"Hey, how you holding up, kid?" Andy asked as he brought another two Styrofoam cups full of rancid coffee back to the chairs in the waiting area.
It had taken a few more hours, but they had finally been told to make their way up to the ICU waiting area where Horatio was being transferred. Kyle had been angered and disappointed that Alexx would not allow him to sit with his father as she insisted that they still had a lot of work to do on him.
And so he sat on the hard and unforgiving plastic chair in the waiting area, watching as doctors and nurses let themselves in and out of his father's room. He wondered what they were doing in there and why it was taking them so long, but more than that he felt helpless. He knew that there was nothing he could do now but wait, but he, like his father, was not a patient man. Both of them were men of action and it stuck in the back of his throat not to be able to do anything to remedy his father's current situation.
His ire increased at the balding man's words, although they were meant to be well-meaning, he once again found himself feeling patronised for being young. It was as if his father's team thought he was a naïve child who had little understanding of what was happening around him. It angered him that they treated him like some naughty little schoolboy, giving him orders and telling him where to go and what to do.
Couldn't they see that he had changed since he met his father and that he was now a grown man and an adult in his own right? Where did they get off telling him what to do and calling him a kid?
He'd fought in a war for God's sake; he'd seen his brothers-in-arms die in the name of duty. Witnessing the horrors of warfare like he had, it had served to make him grow up quickly. He'd probably seen more bloodshed and carnage than the whole of Horatio's team put together.
He'd risked his life out there in Afghanistan, it was about time that his father's team showed him some respect and treated him like an equal.
Andy could see the young man's jaw clench as he gripped his disposable coffee cup tightly in his hands. He tried to rouse him again from whatever train of thought had taken his attention.
"You alright, kid?"
A pair of bright blue eyes shot up and met those of the retired detective, reminding the older man so much of the boy's father.
"Don't call me that," the young man growled, a scowl marring his handsome face.
Andy looked at him, puzzled by his reaction.
"I'm not a kid, so stop calling me that. And stop treating me like one too."
The blue eyes continued to bore into him like lasers, he shifted his weight slightly.
"Sorry, it's just a force of habit. When you get as old as I am, pretty much anyone under the age of fifty is a kid in my eyes."
The blue eyes softened a little as the young man took a sip of his coffee.
"You worked with my father, back in New York?"
Andy shifted his considerable bulk again in an effort to get a little more comfortable.
"Sure did, I was your dad's partner when he was a rookie detective."
Andy smiled at the memory of the young cop with bright blue eyes and even brighter red hair as he strolled into the bullpen all those years ago, all youth and exuberance. His eagerness for the job and his incredible instincts made him a natural; he was a cop that was destined to go far in the NYPD.
"After the first day I met him, I didn't know whether to admire him or hate him. That guy showed me up something rotten."
Andy huffed humorously.
"I was meant to be showing him the ropes, teaching him how to be a good detective. The truth was he was better at the job than I was and I'd been doing it for fifteen years by then."
"I thought you were meant to be his friend?" Kyle asked, puzzled by Andy's observations of his father.
"Of course I was. I guess I was just a bit jealous of him at first, he made the job look easy but I loved that man like a son. We spent a lot of good years together in that squad room before things went…south," he finished quietly.
She came back to awareness slowly, her eyes fluttering open as she heard the sound of a machine beeping above her head. She groaned softly as she attempted to raise her right arm only to find it being held by someone sitting by her side.
"Hey, Cal. You gave us a bit of a scare, how're you feeling?"
She squinted, trying to make the blurry figure in front of her come into focus. She couldn't make out the details of his face but she would recognise that voice anywhere.
"Eric, what happened?"
"You don't remember?" he asked quietly as he placed her arm back down on the bed, by her side.
She shook her head an instantly regretted it as the room began to spin in several different directions.
"You got up to get a coffee and ended up collapsing in the waiting room. You hit your head on the floor when you went down."
"That's why my head is killing me then," she mumbled as she closed her eyes to stop another wave of dizziness consuming her.
"Alexx says you were physically exhausted anyway, she's put you on a drip to restore your fluids and they're giving you something for the pain too."
She opened her eyes once more.
"How long have I been here?" she asked, gesturing to the drip in her arm.
He gave her a small smile.
"About three hours. I was beginning to worry that you wouldn't come round; looks like you needed the sleep though."
The information made its way through her foggy brain before the realisation struck her.
"Horatio, where is he? Is he ok?"
Eric placed a hand over her arm that had begun making its way off the bed again as she struggled to sit up.
"Easy, Cal," he soothed as he tried to calm the panicked woman down.
"They transferred him to the ICU a little while ago; they still have some stuff to do before they'll let anyone sit with him. Alexx says he's holding his own though."
"I need to see him, Eric. I've got to get up and be with him."
"They won't let anyone in there at the moment; the best thing you can do is lie back and rest, ok?"
She tried to fight him and the weariness pervading her body but found herself losing on both counts as she felt her eyes becoming heavier. Soon, the ability to keep them open became too much and she slowly drifted back off into a peaceful slumber.
The discussion between Kyle and Andy was disturbed by the kindly black doctor making her way from Horatio's room and towards the seated figures. She sat down next to Kyle and gave his thigh a reassuring squeeze.
"We've got your father settled, honey. He's been holding his own so far, do you want to come and sit with him for a while?"
He looked at her uncertainly, not sure whether he was fully prepared to see the state that his father was in.
He looked at Andy and then back to Alexx.
"Can he come too?" he asked, pointing to the older man.
She looked as though she was about to object but thought better of it.
"Sure, I don't see why not."
She stood up and motioned the two men towards the room that the redhead was currently situated in and stopped just outside the door.
"I have to warn you that your father doesn't look well at the moment, Kyle. You need to be prepared; the sight of him might upset you a little."
A set of strong blue eyes met the motherly brown eyes of the doctor. She nodded her head and opened the door.
Kyle couldn't help the small gasp that escaped his lips as he saw his father lying motionless on the bed, surrounded by dozens of wires and tubes as the hospital staff battled to keep him stable.
As he moved closer he could see the tubes running into each of the redhead's arms and the oxygen mask that covered the bruised and battered face. Looking further down, he was shocked to see that there was hardly an area of his father's body that wasn't covered in bruises, cuts or burns.
The machines beeped erratically as they recorded the man lying unconscious in the bed's fight for life. It also didn't escape Kyle how cold his father's hand felt as he picked it up and held it.
"He's doing as well as can be expected," Alexx began as she made a note of the readings from the monitors on the chart at the end of the bed.
"We're slowly rehydrating him and trying to increase his body temperature at the same time. It'll be slow going as we don't want to put his body under any more stress than it is currently under."
"We'll be taking him for regular scans to keep an eye on the internal bleeding and the swelling in his head. As his blood volume and temperature increase so will his heart rate, we have to hope that the bleeding doesn't worsen in relation to that."
"Can't you just operate?" Andy asked as he stood in the corner of the room, trying to give Kyle time and space with his ailing father.
She looked at the balding man with kind and patient eyes, "With his heart rate and core temperature so low, he wouldn't survive the anaesthetic. I'm afraid that it is somewhat of a catch-22 situation at the moment."
"What are his chances?" he asked bluntly.
"We all know that Horatio is a strong man, physically. In that respect, I'd say his chances were fifty/fifty at best. It's going to depend on his will to survive and a hell of a lot of luck."
She smiled sadly at both men and left the room, before the urge to burst into tears herself became too much to bear.
Kyle gripped his father's cold and limp hand tighter in an attempt to transfer some of his own strength into him as he willed the redhead to keep fighting.
"I'm right here, Dad. You need to keep fighting, you hear me?" he commanded as he felt hot, salty tears fall from his eyes and fell on his father's chest.
"I'm not going to let you go, I promise you."
Someone stayed by Horatio's side constantly for the next 48 hours as they watched on helplessly as the stubborn redhead battled to survive. There had been many moments of panic and the passage of time was fraught with a number of squeals from the monitors.
Andy sat by his former partner's bedside and held his hand which was now thankfully warmer than it had been two days previously when he'd been found floating in the water off the coast of Miami. The redhead had shown signs of waking during the morning, a soft groan or a flicker of eyelashes every now and then signified that the man in the bed was slowly coming back to awareness.
Alexx had warned them that he was by no means out of the woods yet, as his body temperature, heart rate and blood pressure increased so would his level of consciousness. She had told them that he was still too weak to survive the ordeal of any surgery and that it would be a matter of fate as to whether they would be able to repair the internal injuries without killing him.
Andy felt the pressure on his hand increase, he stood up and leant over the figure in the bed as he saw the one eye not swollen shut open slightly, the blue orb behind it seemed dulled.
"John, can you hear me?"
He increased the pressure on the younger man's hand in an effort to rouse a response from him. He was rewarded with a low moan.
"John, you're in the hospital but you're gonna be alright."
He could hear his former partner struggle to draw in enough breath to speak as his eye opened and closed again. He could've sworn that the other man had fallen back into unconsciousness until he saw the eye open again as it struggled to focus on him.
He could tell that the man was trying to say something to him and so he leaned closer to the bed in an effort to hear him.
The words came out in a breathy whisper.
"I remember," the redhead gasped as he struggled to stay awake.
"I remember everything."
A/N: And that, my friends, is that. I want to thank every single person who has read, reviewed or PMed me their comments for this story over the last five months. It has turned out to be one hell of a journey and I hope that you have enjoyed the ride as much as I have.
Look out for my new story, coming soon...