency." She smoothed long wisps of hair away from Darien's sweat-dappled forehead; even though she'd been trimming it every few weeks, it still grew astoundingly fast.
Her voice, combined with the gentle touch of her hand, seemed to break through the man's panic, and he stilled. The doctor felt his carotid pulse, and was pleased to note that it was strong and steadying. She looked up at the agent who had followed her in, and nodded at him.
A grin split his face, and she spoke quietly. "Don't get your hopes up yet, David, I still don't have any idea just how cognizant he is."
Agent Zimmer's smile faltered slightly. "But this has to be encouraging, at least, doctor," he replied. "Right?"
She shook her head. "I can't make any promises. He's had so many episodes of near-consciousness." Her voice held great sadness in it, which was more than enough to quell any rising excitement in the agent.
"You want me to page Hobbes?"
"No, not yet. Let me watch Darien for a while; run some tests on him. If I get any positive results, then and only then will I inform Bobby."
The broad-shouldered agent ducked his head slightly to the side. "I'll be waiting outside if you need anything, doctor."
A weary smile crossed her face as she aimlessly ran her fingers through Darien's hair again. "Thank you."
As the agent pulled the door almost completely shut behind him, Claire moved around the room to gather the necessary equipment. "Darien, if you can hear me, I'm going to examine you to see just how aware you are. Try to stay calm, sweetheart; you've been very, very ill, and are still quite weak."
Darien lay there, confused as hell. He thought he could hear Claire, but it was like he was underwater and her voice was coming from down a long tunnel. He finally recognized what it was in his mouth: a ventilator tube connected to a machine that was making him breathe.
Shit, how long was he freakin' out? And why?
He desperately tried to trigger a memory… any memory, but it made his head hurt really bad.
Waitaminute…
His stomach lurched sickeningly as one particular image figuratively slapped him in the face.
Arnaud.
The gland.
The gland!
He could feel the panic rising like a red wave again, and he fought to remain calm as his heart rate skyrocketed.
Hey, what was that? It was like…
Claire turned around as the pulse-ox monitor chirruped its unhappiness. "Darien?" she began as she turned, only to drop the instruments from suddenly nerveless fingers. She gasped in shock, and grabbed on to the counter behind her to keep from sliding to the floor.
Darien was going invisible.
Hobbes madly dashed down the hall with Monroe only a few strides behind him. Anyone who was in the charging duo's path moved immediately to avoid being run over, as they knew the expressions on the agent's faces all too well.
There was an emergency.
The two agents barreled down the stairs to the basement floors, and came out at the fifth level with no less speed than when they had entered.
They came even with the Keep's door, and Hobbes skidded to a stop. He looked around the empty hallway in almost panic. "Where's Zimmer?" he panted. "He's supposed ta be…"
Monroe, however, had continued down the hall and came to the bend before she'd noticed that her friend wasn't beside her. She called back over her shoulder, "Hobbes! They're in Lab Three!"
His eyes widened, and he sprinted back down the hall.
Agent Zimmer, along with Heyes and Silverman, was standing guard at the door to the anteroom. His face was uncharacteristically bright and cheerful, as evidenced by the huge grin almost splitting his head in two. "Hobbes, get in there! He's awake!"
At those words the senior agent stopped dead in his tracks, all the color leeching from his face. "A-awake?" he stammered.
Monroe caught Bobby's elbow as she noticed his legs wobble slightly. "C'mon Hobbes, you'd better sit down." She led the dazed man into the first area and keyed the code in for the main room. She snagged the chair at the desk in the anteroom and whirled it through the door, looking like she practically took Hobbes' legs out from under him as he thumped into it.
Claire had looked up from taking Darien's pulse as the door had opened, and turned around with a brilliant smile the other two hadn't seen for months.
Which faded when she saw the expression on Hobbes' face. She quickly strode over to him, seated in the chair, numbly looking at his friend lying in the hospital bed.
Darien's eyes were open, and they were blearily staring right back at him.
"Bobby? Bobby, are you all right?" Claire asked gently. She leaned down and took his pulse, and then looked up at Monroe. "He's in shock," she stated with more than a trace of concern in her voice.
"Gee, ya think?" the brunette replied huskily. Her eyes were bright, shining with unshed tears. She shook her head, banishing the emotion, and put a comforting hand on Hobbes' shoulder. "I know I sure as hell am."
Zimmer peeked over Monroe's head. "Hobbes, you all right?"
Claire smiled up at the usually stolid agent. "He will be, once the shock of it all wears off, David. Thank you."
The man nodded and left the room, closing the door to let them have some privacy.
The doctor knelt down in front of her friend. "Bobby? Listen to me. Darien woke up last night. I didn't want to get our hopes up before I'd done some tests."
Hobbes blinked, his attention finally focusing on something other than the pale man across the room. "Last night?" he murmured.
"Yes, but I just couldn't see you go through another period of false consciousness with him, so I waited until I was sure he would stay with us," she replied softly. She'd taken one of his chilled hands into both of hers, and was gently rubbing some warmth back into it.
"So, he can… hear us?" Alex asked.
Claire nodded. "I'll be taking him off the respirator soon, since he looks like he's having no problems breathing on his own now."
"And that's when the fun starts," Hobbes murmured.
Long blonde hair skittered across the lovely doctor's back as she tilted her head to the side questioningly. "What do you mean?"
He blinked, and pulled his hand away from hers so that he could scrub at his face. "We'll all find out how much damage that bastard did to Fawkes," he explained in a growl.
Alex squeezed his shoulder lightly. "He's a fighter, Bobby. He'll surprise us all."
Hobbes moved as if to stand, and the other two backed away. He rose and walked over to the hospital bed, and touched his best friend's arm. "Hey, kid."
Darien blinked. A ghost of a smile wafted across his face, only to be replaced with a grimace of pain.
Hobbes snatched his hand back, thinking he'd somehow hurt his partner, just as the pulse-oxymeter began to trill. Claire came around the bed and reached for a filled syringe. "Pain's coming back, isn't it?" she asked Darien quietly. He slowly forced his eyes to blink once, and she nodded. She took the IV and injected the medicine into the line. "We do have one complication so far," she began to the others.
Monroe had silently joined Bobby beside the bed. "What?" she asked.
"When Darien woke up, he was understandably confused," the doctor replied, setting the empty syringe back on the counter. "He panicked, and went invisible after I'd come into the room."
Both agents' eyes widened like saucers at that. "That's good, right?" Monroe queried, just as Hobbes grinned with an "Atta boy, Fawkesy!"
"It is good that he can Quicksilver, since that means Vincent and I were successful in properly reattaching the gland."
Bobby looked up with a troubled expression. "I sense a 'but' in there, Keepie."
She ducked her head a little, and once again smoothed Darien's shaggy hair from his brow. His eyes drooped sleepily, and he dozed off with Claire's comforting hand to guide him. She continued to watch him as he fell asleep. "Going invisible triggered a grand mal seizure," she quietly informed the others. "He was in considerable pain, and it was bloody difficult trying to get him to un-Quicksilver in all that."
Monroe pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Negative feedback loop."
"Exactly. The more pain he was in, the more he panicked. The more he panicked, the more Quicksilver he secreted, which in turn caused him even more pain. Luckily, the muscle relaxant I gave him did the trick," she spoke quietly so as not to disturb her patient, whose hair she was still stroking.
"Well, shit," Alex muttered, as Hobbes briefly closed his eyes.
"Once Darien's off the respirator, I'll be able to get a better picture of what we're dealing with." Claire slowly took her hand away from the sleeping Darien, and waved her friends over to the other side of the room. "He'll be sleeping a lot, but I'm pretty certain that he won't slip back into a coma."
"Damned well better not," Bobby murmured thickly. "Told him if he died, I'd kick his scrawny ass into the afterlife."
The ladies smiled at his gruff statement.
"Bobby, if you'd like to come by later, you can help me take Darien off of the ventilator," the doctor suggested. At the man's curt nod, she continued. "You both are welcome to be here," she glanced with a warm smile at Monroe, who almost blushed. "Say, after lunch?"
"We'll be here," Alex replied softly. "Want me to let the Official know?"
"Yes. I'm sure Albert would appreciate it," Claire nodded. She automatically glanced at Hobbes to see if he'd protest with some sort of snide remark, but he didn't even grimace. Ever since the Arnaud incident, Bobby and Eberts had reached some sort of unspoken truce. It led to a much different environment at The Agency, as then the senior agent had no one to bounce his hyperkinetic negativity off of… it was a kind of stress-reliever for him to exchange snarky and cutting commentary with either Eberts or Fawkes. The other agents there were a little too "stuffy", as Claire thought of them in comparison to the eclectic team of Fawkes and Hobbes.
But then, no one was like Fawkes and Hobbes. That might be a good thing.
Claire smiled a little at the thought as she walked her friends out of the room.
The next time Darien awoke, it was with great relief that he didn't hear all sorts of beeps and pings. Just that damned ventilator with its tube shoved down his throat. He pried open his eyes with difficulty to focus on the blurred outline of Claire with her hand on his shoulder.
The arm closest to the doctor twitched, and she turned a smiling face to him. "Hello there, sleepyhead," she greeted him softly. "How would you like to have that tube out of your throat now?"
Darien blinked once, and a smile lit up his chestnut eyes.
She chuckled. "Please, Darien, restrain yourself," she teased him. Claire glanced over her shoulder and nodded, then turned back. "Bobby and Alex would like to help. Is that okay?"
The lanky man's brows furrowed in confusion. He just stared at her.
Her smile faltered as she hesitated. "Do you know who I'm talking about?"
He blinked. Once. Twice.
Claire's face fell before she caught herself with a little headshake. "Don't worry about that now. There are some friends here who would like to help. Are you all right with that?"
Blink.
"Good." Her grin was back in full force again. "Now, what I'm going to do is turn off the machine and wait for a few minutes. I want to be sure that you're strong enough to breathe on your own, okay?"
Blink.
"Then what I'll need you to do is take as deep a breath as you can, and we'll pull out the tube while you blow out as hard as you can. Think you can do that?"
Blink.
"Okay. I'm turning off the machine now…" Claire reached over Darien's head and flipped the power switch on the ventilator.
He felt the pressure in his chest ease up, and for a moment he forgot how he was supposed to breathe. Darien's eyes widened in surprise and rising fear as he felt the burning in his lungs grow stronger, and then Claire gently touched his cheek. That seemed to bring back the memory, and he slowly, laboriously, drew air into his body.
'C'mon, man, you can do this,' he nagged himself.
Again, he slowly sucked air through the tube in his mouth, and then relaxed, letting his chest expel as it lowered. Damn, this hurt. But he wasn't going to give up; no way was he gonna keep that frickin' tube in him any more than absolutely necessary.
Five tortuous minutes crawled by, until Claire rested a gentle hand on his arm. "All right, Darien. I think it's time to take the tube out."
He smiled faintly. Goody!
"Bobby, I'll need your help with this," she called over her shoulder.
Hobbes stepped into Darien's field of vision, his face looking pinched with worry. "What can I do?" he asked.
"First we need to get Darien sitting up." Darien's eyes followed Hobbes as he walked around to the other side of the bed, and helped to raise the head of the bed so that Darien was almost sitting up. "I'll need your help pulling this out," the doctor indicated the ventilation tube. She then bent over and brought her face closer to Darien's. "When I count to three, you take as deep a breath as you can and hold it, and Bobby will pull out the tube while you blow as hard as you can, okay?" she murmured.
Darien blinked.
"On three. Ready?" Claire nodded to first Darien and then Bobby. Both men indicated their readiness, and she counted. "One… two… three!"
Darien gulped in air and held it. Claire ordered, "Now Bobby!" and Hobbes firmly grasped and pulled the tube straight out as Claire directed her patient to blow out the air in his lungs.
The lanky man coughed, gagged and choked as the plastic was yanked from his body. He collapsed over his knees, his solar plexus spasming as he tried to suck in precious air. Dry heaves wracked him as well, and it seemed like ages before everything eased up enough to allow him to breathe.
Claire and Hobbes straightened Darien up, and Alex arranged fresh pillows for him to lean against. He was still breathing quite heavily, but thankfully it wasn't as labored.
He opened his mouth and tried to say something, but all he did was painfully wheeze.
"Darien," Claire admonished gently. "Don't try to speak for a while. Here, have some ice to suck on for a bit; it will help your throat."
She spooned ice chips into his mouth, and the soothing coolness as they melted slipped down his raw throat.
His eyes closed in relief, and he sagged back into the pillows. Weird that he was exhausted from such a little thing as being taken off of a ventilator.
Without even being aware of it, Darien slipped off into a light doze, and Claire motioned the others to follow her away from the bed.
"He won't be able to speak much for at least a day," she informed Hobbes and Monroe. "And he'll still be sleeping an awful lot. But I must say that so far I'm encouraged by his recovery."
Bobby's face darkened, and the doctor rested a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Now that he's awake, and once he's strong enough, I'll be able to test Darien for any lingering damage," she soothed.
"Is there anything we can do to help?" Alex asked.
"Yes. Come and visit him as much as you can," Claire replied. "We need to engage him and see how much he can remember."
"What, of the de-glanding?" Hobbes growled.
"No, of his life. Of us," Claire responded softly.
Bobby and Alex's eyes widened a little as the impact sank in.
"You really think he's that bad off?" the tough as nails female agent almost whispered.
Long, silky blonde hair was swept behind one ear absently as the doctor considered her answer. "We won't know until we can properly communicate with him, but the possibility exists that he could have suffered permanent memory loss at the least."
"I need some air," Hobbes mumbled, and roughly pushed his way past the ladies on his way out of the room.
Claire and Alex exchanged weighted looks. "I'll make sure de Fœhn's left alone," Monroe declared, and she also left the room.
Claire returned to her patient's side, and carefully lowered the bed enough so that Darien could sleep more comfortably. "For your sake, and Arnaud's, Darien, I hope you make a full recovery," she murmured.