Missing persons [paused]

[Littleton] When Nico had told her that he was hospitalized due to a complication of his disease, Emily had been very calm. Perhaps too calm. She'd asked a few questions, made sure he had access to insulin and whatever other medical implements he needed. She did not pester him, or lecture him, or cajole him for not telling her he needed help. In Emily's largely hypocritical world view, Nico is a grown man and will ask for help when he needs it.

Which is precisely why she lets it go when he decides to stay elsewhere mid-week. It's why she doesn't get worried when she hasn't heard from him in a few days. Until she calls, to see if he wants to catch the Farmer's Market with her Saturday morning. And there's no answer. Not the usual no answer, a straight to voicemail no answer. A this phone is lying in a ditch somewhere with no battery no answer. In the technological era, very few people turn their phones off unless they're in an airplane or a government controlled facility. To her knowledge, Nico Brady had no plans to be on either this weekend.

And while it isn't Emily's place to pry, there had been something in her vows just a month ago that nagged at her conscience just now. My song is true and I am my brother's keeper. She'd extended an offer to Nico, and it didn't end with him needing more time to think through joining the House of Leaves. Nico, if not a cabalmate, was also a close friend of Owen's. Wherever the Chorister was, whatever it was that kept him away being not dead yet, he was still important enough to Emily that the people important to him would be looked after to the best of her ability.

By the time she casually asks around enough to know that her nagging worry is a legitimate concern, it's midday. Emily spends her afternoon in various legal grey (and less ambiguous) places, looking for admission records, looking for Nico. When she finds his name on the admit list at Mercy, she doesn't waste any time getting her ass to hospital.

Normally, she would call Owen. But the man does not own a cell phone, and Emily had not had the foresight to remedy that before he disappeared. She could call Chuck, but the worrying Jewish mother thing was really stressful in its own right. She could call Ashley, but bothering the Adept was low on Emily's shit-to-do list until she had more information.

There's a click of bootheels against the hard floor with every last footstep as she makes her way across the lobby and to the information desk. She stands nearly six feet tall today, and will use the height and the surety she wraps around her like a mantle to help manipulate people into getting what she wants -- and what she wants is to see Nico. To make sure that he is okay. To find out what -- and who -- brought him to Mercy at 3:18 AM. Getting there is a circuitous thing. Making demands never goes well. Emily is a Diplomat's daughter. She knows a few things about getting what she wants.

First, choose the young and short looking candy striper. The one who means well. She has that empathy written all over her face. Yes, that one. Secondly, look worried but not so worried as to be wide-eyed and confused. Give out some information -- Hi, I'm looking for a friend of mine. Nico Brady? He's staying with me and he never came home last night... -- lie as little as possible and let them misinterpret as they will. It's easier than putting together a coherent mistruth; it's easier than balancing what to say and what not to say.

She has her keys in her hand. It's easy to say something like Jesus. No. We're not related. Look, he's my houseguest. Find his things. One of his keys probably matches my house key. Look, can you just give me his room number. One of her keys might match Nico's keys. Right now, there's her key and Owen's on her ring. Owen's is not usually there, but for tonight it might help her. So she makes an exception.

[Brady] This place is like a small city, a little metropolis with its own government, its own layout, its own system of workers, its own power grid. It is a fully functioning entity that requires very little in the way of input or assistance from the outside world due to the fact that most of what it needs or wants it can come up with on its own. Even this late at night, nine or ten hours after Emily initially began her search to find her wayward guest and friend-of-a-friend, the halls are not entirely desolate and empty. Sure, the information desk in the core of the hospital's lobby isn't open anymore. The receptionist isn't there on weekends, anyway. If someone wants something, one needs to have some idea of what it is one is looking for before one starts off on this grand adventure of tracking down a patient within this system.

Emily does what she needs to do: she tracks down the most optimistic, noble-minded person in the place, who directs her to the department where her friend was last located.

Unfortunately, it's a Saturday night, and it seems as though every sports player, motorist, and child in the Chicagoland area has had some sort of mishap or illness since the stroke of midnight because the waiting room is a goddamn jungle. Children are screaming. Someone is throwing up in an emesis basis in the corner. The televisions are muted and an argument is going on out of sight, down a corridor where no one is permitted to go without passing through security. The receptionist is exhausted already and she's only been here since four o'clock in the afternoon.

Her eyebrows don't move when she looks up at Emily. Her voice is brassy and ragged from a life of smoking and talking on the phone. "Can I help you?" she asks, as though just having to ask is an enormous drain on her resources.

==========

Upstairs, the intensive care unit is dark. Visitors were sent home hours ago; the only people who are allowed to stay are next of kin. The young man in 1441 claimed that the tall, shy man with dark hair was his brother, or he claimed that he was the patient's brother... someone at some point lied and said that they were brothers, so Owen gets to stay.

Somehow Nico seems worse now than he was before they got here. It's the drugs, perhaps, or the fact that they had to slice him open more to fix him, the fact that he had a tube shoved down his throat to help him breathe until about an hour or so ago and when he tries to talk he rasps instead of producing actual speech. They've got him pumped full of narcotics and anxiolytics yet unless Owen warns him before he leaves the room he starts to panic. He can't do much with all the tubes and needles they've got pushed into him; his strength is gone.

Right now he's supposed to be sleeping. He's lying in bed with his eyes closed, but he's mumbling something that would sound like a prayer if Owen didn't know him to be an unrepentent atheist.

[Littleton] This was not at all how Emily had expected to spend her Saturday. In truth, she'd been hoping for something quiet. A trip to the market, maybe making something nice and warm that sat on a stove burner and simmered for hours and filled her new flat with the smells of home-making. Maybe she'd even play with An a little, and bond with the small animal now calling her flat home. An didn't complain when she came home late and left early, but she did have an insistent way of getting underfoot, or reminding Emily that she was nocturnal even if the Chorister was not.

Kittens, it turns out, have a surprising amount of energy.

And fur.

She'd taken the time to pull the cat fur off of her slacks, but begrudingly. It did not cling to her jacket, thankfully. By now she's wrapped her fingers around the keys she carries. Her other hand is in her jacket pocket, but it comes out whenever she has to talk to someone. It's a subtle thing (There's nothing in my hands [I have nothing to hide]) and the shift of body language is not something she consciously notices anymore. Neither is the shift of her accent, pulling toward more clearly British and less muddled. There's a politeness to that accent; it is not at all the darkly wicked thing it can become around Thomas. Tonight it is all Northern; all proper and concerned. Tight syllables, warm undertones, a little weariness. None of it is feigned.

"Ah, Miss. I'm sorry to bother you," she says, and that regret rings true. "I'm looking for a friend of mine. Downstairs they said he was in this wing earlier today? Can you help me find him, please? Nico Brady." She swallows a little, worried and/or anxious. Emily doesn't glance around, doesn't break her attention away from the exhausted receptionist.

There are screaming children, and people throwing out, and the overwhelming scent of humanity and pharmaceuticals, and it all makes Emily want to turn on her heel and walk out. She hates hospitals. She has visceral and terrible memories of them. The Singer tucks her hands back into her pockets while she waits and tries to ignore the sound of retching from one corner of the room.

"I really appreciate you help," she tells the receptionist, whether or not the other woman is able to help her.

She's not next of kin. Nor is she anything resembling family. No one would mistake her and Nico for closer than cousins, and even that is a remarkable stretch. Emily has no idea how she will get past that hurdle, but if she can't, well, then it would not be the first time she's sat in a hospital waiting room all night. Wondering. And hoping that someone with a fainter grasp of protocol comes on duty and recants.

[Page] Owen wasn't the best sleeper in the world at the best of times.

He tended to get very restless in the middle of the night and toss and turn; when he had nightmares he all but wrestled with his bed-frame and sometimes rolled right out of it. Ever since he'd returned to Chicago, hidden away inside his apartment, recuperating; hiding from the world, he's been having dreams.

They aren't, typically, of the pleasant sort.

Tonight, he's so exhausted that he didn't even make it out of Nico's room. He's asleep in the visitor's chair with his jacket half-falling from his shoulders, chest rising and falling in even rhythms. For once, it seemed, he was not thrashing about or suffering even with his eyes closed. He's certainly seen better days, however. His hair is longer, and in need of tending to, and there is an almost-but-not-quite healed cut running along his hairline.

His left wrist lays atop his jacket in a cast; the dirty edges suggest he's been wearing it for some time now.

Nico is mumbling something in his sleep, but all that happens to his best friend in the chair is that his head drops further over his chest.

[Brady] The woman sucks on a breath mint, or her teeth, or the seething pit of hatred for her life and humanity and the world she's in that she carries around with her every time she sees the parking garage looming beyond her windshield in the afternoon. She keeps sucking on it as this tall British woman speaks about a patient whose name wasn't on the board at four o'clock this afternoon, whose name wasn't on the board fifteen minutes ago when she was back there to deliver a chart, whose name is not anywhere in her memory or field of vision. So far as she's concerned, this Brady kid is someone else's problem; yet this white girl wants to make it her problem, like she doesn't have four rigs coming in in the next twenty minutes and a room full of the sick and injured, no open beds, a pissed off charge nurse breathing down her neck every time she turns around.

There is a name tag clipped to the receptionist's breast pocket. Her name is Erika Sampson. The name tag is yellowing; she's at least five years younger in the photograph.

"You said you're his friend?" she asks, skeptical. There's no time for a response. Erika continues on, "Unless he out in the waiting room, there ain't no Brady here right now."

==========

The mumbling dies down when no one shushes him, when no one asks him what the hell he's saying. Ever since he was dragged out of the anesthetic coma earlier this afternoon Nico's been so far from lucid it would be troubling if the doctors hadn't explained that that was how they wanted him. They didn't mention the thin substance abuse counselor trying to climb off the gurney in the PACU when he woke up intubated and, to his great dismay, in the goddamn hospital.

Owen hadn't heard the hellish angels stop singing until they were almost to the hospital. The last thing Nico said before he lost consciousness in the car was unintelligible; his ribs and collarbone were broken, his lungs filled with blood, his head gone stupid from hypovolemic shock. The car they drove wasn't there own. At some point before they shuttled him upstairs Nico grabbed Owen by the arm, but it wasn't a strong grasp, couldn't do anything more than transmit the idea that Nico didn't want to be left to his own devices. Ever since he was a kid Nico's hated hospitals; he used to fight then, too, even when he was still awake and lucid. He can't fight right now.

There's silence for a few minutes. The ICU is like a tomb. Even the nurses aren't moving in the halls this late. He tries to move his legs. His spinal cord is fine. It's his chest that feels as though it's been put through a blender. He can breathe well enough that they'd rather leave him be for now, propped up at a forty-five-degree angle instead of flat. His eyes open for a few seconds; it's long enough for him to realize where he is, to see that Owen's still there, Owen's asleep, he has no clue what day it is or what time it is or where they are and he's too fuzzy to see if Owen's hurt.

Whatever drugs they have him on are phenomenal: he doesn't want to be here and he's in a tremendous amount of pain but he doesn't fucking care.

[Brady] [THEIR own, not THERE own Christ almighty save me from typos amen.]

[Littleton] Emily is capable of being a patient person. It's in her social toolbox. She wields that capability often enough to remain deft at it. Right now, though, she mostly wants to grab someone and shake them until she gets the information she needs. But there's not a thing about Emily that is physically intimidating enough to make that work. She has to go about things in a less direct fashion. One that takes time. Something in the back of her head is tick-tick-ticking away the seconds since she'd realized there was something wrong, since she knew he'd been admitted. As if every last one of those arbitrary units of time mattered. As if they made a difference somehow.

They didn't. Nothing Emily could say or do would make this better. All she could really offer was tangible proof that someone in this city gave a damn about where he was and how he was. That ticking throbbed, ached at the back of her head. She swallowed it down, kept her voice from rising in pitch or volume.

"Yes, a friend," she repeated. "He was staying with me. He didn't come home last night. I -- I can see you're busy, Ms. Sampson. Maybe you could tell me where people go when they leave here, if they don't go home?" There's a moment, then, when Emily is all too aware of the black humor in the medical profession. She knows one of the other places people go when they don't go home from Emergency. God willing she will not be walking down an hallway in a cold, dark, basement level tonight.

"Could he be in another ward?"

Emily smiled a little, but it was a thinning thing. "I'd be happy to go bother them, and let you get back to work."

[Brady] Erika, God love her, does not make a joke about the morgue when she asks where he could be if he isn't here and he isn't home. She doesn't make any sort of joke. Her cool brown eyes watch the Briton until she's finished talking, her eyebrows only slightly lifted to indicate that she actually is paying attention, she doesn't actually want to be a callous bitch. Maybe she's got a friend, or a husband, or a son or someone who she's imagining being in this boy's place, or she's putting herself in this well-dressed white girl's place. Maybe she just doesn't want to be the one security calls when the woman takes it upon herself to go prowling from floor to floor trying to find this patient.

There's a moment where it looks as though Erika is going to tell her to get the hell out, that she can't help her, there's laws in place to protect patient information. Whether or not he is a patient isn't protected information. Hell, she's already got his name. That's protected information.

With a barely audible sigh, the receptionist turns to the silent, voyeur-protected screen and rests her lacquered nails against the keyboard. A few keystrokes, and she asks, "What you say his name is? Brady?" She would be a far more proficient typist were not for the talons she wears on her fingers. A moment to read, and she says, without looking up, "Honey, they admitted him hours ago. You gonna have to come back in the morning, visiting hours is over at eight."

[Page] It's hard to tell what rouses Owen Page.

One minute he's soundly asleep, the next he's jerking awake and dropping his jacket to the floor like someone just touched him with some live wires. His head still feels tender, as if the insides had [quite rightly] been stuck in a blender on high speed for a few hours. Only, in reality, it was more a direct connection to The Powers That Be coming in on a screaming, screeching frequency he'd been unable to shut off.

He breathes out, now and runs his fingers through his hair; the chair squeaks as he leans in to check on Nico. "Hey, man." His voice sounds rough, prickled with interrupted sleep. "Don't scare me like that again. What, once wasn't enough for you?" There's a smile somewhere in there, before Owen checks the time and rises to his feet.

His shirt is still stained with Nico's blood, and the Initiate re-thinks wandering the halls in it and puts his jacket over the top. He touches his friend's arm. It's surprisingly gentle, coming from a guy who looks the way Owen Page did.

"I'll be back. I need coffee."

The ICU doors slide apart noiselessly, and within minutes, Owen is striding down the halls in search of a vending machine.

[Littleton] Honey, they admitted him hours ago...

There's a mixture of relief and anxiety that crosses Emily's features at this news. It's pretty much the expected reaction for anyone knowing that the friend or loved one they cared about had been found but neither as hale or as whole as one had hoped. Emily presses her lips thin for a moment, and nods. Then she nods again.

"Thank you," she says. Exhales a little. Shakily, but not so much that she couldn't cover it. "Look, I'm going to go grab a cup of coffee. Would you like me to bring you one? It looks like a long night..."

Emily offers because she does appreciate what the woman has offered her, even if it's not what she wants to hear. She offers because, under all of the worry and anxiety and long hours and Unrelenting pressure, Emily is still very human. And aware that her life does not happen in a vacuum.

So whether or not Erika wants a cup of cafeteria coffee, Emily thanks her again and heads for that section of the hospital. This late at night, it's populated by worried family members and significant others. It's a horrible place of waiting. She reaches up to rub at the back of her neck with one hand as she walks, keeps her eyes downcast on the industrial floor ahead of her. She'll push one side of the double doors open and make for the one section of the mess that's still open. Coffee and pre-packed crap to eat. It's better than nothing. She's missed God knew how many meals at this point. Right now, Emily isn't sure whether she'll wait til 8am on the premises, or try and talk her way onto Nico's floor, or call someone a little older and wiser and better-rested for advice.

She's awfully certain that it's highway robbery to charge her four-fifty for a paper cup of thin coffee with powdered non-dairy creamer.

[Brady] If Owen thought to himself, even for a second, that he didn't recognize whoever it is in that hospital bed, no one would hold it against him. Even when he's high, just woken up, upset, or angry, Nico's personality is fairly consistent. Lately he's been in a fog, like the edges of his awareness are muted. He bruises more easily because he doesn't feel it when he bangs parts of his body against solid objects. Sometimes he stops and stares at dead things he finds out in the world, is unusually interested in the obituaries. The morbid commentary has been kept to a minimum. Sometimes he asks Owen what he dreams about. The counselor knows they can't just not talk about what happened to them if they're going to heal; he also knows that he, himself, doesn't want to talk about it. He's not ready.

But even with the death taint on his soul, even traumatized and exhausted, Nico has a spark of life in him. Blame it on his resonance, but he's always been like that: warm and lively enough to be the center of attention even when he didn't want to be. Even in high school, when he attempted to assume a gruff, not-to-be-fucked-with air, he was a vivacious guy.

When he looks at Owen, it's through a haze of medication. That's Dilaudid and Ativan looking at Owen, for a second, not Nico. He can barely keep his eyes open. Owen cracks a joke, which is rare enough as it is, and the smaller man can't even force himself to smile. Humor stains his eyes, but it's weak. It's not until that hand rests on his arm that Nico blinks, tries harder. He manages to drape his own over Owen's for a second, as though that's going to help him focus. Nico's flesh is like ice. The fingers are discolored. They're keeping a suffocatingly close eye on him since the computer practically shouts "DIABETIC" when they open up his file.

He slurs something that sounds like "Okay," and doesn't tighten his fingers to keep the Chorister from leaving.

==========

Em has painfully little information to go on. He was "admitted." Erika Sampson covered her own ass by not telling him what room he was in, or what unit, or even what floor. Just: he's here, still. Somewhere. Without any idea what the hell's wrong with him, without any idea whether he's got a broken arm or if he's on life support, she can't narrow it down any further than that. For whatever reason, the Initiate doesn't decide to just pack it up and try again tomorrow. She goes to the cafeteria.

This late at night they're not serving food. Environmental services workers are mopping the floors; all of the buffet-style food has been put away, the warming lamps turned off. They'll keep serving coffee and a la cart items until eleven o'clock. After that anyone who wants it has to hunt down a vending machine, get the tiny eight-ounce cups of 75-cent coffee.

She isn't alone, at least, and as she passes through the halls, two haggard medical students are walking towards her. They're young enough to not realize they really shouldn't discuss cases too loudly outside of the break room.

"How old was that guy?" one of them asks, rhetorically. "Twenty-three?"
"Yeah."
"I don't care what ED says, that wasn't a MVC, man. No lacs on his face or arms? No blunt force trauma, his buddy's totally fine, no accident report, just... that?"
"I dunno, man. Weird..."

[Littleton] She has fuckall to go on, and Emily would be lying if she said she'd done more with less. She may have googled part of a Demon's true name, pulling it out of the recesses of the Internet, but the Internet didn't have watchdogs like HIPAA and grizzled gatekeepers working swing shifts and graveyards and dealing with the worst things humanity does to itself on a daily basis.

Her fingers are wrapped around that paper cup, and she's blowing across the surface as if she had the grasp of Alchemy needed to turn this swill into something that might elevate more than the level of stimulants in her bloodstream. But caffeine was something even if it wasn't enough.

The medical students are talking loud enough for their conversation to reach Emily. Her footsteps slow. The click of her bootheels slows. She takes a sip from her coffee and watches them for a moment. She's not quite a year into this Awakened world, but already certain coincidences are beginning to sound like jaded truths to her. Something weird enough to get the med students talking comes through the night she's looking for Nico at the hospital? It's not too much of a stretch to imagine that these things could be connected.

"Ah, pardon," she says, reaching out with one hand as if to stop them. The coffee is still steaming hot in her hands. It's beginning to sting her fingertips. She resettles the cup in her hands when she pulls her ar away from them. Emily looks worried, upset by something they said.

"I couldn't help but overhear..." she says, glancing down the hallway a bit, as if other people may have as well. It's a subtle thing, not one she lingers overlong on. "Your patient. He's not, about this tall?" Emily holds her hand up at what Nico's height would be, then adjusts it as she remembers she's holding her hand up. "Diabetic? See, I'm looking for a friend of mine, and all I know is he was admitted after Emergency-- " The words ran together a little. People tended to talk all in a muddle when they were worried, or fatigued, or tired.

"Please," she pleaded. "Tell me your patient's name isn't Brady. If I have to come back tomorrow, I'd like to know he wasn't that guy you were talking about just now." Because, clearly, a friend or loved one searching the hospital after visiting hours, with no hope of getting in to see their quarry, is hoping for something benign. Not the sort of trauma that turns into medical abbreviations and kibitzing in the hallways.

[Littleton] [edit, for stupid: Emily holds her hand up at what Nico's height would be, then adjusts it as she remembers she's wearing heels.]

[Page] There isn't exactly a vast selection of vending machines up in the ICU.

Owen locates one pressed against the wall at the end of the hall near the Nurse's station. Well, he can't say he's surprised by that, if he worked in Mercy he'd want constant access to caffeine as well. The Chorister inserts some coins and stares much without seeing as the steaming liquid is poured into the cup. He crosses his arms over his chest and yawns, scrubbing a hand down his face and wincing.

Drawing it back, the Initiate uncurls his palm and notices the cut down the middle of it from the fight last night.

Owen's jaw clenches, and for a moment he has to fight back the memory of the mutant that had wreaked such utter destruction in the middle of the street -- the thing that was still out there somewhere. "Christ," he mutters under his breath and then glances above him with a slight shrug. "Sorry." Grabbing his coffee, Owen starts back down the corridor, head bowed. Even without purpose or intention, it was hard to ignore a guy who looked the way Owen did.

Scruffy and half-asleep as he was, he was none the less an attractive man; if you were in the market for your typically emotionally stunted and unavailable sorts.

The doors to Nico's room slide apart for him, and Owen is once more immersed by the stark white bed linen and myriad of machines that make his friend seem so much smaller, so much frailer. For a minute, he just stares at Nico, eyes traveling over him, hooked up to machines and so fucking vulnerable in the bed. Then his midnight blue eyes drop away, filled with a guilt Nico is all too familiar with seeing in Owen.

He leans against the wall; cup in hand, frowning at his coffee.

"I'm sorry, Nic. Should be me there. Why is it I always make messes and you wind up paying for them."

[Brady] Nico is right where Owen left him when he gets back, his stubborn heartbeat audible with every contraction thanks to a monitor over his head, his respirations fruitful thanks to a nasal cannula clipped to his septum, blowing cold air into his sinuses. There's an IV in the crook of his left arm: it's his dominant, for starters, the antecubital vein stronger on that side than the other; for another, his right arm was sliced open during his "crash." They had to stitch him back up at some point. The nurses don't want to bother with that arm. It's wrapped in gauze and useless now.

The drugged-up Orphan turns his head when the door slides open. He isn't sharing the space with another body. The lights are off because he's supposed to be asleep. His heart rate speeds up when Owen comes back. It's subtle; it goes from 61 to 64. His brain is perfectly intact, unbruised in the fight. He just has a thick blanket of medication slowing down just about everything.

"You didn't," he says, eyes sliding shut for a moment. He doesn't sound like Nico. His voice is raw, weak, his throat irritated. Eyes squeeze as though he's suddenly aware of the pain lurking under the calm surface of failing to give a fuck, and when they open again, the ghoul wearing his friend's skin opens his eyes. "C'mere. You're too far away."

==========

The students stop dead when this impeccably dressed, accented woman stops them. It's entirely possible she resembles a hospital administrator or a professor or someone who's going to be busting their asses for talking too loud about protected information; the taller and skinnier of the two young men, the one who is doing the less amount of talking, actually looks alarmed for a moment before she explains what it is she wants.

"I, uh..."

His classmate jumps in.

"Do you want me to tell you where he is, or do you want me to tell you we weren't talking about your friend?"

[Littleton] "I want," she says, emphasizing that word a little, so it was clear in everyone's minds just now, "To see for myself that he's okay, and if not okay then alive but I understand there are rules about this sort of thing." If there's a gently rueful note to that understanding, so be it. Emily can appreciate the things the rule exists to protect, but at the moment its an impediment to what she wants. That want is quickly becoming a need.

"But I will settle for where he is."

This lesser of two options is said, clearly, calmly, and without breaking eye contact with the med student who jumped in to save his floundering classmate. She was younger than them. Emily was no administrator. But there was a clear sense of Otherness to her that marked her as more, or less, than their usual visitor. It wasn't the sort of thing that they, as Sleepers, would likely put their finger on. Beyond her accent. Beyond the carriage and mannerisms that put her far from an American co-ed in their initial perceptions.

She doesn't give them the option, now, to tell her that Nico isn't their patient. They've as much as admitted that already. Her eyes do sweep their jackets for name badges; it's a quick thing, but one that's hard to miss if they already think they're headed for trouble.

[Brady] The taller of the two of them is, according to his lab coat, named Richard Allen; the one who spoke up, who has the more skeptical attitude, the refusal to believe what's on paper and right in front of him, is named Hossein Aziz. He has a Midwestern American accent and a five o'clock shadow. His hands are full: one of them carries a pile of paperwork and the other holds onto a pager. His buddy carries a Thermos of coffee and a strange instrument. They both look exhausted. Allen looks wary of this reverent, unrelenting woman; Aziz has a far different reaction to her.

"We just finished a rotation up on the fifth floor," the future physician says, slowly. Then he speeds up as he says, "We can't give you any information about the patient's condition, ma'am. You'll have to ask the nurses. The ones in the fourteen-hundred wing might know something, but visiting hour's over, so..."

[Brady] [Uh... yeah there's more than one visiting hour, son. How about "visiting hours're over"? Yeahhhh, that's it...]

[Page] He doesn't seem to pay much attention to the fact that Nico's heart-rate picks up speed when he returns, but then, it's Owen, who has been oblivious to how his best friend feels about his entire life -- evidently, that hasn't changed much. Nico tells him that he didn't, that he should come closer, he's too far away and Owen looks at him intently for a minute, eyes dark and fathomless before he nudges off the wall and drags his chair closer; handling his coffee with his uninjured hand after he sits back down.

"Yeah, maybe not this time."

Owen is saying in a low voice, at once weary and resolute. "But just like at the school, I didn't fucking think. I just... ran in. If I'd just... been quicker, if I hadn't..." The frustration has his voice being leeched clean away and after a minute he leans over, sets his coffee down and sets his hand over his friend's carefully. It's warm from holding the coffee, and Owen gently pats Nico's hand the uncertain manner men tended to.

The cautious expression steals over his face again, his brow knitting together, mouth considering a smile.

"You look like shit, you know." If it weren't for it being who it is saying this, such an insult could be well, insulting.

[Littleton] "I know," Emily says, when he reminds her that visiting hours are over. "Over at Eight." Like she's heard it a dozen times. Like she plans on being there at 8AM on the dot, waiting. She nods a little, and the tightness in her expression recants for a moment. She's not surprised at all to note that it's a genuine reaction. Knowing, even knowing bad news, is better than knowing nothing at all.

"Thank you both," she says, honestly. Emily steps a little out of their path so they can move beyond her. Emily's trajectory appears to be headed to take her back toward the main lobby, and out to her car in the parking lot.

She's not stealthy enough to sneak where she wants to go, so she'll have to wait until the students have cleared the hallway before making her way to the fourteen hundred wing. And she'll have to look like she belongs there, which won't be hard from the exhaustion she's beginning to feel and with the cup of coffee she's carrying. This late in the evening, everyone in the hospital is exhausted. Everyone is worried. And plenty of people walk the halls just to get some sort of exercise in between interminable bouts of waiting.

Somewhere along the way, a sign will tell her the fourteen hundreds are an intensive care wing. It will tighten the already tense feeling in her chest. Force her to stare numbly at the sign for a moment. Sip from her coffee, heedless of the black-tar burn of it sliding down her throat.

Somewhere along the way, it catches in the back of her mind. His buddy's totally fine. She hasn't parsed it, yet. It hasn't begun to make her wonder or worry, yet. That was a superfluous bit of information that didn't directly help her find Nico. Maybe in the long hours of waiting that were inevitably ahead of her, Emily would worry about it. Not now.

She finds the nurse's station, and waits until someone comes over to tell her she can't wait there anymore.

"Hey, I know. Over at eight. I just... I was hoping if you could tell me how my friend's doing. Nico Brady? I think he came in as an MVC, but that was hours ago. He's Diabetic, and I just, I'm really worried." Emily strings together the bits of information she's gleaned from her earlier conversations. She'd spent enough time listening to Ashton talk that it didn't sound completely foreign on her tongue, either, even as it was wrapped up in her accent and the worry that was edging out her composure just now. "He didn't come home last night and it's taken me all day to find him."

[Brady] The nurse who comes over to figure out where this tall, thin young woman is supposed to be is likewise tall and thin, like the cigarettes she probably lives off of, and appears to be in her forties, though it's hard to tell if she's younger and just hasn't aged well or if she's actually older and is doing quite well. Her overprocessed blond hair is pulled back with a clip, and her thighs don't touch when she walks. There's a stethoscope around her neck, and she isn't wearing a name tag; it's her no-nonsense blue scrubs, too big for her, that give away that she belongs here. Before she can begin her speech, the British woman beats her to it. She crosses her arms over her flat chest and listens.

Then her face softens when she hears the name. Most of the patients she sees day in and day out are old, desiccated, on their way out anyway. There aren't a lot of young patients up here. The ones who are are desperately young, and there's something terribly sad about a twenty-something on death's door. Their lives are just starting. They've finally achieved independence, an identity. If they've just left college they're full of promise and hope. Most of them don't realize how much life sucks yet. And this particular patient, the nurses can tell is cute when he isn't mostly dead. It's a waste of flesh, mostly. Never mind that he's queer as a three-dollar bill. They don't know that. Everyone's asexual up here.

Up here, the nurse's station is empty this late. There's a television in the break room. They can hear the myriad monitors if the alarm goes off. Someone does rounds every fifteen to thirty minutes. They don't pay attention to who's coming and going because they have twenty patients; that means twenty sets of next of kin in and out the door all night long.

"I can't give out information about his condition to anyone other than next of kin," the nurse says, apologetic, dropping her arms. "HIPAA, you know. If you'd like to have a seat by the elevators, I'll let his brother know you're here, he can come out and talk to you."

==========

When Nico smiles, it's a wan, miserable thing, but it's there. He looks as though the last thing he wants to see right now is Owen upset, but the fact that Owen's upset means that he's here, that he's affected by what happened, and somehow, Nico still can't turn off that part of him that wants to hear other people's pain, their troubles, their stories, even when he is heavily medicated, when earlier this morning he was in so much pain he nearly cracked his teeth trying not to scream in front of Owen.

"Dude," he says, speaking an effort he barely has the energy for at the moment. He can't breathe too deeply because his ribs are broken, because his lungs are scarred from collapsing, because there is a fucking tube draining blood and every time he breathes in he can feel it, like some sort of parasite sucking at him. "It's okay... wasn't your... wasn't your fault."

Even Nico doesn't tend to go for the hand when he's trying to comfort someone. It's too familiar, gives the wrong impression. When he comforts someone it's with an open hand on the shoulder, as high up as he can get. Hugs come from the side, not the front. He doesn't jerk away when Owen pats his hand like a typical American male, as though he's afraid someone's going to see him, or as though it just isn't natural.

He looks like shit. The Orphan rasps out a laugh; his eyes slide shut. This hand-patting shit isn't doing it for him. He slowly supinates his corpse-cold hand so that their palms meet and grasps Owen's as tight as he can. It's not very tight at all. His skin is dry as paper.

"I feel like shit," he acquiesces. "Think they've... shoved something in every hole they can shove something in. Fuckin' hate hospitals, man."

He winces, rubs at his eyes with the heel of his free hand, and looks back over at the Chorister. His smudged eyes look frighteningly large against the pale backdrop of his skin. He wasn't this pale last night. His tan has been leeched away by blood loss: they replaced his volume but not his red blood cells. There's a shortage of his blood type, not enough O-negative to do anything but keep him alive.

"You okay? Why're you beating yourself up? Would've been way worse if you weren't there."

[Littleton] The nurse's face softens. It's recognition. Emily is aware enough to realize that she's finally found the right place. That there's someone here with Nico's last name, that matches Nico's general description and a couple key indices. That he's alive, if barely, and that he's not out in the middle of nowhere. His cell phone is off because that's what the wretches in the system did, they worried everyone on the planet with an ounce of tech savvy by sending your calls to limbo or voicemail or the dreaded disconnected tone. Emily's expression softens, too.

"I..." There's no point in explaining that she understands the HIPAA rules. Or that there's nothing more then nurse can say, because Nico is in the fucking ICU. And no one goes there for anything but dying or death watches. Emily wants to walk onto that ward even less than she wanted to be in the hospital in the first place. She glances toward the hallway with its glass-doored rooms and feels something inside twist. It's more than just her empathy and worry for Nico.

She should have been here last month. Emily's hand rubs at her side, where there's a new hurt that has healed (been healed [been magicked away]), and puts the thought from her mind.

Emily pulls her attention back to the nurse. Her brow furrows gently at the mention of his brother. "No, but thank you. I don't want to disturb them. I'll... I'll come back in the morning. What time does the ward open for visitors?"

There's a softer note to her voice now. Perhaps a little distraction of being this close. Or relief at having put a mental image with the physical location. It sounds like recanting, like Emily has come to some sort of acceptance of these rules and policies and barriers between her and her friend.

It's not.

She'll wander back by the elevator to sit for awhile. Then, when it's been quiet for a bit, she'll make her way onto the ward to find the door marked BRADY. On some level, she has to be expecting what she'll find there. On another, she is utterly and completely unprepared.

[Page] People will say a lot of things about Owen Page when he's dead. Hell, people say a lot of things about him now.

They'll call him a deserter, the way he left his Cabal and his kind of girlfriend behind. They'll call him a trouble-maker, the way he's shown up again. They might call him bad news, to Nico, to Emily, to the entire Mage population. Or, who knew, maybe they'll say he was a good guy, just a little messed up.

You know how it went.
Guys in their early twenties, some of them could be worse than teenagers.

Of course, of the people who may such things about him, none of them know him. Not the way the man lying in the bed holding his hand in his [currently] frail grasp does, not even the way the young woman sitting out there by the elavators, about to walk in and get the wind knocked out of her sails, does.

Owen was many things.
But he was also faithful, painfully loyal and willing to step up to bat for the people and the things that mattered to him.

Right now, Nico is asking him why he's beating himself up, and it's all the Chorister can do not to let himself cry. He makes some face that is between a grimace and a laugh and drops his head forward, resting his forehead against their linked hands. It is very possible that this is the position Emily finds them in when she finds the ICU doors to Nico's room parting to accept her.

A dark head, bowed over a figure in a bed, broad shoulders hunched against whatever is going on.

"It was like Maggie all over again, you were dying, Nico and I couldn't even hear you." This, muffled against his chest. When he does raise his face, it's pale, and his eyes are wet and its then that they meet Emily Littleton's through the glass doors and he goes still.

Nico feels the flex of his friend's fingers.
Owen lets out a breath that is equal parts sigh.

[Brady] "Hey..."

It hurts to speak too loud; the word comes out in a croak, like seeing and hearing his friend--more of a brother than any of the men who share genetic information with him--crying would have him following suit if it weren't for the drugs, the Jhor, the refusal to let himself be weak and vulnerable even when he's the one lying in a fucking hospital bed with tubes and needles stuck in his chest and veins and nose. The Orphan looks more like a Technocratic construct than a Traditionless heathen. Faith and magic aren't keeping him alive. It's science.

It makes him nauseous even with the phenergan in his system.

There is nothing he can say that he hasn't said already. Nico was at Maggie's funeral, was the one standing by in case Owen couldn't hold himself up anymore, was the one who watched him lash out at the world when he couldn't handle the pain and held him back when he attacked other people. They sat up nights together talking and sharing illicit, illegal substances without discussing what would offer them a different sort of peace and hope six years later: they never admitted what they were to each other, back then. Nico didn't tell Owen that he was dragged into an alleyway and beaten within an inch of his life, nearly raped before his Avatar blasted into his consciousness any more than Owen told Nico that he saw fuck knows what, some twisted angel of mercy or vengeance or death the night that Maggie died. It's been ages and nothing Nico has ever said, anything he could possibly say, will make him stop blaming himself for that night.

It was his fault, if we're going to split hairs and get down to mechanics. He was drunk. He was driving. He's still alive. But he's been more than punished, by himself and life and God and whoever else is out there. Maggie, wherever she is, has to have forgiven him. These are all things Nico has said before. They haven't talked about it since Nico finished six years of schooling to become a counselor. Back in high school he listened more than he talked.

Right now he can't do either very effectively, and if he remembers this in the morning, when they release him or he sneaks out or whatever the case may be, Nico will probably kick himself for not being present. Never mind that he has dead eyes, that his hands feel like they're too numb to feel. He slings his forearm across his body, unable to move his upper arm because fancy that his fucking collarbone is broken, and clumsily rests his hand on the back of Owen's head. If he keeps crying, he says nothing; he can't move his lips to shush him, can't susurrate to let him know it's okay, he's here, he's not dead, Maggie loved him up until the second her heart stopped beating, probably even after.

When Owen looks up, goes still, squeezes Nico's hand, the Orphan doesn't realize what's going on. He's too out of it to sense the resonance at the door. This is the only time Emily really has a chance of lying to the man, is when he's pumped full of chemicals and struggling to breathe because half of his ribs are snapped or bruised and his lungs are scarred.

He's still alive, but he looks like a corpse. Emily can't even see his face because he's looking at Owen, not the door. His hand slides away.

[Littleton] These last few feet are a ghost walk for Emily. There's a chorus of memories and fears lying just below the surface that she doesn't want to give voice to just now. It leaves her a little numb; it leaves her a little breathless. Her frame is taut with concern and attention. Her breathing is shallow. There's all of two more feet to Nico's door. Every footfall seems so damned loud just now.

It isn't that she doesn't see the dark figure beside Nico's bed. Or that she doesn't inherently recognize his silhouette or the faint spill of resonance that surrounds the two of them, even here. No, some part of Emily feels that even before she sees him. She could name him with her eyes closed. They had been close once. It's that she has spent her day looking for the Orphan, and found him at last.

Through the glass, she can still see the blink and flicker of monitors. She can hear them. Even if the sound did not travel through the door, she would still hear them. Her fingers tighten on her coffee cup, but it's paper and threatens to give way. That draws her gaze down, draws her second hand up to meet the first. Gives that spill of Grace around her a paired image. Repose. Prayer. Regret. Emily doesn't know what it will look like to either of them; she's not sure she'd care if she did.

When she lifts her head, Emily's eyes settle on Owen. Owen who is a ghost, a ghost who wears a plaster on his arm and a gash on his head. She catalogues the many hurts they have between them. Her throat closes; she swallows that down. For all that she has imagined seeing him again, has hoped that he might come back, has worried, waited, the Singer girl's expression does not change. It stays numbly worried. Disbelieving. He stays a ghost, for a moment longer. An apparition trapped behind glass. Surely he would disappear when the doors parted.

Even if Owen had not been there, these last few steps would be the hardest. And if Emily stands in the hallway, looking through long enough, some nurse will wander by and make her leave. It wouldn't be her fault that she wasn't brave enough to walk into his room. It would be protocol. HIPAA. Visiting Hours. Some ready excuse.

There's a quiet click of boot heels when she steps into the room, and the swoosh of the sliding door which lets the hallway sounds in that much more clearly when it opens. There's a surety that follows her in, even if calm and composed is not entirely what she feels just now. She borrows it from someone who can no longer stand beside her, but who held her hand the last time she was in a room like this. Emily finds a place to set her coffee down before she crosses to Nico's bedside. She rests a warm hand on Owen's shoulder that -- if he allows it -- slips beyond, and across the planes of his shoulders to wrap him in a brief, one-armed hug that is immediately more steadfast and understanding that she feels capable of just now. Her eyes are for Nico, though. She doesn't look over at the other Singer, just now, which may detract from whatever small comfort she's trying to offer.

"You have no idea how grateful I am to see you both," she says, when she finally says something. Her voice is hushed (Reverence) and heavy. Heavy enough to ground them if they wanted it, to be an anchor and a firmament just now. But it's all she can say, just now, around the lump in her throat. And she doesn't know where she can touch Nico to offer any assurance. Just now, right now, is probably the first time that she stops to think about whether Nico Brady wanted her to try and find him in the first place -- and that thought threatens to crumble her where she stands. It erodes whatever certainty she'd walked in with, even more than the presence of her long-lost once-(maybe)-Mentor.

Emily's arm slides away from Owen's shoulders. She stands a little apart. Without her coffee, she has nothing to busy her hands with, so they fall to her sides. Empty.

[Brady] [Pause!]