A/N: I'm so delighted with the kind words and encouragement I've gotten so far! Thank you all for your time and energy spent reading and reviewing. I really appreciate each of you, and I hope you'll enjoy our next installment.
He turns away from the window of the room where they've taken her, conscious at last but confused and, it seems, unaware of her physical injuries. They're cutting her out of her clothing now, though he's certain she'd be able to get it off herself if they helped her sit up. Her hair, thawed and wet, is dripping over the rolling hospital bed they placed her on when they took her away from him, lifting her head carefully from his bent elbow, saving him from having to answer her question about why she couldn't feel how cold she was.
He stumbled out of the cab to follow her, digging out more cash from his wallet and handing it to the cab driver, thanking him, the snow swirling around him as he told the operator they'd made it, collecting her coat and tucking it under his arm.
They were rolling her quickly inside, leaving him to follow in his own time, and he watched as Blair raised her head a little, briefly – looking for him? – before sinking back down. A nurse, short of stature and plump with the face of an angel, stepped back from Blair's side to move toward her feet and grasp the end of the rolling bed, steering it through the double doors, and that's when he saw it. Her skirt, still nudged most of the way up her thigh; her leg lolling a little, bent at the knee, bare heel anchoring her foot as it swayed toward the other, where it eventually came to rest – he saw what the scratches were. He breathed in and out for a moment, that dark feeling in his chest sharpening.
The cab driver saw, too. "What happen to her?" he murmured, accented, as much at Chuck as not. The question was covered by the rapid, almost mechanical exchanges of the medical staff that surrounded her, approaching another who waited just inside the doors, reaching a hand out to grasp the base of the bed near Blair's head.
"Pupils are round, equal and reactive."
"Core body temperature reading…"
"We're set up for extracorporeal warming."
"Miss, can you tell me your name?"
"Prepped for gastric, thoracic and cardiopulmonary lavage."
"She's going to three. The heart-lung machine is prepped-"
"Miss- your name, please?"
He focuses on her upper half as he watches through the glass, laced with wire mesh in an infinite pattern of tiny hexagons- bulletproof, he wonders? The nurse and physician have both seen her leg now, he's sure. They're using a pair of gleaming, sharp-looking shears to strip her bare, hooked under the hem of her white blouse, skimming upward without needing to clamp down at all – the fabric falls away. A steady hand is on her shoulder. The nurse looks to be comforting her, saying soothing words, while Blair's head twitches to and fro. She's not grasping what's happening, why she's here, and certainly the cutting off of a designer blouse isn't lost on her. Down to her bra – stunning, actually, a pale green longline, silk, with vertical stripes in slightly lighter and slightly darker shades.
He's seen it before, in a different life, running his fingers across the exceptionally difficult to unhook clasps, wanting to pull it off in the same motion as the dress whose zipper he's just opened down to its root at her waist. Brushing down over the base of her neck, bare because her curls are piled on the top of her head- which she must have done just before he arrived, because they were down all day at school- and over her vertebrae, not minding the delay in getting the garment off.
In the end, the hooks were no match for him, of course, and they'll be no match for the shears.
He steps back, as though afraid, while the nurse smooths back Blair's wet hair, places a hand on her hairline, smiles at her – the orderly who is handling the shears reaches for Blair's torso, her blouse now useless and open in the front, ready to be peeled off – together in one movement with her bra, he realizes not without mirth – and hooks one finger underneath the bottom of the green silk, stretching it away from her skin so he can get the shears between them.
The blade must touch her, for she squirms then, back arching, and he hears her voice spike in protest. She's focusing her displeasure on the nurse whose attempts to soothe her suddenly run off their tracks. "Stop!" Blair yelps, clearer this time, her abdomen tightening with the exhalation. He steps forward; his fingertips come up, unbidden, to rest on the glass. They press hard as her voice reaches his ears again, an indistinguishable plea. Are they hurting her?
The nurse looks down at where Blair's midsection has curved forcefully off the table and her face jolts up to look at the physician, who is standing on Blair's other side. Blair sinks back down, her blouse falling underneath her now in tatters, and he sees, not a foot above what's scratched onto her thigh, a mottled red mark the size of his full hand, fingers splayed out, curled around her side. The rest of her is pale, almost white, a shade or two lighter than usual from cold, and the mark stands out like a bloodstain on virginal white bed sheets. Proof.
He tears his eyes from her waist – that's off limits now, too – and looks back at her face to see her eyes skittish with tears. Her mouth is moving rapidly, but he doesn't think she's speaking. The nurse turns on her fullest bedside manner, stroking Blair's hair, explaining to her what's happening, he's sure. The shears come back, tip stealing underneath pale green silk, as Blair squeezes her eyes shut, nodding. He shuts his eyes as the shears clamp over the layers of expensive fabric. He doesn't want to see anything else, as much because he's afraid he'll be sick looking at the body he's been dreaming about seeing again for a month as because he's afraid he'll see more injuries. As it is, he has enough material for a lifetime of nightmares.
Fingers still pressed against the glass, eyes closed, he turns his head to the side, swallows, shakes his head and bites hard on the inside of his lip, then the tip of his tongue. All in vain. He can't forget, not even for a moment. Can't stop seeing her leg, the knowledge of what his fingers brushed over in the cab but could not understand relentless in his mind.
He drags his fingers from the glass with effort and walks away.
ii.
The waiting room is empty, which would surprise him, given the storm and the state of the roads outside – not to mention the apparent multi-car pile-up on the FDR that the late-night news anchor is chirping on about – if he were in a state of mind to process surprise. He sits in a corner chair, expressionless, her coat in a wet ball against his stomach. He's still damp from sweating in the cab. He's uncomfortable, chilled, and he doesn't care. He doesn't even feel it.
His shoes are carefully aligned on the floor beneath him, knees bent with perfect perpendicularity, back straight. Jaw slack. The pads of his fingers, folded into her coat, are the only part of him that feel alive. The textured wool caresses his fingertips as he moves them, imperceptibly, a millimeter this way and that.
"Sir?"
It's the nurse.
His eyes flick to her. His fingertips still. Her face is as unreadable as his.
His mind spins into a frenzy. He's certain, certain, that she's going to tell him then that Blair has died. She had internal bleeding; he harmed her vital organs with all that friction and hot air in the cab; she was in delicate shape, fragile- beautiful, delicate, untouched shape- and he ruined her, single-handedly ruined her, in quite spectacular fashion, and she suffered horribly, struggled to stay afloat – but couldn't – and he- he's a monster for putting her through that; he might as well have just put a knife into her jugular- again-
"She's asking if you're still here."
If?
Does she not want him to be?
"Would you like to see her?"
He nods, throat dry, and then finds he needs to brace his hand on the armrest to get to his feet. "Is she…"
"She's stable." She pauses. "Are you family?" He blinks, taken aback. "Boyfriend?" she tries again.
Hands buried inside her wool coat, he strokes the soft, nubby texture. I can't see why anyone else would.
"Friend." He swallows. "We go to school together. Is there… is there anything you can tell me?"
"She's hypothermic," the nurse confirms, repeating back to him what he frantically suggested when the cab door was wrenched open and this sweet face appeared, blank yet concerned all at once, hands coming to cradle Blair's head and guide her to the gurney. "Her temperature when she arrived here was 86.5 degrees Fahrenheit, which is, as you know, very low. That's moderate, tending toward severe, hypothermia. She's lucky to not have sustained any serious tissue damage or frostbite. We were able to avoid invasive warming methods – washing her major organs with warm fluids, for example – which are effective but physically traumatic and require putting the patient under general anesthesia for some hours – and we're bringing her back up slowly to a normal temperature. She's periodically inhaling warm, humidified air through an oxygen mask to rewarm her chest cavity. You'll see an IV in her arm, which is a heated saline drip to help warm her from the inside out. She's wrapped in medical electric blankets."
His heartbeat slows, goosebumps pricking up on his arms, at the calmness with which she's telling him all that's being done to keep Blair's head above water, all that's had to be done just to save her from loss of life or limb. Can this be real? Six hours ago, however long- she was fine. Now – moderate tending toward severe hypothermia?
"Her heart was pounding in the cab." He again can't bring himself to say that that was largely his fault.
"Recovery from hypothermia is a fragile time." Her voice and face are kind. "Particularly when the core body temperature has dropped that low. Many things could have set that off. Her pulse rate was elevated when she arrived, but her respiratory rate and blood pressure were normal to a bit lower than normal. She stabilized quickly once we got her saline started and got her into a controlled environment. Her life is not in any danger."
He exhales. "Is she in pain?"
The nurse hesitates. "She's largely numb. She may have other injuries. We're going to give her body time to adjust and reach a slightly higher temperature, at least another thirty minutes, and then examine her more fully."
"What about her … cuts?"
She blinks back at him. "We'd like to wait until she's in better shape to evaluate where she'll need stitches."
It's not his place to point out what's carved into Blair's leg. Nor ask if they know how it got there. Which they almost certainly don't, and very certainly have not asked her.
After a long, charged silence, the nurse comments as if she's giving him the time of day: "Hypothermia patients often experience some memory loss. It's best to wait for her to come round on her own."
"I understand." And he does. Though he wishes he didn't. "Is there anything I can do for her?" he asks. He'd love to be assigned some herculean task. There's nothing he won't do for her right now.
She gives him a soft smile, a sympathetic smile. "She asked if the young man who brought her in had left, and when I said I wasn't sure, she asked me to see if you were still here. I think she just wants to see a familiar face."
On the way back to her room, he tells the nurse: "She's a minor. Her parents are both in France."
"Can you get in touch with them, please?" she asks. He nods. It's a lie. He doesn't have Harold's number or Eleanor's.
Not that he'd have the words to tell them what's happened to their daughter. He can't even grasp it himself. Let them live as many more moments as they can without knowing – the longer the better; he knows firsthand. It's a problem to be dealt with later.
She's been tucked away in a room on the opposite side of the floor from the triage desk and waiting room. She's sitting up, propped with pillows up to her shoulders, hair wet and pulled to one side, draped over her shoulder. As promised, she's wrapped in blankets, standard-issue hospital blue. She's holding a paper cup in her left hand, a yellow straw stuck in the side of her mouth that isn't cut – they've cleaned off the blood – lips closed firmly around it, the liquid inside coming in short sips that are obvious from the darkening and lightening of the straw.
He stands in the doorway, still holding her coat. It's become an extension of his body in the last hour. He sees his own coat, stripped out from its previous place underneath her, hanging on a hook at the rear of the room.
She tracks him with her eyes, and for a terrible moment he's sure she's about to tell him to leave.
She places the paper cup down on a rolling table next to her bedside, opposite side of the bed from where the door and he are. She swallows and then beckons him in, raising her right hand – swollen, now purple, in the middle – and swiping unsteadily toward her, a motion that looks abbreviated, shorter than she intended it to be. He shuts the door behind him.
As he approaches, he sees that she's flushed and sweating. The gash on her cheek has also been cleaned, and even without the blood it looks as ugly and jagged as it did when she first turned toward him – when he turned her toward him – in the park. He struggles for an opening line, sifting through and rejecting numerous quips; expressions of worry; questions.
"Hi," he finally says, when he's standing at her bedside.
She's trembling.
Their eyes hold each other for an excruciatingly long ten seconds. Her blinks are inconsistently timed, sometimes fluttery, sometimes languid.
"I thought you left." The words are raspy, like she has a sore throat.
His lips part. He closes them. Shakes his head. Left? He's a heartbeat away from needing to be hospitalized himself. She swallows, with what looks like difficulty. She reaches for the paper cup again.
"It's snowing," she offers at last.
"Does your throat hurt?" he asks. She nods- yes- and takes a long sip of whatever's steaming up from the paper cup. "You don't have to… "
She lowers her eyes. "The doctor said until my body temperature comes back to normal, I'm going to shiver all over."
It's almost five in the morning. She should still be sleeping – another hour, at least. Wrapped in non-electric blankets, not shivering, hair dry and brushed and spread on her pillows. He should be in the shower in his room at The Palace, deciding what to wear, keeping a weary eye on his reflection in the fog-addled mirror.
"School's cancelled," he tells her, as idly as she commented on the weather. Not that it matters. She wouldn't be able to go.
"My temperature was 86.5." She doesn't seem to have heard what he just said. Her skin is more flushed now than it was even a few minutes ago. "A degree or so lower, and I wouldn't have been able to walk. And-" she swallows against a dry throat. "I'm no biologist, but I'm guessing with the weather the way it is, it wouldn't have taken long out there for it to drop another degree."
He should have chased her sooner. He should have called her at 9:42 PM, making sure she got into one of those cabs on Madison Avenue and was hurtling uptown, catching her probably around 80th, on her way to the safety of her penthouse and not wandering off into the unknown. Even if she wouldn't give him 60 seconds to try to undo what he'd just done, he shouldn't have been content to wait nine hours to see her. He should have gone after her, focused on making things right with her instead of focusing on what he always focuses on: the nearest thing, the quickest fix he can find to tamp down his own vulnerability, whether diluting it in Scotch or slipping it between someone's thighs.
His fingers find a strip of velvet – the black accent lines on the front of her coat – and, invisible to the world, trace it up and down, an inch, half an inch, back and forth.
Her eyes slide back to his; her voice drops to a whisper. "At 82 degrees, a person of my height and weight goes into heart failure."
He swallows thickly. "Blair-"
Like he hasn't spoken: "If you'd left me there, I would have died."
Alarm suddenly erupts in him when he sees her indifferent expression. Does she think it's possible he would have left her there? He wants to reach for her, but he finds himself too afraid to touch her; blooms of bruises, flesh like blushing tissue paper tearing under even his most gentle touch, dance in his mind; who knows what other injuries she might have. The thought of possibly hurting her again, more, is unbearable. He instead puts his hand on the railing to her bed, which is drawn up like a skeletal armrest on a sterile chaise lounge.
"I would never have left you there." I'd trade places with you in a nanosecond, he adds silently. Him there, bloody, in the bed, shaking with what are apparently reverse chills, while she stands idly by telling him he doesn't have to worry about missing school. Of course, she wouldn't be hanging around waiting for him and watching him drink whatever that was. He'd be alone. She'd leave him, and rightfully so. And if not- he'd tell her to go.
Her eyes brim with emotion, and he thinks she's about to offer him a thank-you, an expression of gratitude that is as unnecessary as it is undeserved, and instead she looks off into the distance, puts the straw back between her chapped, pale lips – not bluish anymore, he notes – and says softly around it, "I might have."
She takes a sip.
His brow wrinkles. She might have left him there, or left herself there? "What-"
The door opens behind him. The nurse, on her rounds – Annemarie, she introduces herself – checks the machines connected to Blair, double-checks her saline, adjusts the heat setting on her blankets. He moves to the other side of her bed, where there's a chair against the wall, and watches Blair's face as she tips it up to have her pupils examined, her temples and jawline gently pressed. Annemarie whisks up Blair's near-empty paper cup, leaving a full one in its place. "Drink up, my dear," she soothes to Blair. "All the hot, sugary cocoa you can stomach for the next few hours." She offers to bring something for Chuck, but he assumes Mt. Sinai doesn't serve single-malt Scotch to visitors, so he declines politely.
"Can I call anyone for you?" he asks Blair as soon as they're alone again.
"No," she replies. "I don't want to worry anyone for nothing."
What she means is, I don't want anyone to know that the fallen Blair Waldorf, 24-hours-ago queen, is now almost literally torn to shreds, lying in the hospital shaking and recently half-dead.
"In case anyone asks," he says, low, "I told the nurse I would get in touch with your parents." She nods, but he can't let it go. "What about Serena?"
"No." Her hand is shaking; she frowns and places her cocoa down on the table next to his chair.
"Dorota?"
She shakes her head. "I can't call Dorota until I'm cleaned up." She looks down at her right hand where it rests on her lap, not bundled in her warming blanket. "She'd die if she saw me like this."
He looks down too, at the floor, trying not to selfishly think that he's not exactly not dying himself.
Her next words creep toward him like a shy child, her voice hushed as well as raspy now: "She's known me since I was little."
I've known you since you were little.
He almost says it. Instead, he says, "okay," and stands up, picking up her cocoa, putting the straw in front of her and sliding it between her lips when she parts them. She's shivering deeply, the blush on her neck and cheeks deepening in what the nurse will later explain to him as a combination of blood rushing back to her skin and the delayed-onset appearance of chapping and windburn from several hours of exposure.
Because he will soon find out what he already knows, lurking in an adjacent corridor of his conscious for the past hour: that she's been outside almost the entire night, since he last saw her at 9:41 PM on Madison Avenue, when he turned away from her toward Cadence, his drug for the night. The drug he chose instead of going after a girl he's known since they were both little.
This is all beating in the background of his mind, but he's Chuck Bass and he chooses distraction for now, while he still can.
He reaches out and steadies her head above her trembling shoulders, palm moving a little, gently, like it did on her knee that first night, and helps her drink her cocoa.
Taking a break, she looks up at him. "Do you need to go?"
"No," he tells her. He blinks twice, realizing it might have been a suggestion, and draws a breath, faltering. "Unless you want me to?"
Her uncombed hair is drying at the temples, teasing up into soft half-curls. Whatever makeup she was wearing last night is gone. Flushed from hairline to neck, she blinks rapidly at him. "I…" she shakes her head and gulps, deeply uncomfortable with the vulnerability of her position and what she's about to say. "I don't want to be alone here."
Even Chuck Bass is preferable to no one, apparently.
He nods.
"Please," she adds, almost under her breath.
"I'll stay as long as you want." He offers her the cocoa again.
iii.
Annemarie is in and out every fifteen minutes or so, but her visits feel closer together. Blair alternates between sipping cocoa and breathing humidified air through an oval mask that Annemarie slips around her head. She complains that her side hurts.
"Once your temperature's up another degree," Annemarie tells her, surveying the core temperature thermometer she's just removed again from Blair's ear, "we'll examine you more fully. Probably twenty minutes or so."
"Can I shower?" Blair asks. "Would that help?"
The nurse's lips tighten, just momentarily. Blair doesn't see. "Not yet, dear."
"I feel hot," she whines a few minutes later, air mask removed from her face, when they're alone again. He's sitting by her bedside, half-empty cocoa next to him. She touches her face with her non-swollen hand. "My skin feels hot." She looks at him. "And achy. I wonder if I have a fever now."
"It's muscle soreness from shivering," he reminds her evenly, relieved that she's complaining. Annemarie told her that not five minutes before.
She frowns, suddenly interested, when she catches sight of the back of her lower arm, which is flushed rosy pink, like the rest of her exposed skin. Her neck and face are actually worse, though mercifully she can't see them. She kicks her left foot out of the medical blanket. "It's so red," she mumbles, defeated.
"You're supposed to stay in the blankets." Now his tone is lecturing. "If your temperature doesn't come up, they won't do the examination and you can't go home until they do. Just stick it out for another fifteen minutes."
More lies.
He knows she's not getting out of here yet.
She sighs, leaning back against the now partly-reclined headrest of her bed, and nudges with her toes to bury her foot back under the blankets.
But she's clumsy and half-numb and shaking, and all she manages to do is knock the blanket over her knee, where it was hanging on by a corner anyway – he has the thought momentarily, just before it happens, to stand up and grab the edge and lay it the rest of the way across her – and in so doing, exposes her left leg, where the white-with-blue-paisley hospital gown has pooled above her knee from all her squirming the last few minutes.
And there it is. Staring him in the face.
And she sees it, too.
"Wh…" She blinks a few times in rapid succession, focusing her gaze down at it. She can only see the tops of the marks from where she reclines. She tugs the hospital gown up further, unconcerned with baring more of her leg to him, and in so doing reveals the entirety of what's there.
He's silent.
"What is that?" She looks at him; cranes her neck. He can't look away from her leg.
"Chuck?"
He tears his eyes from it and looks at her.
"What is that?"
He blinks back at her. He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out, and instead he inhales softly, blankly. A reflex.
He manages to keep the cringe from his face, but staring blankly does nothing to put her off.
She gives him a confused, exasperated glare and grasps with her good hand at the railing, trying to haul herself up, trying to twist her leg inward to see what the scrapes are – and winces, loud and breathless. She squeezes her eyes shut and lowers, carefully, back to the angle of the bed. Sucks in breath.
"My side," she mutters, "really hurts."
He watches her face contort in pain.
"I wonder if I broke something."
He presses his back molars together. Judging from the blood-like splotch covering half her rib cage that he saw an hour, two hours, ago, when she was whimpering on the gurney, it seems like a definite possibility.
"Bass," she bites, setting her face with effort to neutral.
He meets her eyes like a guilty child.
"What is that on-" a stifled gasp; her temple belies the clenching of her jaw- "my leg?"
"Scratches," he manages, at a whisper.
She holds his gaze. "Does it say something?"
He doesn't have the wherewithal to hide the deeper breaths he suddenly finds he needs.
"No." There's a hint of defiance in his voice.
Her reddened cheeks plump; there's a sadness in the way her eyes slant at the corners in a soft smile. "You're a much better liar than this."
Suddenly wishing for her coat to hide behind, he laces his fingertips together.
"I'll get down and go look in the mirror, then," she bluffs, the same half-defiant note creeping in. A hollow threat. Even were she not tethered to a handful of machines.
She's looking a little desperate now, and as unable to hide it as he is.
"Come on…"
"No." He shakes his head. He remembers the first moment he thought- maybe, just- the way she clenched her knees together.
Where are your stockings, Blair?
No.
Taking a deep breath, she starts to sit up again, trying to slowly twist, a light, girlish groan contained in her throat, behind her clenched jaw.
The noise is too much. The only thing he can put above his unwillingness to say it is watching her suffer.
He unclasps his hands and puts up a palm to stop her.
She eases herself back, breathless from discomfort and mounting anxiety, staring at him, one long exhalation of relief.
He swallows, opens his mouth- closes it, swallows again.
She waits.
"It says…" he can't bear to look at her. He looks straight ahead. At it.
His heart drowns out the sound of his own voice in his ears.
He closes his eyes.
"Whore."
The beating of his heart doesn't slow after it's out of his mouth.
Then she's quiet for a long time.
He finally looks up at her, and her face is blank, slack, soft-lined, with lips paler than her cheeks. She licks them, with effort. "Oh."
He's wondering if he should respond, if he should stay quiet, if-
She clears her throat, still dry. Opens her lips, but they're still, parted, for another quiet moment.
"Right."
She looks at him, blinking her gaze to and through and around him for what's no more than thirty seconds but feels like a decade, and finally he says, "Do you want some more cocoa?"
She nods wordlessly, and he gets up to hold it for her, draping the loose edge of the blanket back over both legs without looking as he rises to his feet.
iv.
Annemarie is away for a long time. Chuck is on the verge of going to look for her when she appears, checks Blair's temperature, and gives him a look while she tells Blair her temperature has risen sufficiently to examine her fully. She'll be back in a few minutes with a physician.
He's still standing, and glances over as he turns to move away from her bedside toward the door.
"Don't leave," she says suddenly. It's the first thing she's said out loud since Right.
"I…" he has trouble finding his own voice. "I don't think I should be here while they're examining you."
Her mouth twists in an effort to keep calm. "Can you please stay? I don't want to be alone. You can- can you just face toward the wall?"
She sees his hesitation.
"If it's not too terrible," she adds weakly, her voice breaking. She almost smiles, like she's making a dry joke at her own state, poking fun at what she's been reduced to. Embarrassed. On his behalf as well as her own.
He turns back.
The physician, Dr. Lambright, arrives, with Annemarie in tow.
"My friend's going to stay with me while you examine me," Blair informs him quietly.
Chuck wheels the rolling table out of the way and stands near the head of her bed, further toward the wall than where she sits – Annemarie raises her bed so she sits upright – facing away from Blair, from her flushed feet and ripped flesh and raspy voice.
No sooner does Dr. Lambright tell her he's going to start by pressing his way up her legs, starting with her toes, feeling for any broken bones or tenderness, that her left fingers find the sleeve of Chuck's sweater, bunched above where his hands are dug in his pockets, buried deeper than ancient tree roots. He glances over, startled, to find her brown eyes looking up at his. She peers up at him, eyes lost.
He unearths his left hand and slips his fingers through hers.
They draw blood from her right arm, and she's brave and doesn't so much as squeak when they miss her veins twice. She does ask after an excruciatingly silent few minutes, in a pained whisper, how many tubes are they going to take?
"Three more, love," Annemarie soothes. "Almost finished."
Does this hurt? No. Can she feel this? Yes.
He's starting to relax too much, to feel too much relief at the lack of horrible developments, when she clenches her fingers around his and gasps.
"Try to breathe, Miss Waldorf," Dr. Lambright murmurs, sounding like he's raised his head to look at her. His voice is not unkind. "Likely fracture," he says to Annemarie, who is noting everything down on Blair's chart. "Feels like seven and eight. X-rays."
"The right hand," she suggests.
"Radiology after we're finished here."
They work the rest of the way up her body, dutifully avoiding her leg. She'll need stitches in both places on her face, the doctor explains, and he can hear Blair swallowing over and over near his elbow while the man shines light into her open wounds, seemingly uncomfortable with his nearness.
"Blair," Annemarie asks kindly, "are you sure you wouldn't rather be alone for the remainder of the exam?"
She hesitates, her fingers loosening around his. Still wrapped in the heating blankets, she's sweating now, and her hand is damp and warm. He moves his thumb over the knuckle of her own thumb, where it's been resting all this time, just once. "I'll go if you want or stay if you want," he tells her without turning. Really, he's not sure which would be worse. "It's completely up to you."
The memory cracks through him: she needed someone, and I was there.
"I don't want to be alone," she says for the third time in an hour. To Annemarie: "We can speak privately after."
The doctor's bedside manner improves dramatically, to almost solicitous, during the latter part of the exam; in gentle tones, he tells her everything he's about to do before he does it. Checking the wound on the side of her leg- which they all know, and have known, is there; looking for any other trauma-related injury in the middle third of her body; and finally, he hears her gulp a little, then a faint sniff as Annemarie flattens her bed to horizontal, laying her body out in one long line, and suddenly her face is in his view: eyes shut, lashes wet, tears leaking out into the recently-dried waves at her temples, struggling and succeeding, with almost militaristic discipline, to keep herself quiet as she grips his hand like it's the last thing she has to hold onto so she won't fall over the edge into- what?
And he brings his other hand from its locked fist in his pocket and covers the back of hers with it, holding hers just as tightly, desperate to close his eyes but refusing- just in case she opens her eyes and needs to look at something, someone, a familiar face- refusing to let her go over the edge.
In case she needs someone again.
Actually, you don't even have me.
He'll be there.