A/N: Just a fun little one shot I wrote a while ago and decided to get around to posting at long last while I work on my main fic. Hope you like it!
He walked onto the ward in silence, pushing his trembling hands into his jacket packets as he made his way down to the cubicle at the far end. He paused then and took a breath, a futile attempt to prepare himself for what he was about to see. It was hard to believe this was the tenth time he was coming to see her. It never got easier, seeing her like that, and he hated making the journey here from the school every night, but it needed to be done. She had no immediate family, none she made him aware of anyway, meaning he was all she had.
He was the only one permitted to see her and he took every opportunity to do so.
When he opened the curtain at last so he could enter the cubicle, seeing the numerous wires connecting her to the machines and the breathing tube down her throat made him swallow hard. He was told when he arrived that her condition was showing signs of improvement. She was responding well to tests and, given she was starting to breathe for herself again, they were planning to start weaning her off the oxygen soon. It relieved him to know she was getting better, of course, and he was proud of her for putting up such a fight, but she still looked deathly ill as she laid there in front of him.
It was wrong of him to think such things, no doubt, but he was glad she was the only one to make it out of there alive. Hordley was killed instantly when the ceiling caved and after all he put her through, no one could say he received any less than his just desserts. He only wished Rachel hadn't been so…so Rachel…and tried to save him when she found him because that was how she ended up in this mess. Should he have been the one to come across him in that corridor, he would have left him to burn and lost very little sleep over it. She was a far better person than he was though. She was so special and there was genuinely no one else like her anywhere.
Sighing to himself as he moved away from the foot of the bed and went to sit in the worn chair to the side of it, he ran his hands down his thighs before reaching for her limp hand and squeezing it. "Guess who," He said quietly, knowing she was able to hear him despite being unable to respond. "I'm a bit late today. I had a couple things I needed to see to before I could get away. I have no idea how you do half the things you do, you know, but you are more than welcome to take the wheel again when you come back to work because I am exhausted. Oh, you got some more cards today and that brings the total up to about…250. You're going to have quite a lot of reading to do when you get back."
He fell silent for a time then, the ventilator the only sound to be heard as it went on pumping oxygen into her lungs. "The nurse told me you're improving which is good," He continued eventually. "Not much of a surprise though. You never were the sort to go down without putting up a good fight. It's one of the things I…" He stopped talking and felt his cheeks heat up as he looked down at their hands. Before all this happened, he no doubt would have prayed she ignored that and forgot he said anything. He would have changed the subject and pretended he hadn't just been about to say he loved her, but that was before he almost lost her.
He remembered sitting out on the grass with the rest of the school while the fireman tried to tackle the uncontrollable blaze. He remembered what he was thinking at the time and it was all the things he wished he said to her while he had the chance. In his mind, she was as good as dead. No one ran in to look for her or get her out of there and any attempt he made to do so was foiled, so he convinced himself that was it. He thought he let her go without ever having told her how much he loved and wanted her. He hated himself for being so weak and such a coward. For never telling her the truth about his feelings for her, but then - after the longest time - they succeeded in locating her.
She was unconscious and not breathing when they brought her outside, her pulse barely detectable, and even though many efforts were made to dissuade him from joining them in the ambulance he put his foot down. The last time he left her alone, stupidly agreeing to let her do one more sweep of the building by herself, it nearly resulted in her losing her life and he'd have to be dead and buried before he took that chance again. In the end, knowing they had a short window of time in which to get her to hospital if she was going to have a chance, they said he could do what he liked and he climbed in and held her hand the whole way to the hospital.
Of course, he had to let her go for a while when they arrived so she could be rushed to the ICU and put onto a ventilator, and it was the longest hour of his life. He could have gone for a drink or a walk while he waited, but she was the only thing on his mind and he wanted to be as close to her as possible. He had another hard task ahead of him when she was stabilized at long last - convincing them to let him see her. 'Immediate family only' was all he heard for quite some time, but when he eventually snapped at them and made it clear she had no family they reluctantly agreed to let him be the one to come to see her.
He doubted he would ever be able to erase the way she looked from his memory.
She was in such a state.
Part of the ceiling must have caught her head when it came down because there was congealed blood on her skin and in her hair. Her face was swollen and bruised and seeing all the wires and the ventilator for the first time turned his stomach. When a nurse eventually came along, she told him he should be fortunate they found her when they did. If she'd been in there just a couple minutes more then the outcome would have been entirely different. Hearing those words made him all the more determined to make her proud but also to be there to encourage her. Knowing she had so many people behind her, so many wishing her well, would only strengthen her motivation to fight.
It seemed to work too because she was doing much better, but she wasn't out of the woods.
He knew there was a chance things could change and her condition could start to worsen again and that, he supposed, was part of the reason he was ready to be more open with her. Moving forward on the chair so he was closer to her, he smoothed his thumb across her knuckles and squeezed her hand a second time. "I am such an idiot. I should have said this long before now. You probably already know, really, and you're asking yourself why it took me this long to get around to admitting it. I have no answer for that, but one thing I never question is the way I feel about you. I love you. I really do."
Looking up at her face again, he brought his spare hand up and reached out to run it down her cheek. "I don't know what's going to happen and I…I don't even know if you feel the same way, but that's why I need you to get better. I need you to wake up so we can sit and talk about this. About us. I know you're going to need some time before we do any of that though, I do, and I am more than all right with that. I expect nothing from you either. If you want to just be friends then I can live with that. If you want to give me a sign or something though, I would appreciate it. I'm not a mind reader."
He was only teasing, obviously, but seconds later he felt her hand twitch slightly in his and his heart stopped. Turning his attention back to their hands, he watched as she weakly curled her fingers around his and gave his hand something he could tell was intended to be a squeeze. Oh, if that wasn't a sign then he had no idea what was. He chuckled under his breath as tears came to his eyes, all manner of emotions overtaking him as he looked at her again, and before he could stop himself he stood and leaned down to press the softest kiss onto her forehead. "I hear you, Rach…" He mumbled. "Loud and clear."
A/N: Thanks so much for taking the time to read! I would love for you to let me know what you thought with a review if you have the time. See you soon!