Lean Wide Out the Window
The pillow dips by his ear and warmth teases through his darkness, a murmur of words cresting around him and then falling, dropping off, and he's buoyed by its familiar tone, the shape of sounds that have him rising up through the water.
When he surfaces, silent, clean, he feels her hand fall to his shoulder as if to balance, and then the lean of her body away before she comes back. He slowly turns his cheek and his nose brushes her knee, finds her sitting at the head of his bed, fingers light under his collar, barely a caress.
"Kate?" But it comes out surly, rough, unlike him and he can't quite understand.
"Hey there, Sleeping Beauty," she murmurs, amusement etching lines into her voice that he hears. He closes his eyes and his mouth, swallows through the weight, the dry, the dark. Her fingers skim his jaw and his lashes flutter.
"Am I late?" he mumbles.
"Late for what?" she says softly back. The stroke of her fingers to his ear rouses him again.
"A body." The words ripple out of him and fade away.
"No," she whispers, still quiet, still out of tune, out of focus. A blur, a shading towards grey, the silky edge of her thumb at his throat. "No body. We're not even in New York."
"Hmm."
"Soon as you're stable, we can fly home."
"Mm." A breath leaves his chest and it's too nice to pause like this for him to ask for it back. Just a rest in the low tide of his breathing. Deep, heavy, the vacuum of his lungs...
Her knee nudges his shoulder and he startles into inhalation, a gasp of air that inflames his body and has him flail to hang on. She catches his hand and squeezes, and he can drop back to the pillow and clutch at his breaths, eyes wide.
Her other hand is flat over his chest at his heart, like she's waiting for it to happen again, like she's keeping track of the beats, but he's here. He's awake now.
"I know it's tempting," she says. Her voice is low, rich. "To stop. I know that feeling from after I was shot. But it's just the drugs. Makes you feel weighed down, so heavy you could just stop. But don't stop, Castle."
He nods, blinking, confused. "Why drugs?"
"Partial fracture to your kneecap while we were snowboarding. Had to do surgery. You have a couple pins that'll have to come out later."
He grunts and glances down, a mess of confusion, the darting edge of pain even with the drugs. It's gonna hurt soon. "This sucks," he sighs.
Her fingers slip along his forehead and he glances over to see her lips tugging in a smile.
"What?" he mutters.
"You say that almost every time."
"Every time what?"
"Every time you wake half-conscious and I have to tell you all over again."
He grunts but her fingers are cool and lovely along his cheeks. "It sucks every time," he sighs.
"I know," she says softly, patronizing, soothing. "I'm sorry. Sleep, Castle."
His eyes slip shut and the urgency fades, melts into the sheets.
Kate didn't expect this.
She assumed there would be a level of whininess, of self-pity and pouting, even grumbling. Every time his eyes open she girds herself for annoying Castle behavior - girds herself by giving in to the memory of being cold and so alone on the side of a mountain while he slipped in and out of consciousness.
She goes down the hall for another cup of coffee and reminds herself of how bad it might have been before she walks back into his hospital room.
She's surprised every time.
He's not sullen, but he is quiet. Riding the wave of anesthesia, perhaps, not quite all the way with her yet. It's only been a handful of hours, a too long evening, an overly bright morning, but now that he's mostly awake, his conversation is a jumble, hard to hold on to, heartbreakingly soft.
She sits in the uncomfortable chair holding his hand or she lounges across the plastic-cloth bench under the window reading from a hand-me-down paperback, and when he wakes again it's more like a slow slide into awareness. He'll mumble at first and his words are coherent but silly, still shaking off dreams, and then his eyes will find hers or his hand will tighten and he's here.
But he's not here.
She's given up on explaining where they are, why, what happened. At least until it looks like he's fully conscious. Sometime tomorrow, the surgeon promised. She can wait; she just murmurs nonsense into his ear until he drops off again.
The surgeon has checked on him every few hours, the attending physician rounds as well; the nurses are diligent and friendly and informative. Some of them have matronly crushes on him - Kate's found him to be adorable on drugs, so she doesn't blame them - and those nurses will bring her things: extra blanket, a pillow, the remote to the television, a book another patient left behind.
He's fine; he's sloughing off the effects of the anesthesia. When he's lucid again, and not coming unstuck every few minutes, she'll explain for the last time.
Honestly, she misses the pouting. She was steeled for it, she wrapped herself in that cold aloneness of snow just to get her through the immaturity of a sick Castle, and it's done its job. Too well. She wants him here, with her, present again.
But she doesn't have that; she's got a slow fading in and out again, and the leak of morning light as the sun hemorrhages into full afternoon, and really - she could really do with hearing him say her name with all the old awareness.
That would do a lot.
Kate scrapes her hand through her hair on top of her head, holds it there for an infinite moment, gathering strength as she stares into the mirror, and then she drops it like a curtain in front of her face and washes her hands, moves out of the bathroom to sit at his bedside again.
Afternoon dulls into evening.
She shakes the doctor's hand and smiles, watches him leave the room.
When she's still standing at the foot of the bed and her vision dims - like the instant before a brownout - she admits that she can't stay.
Visiting hours are over and her badge is worthless here; she wraps her fingers around Castle's ankle and strokes her thumb up his shin, glancing at his closed eyes, his immovable face.
She leaves the hospital and gets in the rental car, sits in the driver's seat with the heels of her hands pressed into her eyes just to keep it together a bit longer.
She should eat dinner. She's been running on coffee since yesterday afternoon when they airlifted him here. She rented a hotel room right next door to the hospital, but going back to it last night, she hadn't gotten any sleep. She laid awake until the dawn and then showered mechanically and showed up to wait in the lobby until visiting hours.
Winter cold seeps into the car and her fingers scrape at the ignition with the key, find it after more of an effort than is ideal, and then she cranks the engine, adjusts the vents to blow heat across her.
The shiver starts in her spine and shakes her, rattling her head on her neck as she grits her teeth through it. And then she puts the car in gear and backs out of the parking space, heads for the Denny's on the other side of the hotel.
She feels like crap and if she eats, maybe she'll be full enough to send her to sleep tonight; it might help.
The odor of grease is heavy inside the restaurant; she's shown to a booth and she sinks into the sticky pleather, presses the fingers of both hands into the tabletop to keep her elbows close to her ribs and her coat tight around her.
She had to call Martha to have Kate's name added to the approved list, to get permission to make decisions during his surgery (nothing better happen to him in surgery; God, please) and she spent the rest of the phone conversation convincing his mother they were just fine, everything was under control, they'd be back in New York in a week or so.
Castle talked with Alexis once right before he went into surgery, and when Kate got the phone back, his daughter was brimming with laughter, at ease and her mind put to rest. At least Castle knew enough to try his best for her, to keep with it long enough to allay his daughter's fears.
With Kate, he doesn't seem to need to try.
Which is good; how it should be.
She thinks it would be so much better if she could just get some sleep.
She's updated the boys and emailed her captain for extra time off; she's had to take paid sick leave to stretch past the vacation days. She has no one left to contact, no one left to talk to, no one.
The waitress swings by with water and a glass of milk that Kate didn't order, but she leaves it there, can't figure out how to explain. She orders scrambled eggs and hash browns that - when they come - she can't eat. The eggs are thick and sit heavy in her stomach when she tries a bite, but she drains the milk at least and feels better for it.
Kate pays and leaves her barely touched plate, pulls her coat tight across her shoulders as she hunches into the wind. She drives to the hotel next door, feels only marginally better as she steps onto the elevator. Her fingers tap against her thigh as the floors light up, one by one, until she gets out and heads down the carpeted hall to her room.
It feels wrong to be in a hotel in Colorado. Alone. It feels wrong to be alone.
She's never before in her life had that thought.
What has that mountain done to her?