29. Emergency Room/Intubation/Reluctant Bedrest

("Awaited" from The Artorius Blade)

Arthur saw Gwaine first.

He strode down the hospital hallway, trying to hurry as fast as possible without alerting any curious strangers to the severity of the situation he found himself in. To that end, he kept his arm pressed tight to his side, to hide the bloodstained rip in his shirt. At the end of the hall, a door was open to the General Surgery waiting room, giving a clear view of the two chairs on the end of the row that was backed up to the high counter of the nurse-on-duty's desk.

Gwaine sat with his elbows on his knees and his fingers threaded through his longish dark hair, apparently staring straight down at the carpeted floor. There was a tension in his posture that conversely eased Arthur – it meant the knight was still waiting for news, not in shock or grieving The News.

Arthur paused in the doorway to catch his breath, try to calm his rapid heartbeat. Now that he was here, he found he was simultaneously eager to find out everything, and dreading what that would include. At closer look, he realized that Gwaine was filthy – shirt and jeans smudged as though he'd been rolling in the dirt. And there was blood.

"Gwaine?" he said finally, approaching.

His knight looked up, pale and haggard, and wavered slightly as he stood. "Arthur," he said, and his eyes dropped to the tear in Arthur's shirt, the line of scrounged band-aids marching down his arm. "You're okay?" he said uncertainly.

"Fine," Arthur replied shortly. "Merlin."

"He – ah, hell, Arthur." Gwaine shook his head, tears starting to his eyes.

"Where is he now?" Arthur said.

"Surgery."

Good. Best place for him. There was still a tight frantic feeling in his chest that resisted soothing, but he knew how to deal with that - a methodical addressing of the facts, since there was nothing they could do anyway but wait, now. "Sit down," he instructed Gwaine. "Start from the beginning."

"We followed the kidnappers' signal we were tracing until it went dead," Gwaine said, and winced at his choice of words. "We found the SUV on its side, where it had jumped a curb and crashed through a fence into a construction site. No occupants, but we did see the zip-ties they restrained him with at the house that had been cut. We proceeded into the lower level of the site…"

Arthur could see his men, just the way they'd been trained – not walking in, shouting carelessly, but creeping warily, probably with two of them armed and ready, spread out but within sight of each other.

"We found Merlin's phone, all smashed to hell," Gwaine said bitterly. "We found a couple of tranq-darts. Shell casings. But no blood. Looked like they chased him all over the first and second levels of the place. Arthur, they had every opportunity to just walk away… Then we found the bodies."

Gwaine sat back in his chair across from Arthur, eyes flickering around the room to make sure they were alone and could not be overheard.

"One man here, and one man here." He demonstrated with his hands. "Both with their guns in hand, both shot. I'd bet dollars to doughnuts he tricked them into shooting each other, somehow."

A brief stab of pride, warm and painful. That's my boy, Arthur thought, wishing he could ruffle his knuckles through his sorcerer's shaggy black hair. "And then," he said quietly.

"Then we looked over the edge of the second floor and saw – the third guy, probably dead on impact from the fall. And Merlin on a heap of construction rubbish. He – wasn't moving, only a little. Looked like he was just lying there." The knight cleared his throat. "We went back down to the first level, and out to get him. That's when I saw that rebar had gone straight through him…" Gwaine gritted his teeth and gave his head one abrupt shake. "It's something I won't ever be able to forget," he told Arthur grimly. "It was – he was – Arthur, he…"

"Arthur!" someone else said, in a tone of urgent relief, and they were both on their feet in an instant.

"Gaius," Arthur said, wincing at the old man's stern ashen worry.

"Have they got him in surgery?" Gaius demanded, giving them both a once-over. Gwaine nodded, and the old man began to check Arthur's arm, then his side, moving as if by rote, assuring himself of the insignificant nature of the scratches with half his attention. "Now, tell me of Merlin's injuries," he went on resolutely, seating himself and motioning them to do the same. "Pierced by lengths of metal rods?"

The nerves in Arthur's chest mimicked that phrase at the gruesome bluntness of the question; Gwaine nodded again.

"How many, and where?" the old physician questioned firmly, and in the face of the calm strength of Merlin's grandfather, Arthur found it easier to compose himself.

Gwaine evidently felt the same way. He took a deep breath as they collapsed into their chairs at just about the same time, and said in a steadier voice, "Three. The – right leg, near the knee. The – left forearm. And – the right side of his chest."

Gaius asked more questions, clarifying exact placement, Arthur assumed, and guessing proximity to arteries, bones, organs. Gathering as much medical information as he could without being able to examine or treat Merlin himself - though Arthur thought that the old man was probably as relieved as any of them that he was no longer faced with that responsibility.

"They had to cut through the rebar to free him. They left the – pieces–"

Gaius nodded in approbation. "Much better to remove them surgically," he commented.

Ready to push the disturbing tale to its conclusion, Arthur said, "You rode in the ambulance with him, then?"

A tear spilled down Gwaine's face as he nodded – and Arthur was quite sure it was the first one he'd seen from this man ever. "They – had to revive him – twice," he told them with difficulty. "The third time they said, he's gone. They said, shall we call TOD?"

Arthur felt the incongruous sensation of falling backward, though he was secure in his chair.

The knight gave a grunt of a self-deprecating laugh. "I told them I'd shoot them if they stopped trying…"

"Gwaine," Arthur whispered, and Gaius patted his knee, the corners of his mouth pulled down in an effort to hold back his own emotion.

"He told me, don't let me go," Gwaine said. "I promised him that I wouldn't give him up, no matter what." He leaned back in his chair, pushing his hands in his pockets, then froze. He withdrew his hands, cradling two small objects. "I forgot," he said stupidly. "They gave me these when they – well, they had to cut his clothes off…"

He handed the larger of the two to Gaius. Merlin's watch.

The two younger men watched the grandfather handle it with trembling, wrinkled fingers. The leather band was ruined, soaked and stiffened with blood, but Gaius wet his thumb and rubbed the face of the watch clear. They watched the second hand tick round the circumference of the instrument, steady and without hurry, and it was oddly reassuring.

The second was tiny and exquisite, perfect and unspoiled, protected as it must have been in Merlin's hip pocket. Gwaine reached without thinking to give it to Arthur, who accepted it without hesitation. The engagement ring intended for Freya, the delicate engraving reminiscent of waves, the light clear blue of the stone a near-exact match for the depths of Merlin's magic made visible. They all three looked at it a moment, and it seemed to Arthur that he held his friend's hope and love and future in the palm of his hand. He closed his fingers around it before the others noticed the trembling.

As if by common consent, Gwaine and Gaius both turned away in silence. Arthur began to wander between the rows of chairs, straight up, spin around, then down again. He took out his phone to text Leon, M in surg. Will wait here w/ gaius, send msg when theyre done.

To Elyan he added, Plz get gwen hom asap n stay w/ her?

Then he steeled himself to make the two phone calls he dreaded most. To his own wife, first – I'm fine, I love you. I'm sorry I couldn't keep my promise to bring him home safely – I hope I still can.

He pushed his hand into his pocket, rubbed his thumb and forefinger lightly together in the middle of the delicately fashioned ring. And then the call to Freya.

…..*…..…..*…..…..*…..

Saturday. 11:35 pm. Freya arrived, by herself. She looked pale, but composed. Arthur took one step toward her as soon as he noticed her in the doorway of the waiting room, but she had eyes only for Gaius, standing at the duty nurse's desk. The old man turned, saw her, and met her halfway, each taking the other in their arms.

Gwaine stood also, fidgeted to the side until they separated.

"I am so sorry," he told Freya, who reached to put her arms around his neck, also.

Then she turned to Arthur, who felt as if he should go down on his knees to beg her forgiveness for failing to protect Merlin, or something. She stepped close to him, her face pale but calm, her eyes dark and expressionless. He said nothing, waited for her well-deserved fury. Instead she put one elbow around his neck, drawing him down, slipping her other arm gently around his injured side. He didn't dare to touch her, but he could feel her drawing breaths that stopped just short of sobs.

"I'm sorry," he said then, breathing in gasps himself against her shoulder. He was surprised at the strength in her petite frame.

"You know Merlin," she reminded him in a whisper. "He would prefer it this way. It would be much harder for him to wait here, than to be in there. He would give himself to keep this from any one of us. You know that."

Yes, he did. It didn't make it any easier to be the one waiting for the surgeon's prognosis.

Sunday. 4:02 am. The double doors opened, and a tall raw-boned man with thick glasses, a white cap covering his sandy hair, and scrubs to match emerged. Even as the four of them came eagerly to their feet, Arthur noticed the absence of gloves, mask, gown, little paper covers for his tennis shoes. The surgery was over, he had done as much as he could.

Gaius took Freya's hand. Arthur and Gwaine, flanking the two, were included.

"He's out of surgery now – successful surgery," the doctor told them, and the three men exhaled in relief. Freya drew breath in, seemed to stand a little taller. "He's got numerous scrapes and bruises, of course - but three serious injures that we repaired. The leg wound, to the lateral side of the lower end of the femur, missed the bone. Flesh wound. Painful, but easy to repair. If all goes well, he can try walking on it in ten to fourteen days.

"The damage to the left forearm was a little more severe," he went on. "The iron rod struck the ulna pretty directly. We removed – well, a number of bone fragments, and placed a row of pins holding the remainder of the bone in place. That'll take at least three months healing and therapy time, before he has full use of the limb, however–" he paused as though something had just occurred to him, "the main nerve line was quite damaged as well as the muscle, he may find that he suffers lingering numbness, a decrease in gripping strength, a loss of a measure of dexterity in the last two or three fingers."

Ah, Merlin. Arthur thought of the way the sorcerer's long fingers flashed over the keyboards of his computer system. Gwaine looked slightly green, but Arthur was surprised how well Gaius and Freya were both taking the news.

"However," the surgeon continued, and the relief that had begun to bloom in Arthur's heart chilled. "It is the possible complications of the chest wound which concern us most. Two ribs were cracked, one to the anterior – ah, one in back and one in front. Those will heal on their own, given time and rest. But the right lung collapsed some few minutes before the EMTs reached him, according to their report. They were able to resuscitate him – more than once, I understand – but the question of brain damage due to depleted oxygen won't be answered til he regains consciousness. We updated his tetanus vaccination and he's on antibiotics to combat any infection that might result from the nature of the injury. And of course he'll be in danger of contracting pneumonia for some time, until he can use both lungs fully and freely, on his own."

"On his own?" Gaius and Arthur said at once.

"Yes, he's on a respirator now, just to be on the safe side," the surgeon responded. "Keep those O2 levels up. He didn't lose too terribly much blood, but we gave him an extra half-pint anyway."

"Can we see him now?" Arthur asked, his voice sounding gruff, but the others didn't seem to take notice.

"Hm. Intensive care rules are immediate family only," the surgeon said dubiously.

"We're as immediate as his family gets," Gwaine growled.

The surgeon raised bushy sandy eyebrows, and Gaius drew himself up with the authority of years – of centuries. "I am his grandfather," he said. "We are his family."

The surgeon looked at them and finally said, "Three names on the visitor's list."

Gwaine took half a step backward. "You three, then," he said.

"If all goes well, he should be out of ICU in a couple of days, a week at the very most," the surgeon said. He glanced over his shoulder, and through the small window on the double-hinged doors Arthur saw medical personnel wheeling a hospital bed almost thirty yards away at the end of the hall.

It was too far to see any detail before they entered a room on the right, only the tousled mass of black hair at the head of the bed.

4:22 am. Gwaine had stated his intention of calling a cab to drive him home, and finding a way to return, later that morning, but promised first to let everyone know the news. Gaius and Freya had scrubbed and covered their clothing so they could be taken straight to Merlin's room.

Arthur, on the other hand, found himself submitting impatiently to a nurse's attention. He traded his bloodied, ripped shirt for a spare scrub top, exchanged his pitiful row of band-aids for a professional cleansing and re-bandaging job before he was allowed to join them.

The light was dimmed in the room, as though Merlin was only sleeping and might be disturbed. Monitors blinked and beeped in a subdued way, the respirator clicked and soughed as it kept the sorcerer's body alive.

Gaius was checking the equipment, adjusted the clear plastic mask that distorted his grandson's features in a way that spoke poignantly of medical training combined with a more tender desire for the patient to be comfortable, even unconscious. His hand was light on Merlin's left shoulder, just upward from the bandaging of the arm that rested lightly in the immobilizing sling suspended from the framework of the top of the bed.

Freya had drawn a chair up to Merlin's right side. She traced the dragon tattoo on the bare skin of his shoulder with one finger, a dark shape indistinct in the shadows, then reached for the fingers of his right hand, curled limply on the crisp sheet that covered the rest of his body. With her other hand she smoothed a wrinkle from the sheet.

Arthur lingered awkwardly in the doorway, deciding he had a love-hate relationship with hospitals. Eternally grateful for the skills, services, and substances which saved lives – his and Merlin's – he nevertheless hated the sounds, the smells that reminded him how fragile, how fleeting was life.

Even the life of someone like Merlin.

He was too quiet, and too still. Even sleeping, his friend had always been prone to changing position – rolling over, twitching, an occasional minute of light snoring. An unconscious Merlin, motionless and silent, only heightened the feeling of anxiety.

"You should speak to him, Arthur," Gaius suggested softly.

Arthur gripped the raised panel that formed the foot of the bed. "Hey," he said hoarsely. No response, though Freya and Gaius both glanced at Merlin's face, obscured by the oxygen mask, he hadn't really expected one. "You wanted me to stay with you, Merlin, well, here I am. Barely a scratch on me, thanks to you and your magic."

He wanted to punch Merlin's shoulder in a show of affection, to laugh when his friend pulled a face and pretended it had hurt. He wanted to flick the bottom of Merlin's feet under the blue-green cotton blanket and tease him for being ticklish when he reacted. But the thought that he would inevitably cause more pain and still have no reaction to show for it threatened to break the dam holding all emotion inside him; he thought he'd end up sobbing into Merlin's sheets like a baby.

"It's your turn now, Merlin," he told him. The respirator choked and sighed, the artificial rise and fall of Merlin's chest the only movement. "Stay with me."

8:13 am. Gaius opened the blinds on the room's small window. Freya sat motionless in her seat, her head rested against the thin hospital mattress beside Merlin's upper arm, her eyes open but unfocused.

Arthur stretched muscles stiff from the abuse of the evening before, the tension of the night, and the hours spent propped against the wall of the hospital room opposite the bed. A desire hit him, sudden in its intensity, to see Merlin shift, rebellious in his sleepiness, and complain to his grandfather, five more minutes…

The respirator forced oxygen into Merlin's lungs, drew the breath back out again.

8:30 am. The nursing staff shooed them from the room. One hour, they were told. The doctor wanted to do an examination, and they needed a chance to clean up the rest of him.

Gwen was in the waiting room.

"I brought breakfast," she announced, giving Freya and then Gaius quick hugs, passing them a large plastic bag holding several Styrofoam containers. "Elyan is parking the car; he'll be up in a few minutes." Then she turned to Arthur, assessing the loaned scrub top and the bandage on his right forearm, elbow to wrist.

"It's nothing, really," he told her. "They're making sure I don't contaminate Merlin, or something."

She stood on tiptoes to put her arms tightly around his neck, and he held her close, breathing in her fragrance and absorbing some of her strength.

"How is he?" she whispered.

He sighed into the shoulder of her shirt, and bit back a bitter instinctive response. "He's stable," he told her, stepping back. "Still unconscious."

"How are you?" she said to him softly.

He shook his head, not trusting himself to speak. Her brown eyes were sympathetic, understanding everything he hadn't said.

In addition to breakfast, Gwen had brought him a change of clothes. She insisted on driving Freya back to her apartment for similar care, as well as a nap. Arthur pressured Gaius to adopt the idea also, and after the old man had spoken to the day-surgeon and checked Merlin one more time, he acquiesced.

That left Arthur alone with the unconscious sorcerer. He hunted around the room for a moment to locate a power outlet that was not being used by the myriad needs of the life-support system, and found one in the corner. Setting the small clock radio – the last contribution from his wife - on the window-sill, Arthur set the time out of habit, and pressed the small slide-switch to "on".

Static fuzzed briefly as he adjusted the volume, but he didn't touch the station control, waiting for Merlin's magic to express his emotions in the choice of music played.

"Come on, Merlin," he said quietly.

Minutes passed. Musical tones began to sound amid the static, few and far between, so faint and so random he wondered if he was imagining something he wanted very much to hear. But over the next few hours that he waited, alone in the room except for an occasional visit from a nurse, the notes became clearer, the static less, until the melodic sounds resolved into piano music, faint but unquestionable. He didn't recognize any song, but it was light and airy, whimsical and lingering, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

It was something.

12:42 pm. Freya appeared at the door again, dressed in fresh clothes, her hair still drying in dark waves down her back. Her first glance assessed Merlin's condition – unchanged – and her second was for Arthur, somewhat the worse for the passing hours. Her eyes fell then upon the radio, and her smile was faint and sad.

"Leon is waiting for you," she told him. He nodded and rose to leave, but she cocked her head as if remembering something, her eyes on Merlin's face. "Arthur," she said. "Where is the sword?"

"The NSA has it," Arthur said. "It's evidence."

She didn't look at him, but nodded once in acceptance. "It's not in any one man's hands, then?" she said. "It should be sufficiently safe, for now. He showed it to me, yesterday morning…" Arthur saw that understanding had somehow become accepting, in that moment. Merlin had been right about the sword commercially recovered from Avalon, after all, and how it might affect the Lady. She added, "It gave you that wound?"

"Yes," Arthur said, "Although, I wouldn't call it a wound. I mean, it's just a scratch, really." The bandaging on his arm and side was stiff and uncomfortable and itchy, the slight tear in his skin only mildly sore.

She looked away from Merlin to him, her brown eyes fathomless in her sweet expression, sympathetic and patient. "He had nightmares about that, did you know? Because you were killed with a sword burnished in a dragon's breath, ages ago. He feared that yours would be used against you."

A vague dark memory flitted past his eyes – of lying helpless while his last enemy threatened. His sword, in Merlin's hand – brought peace at last, Arthur had told him. After how many years, a monumental accomplishment. And Merlin had once again shrugged it off as insignificant, his attention focused wholly on the life and wellbeing of his king.

"I believe I managed to forget that part, actually," he told Freya. "I – should have listened to him, then, about the sword, I should've–"

She smiled gently and shook her head. "Times have changed, Arthur Pendragon," she said. "Centuries have changed men and their laws. He was right – but so were you. That is," her smile deepened, "what makes a partnership work, isn't it?"

He smiled back at her, feeling his heart lighten somewhat. If she didn't blame him… then it only remained for Merlin to forgive him.

12:55 pm. Arthur had gone home after Leon's visit, had showered and changed and eaten something – he didn't even remember what, just tupperware containers of leftovers from the refrigerator. He crawled under sheets, blankets, and pillows in the darkened bedroom and slept. Gwen was there to field phone calls for him, just in case. It was lovely, really, that he and Merlin had so many who cared so much, but the constant concern, the questions, were exhausting.

For a moment he wished he were a kid again, living a day in the midst of the dreams of centuries past, wide-eyed and eager for the next. So full of hope and anticipation and potential. All his life ahead of him. As a young teen, he was much too old for an imaginary friend, but the memories of Merlin, the expectation of remembering more was nearly as good as the constant companion himself.

He wished he could dream of those days, those times again.

7:50 pm. "Arthur. It's time to wake up." The voice was low and musical, loved and familiar. In the blank disorientation that comes when sleep is hard and fast and insufficient and off-schedule, he thought confusedly, Merlin? He'd throw a goblet or a pillow…

He rolled over and opened his eyes to see the fan on the ceiling of his bedroom rotating, languidly stirring the air.

"You wanted me to wake you for dinner," the voice continued. Gwen.

Oh, yeah. Dinner with his wife, then back to the hospital to watch his friend sleep.

11:01 pm. Freya had gone home. She'd been prepared to quit her job to stay with Merlin – since she'd taken extra time for the trip to England, and since nothing short of legal marriage qualified her for extra time off due to a family emergency – but she'd been talked gently out of it by Gaius. Arthur, as CEO of Camelot Technologies, could take as much time and whenever he wanted, and Gaius had considerable freedom also, as the head of the lab and technically Arthur's employee.

At this point, a change in Merlin's condition could mean flatlining just as easily as it could mean waking up; between the three of them someone could be with Merlin around the clock.

He slouched in the chair in the corner and watched Gaius putter around the bed. Once again the lights had been dimmed, and though Merlin hadn't so much as twitched on his own, Gaius still busied himself straightening sheets, blankets, pillow, checking and re-checking bandages for himself.

"What do you think this means?" Arthur said.

Gaius glanced at him to see what he meant, then cocked his head to listen a moment to the ethereal instrumental music that rose intermittently from the sea of soft static that the radio – always on, at Arthur's insistence – emitted. "It's Beethoven," Gaius said.

Whatever. Arthur repeated, "What do you think it means?"

To clarify, he reached over and thumbed the station-selection knob to cross the range of frequencies. Nothing changed, the tune still rose and fell leisurely.

"It's quite clear it's his magic," Gaius said finally. His ministrations complete, he allowed one hand to absently stroke Merlin's black hair, washed clean by the nursing staff. "I believe it might be – solely his magic. Without his conscious will to direct an intended message or thought through the lyrics–"

"You mean like, elevator music?" Arthur said, not knowing whether to be amused or horrified. "Like he's put the whole world on hold?"

Gaius gave him a look over the tops of his black-rimmed half-glasses. "Yes, I suppose so," he said.

Arthur bit his tongue on the question he'd been biting back all day long. How much longer?

It takes as long as it takes, that's all.

Monday 1:53 am. Arthur had dozed off in the chair, and blinked himself awake as a nurse clicked an extra light on to perform the routine checks. It was a bulb just above and behind the head of the bed and gave Merlin's still features harsh and unnatural shadows.

The nurse smiled at him as she moved the blanket to check the bandages on Merlin's leg. "He's fine," she whispered. "Vitals all steady. He's doing great, really."

Arthur didn't disagree. What brought him upright and wide awake was the realization that an actual song was playing on the radio.

Dream… when you're feeling blue/ Dream… that's the thing to do…

The nurse flipped the light switch and left again, with a whispered promise, "We'll check him again in a couple of hours."

Just… watch the smoke rings rise in the air/ You'll find your share… of memories there…

Arthur rose to stand at his friend's side.

So dream… when the day is through…

He didn't say anything, just looked at the face he'd memorized so long ago, now distorted by the plastic of the oxygen mask.

Dream… and they might come true…

The unnatural regularity of the rise and fall bothered him, but he lifted his hand, and placed it lightly on Merlin's chest, over his heart, away from the cruel puncture wound.

Things… never are… as bad as they seem/ So dream… dream… dream…