Disclaimer: See initial chapter.
A/N: Guest, thanks for the review; to be honest, lack of feedback for this story has me thinking that it's just not good enough to continue posting.
Brennan didn't like sitting still with nothing to do. She twisted her hands in her lap, seeing Sweets' blood on the palms, even though she'd cleaned them multiple times. It wasn't rational to see blood where there wasn't any.
She wished that she was at the lab, working the case she'd left behind when she'd visited Booth for lunch. There was something comforting about holding a skull or a bone in her hands– the weight was tangible and practical. Empty hands, while she didn't believe the adage that they were the devil's plaything, made her very uncomfortable.
Sitting in a hospital, waiting for a doctor to walk in and tell her whether a friend she cared about was going to live or die, wasn't something that she did well. She needed to be the one finding the answers, not waiting for them.
Booth reached over and took one of her hands, and squeezed. "He's going to be okay, Bones. He's young and strong. He'll be fine."
"You can't know that," Brennan said. "He was shot from not even four feet away. The bullet lodged into his spine between the third and fourth lumbar vertebrae. Even if he survives surgery, he could end up partially paralyzed."
"He's going to be fine," Booth said, and he squeezed her hand. "He'll survive, and he'll be fine."
"Is that your faith talking?" Brennan asked, searching his face for answers she knew that Booth couldn't possibly have. Answers she wouldn't have believed, even if they had been manifested on her partner's face.
He scrubbed a hand over his face and took a breath. "Yeah," he said, and then looked at their entwined hands. "No. I don't know, Bones. All I know is that Sweets doesn't deserve to die, and he sure as hell doesn't deserve to be paralyzed."
"I know." Brennan squeezed Booth's hand, getting as much comfort from the weight of his hand in hers as he appeared to be getting from her. "I can't just divorce the reality of Sweets' situation from my mind, and, I can't stop seeing him fall after he was shot."
Though it had been a relatively short fall compared to the one Sweets had taken in her dream, it had seemed to last forever. Without adrenaline running through her system, she'd had time to replay the event in her mind. It wasn't any less horrific with the absence of the thought-altering chemicals. She didn't understand why she couldn't separate the facts of what had happened to Sweets from the emotions associated with it.
Brennan wasn't used to not being able to separate fact from emotion. She was good at compartmentalizing. Even Sweets had said it, and he was an expert on such things.
Not that she gave much credence to psychology, but Sweets and others did. Regardless of her own feelings on the subject, psychology was a much respected field of study. She had a feeling that, if Sweets did survive surgery, he'd need whatever help psychology had to offer him. That maybe he'd be able to find solace in it.
A surgeon stepped into the waiting room. He was dressed in green scrubs that looked like they'd been slept in, but Brennan knew that he'd probably just hastily changed out the scrubs he'd worn during surgery because they were probably covered in blood. She looked at her hands, and smiled when Booth squeezed the hand she'd held over Sweets' wound.
"Family of Lance Sweets?" The surgeon looked tired and wary, like he wanted to be somewhere else, and his voice was subdued. All outward signs that he had bad news to tell them.
"Dr. Sweets," Brennan spoke up, correcting the surgeon. She stood, and Booth stood with her. "He hasn't got any family. He's an orphan."
"What Dr. Brennan means," Cam spoke up, and Brennan wondered when the pathologist had arrived, and how she'd missed it, "is that we are all the family that Dr. Sweets has."
The surgeon frowned and took a deep breath. Expelling it, he gave them a grave smile, and gestured for everyone to sit down. Brennan hadn't realized that Hodgins, Ang, Cam, Hacker, Arastoo, Finn, Michelle, and even Caroline had come, and all of them had risen when she and Booth had. She was usually more aware of her surroundings than that, and she felt shaken by her lack of awareness.
"Please, take a seat," the surgeon said, suiting his words to action by taking a seat on the magazine table in front of them.
Reluctantly, Brennan sat.
The surgeon slapped a folder against his knee, and opened it. "Which of you is Agent Seely Booth?"
"I am," Booth said, leaning forward.
The surgeon leaned closer to Booth. "Dr. Sweets has your name listed on his advance directive as someone we can release medical information to, he's named you and Dr. Temperance Brennan as legal surrogates."
Booth stiffened, and frowned, and he looked at Brennan. She hadn't known about this either, and wondered why Sweets hadn't said anything to either of them.
"Do you know when he did this?" Booth asked.
The surgeon sighed and looked at the paper. "Looks like it was done fairly recently, within the past month. I'm sure that he meant to speak with the both of you about it before all of this happened."
"I drew up the paperwork for him," Caroline said. "Told that boy he should've talked with the two of you about it first." If Brennan wasn't mistaken, the prosecutor sounded sad, not angry as her words would have implied.
"Is he…" Booth trailed off, and Brennan steeled herself to hear the worst.
"He made it through surgery okay, but," the surgeon paused, "the bullet caused some major damage to his spinal cord."
"So, what are you saying, doc?" Booth's voice was aggressive, and Brennan's heart felt like it was stuck in her throat. It was an odd sensation, one she'd only ever felt once before.
The surgeon looked at each of them in turn, and then cleared his throat. "I'm sorry, but it looks like Dr. Sweets will be paralyzed from the waist down. The damage to his spinal cord was irreversible. We'll know more about the extent of the damage once some of the swelling goes down."
"How can you be so certain?" Booth asked.
"The bullet entered in through his chest, but lodged itself in between the third and fourth lumbar vertebrae, shattering them, causing damage to the spinal cord," the surgeon spoke in a curt, yet compassionate tone. Brennan supposed that Sweets would say that he had a good bedside manner, but she found no comfort in it.
"So, you're saying what? That this is irreversible?" Booth pulled his hand from hers, and ran it through his hair.
The surgeon nodded. "Right now, we have him sedated. Miraculously, there was very little internal damage. The bullet nicked his liver and spleen, but those were easy to repair. Given the bullet's trajectory, he was really a very lucky young man."
"You'll have to excuse me if I don't shout, hallelujah, doc," Booth said, and he clenched his hands into fists.
Brennan placed a hand on his arm, hoping that he wouldn't haul off and hit the doctor, even though there was a small part of her that wished he would. She wanted to hit him herself, even though she knew that he was just telling them the truth.
"I understand that what I've told you has come as a shock," the surgeon said carefully, "but, once the swelling is down, we will know more about how much motility Dr. Sweets will have in his lower extremities, and we'll be able to take the next steps from there."
"No pun intended, huh, doc?" Hodgins said angrily.
The surgeon seemed to blanch at the etymologist's words, and Brennan wondered why, and what he'd said that had upset Hodgins. She looked to Booth, and he seemed angrier than he had a moment ago.
"Look, I understand that this is hard…"
"You don't understand the half of it, chéri," Caroline cut him off, and she stood. "You gonna take us to him now, or continue to tell us what you don't know?"
"I'll have someone come and get you when he's settled in a room and is ready to receive visitors," the surgeon said, and then he stood and left without a backward glance.
"What?" Caroline asked. "I don't know about you, but that man was getting on my nerves. I won't trust anything he's said until I can see Dr. Sweets for myself."
"Me either," Brennan agreed, reassessing her earlier appraisal that the doctor had a good bedside manner. His bedside manner still needed a lot of work yet.
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