Leonardo found himself silently watching the clock, for no real reason. There wasn't anything he could accomplish at 3:30 in the morning, and yet some sense of urgency wouldn't allow him to sleep. The third wave of the stem cell treatment had taken place the day before, in addition to the new procedure that Caleb was devising to deal with the so called "Wnt pathway." The man theorized that signals still operating through the pathway had inhibited the second wave of iPs cells from doing their jobs correctly.
Leonardo understood enough of the medical speech to feel cautiously optimistic, but he also realized that the transplant itself wasn't an instantaneous fix. The new stem cells needed time to make themselves at home and overcome the defective cells that were still at large.
Calley was leaning against him, so moving without waking her would be difficult. Leonardo decided it was worth the risk rather than lying there uselessly. The blue-masked turtle carefully disengaged from her comforting body heat, and the young woman immediately rolled over toward him.
"Leo? Are you all right?"
"Yeah," he said softly. "I just can't sleep. I'm going to sit with Mikey for a while."
"Do you mind if I come?"
He shook his head. "No. It's all right, Calley."
The young woman rose and unhooked the robe that was hanging on the back of the bedroom door. She wrapped the soft terry-cloth material around her nightgown, and nodded at Leonardo to go first into the hall. The turtle didn't even feel tired as he traversed the length of the hall with a renewed energy in his step that struck him as ironic.
He led the way through the darkness without bothering to turn on a light, and continued upstairs to the Lab. Leonardo pushed open the door slowly, and he saw Marcus hunched over a notebook, scribbling something furiously across the page. Becky was fast asleep on the cot, but Leo was careful not to make any noise as he walked across the floor. He sidled up to the desk and was about to speak to Marcus, when the man jolted so hard he almost fell out of his chair.
Leonardo swiftly steadied the human and smiled apologetically. "Sorry. I didn't want to disturb Becky."
"One of you is going to give me a heart attack someday," Marcus exclaimed under his breath, but then gave Leonardo and Calley a warm smile. "What are you two doing up?"
"It's my fault," Leo admitted. "I couldn't sleep, and I couldn't get up without waking her. We just want to stay with Mike for a while. Is that okay?"
"This isn't a hospital, Leo, and we don't have posted visiting hours. Stay as long as you want, just keep an eye out for Becky and make sure she isn't disturbed," Marcus replied.
"Thanks, Marc." Leonardo located two chairs and wheeled them both closer to where his baby brother had been lying for four days now, as unresponsive as when Donatello had carried him up to the Lab.
As he gazed at Michelangelo, he reminded himself of the new hope that Caleb had acquired for them. He reached to grasp one of his brother's hands, but turned his head when he felt Calley's gaze.
"I want to believe that this is a turning point for him," he told her. "I wish everything didn't take so much time to accomplish."
Calley nodded. "Waiting is the hardest part for all of us. But if he lasted this long in the condition he was in...Leo, I have to believe that he'll get through it."
The blue-masked turtle rested his chin in his free hand. "I hate that he had to be the one to go down this hard, not that I'd enjoy watching it happen to anyone else either."
"All of you would rather be the one suffering than the one watching someone else do it," Calley replied. "But things are the way they are, Leo. For the most part, Mike stayed true to himself during this entire process, and that proves to me the strength he has inside him."
He nodded vigorously. "All of my brothers have always had their individual strengths, and their own ways of marching to a drum beat. I have to confess that it irritated me when we were younger. Sensei said 'jump', and I was ready to leap twice as high as he'd requested, but them...They did things differently. My brothers were obedient to Sensei and good students, for the most part," he added wryly. "Seriously though, they worked extremely hard, they just didn't follow the most traditional approach like I did. I found that Sensei was adapting techniques and lessons to fit them, when I thought it should have been the other way around.
"In a way, I felt like there was one standard for me, and one for everyone else. I always thought Sensei expected so much more out of me than the others, and I strove to deliver it. I thought my brothers had a much easier time of it...and I can admit that I resented them for it. It took several years for me to get it through my thick skull that Sensei had to deal with us differently, and that I wasn't being singled out with the expectation of perfection.
"By that time there were already cracks and strains in my relationships with my brothers, which left me feeling like an even bigger failure. I made a lot of mistakes growing up, Calley, and plenty more after I tried to take the reins when we lost Sensei."
Calley sat up straighter. "I know the truth about that transition, Leo - the others told me everything in detail. You were one of the only things that held the family together."
Leonardo shook his head. "To be honest, I've never been sure how I did. Shell, there were days when I didn't want to get up myself, let alone try to encourage someone else. But I was afraid of losing sight of the others, or creating another rift that would ultimately destroy what balance we had left."
"You focus too much on your mistakes, Leo. You've told me a thousand times that we can't change our past; we can only learn from it. I don't know if you'll ever understand what you really mean to this team."
"It isn't just me, Calley. It's all of us working together through our differences, our weaknesses and our strengths. Somehow we complete each other, like fitting together the pieces of a puzzle. We're all unique, but it adds up to one picture. Losing part of the puzzle would be like losing part of ourselves. I only wish I'd learned to appreciate the pieces earlier on." Leonardo stopped to gaze at his brother again.
"It's so unreal to see him this way. Mikey was-" Leo caught himself, and immediately corrected. "Mike's the ultimate example of vitality and life. He was always one of the last ones to wear out in a fight, even if he'd been getting his shell kicked. It didn't seem to matter if he went down ten times in a row, he was jumping back up like a jackrabbit, wanting to continue. He's got tenacity and a stubborn streak in him that rivals Raphael's, he just tempers it differently. Being around Mike for ten minutes is better than Prozac." Leo grinned, even as tears stung his eyes.
"The thought of not having him around makes me think of a world where the warmth of the sun is never felt. In my own selfish way, I don't want to live in that world. I don't want to know what it would be like to go without his smile, his constant teasing of Raph, or the way he...He builds up everyone around him, even at his own expense. Isn't it amazing how I can find a way to make all of this about me?" he asked humorlessly.
"I think you're experiencing natural emotions, Leo, and you don't need to berate yourself for them," she replied.
Calley's arms encircled his neck, and he turned his chair to accept her embrace. He enjoyed the comfort of being near her for the following moments, without burdening himself to speak.
"Thank you for letting me come with you," she said into his ear.
"Did you think I wouldn't?"
"I wasn't sure. Leo, you've been a little...distant, particularly in the evenings. I know there are some things you're not ready to talk about, and I'm not going to push you. I'm just grateful you let me in tonight."
"Calley, I'm sorry," he breathed in return. "Some of it is related to Mike, and other things..." The shadowy memory of the Akiudo that constantly tried to reassert itself in his mind taunted him. "I'm unsettled, and I'm not dealing with it correctly," he finally said. "I'm not trying to push you away or hold you at a distance. I'll do better with this, I promise."
"I love you, Leo. I only want to be there for you the same way you've been there for me, if it's humanly possible."
The blue-masked turtle guided her face toward him, and relished in her scent as she rested her forehead against his. "You are there for me," he said. "You've kept me sane through the last couple of months, in ways you probably don't even realize."
She bent her head to kiss him and he returned it gratefully, marveling at how patient the young woman was being about the wedge he'd been unintentionally driving between them. Leo was caught up in the feeling of her soft lips, and was not prepared for Calley to jerk away from him.
He opened his eyes in surprise. "What's wrong?"
The young woman was on her feet, staring at Michelangelo. "I'm sure I felt something, like he's right on the edge, Leo. You should talk to him."
"No, not me," Leonardo said quickly. "Wake Becky up!"
Calley nodded and moved toward the curly-haired woman while Leo got to his feet to address Marcus.
"He could be waking up, Marc!"
The man tapped a couple of keys on the keyboard in front of him, and studied a read-out of numbers that may as well have been in Portuguese for as much as Leonardo understood them.
"His own breaths per minute are increasing," the man said suddenly. "I need to watch for a couple more minutes to make sure of where his lungs stand. Look for other signs of awareness, Leo!"
Leonardo stood by his youngest brother's side, but left room for Rebecca to get in closer as she staggered drowsily away from the cot. In the time it took her to walk the distance, it looked like she became firmly awake.
"Mikey?" she called encouragingly. "Mike, do you hear me?"
Even Leonardo could detect the fact that the orange-masked turtle's chest was rising out of sync with the ventilator, indicating that he was trying to breathe on his own.
"Okimasu, watashi no ai." (Open your eyes, my love.) Rebecca rested a hand on Mike's forehead, and the turtle definitely moved.
"Marcus!" Leonardo barked more loudly than he'd intended. He clapped a hand over his mouth at the insolence of disturbing the process unfolding in front of him.
Michelangelo's eyes slid open as if in slow motion, blinking rapidly before they appeared to focus on anything. Leonardo saw the clear discomfort in his brother's face as he shifted his neck and tried to swallow.
"Mike, it's okay," Becky reassured him. "You're going to be okay. Just stay calm."
His blue eyes conveyed the questions he was incapable of verbalizing with the tube still in his trachea, but the lines in his face relaxed after a moment. Mike actually smiled as Becky caressed his forehead.
"It's not polite of you to keep me waiting," she said teasingly, and Leonardo sensed Rebecca was trying to keep him relaxed while Mike fought to get his bearings as to what was going on.
The orange-masked turtle's arm flopped suddenly toward him, and Leonardo instinctively caught Mike's wrist. "Welcome back, bro. No more vacations for awhile, okay? It's too boring around here without you."
Mike gave him a slight nod which communicated his cluelessness effectively as Marcus joined them.
"Hey, buddy," Marc greeted him. "I need to test a couple of things with you, then maybe we'll see about getting the stupid tube out of your throat. You'd like that, huh?"
Mike nodded again, but his eyes traveled back to Leonardo, who was still gripping his wrist.
"I'm sorry, Mikey," Leo apologized. "You won't be getting your hand back for a while."