Chapter 8: Waking Up

Booth blinked hard to try to stay awake. He went back and forth between berating himself for actually buying in to Avalon's mumbo jumbo and cursing himself for not letting that damned squint finish spouting one of his ridiculous facts. What was the most common time for coma victims to wake up? Was there really a time? Who would even track that kind of a statistic? And, Avalon, she'd said Bones would wake up before sunrise. It was now 2:45 am. The psychic was probably just telling him what he wanted to hear. He rubbed his burning eyes with the palms of his hands.

"I told you not to believe Avalon, Booth." The voice was raspy from disuse, but unmistakably Bones.

Booth flew out of his seat. He gently touched her forehead, ecstatic to see two beautiful blue eyes staring back at him. She was half-smiling, though he could see from her eyes that she was in pain.

"Bones... Bones..." He had to take a breath to compose himself. "I didn't realize I'd been talking out loud. Welcome back. Are you in a lot of pain? Should I call a nurse?"

"No, it's not too bad. A headache and some other pains. What happened?" She tried to lift her head to look down her body, but quickly dropped it back to the pillow. "I'm feeling a bit fuzzy. You know I hate that."

He laughed, so relieved that she sounded like herself, if perhaps a woozy version. He stroked her face again, delaying the moment when he'd have to tell her about the attack, about how he'd failed her.

"Booth, how long have I been here?"

Booth sat down hard in the chair by her bed, though he continued to touch her, now lightly clasping her arm above the iv. He felt a need to be connected to her while he told her the story.

"It's been almost exactly three days. I found you around 2am at your apartment on Wednesday night."

"That would actually be Thursday morning, Booth."

He laughed again, deliriously happy at something as inane as being corrected. He had to restrain himself from jumping up and kissing her right then.

"Yes, Bones, Thursday morning. Sorry. Anyway, what apparently happened was that someone broke in to your apartment, not necessarily to hurt you, but to send me a message. Do you remember any of that? You were knocked on the head pretty hard, so I don't know if you are likely to."

Her brow furrowed in concentration. "Why do you think he didn't want to hurt me if he obviously did hurt me?"

"Well, somehow you activated your cell phone and called me. I.. I...didn't answer so it went into voicemail and recorded five minutes of what went on. Angela is working on getting as much off the recording as possible, but when I played it back I could hear your voice clearly and some of what he said. He was after me. Something about getting to me through those I lo-um, care about." He reminded himself to take it slow. He didn't want to spring his renewed affections on Bones. There were too many unknowns. How she would react when she knew the whole story. Whether she still had any affection for him after she'd opened up to him a month ago during that doctor's case and he'd rejected her. Even how Bones' friendship with Hannah would play into the whole mess.

"Yes, I do remember some of that," she was saying. "I think I tried to convince him that the people he was targeting didn't mean that much to you, but he didn't believe me when I said that you and Hannah had broken up. He told me that you were at home having sex."

Booth winced and rubbed his palm over his face in agitation. "God, Bones, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I didn't come over immediately when you called." He hoped she could hear the sincere regret in his voice.

"Don't be ridiculous, Booth." Her tone was more languid now. She was tiring. "I had hoped you would come, but rationally I know you aren't responsible for me. I can take care of myself. I remember once when you called when Sully and I were just finished having sex and I was glad that you hadn't called five minutes earlier because I would definitely not have answered it then." Her eyes started to drift shut but she fought to stay awake. Finished with that topic, she moved on. "Could you get my x-rays for me so I can look at them when I wake up? Seems that my ulna is broken, probably a compound fracture. I need to rest now though." With that, her eyes closed.

Booth was relieved that Bones wasn't angry with him, or even very disappointed in him. She was always so practical about such things, and often way too straight-forward. He didn't want to think about her sexual relationship with Sully or, for that matter, her thoughts about his relationship with Hannah. Sometimes she took those "biological urges" a bit too much in stride. So matter of fact. He smiled, hearing her voice in his head. The body has natural urges that need to be tended to. Love does not have to enter into it. Perhaps one of these days he'd be able to change her perspective. He'd certainly like to try.

He lightly drew a finger down her soft cheek. "Sleep now, Bones. I'll be right here when you wake up."