Howie and Kevin were both sitting up in bed when A.J. came in. They watched his every move as he walked slowly across the room to Kevin's bed, and drew up a stool. He leaned his elbows on the bed, put his face in his hands and let out a long sigh. The room was silent for a few minutes as they waited for him to speak.
Finally, Howie couldn't take it any longer. "Well? What's happening?"
"He's staying." A.J.'s voice was tired, holding no thrill of victory. He sounded old.
Kevin let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding.
"But?" Something was still wrong, Howie could tell.
"He has a living will." A.J. raised his head and looked at them. "Fuckin' twenty-one years old and he has a living will." He shook his head, "Saved his ass right now... but, can you imagine? I don't even have a *normal* will. Nick has this whole long, complicated thing in case he's unconscious for a long time, or brain-dead. What kind of life is that?" He was crying now, "He thought about something like that so often that he walked into the lawyer's office the day after his twenty-first birthday and had it written up."
The others had no answer.
"And you," his voice turned hard, his dark eyes smoldering with anger, "You're so angry at him for not telling us the truth, for hiding it away. You think he fucked up your life, letting you walk away from that mess with a barely-broken leg? Well congratulations, man. He chose you as his guardian."
Kevin paled.
"I don't care how confused all this shit makes you, how betrayed one secret makes you feel, all I know is that kid in the ICU trusts you with his life. I hope you're happy, Kevin Richardson."
Jacob came to take over for Suzanne.
"How is he?"
"Physically, he's ready to wake up. Emotionally..." she sighed. "They're on a roller coaster, and he's along for the ride. Now that his father's around, things aren't looking up. He hasn't got much of a reason to return to the living."
"Neither has Lina." At the alarmed look on Suzanne's face, he shook his head. "Oh, she's awake now... it wasn't a sympathy thing with Nick like we thought it might be."
"Thank God. Those two are so close."
"I dunno, Suzy. I have a bad feeling about this."
"I'll go say hello before I sleep."
"You do that. Anything I can do here, besides wait?"
"Keep an ear out for them, give Mindi any help she asks for..." she shrugged. "Give him a good swift kick in the pants? Anything that seems like a good idea."
"All improv as usual? Good thing I'm an actor." After satisfying himself that his teammate was right about Nick's physical condition, Jacob decided to take a more active role in things. "Unconscious psychic to sleeping non-psychic. Think I can manage it, Nick?"
Brian lay in his hospital bed, sleeping but restless. His subconscious was still dealing with the complicated events of the day. Fear, pain, confusion, guilt, worry, and even a little anger swirled around in his head. Nightmare images of the damaged bus, horrible fantasies of Bob, the dead bus driver, frightening scenarios where Brian himself died, all repeated again and again. The most prominent theme though, was Nick. After a few variations on the idea of Nick dying while he watched helplessly, Brian entered a new dream.
He wandered aimlessly through a thick orange fog, searching for something. Every so often he caught a glimpse of green, a whiff of ocean breeze, a crash of cymbals, all clues to a mystery he couldn't solve. He never seemed to get any closer to an answer, but something told him it was important he keep going. The sense of urgency grew and grew until Brian broke into a run.
"I'm coming, I'm coming!" he yelled frantically, arms and legs pumping. "Hang on!" Just as his lungs were about to burst, he ran straight into a closet door.
The door was taller than Brian. It was the kind of door he had often seen on hotel closets - a door on runners, where one part slid back behind another. Dust covered the runners and lined the strange handle set into the door. It was a circle cut into quarters, each quarter made of a different kind of wood. He tried to grasp the circle in the middle, but his hand kept slipping. His task wasn't made any easier by the quiet sobs he could hear coming from the other side of the door.
Eventually he changed tactics, and tried to grip each of the quarters in turn. The last one he tried, in the upper left corner, suddenly lit up. The sobbing quietened and a very young boy asked, "Brian?"
Brian woke up with Nick's voice ringing in his ears.