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Can You Feel Me? : Chapter 25
Brian felt drained, like all of his energy had been sucked out of his body.
He laid his forehead on the coolness of the floor, trying to regain his
breath. His mind became clouded, his eyelids drooping as he couldn't resist
the siren song calling to him any longer. His body relaxed as his eyes
closed.
Howie, AJ and Sterling were all still staring up at the ceiling, not really
sure they had seen what they thought they had. AJ looked at Howie, "D, did
you see that?"
Howie looked back at him, his voice hesitant, "Depends, what did you see?"
AJ looked up at the ceiling again and then slowly lowered his eyes towards
the floor, following the path that the lights had made before fading away.
Howie nodded, "Yes. I saw them. I have no idea...."
AJ shook his head in wonder, "Me either, D. Me either."
Kevin took the washcloth from Nick's hand and wrapped it around his other
one, letting the cotton absorb the blood seeping from the cracks in his skin
caused by the shards of mirror that had embedded themselves. He kept
rocking the both of them the entire time, it seemed to relax Nick, so he
continued.
Sterling had no clue what to make of what he had just seen. It was
unexplainable. Everything that had been drilled into his head in school,
the science of medicine, the science of the brain and psychiatry, none of it
could explain this. And that scared him. It rocked everything he believed
in, everything he thought was stable and unchanging.
One thing that he did know was that the five men in this room had a
connection to each other that was unusually strong. Especially that between
Brian and Nick. Brian. The thought hit him, he remembered seeing Brian run
into the room screaming Nick's name and the word no. Sterling blinked out
of his reverie and looked around. He didn't see Brian anywhere. His eyes
drifted to the floor and saw a pair of legs, the rest of the view blocked by
the end of the bed. "Brian!"
The physician side of him kicked in and he raced to Brian's side, kneeling
by the younger man's prone body.
The cry of their friend's name brought Howie and AJ out of the thoughts that
they were lost in. They cried out as they registered the fact that Brian
was lying on the floor, falling to their knees beside Sterling. The three
of them carefully rolled Brian over so he was lying on his back and Sterling
bent over him, placing a stethoscope on his chest.
Howie looked down at Brian's still face, chewing his bottom lip, "He has
heart problems. He had surgery last year."
Sterling nodded and gently patted the side of Brian's face, "Brian! Brian,
come on, guy! Wake up!"
They all watched for some sort of response and let out a breath they didn't
know they had been holding when Brian's face scrunched up and he tried to
pull covers that weren't there over his face. When he realized that he
wasn't in a bed, his eyes flew open and saw the concerned faces of AJ and
Howie over him. He shot up, his head nearly colliding with Sterling's on
the way through. "Nick!" He stumbled to his feet and the sudden movement
made his head spin. His knees turned to jello and slid out from under him,
sending him to the floor again. Howie managed to shoot to his feet and grab
Brian before he hit the unforgiving linoleum of the floor.
Sterling sent AJ for a nurse and worked to bring Brian back around again.
Kevin looked down at the blond head nestled on his chest, still staring at
something that only he could see. He closed his eyes and wished that this
was all a dream, that when he opened his eyes that Nick would have covered
his face with shaving cream or some other prank and the world would be back
to normal. He opened his eyes again and sighed, everything was still the
same.
Sliding an arm under Nick's knees, he lifted the younger man into his arms
and carried him into the other room. It wasn't until he set Nick down on
the bed that he noticed his cousin lying on the floor, with Howie, AJ and
Sterling trying to revive him. "Brian?!"
Sterling took the stethoscope from Brian's chest, "He's ok. He just seems
to be exhausted. My guess is he hasn't slept or ate since Nick was brought
here. Am I right?"
AJ nodded, "Yeah, that's about right. I managed to get him to choke down
some coffee this morning so he didn't fall over. He hardly slept at all
last night, he kept waking up with nightmares of Nick dying halfway to his
room or catching him as he fell at his door, but it was too late, he was
already dead. We ended up having to stay with him last night."
Sterling nodded and looked up at the nurse who had come into the room, "I'll
need four cots in the room and a suture tray please." The nurse nodded,
being too professional to question the odd request.
Sterling looked up at Kevin, "How bad is his hand?"
Kevin looked startled, "It's bleeding. There is mirror stuck in it. I had
to stop him from washing his face with water that was full of mirror
pieces."
Sterling didn't look surprised. He knew that sometimes outburst of extreme
emotion were common with Hysterical Catalepsy and wasn't surprised that Nick
had gone for the mirror. It represented himself and it was a rather dramatic
way of breaking ties with who he used to be. But the light....Sterling
sighed, the light was going to be hard to explain, even to himself.
The nurse returned with the cots and the suture tray, setting the cots up
and leaving as silently as she had come. Brian was laid on a cot and with a
stern look and an order from Sterling, Howie and AJ were lying down also,
asleep before Sterling had walked back to Nick's bed.
Kevin held Nick, turning his head away from his bloody hand, not knowing if
Nick was registering that he was bleeding, but not wanting to take the
chance. Sterling picked the glass out of Nick's hand while Kevin stroked
his hand over Nick's hair in a calm slow motion, more for his own good than
for Nick's. He just had to do something, anything to not look at his hand.
How could he be bleeding and cut like that and not notice? No reaction,
nothing.
When Sterling finished, he wrapped Nick's hand and looked up to see both
Kevin and Nick sleeping, the older man cradling the younger close to him and
the younger with his head resting on the large, strong chest of the older.
Sterling cleaned up the tray, not having to stitch anything, and quietly
left the room. A few minutes later an orderly came in to clean up the
mirror mess and then all was quiet in the room.
Katya shook her head to clear the cobwebs. Where was she? It was so dark.
She rose slowly, not knowing if the forces that held her up before would
still work. Once she was right side up, she looked around her. Blackness.
It was black and dark as far as the eye could see, surrounding her on all
sides. Nothing below her, nothing above her, nothing anywhere around her.
Then through the silence she heard a small sound of a sob.
The sound sounded close to her and far away all at once. Following it, she
seemed to walk for miles before reaching the source of the sound. She found
someone curled up in a corner, crying. Their head was buried, hidden, in
the arms folded on the knees that were drawn up under the person's chin.
She walked closer and sat down beside the person, not knowing what to do or
say. She was so lost in trying to figure out what to do, she didn't notice
the sobs had softened. She came out of her thoughts to see a pair of blue
eyes looking at her. The blue eyes belonged to a face she knew well.
With a gasp, she reached her hand out and made contact with the side of his
face, stroking it softly like she had seen Kevin do. "Nick?"
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