Author's note: These characters in no way shape or form belong to us
Vigil
The room is cluttered, not the usual antiseptic environs expected in a hospital. The reclining chairs are deep and soft in a futile attempt to substitute comfort for health. He sits in an upright visitor's chair next to the treatment chair. His eyes rove ceaselessly over Spinelli's face, his large rough hand grasping onto the hacker's smaller soft one. The boy's face is drained, pale and weak looking, his eyes are closed and dark smudged beneath.
There are background noises, the soft rubber soled shoes of the nurses, but his entire focus is on all the tubing connected to the small plastic port protruding from his chest. How he hates that thing.
"Life saving," they say.
"Life draining," he believes. He would trade places with him between one heartbeat and the next...if only he could.