Author's Note: Thank you again to everyone who reviewed last chapter. I love hearing feedback, criticism and general thoughts from you, so if you have anything to offer from encouragement and support to constructive tips on how I can improve, feel free to drop it into a review. Enjoy the new chapter!

Chapter 6

By the time Katara made it to the reception area of the hospital, the rain had drenched her from head to toe and an aching chill was setting into her bones. She rubbed at her arms as she paused to catch her breath and tried to ignore the concerned glances she was receiving from the hospital staff.

"Katara?" a familiar voice said uncertainly.

Katara looked up. "Hey Suki, how are you? When does your shift end? You should stop by for dinner later, I'll save you something. Sokka would love to see you." Suki gave a gentle laugh and looked down at her feet. Katara felt herself stop smiling and straighten up, body going numb to the cold. "Suki, what's wrong?"

With a deep breath, Suki brushed a crease out of her nurse uniform and looked back up at Katara. "I was wondering when you were going to show up."

"I got stuck in an after-school detention," Katara explained nervously. "Has Aang been asking for me?"

Suki bit her lip. "He asked if I knew why you weren't here yet. Apparently, you were going to come in right after school."

"That's right… I'd meant to, but like I said, the detention…"

There was a tremble in Suki's voice. "He asked for you just before four o'clock." Katara frowned. Suki's lips were shaking and she wasn't looking at her properly like she usually did. "Katara…"

Her eyes went wide. "Where's Aang?!" Suki shook her head and Katara grabbed her by the front of her uniform. "Where is he?!"

"They moved him into Intensive Care just before five. He's on life support." Tears blackened with makeup trickled down Suki's cheeks. She started gasping for air between sobs and Katara let her go.

"What happened?"

"I don't know! He asked for you and then he said he didn't feel so well, and Dr Pakku said to give him some morphine and keep an eye on him… and then he just…" Suki faltered and stopped, unable to go on. "He's not waking up. Dr Pakku doesn't know if he'll wake up at all."

Katara realized that something warm was on her face and touched her cheek to find that between the raindrops, she had started crying too. She suddenly felt that she couldn't breathe and started hyperventilating. Suki reached out for her and pulled her into a hug. Other hospital staff and visitors passed them with sympathetic glances. Suki managed to pull herself together enough to lead Katara to where Aang would usually have been so that they could have a little more privacy.

"Sugar Queen? Is that you?" a voice perked up as they came through the door. The small room contained two bed; one, which Aang usually lay in, but which was now empty, and the other, Toph was sitting up in.

"Hi Toph, it's me."

"Suki, you told her, right?"

The young nurse nodded. "Right. I told her as soon as I saw her."

Katara sat in a chair next to Toph's bed and Suki excused herself from the room to get new bandages and ointment for Toph. "How are your eyes?"

She snorted. "Well, they're not getting any better. But that's not important right now. What did Suki tell you? No one has been in here to tell me anything since they moved Aang to Intensive Care. What's going on?"

"Suki told me that Aang's on life support. He's… not waking up."

Toph drummed her fingers silently against the bed-sheets over her legs. "He was asking for you for ages before it happened." There was a long pause and Katara clutched her schoolbag against her, shivering in her still-wet clothes. "Where have you been? You were meant to be here hours ago."

Katara gave a shuddering breathe. "I had an after-school detention. Oh…" She trailed off and bit her lip. "If I knew today would be the day, I would have told Ms Joo Dee where to shove her stupid detention. Aang needed me here, didn't he?" Toph nodded solemnly. Katara's body began to shake with sobs again. "Why didn't I come straight here? I might still have had a chance to see him."

"Well, why didn't you?"

Katara stopped her sobs for a moment to think. What had she been doing after the detention to keep her from coming straight to the hospital? Rescuing her sketchbook, the skate park, Zuko. "Oh Spirits no…" Toph waited silently for the explanation. "Why was I so stupid? Why? This one time…"

"What were you doing? Where were you?"

Suki came back to the room and gently pushed Toph back down to her pillow, unwrapping the bandages around her eyes. The skin around the sockets was pink, and her eyelids drooped and trembled in uncertainty of staying open or closing.

"I was just talking with… someone."

"Someone?"

Suki paused in her application of the ointment to the damaged skin. "Who's someone?"

"I had detention with a boy. He helped me get my sketchbook back afterwards. And then we just hung around talking for a while before I decided it was getting late and I should really come here." She growled in frustration. "Why didn't I just come straight here?! The sketchbook could have waited!"

Suki put a comforting hand on Katara's arm. "It's okay, Katara."

"It isn't your fault, Sugar Queen."

"This still would have happened, even if you had showed up on time."

"But at least I would have been here to hold his hand. At least I could have said goodbye."

"Hey! He isn't dead yet!" Toph protested. "Don't act as if he's not going to make it through. This is Aang. He's been fighting for years. There's no reason for him to give up now. It's not like the past little while has been any worse than the past year. Not enough for him not to pull through!" There was a long silence in which Suki and Katara glanced nervously at each other, hoping against all hope that Toph was right, and their friend would survive. "Right?" Toph's voice was suddenly quiet and uncertain.

Katara's hand reached out to touch hers. "Right," she whispered.

Suki wrapped the fresh bandage over Toph's eyes and excused herself from the room again. "My shift finishes at eight, when visiting hours are over. I'll see you at the house."

Katara shook her head. "I'll stick around."

Toph settled back against the pillow of her bed for a nap after another nurse came around with dinner. The nurse offered a bowl to Katara, but she wasn't hungry enough to even look at the food. She probably couldn't have eaten if she'd tried. Her stomach felt sick and churned at the thought of Aang and the pain he must have been in. What it must be like to die. The empty bed on the other side of the room irked her so much that she felt herself beginning to cry again. But Toph was asleep, and Suki was busy working, and Zuko was back at The Jasmine Dragon café with his uncle Iroh, oblivious to how much she needed someone to just talk to, oblivious to how much she wanted to just talk to him like she had that afternoon.

"But it's his fault," she said to herself. "If I'd just come here instead of walking around with him…"

Katara didn't realize until she was staring at the picture in her sketchbook that she had unzipped her schoolbag at all. She continued working on the image she was drawing for Aang, adding the colours and the detail while she waited for visiting hours to end. Sokka and Gran-Gran could wait for their dinner, and once they found out what had happened, they would understand why she hadn't come home sooner. Once she decided that she'd finished the picture, Suki came in, as if on cue.

"My shift is over. Dr Pakku said you can come and see Aang for a moment if you want, before we leave."

Katara stared blankly up at her and nodded once, gently tearing the picture out and tucking it under her arm while she packed her sketchbook and her art supplies. Her hands had been stained a murky white-blue from colouring the ice and the ocean. Before she stood up, she reached for the bed and gave Toph's hand a final squeeze before leaving the room with Suki. "Bye, Sugar Queen," the sleep-thickened voice whispered.

The hospital was bigger than Katara had realized and she'd lost track of the number of corridors and turns Suki led her through to get to the Intensive Care Unit. Aang was lying bare-chested in a bed, an oxygen mask on his face breathing for him, and a machine near the head of his bed beeping out his feeble heartbeat. Suki stood by and watched as Katara sat down next to him and pressed a gentle kiss to his forehead, leaving her fingers to trace the faded remains of the blue arrow he'd drawn on his head, days earlier.

With a sigh, his head rolled on the pillow, and his eyes cracked open just a fraction. Katara held her breath as her best friend looked up at her. "Aang?" she whispered hopefully. A smile of joy spread across his lips at the sound of her voice and he closed his eyes again and fell back into his coma.

Author's Note: Longest chapter so far! I was very tempted to end it there, just like the end of Season 2. Having said that, I was tempted to wrap it up last chapter too. But the plot-bunnies have gone wild and started breeding inside my brain and I may have become slightly infected with ideas for this story. I'm thinking of something a little bit longer than what I'd intended. But that's okay with me. Are you cool with that, readers?

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed that chapter. Tell me your thoughts in a review. Hint, hint; if you read the chapter, please leave a review. I love reviews. All writers do. So review!