Visiting Hours (Twinkie)
"Thea, this is the worst idea in the history of bad ideas," said Oliver, pulling on a gray sweater over his head.
"It won't be that bad," Thea replied. "What'd be really bad is if they were still calling volunteers candy stripers. I've seen what the guys wore. Little red and white striped vests, white pants . . . You'd look like the toughest one in the barbershop quartet!"
She pinched his cheek, and he flinched away from her. He didn't miss the hurt in her eyes, but the gesture had surprised him. Most of the time, he could steel himself for the contact because he could see it coming.
"You owe me, Ollie," she said, a note of anger creeping into her tone. He was hearing it in her voice more and more. "You owe me at least that."
He turned away from the mirror to give her his full attention. She was dressed in tight, sequined jeans and a shiny blue halter top, more suited for a night on the town than an afternoon volunteering at Starling General Hospital.
"Well, it's just one afternoon," he finally said.
"Yeah, it won't interfere with your busy evening plans to ditch your bodyguard and disappear for hours," she said. She reached her hand up tentatively and lightly patted his arm. "You can handle anything for one afternoon."
In the car, Diggle made judgmental faces in the rear-view mirror while Thea gave Oliver a rundown on how things worked at the hospital.
"No bedpans, thank God. You can help patients with little things, like fetching stuff and fluffing their pillows and crap like that. But you're not supposed to lift anyone or help them stand up. It's this whole insurance deal. I'm pretty sure I tuned out when they explained that."
She had a lot to say about the other volunteers, and one nurse in particular who, according to Thea, was a mortal enemy but probably just had a chip on her shoulder about a wealthy teenager slumming it with the mere mortals. Oliver couldn't get her to say much about the patients.
They arrived at the hospital, and Thea pressed the lanyard with her hospital ID into his hands.
"Take this," she said. "They get twitchy about people going in and out of patients' rooms."
"It has your picture on it," Oliver pointed out.
"No one's going to look that close, trust me. They just want to see that you're official. Everyone official has those dumb lanyards."
Dig made eye contact with Oliver in the rear-view mirror. "I'll drop off Miss Queen and be back here to accompany you in a few minutes, sir."
"Right." Oliver nodded at him. Though the man had agreed to join forces with him, their interaction had still been a little strained.
Oliver entered the hospital lobby and looked around. Thea hadn't told him where to go—he only knew that she worked on the sixth floor, the surgical unit. He took a chance and approached the information desk.
His natural charm overcame any hesitations the receptionist might have had about Oliver taking his sister's place for a day. He made up a story about wanting to get involved in the community now that he was back from the dead. He signed a roster, slipped the lanyard over his head, and pushed up his sleeves. Diggle materialized at his side as he walked to the bank of elevators.
"You don't have to be here," Oliver said to him.
"It's my job, Oliver. That doesn't change just because I decided to join your little crusade." Dig faced the elevator, arms crossed.
The sixth floor was sprawling but neatly laid out. The patient rooms were located off a circular hallway that ringed the nurses' station and a large waiting area with comfortable-looking couches and a complicated coffeemaker. Oliver checked in at the nurses' station. Jen, the nurse Thea had warned him about, clearly didn't hold a grudge toward all Queens.
"Oh, of course," she gushed when Oliver described his arrangement with Thea and told his little white lie. "We'd be so happy to have you join us, Mr. Queen. Please make yourself at home. If you'd like, I can show you around personally."
"I'd really just like to have the same experience that Thea or any other volunteer would have had in my place," Oliver said with a grin. "No special treatment."
There was only one other volunteer on the floor for the afternoon. The white-haired woman named Lois linked her arm into Oliver's and steered him toward the waiting area, promising to show him the ropes if he'd figure out the coffeemaker.
Ten minutes later, Dig got the coffeemaker working, and Lois had filled Oliver's head with more information than he needed about every patient on the floor and a few that had already gone home. It seemed rude to Oliver to wave fresh coffee under the noses of people who probably couldn't have any, so he declined a drink.
Lois pushed the steaming cup at him anyway. "Take it to Miss Felicity, then," she said. "Room 652. It'll perk her up. And so will your face," she said with a saucy wink.
Felicity. Oliver wandered down the hallway, only vaguely keeping track of room numbers. What were the odds of coming across two people with the same unusual name?
"Felicity, isn't that the name of the IT girl you talked to at your father's company?" Dig asked. "Here it is, room 652."
Oliver knocked softly on the half-open door and then entered the room. The lights were off, but the vertical blinds had been drawn back from the large window that made up one whole wall of the room. The blanket-covered lump on the bed might have been a person—he couldn't be sure.
"Come closer," the lump mumbled.
He approached the bed warily. A hand crept up and pushed the blankets down to reveal a face. Her blonde hair was down and tangled, and her glasses were nowhere to be seen, but that was definitely Felicity Smoak squinting at him.
"Closer," she said, her voice sounding raspy.
Oliver took another step, drawing up close, his hip bumping into the bed rail.
Felicity moaned. "Oh, it smells like heaven. Can you just pass the cup under my nose?"
"It's for you, actually," he said. "Lois thought it would perk you up."
"Ah, Lois," she said dreamily." Good woman."
"Can you—do want me to help you sit up?" Oliver asked.
"It's one of those buttons," Felicity said, with a gesture toward a complicated remote control connected to the bed with a cord. "I don't know which one."
Oliver set the coffee on the night stand and picked up the remote. "Seems pretty straightforward." He pressed the button with an "up" arrow on it, and the bed rose in height. "Okay, that's not it." He pressed the "down" arrow, and the bed slowly dropped to its original height.
"Can you not hit any buttons until you figure it out?" Felicity asked. "You're making me queasy."
"Sorry." Oliver studied the remote. "Okay, I think I have it. Are you ready?"
"Go for it."
He pushed the button, and the lower end of the bed rose. Felicity drew up her knees.
"Damn." He tried the only other button, aside from the bright red one that surely would summon a nurse. It raised the upper half of the bed, putting Felicity in a more comfortable sitting position.
"Well, that was . . . fun, I guess," Felicity said. "Now who are you?"
"Wow, I guess I didn't leave much of an impression the other day." Oliver set the remote on the bed near her hand.
"We've met?" she asked, squinting at him. "I'm sorry. I can't see much of anything without my glasses, and I'm not sure where they went."
Oliver glanced around and found her glasses neatly folded on the night stand, close to the cup of coffee he'd just set there. He handed her the glasses. She unfolded them, set them on her face, and blinked a few times before looking up at him.
"Mr. Queen!" She struggled to sit up straighter, wincing, and ran her hands over her hair.
"It's Oliver," he reminded her.
She struggled to sit up straighter and ran her hands over her tangled hair.
"Oliver, wow," she said. "I wasn't really expecting any visitors. I must look awful."
"You're in the hospital, Felicity. No one expects you to be put together."
"Still. If I'd known you were coming, I would have at least tried to brush my teeth," she said. "How'd you know I'd be here? I didn't even know I'd be here. Not until I collapsed at work yesterday and woke up in an ambulance."
His brow furrowed with concern. "Are you okay?" he asked. "What happened?"
"I had an emergency appendectomy," Felicity explained. "I'm okay now. Especially with this little guy." She opened her fingers to reveal a button connected to an IV pump. "He's pretty awesome, but he makes me hallucinate, which is kind of unsettling."
"'He'?" asked Oliver.
"Definitely a 'he.' Oliver, meet Neville the morphine pump." She sniffed the air. "Now were you serious about that coffee?"
"Absolutely." He picked up the coffee from the night stand and wrapped his hands around the cup, testing the temperature. "Is it okay for you to have this?" he asked. "Lois said it was fine, but I don't know what dietary restrictions are like after surgery."
"I'm on clear liquids until dinnertime," she said, reaching for the cup with grabby hands, like a child too young to ask for what she wanted. "Coffee, as it turns out, is a clear liquid as long as there's no cream and sugar in it. I had some with breakfast." She frowned, her nose crinkling. "Actually, it was breakfast. That and some apple juice."
Oliver handed her the cup. Her fingers brushing against his own caused a shiver to ripple down his spine. What the hell? He hadn't felt anything like that since . . .
"Oliver?"
He sighed. He liked the way his name sounded on her lips. No Ollie. No disapproving tone. No expectations.
"What?" he asked.
"You went somewhere else for a minute there," Felicity said. "And judging by the look on your face, it wasn't a happy place."
"It's nothing," he said with a fake smile that stretched his face uncomfortably. It had always been enough to fool anyone else. But it was becoming clear to him that Felicity Smoak wasn't anyone else.
"Oh, it's something," she said, frowning again.
The way her nose crinkled was adorable, and Oliver found his smile widening, turning genuine.
"But it's none of my business," she continued. "Thanks for the coffee."
It sounded like a dismissal, but he was reluctant to go.
"Do you want me to leave?" he asked. "You probably want to rest."
"I probably want more morphine," she said. "But stay. The company is nice. Maybe if you're here talking and distracting me, I won't see glowing green rabbits."
Oliver drew a chair close to the bed and sat. "That's what you hallucinate? Rabbits?"
She sipped on the coffee. "It could be worse. It could be a serial killer. Or a mad flock of kangaroos." She shuddered.
"Kangaroos, huh?"
"Don't get me started," Felicity said, waving her hand around. "Ugh. I really do need to hit this button again. Fair warning, though. I don't just see phosphorescent mammals—I also get really, really loopy. So don't hold me responsible for anything I might say under the influence."
Oliver grinned. "I'm kind of looking forward to it."
Felicity blushed. She stared down at the button like it was a much more complicated piece of equipment than it actually was.
"This makes me feel like I'm on Jeopardy," she mumbled. "I'll take Heavy Narcotics for two hundred, Alex." She pressed the button and finally dared to look up at him again. "Just do me a favor and try to forget anything I might say in the next few minutes, okay? Because if running into each other becomes a habit, things could get really awkward."
"I make no promises," Oliver said with a wink.
She blushed again and looked up at the TV. "I forgot that was on. I turned the volume way down when my doctor came in this morning."
Oliver craned his neck around to see the screen. It was some reality show about supermodels or fashion, or both. He was pretty sure he'd seen Thea marathoning it the previous weekend.
"This TV does not get enough channels. I just had my belly cut open and my organs rearranged. I don't want to watch the Food Network." She picked up the control and edged up the volume just enough to be audible. "I do have a scar now. I've always wanted a scar with a cool story behind it, but an emergency appendectomy isn't as cool as, I don't know, a BASE jumping accident."
"I'm pretty sure if you had a BASE jumping accident, it'd mean you were dead," Oliver said.
"What about heli-skiing? That's a thing, right? Where they drop you out of a helicopter and you ski down the mountain?"
"Why does it have to be an extreme sport?" he asked her. "Maybe you stopped a mugging or took a bullet for someone."
Felicity laughed drunkenly. "Nobody would ever believe that. It's pretty obvious my life is much more The Office than it is CSI. And I like it that way."
Did she? He wasn't so sure. If she'd been completely satisfied with her existence as defined by the confines of her IT cubicle, she would have accepted the lie he told her when they'd first met. Instead, she tilted her head and raised her eyebrows and agreed to help him anyway. Felicity Smoak wasn't just some IT girl.
"Oh, there are two of you now," she said, her words slurring a little. "This is better than rabbits. Yay, morphine." She gave a weak fist-pump.
She fell silent then, and Oliver watched her sip her coffee and stare pointedly at the TV. He didn't miss the little side-eye glances she kept giving him.
"Still two of you," she said after a while. Her eyelids were starting to droop. "Should I name the other one? He needs an identity, or he'll always be in your shadow. Boliver? Fauxliver? Oliver 2.0?"
He took the cup from her hands and set down.
"You're really hot," said Felicity. "Both of you. Do you ever look in the mirror and get surprised by your hotness? Like, 'Damn, I'm hot! I forgot for a minute.'"
Oliver smiled. "I see scars when I look in the mirror. And they're not the kind you get from surgery."
"But you're more than your scars," she pointed out. "Like way more. I think at least one of you should be shirtless," she mumbled. "It's only fair."
"I'm pretty sure partial nudity is against the rules for volunteers."
Her face fell. "You're volunteering. You didn't come just to visit me, did you?"
"My sister talked me into covering her shift today," said Oliver. "But if I'd known you were here, I would have visited you anyway."
"You should go," Felicity said, closing her eyes. "They probably don't want you to sit in one person's room the whole time you're here. Phyllis in Room 673 doesn't have any family. She could use a visitor."
"I think I'll let Lois take care of Phyllis," Oliver said, enclosing her small hand in his. "I've got my hands full right here."
"Oh, you're full of it, all right. Both of you. The other you hasn't spun me some ridiculous lie yet, but the day is young, and you both still have your shirts on."
He couldn't help but laugh. It startled her awake—startled him too—and they locked eyes for a moment. Then she sighed, and her eyes fluttered closed. Oliver reached up with his free hand and took off her glasses, hanging them from the neck of his sweater for safe-keeping. Then he took her other hand in his, for safe-keeping.