A/N: Jeez… This chapter is the longest fanfiction-piece I've ever written, and please forgive me for that. Hope you don't think I'm boring… Bu anyway, my pretties, read on.

3: Bonds Almost Broken

Water splashed over the white wall to the hospital room when Lawrence threw the bottle of water that stood in front of him into it with every ounce of the little power he had.

The frustration burned inside of him. These people stuffed him with tranquilizers, and for that he was grateful, since he'd probably lay balled up under his blanket, shaking with fear if it wasn't for them, but there were things no drugs in this hospital could cure.

Like the nightmares.

Like the unbearable itching in his healing foot.

Like the worrying, like the burning frustration of the fact that Adam was here, somewhere in this hospital, and Lawrence was in his uncomfortable hospital bed, helpless like a turtle on its back, and these damn doctors wouldn't let him have him over.

He didn't get what the problem was. His foot was re-attached, and he really was okay, at least physically. And if you were to believe his barely eighteen-year-old nurse, Adam was doing as well as the circumstances let him do, and Allison and Diana had been allowed to see Lawrence a couple of times.

So why in the name of HELL wouldn't Adam be allowed, too? For god's sake, they were both patients at the hospital, and Lawrence worked here!

His nurse seemed to fight to remain calm as she watched the water run down the wall. She pursed her mouth in disliking before she turned back to Lawrence.

"I can see why you're upset, doctor Gordon. But you're in critical condition, and Mr. Faulkner is the same. You can't see him yet."

Lawrence breathing got ragged as he tried not to yell at her. He wouldn't get to see Adam again until they both got out of the hospital if he lost his sense once more, and he knew that.

"He is," he began which as much calm in his voice as he could bring up, "one fucking floor away from here. And he can walk. I'm a surgeon, I'm a surgeon on this fucking hospital, by the way, I know that bullet wounds are guaranteed to be immune for infections if you've removed the bullet and sewn the wound shut, and put the patient on an IV-drip with salt solution and infection killing for six hours! And please, tell me you've done that! Because if you hadn't, you're idiots, all of you, and if you have, he should be able to come here, just for an hour or something, since we'll hardly go out for a beer or something! For the love of god, he's in his twenties, he's not a fragile old man, he's a kid! Can't you just…"

The nurse raised an annoyed hand, and Lawrence shut up immediately.

"If you're a doctor here," she said dryly, "you should know that the employees here care about their patients. You don't have to see him yet, he gets by without your help. And you shouldn't worry about Mr. Faulkner at all, he's fine now. If I were you, I'd worry more about myself."

Lawrence stared at her, his eyes black.

How could she say something like that?

How could she tell him whom he should be worried about? Currently, he wasn't even allowed to eat on his own, but had to do it through a tube in his arm. Couldn't he at least decide whom he wanted to worry about?

"Plus, there's no need for cursing," the nurse added and tapped the said tube in his arm lightly.

Lawrence considered taking the whole tray of food that stood in front of him and throw it into the wall to join the water. Why would they even give him food? He was already given that through a tube! He'd said that! Jesus, couldn't these people do anything right when he wasn't around?

"Yes," he said slowly, "I need to curse, because otherwise, you don't listen to me."

The nurse gave him a sharp look, but you could tell she actually was listening now. She knew how many important people Lawrence could go to to tell on her if she talked back at him.

"Adam…" Lawrence began and tried to express what he wanted to say, even though he knew the bond between him and Adam couldn't really be described. "…Is my friend. Despite what you say, I am worried about him. I owe him my life."

The nurse kept looking at him. She softened, Lawrence could see that even through the fog of painkillers.

"Please," he continued. "Please. Just for an hour. It would mean… The world to me."

The nurse chewed on her tongue. Nervously fingered her chart, before she blew up her cheeks and slowly let the air seep out between her black-painted lips.

"I'll talk to his doctor," she finally said, almost annoyed. "Try to sleep a little while, at least, I'll get fired if you don't. But I'll see what I can do."

Lawrence was ashamed of the tears that were forming in his eyes. God, couldn't he at least wait until he saw Adam until he started bawling like a girl?

xxxxxxxxxxx

"His condition is unstable."

"Well, what the hell do you think mine is?" Adam hissed. "I want to see him! I'll be nice to him, I promise!"

"That isn't what matters. You can catch an infection if you walk around."

"From where? From this sterile environment? It's a bullet in my shoulder, it's not like I can't walk! Come on! Please, please, doctor…"

Adam clasped his hands together to emphasize his desperation. He wanted to see Lawrence, he had to see Lawrence. The last time he saw him he was delirious and wounded, practically on his deathbed, but he'd survived. He just wanted to make sure he was okay, make sure that Adam didn't had a reason to lay awake at night, writhing in despair, imagining Lawrence's bloodless face.

He wanted Lawrence to crawl up to him, put his hand on his cheek, tell him they were going to be okay…

"Mr. Faulkner…" The doctor began patiently, but was cut off by a young, red-haired nurse who entered the room.

"Doctor, may I have a word with you?"

The doctor gave her an 'I'm with a patient'-look, and she hurriedly added:

"It's urging."

A heavy sigh was heard from the other side of the chart the doctor held in front of his face.

"It's about doctor Gordon!" The young woman finally hissed, that by now seemed to have grown weary of being treated like a baby.

Adam understood why she had used that as a trump card. As soon as the name 'Gordon' reached the doctor's ears, his eyes widened for a brief second before he cleared his throat, threw his chart to the foot of Adam's bed, and asked politely if he could excuse them for a minute?

Adam send him a killing look.

"If you're going to talk about doctor Gordon," he said, spitting out every syllable, "you'll go no-fucking-where, okay?"

His doctor looked back at him as if he was an annoying kid who was clinging onto his leg. Then he turned to the nurse with another deep sigh, and said:

"What about doctor Gordon?"

The nurse's eyes fluttered over to Adam's hospital bed, and she made face that clearly said she didn't want to discuss this with him in the same room. Adam steadily met her gaze, because like hell they would have this conversation without him.

"He wants to…" The nurse seemed to try to find words that Adam somehow wouldn't understand. "He wants to see Mr. Faulkner."

Any person who saw Adam Faulkner at that moment would have used the metaphor "child with a brand new toy". Because in his eyes, that had been black with sorrow and locked up grief, was lightened up when he heard his friends name, and when he answered the comment he was so happy that it came out as a little yelp.

"Lawrence? Lawrence said he wanted to see me?"

Neither doctor nor nurse pretended to hear him.

"Gordon said that? He should know better, he's a doctor."

The nurse just shrugged for an answer.

"His condition can't be stable enough already, right?" The doctor said skeptically. "He saw off his foot!"

"I know that," the nurse said, "but we've re-attached it. The chance he gets to keep it actually seems pretty high. Fifty percent. And believe it or not, but his vitals, pulse, blood pressure and oxygen actually seems good enough for a short visit. An hour or so."

The doctor's brows got more and more furrowed during her little speech.

"Fifty percents chance to keep his foot? But… It almost never remains after it has been removed."

The nurse slowly shook her head. Adam's thoughts about her got a little higher when he saw a small smile on her lips.

"He seems to be a good fixer. Of both himself and others. And I'm not a doctor, but I can say, with pretty big certainty that a visit would do him good. As long as it's Mr. Faulkner coming to him, and not the other way around."

Adam felt as if someone had turned his insides into a knot from the nervousness. Now, he was so close, so close to meeting Lawrence again. He was a damn arm's length away, if just the doctor…

The said man sighed a third time. Adam wanted to cut his lips off, because he had a sense that sound would find its way into the few hours of sleep he got.

"Fine," the doctor said, and Adam was so happy he could oversee all the sighing in the world. "But just for an hour."

He. Said. Fine.

A joyous scream was heard in Adam's mind.

He said okay. Do you get it? You're meeting Lawrence! Lawrence!

Lawrence.

Nothing else was important to him anymore.

Adam got up from the bed, his head spun a little from the drugs and the lack of sleep, but still, he went determinately out through the door.

The doctor shouldn't see him cry.

And he wouldn't cry. He would swallow his sobs and find Lawrence.

And when he got in there, he wouldn't cry either. Lawrence wouldn't see him cry, he would see him strong.

But maybe he should have asked which room Lawrence was in.

It was a big hospital, so Adam had to wander around in its labyrinth of white walls and green, senselessly ugly chairs. And he didn't find Lawrence anywhere.

Of course you don't. He's dead, you little moron. He's down in the morgue, he's in one of those freezers, he has a tag on his toe, he's cold and dead, dead, dead…

Adam held back a sob. It felt like since he left the hospital room, he hadn't done anything else.

"Excuse me," he blurted out when a nurse passed him.

She stopped and looked kindly at him.

"You know where… Lawrence Gordon… What room he's in?"

She smiled tolerantly.

"Lawrence Gordon is a doctor at this hospital."

Damn it. I don't want to…

Adam raked his hand trough his hair. It was a nervous habit, and he tried to get rid of it, since whenever he did it now, he felt a stabbing pain in his forehead from where he'd hit the edge of the bathtub.

He knew he wasn't going to be able to explain to her why Lawrence Gordon, the calm, sensible doctor she'd probably gotten to know, was now in a hospital bed somewhere where Adam couldn't find him. He was too busy getting those memories away from his own head.

"Right," he said in a clipped tone. "I must've been mistaken. Thanks."

He turned around. He was going to keep walking, but before he managed to take a step, he felt a hand on his shoulder. When he turned around he saw, instead of the nurse he just talked to, the nurse that had been in his room, and she had an annoyed wrinkle between her eyes.

"There you are!" She said angrily. "You can't run off like that!"

Adam opened his mouth to excuse himself, suddenly terrified that she would tell him that such an anxious patient wasn't allowed to meet doctor Gordon, since that would make him nervous, but she interrupted him before he managed to say anything. However you do that.

"I just thought you wanted to know that doctor Gordon is in there."

When she pointed to the door right next to Adam, he would have kissed her in pure happiness, if he hadn't been in such a hurry to slam the door open and run into the sterilized room.

"Lawrence!" Adam said loudly.

He knew he should be more careful, more quiet, or even better, not there at all, but he didn't care. He needed Lawrence, he always had, and he'd never been more aware of it than now.

And there he was.

Lawrence.

Lawrence who was living and breathing. He was real, he was in his hospital, he was awake, he was there, and he stared at Adam with eyes as wide as tennis balls.

"Adam?" He said gently.

Adam nodded. Lawrence was blurred by the tears that insisted on welling up in his eyes and make them shiny, but he didn't want to cry.

"It's me," he replied, and his voice was all thick. He sounded like a seal.

God, he was a sissy.

Lawrence didn't seem to hear him. He kept staring, and his bottom lip quivered, like on a kid.

"Is it really you?" He asked silently, as if he was afraid Adam would disappear into a cloud of smoke if he spoke to loudly.

Adam nodded again, covered his mouth with his hand but still couldn't sawllow a jittery sob.

"It's me," he repeated, and his voice cracked in the middle of the sentence.

Lawrence rolled his lips together and closed his eyes.

Just for like a day they had been away from each other, and yet, they were this shook up from seeing again.

This was what needing really was. They needed each other. Both of them. But neither one of them had really gotten it yet.

Adam looked up at Lawrence. Looked at his clenched jaw, at all the tears he held back, and he thought to hell with the macho act, and walked up to him, bent down and hugged him.

Lawrence responded. He put his arms around Adam's shoulders, and Adam grunted in pain when he felt the pressure against his bullet wound, but he never, never ever, wanted Lawrence to let him go.

And they were together. United. Finally. Lawrence in his hospital bed and Adam next to it, and they clung onto each other as if the other would vanish of they didn't. Lawrence sobbed into Adam's hair, and they squeezed breath and tears out of each other, and neither one of them had really understood how much they've missed the other one until now.

Adam pressed Lawrence closer to him. And in a strange way, he was reminded of a moment they'd had in the ambulance that had taken them away from the bathroom, when their gurneys were next to the each other and panicking paramedics ran around outside, even though it was completely silent in the ambulance, except for their own slow respiration. And Adam had asked Lawrence how he was able to get out, and how he'd remembered to send someone back for him when he did so. Lawrence had answered, not without a small, smug smile despite the pain, that he'd made a promise, hadn't he? And then Adam had reached out a shaking hand, and Lawrence had grabbed it with his own, that was cold from the blood loss, and they had gone to the hospital that way. Together.

It had been so close to losing each other.

But they hadn't. They were here now, together once more, and neither one of them really had to say that they would never be parted again.

They knew it anyway. Both of them.

This isn't the final chapter… I wouldn't let my darlings go before having them making out a little… But only if you review! If you don't, I'll make them hate each other! (evil cackle)