Vegaspete: Just hold me this night

Just ease me from this fear

I woke up in somebody's arms, rhythmically swaying as I was carried around. I wanted to open my eyes, but they felt glued together. Somebody softly caressed my face, and I heard a silent whisper: "Shhh, just sleep. Everything is fine."

That was Porsche. I took a deep breath, and his well-known smell calmed me immediately. I knew something happened, something so bad that my throat was sore from crying, but my head was like a cloudy sponge, I barely remembered my own name.

"Everything is fine", Porsche whispered again, and I forced myself to believe it for now. To let the sleep overcome me.

When I woke up again, I was in a foreign bed. It was white, everything was white and bright, and for a few seconds I was blinded by the glaring light. Then I realised that I was in a hospital. I looked around, but the simple room was not the treatment room of the main family, this was the real hospital. When I moved, I felt a sharp pain in my hand – an infusion. My arm was also bandaged, and I felt a few more injuries on my whole body that I didn't notice yet, because-
Vegas.

I clenched my teeth and pulled out the needle, then I stood up. Whatever the reason was I lied here, Vegas was injured worse.

When we arrived in the hospital, they immediately operated him, with a survival chance around thirty percent. I didn’t leave the waiting room, didn't allow the doctors to look after my own health in case the operation would end in the moment I left the room.

Porsche tried to talk to me, tried to get me treated or at least out of this room, but I didn't even listen. I just looked at the closed door for hours and hours until a doctor came out.

I finally got some information – they were able to get the most dangerous bullets out of his body, but this was just one problem. His heart had stopped beating because of the wounds, and before they were able to reanimate him, a few minutes passed. Right now, he was in a artificial coma where he would stay until he was physically more stable, but nobody could know how he would be after waking up, maybe he would he disabled or have severe memory loss.
I probably didn't even breathe while listening, and when he finished, I just looked at him for a few seconds.

"Will he survive?", I asked then, with a sore and anxious voice, and the next few seconds felt like eternity until he answered. "We can't be completely sure, but his chance to survive has become way higher, we calculated a plausibility of over eighty percent."

I started to cry without any sound, dozens of silent tears that were running over my face. I wanted to thank him, but I wasn't able to speak, so I just hugged him, and after a second of surprise, he hugged me back, a bit hesitating.

I had something that I almost lost: Hope. A desperate, almost painfully bright hope.

He tried to convince me to get my own treatment while Vegas would get a few hours of rest and then be operated again, getting the bullet out of his shoulder that they ignored till now because it was almost no risk for his life.

That was the bullet I shot, and even if the chance to die due this operation was very low, it was no option for me to get away from him now: If he would die now, it would be my fault.

I wanted the truth, just wanted to be eased from this fear.

So I waited, waited for hours, and then my memories blacked out.

Now I was walking out of this foreign room, on my way to find Vegas, and I almost bumped into Porsche.

My best friend's face lighted up when he saw me. "Pete, you are up! You are such a darn idiot, you scared me!" He wrapped his arms around me and didn't even let go when I whimpered in pain because he squeezed my injured arm.

"You were awake for more than 50 hours straight, without food or water, and all of this after the exhausting fight! The doctors didn't realise that because they shifts changed, and I thought you were in a bed or something! I went home to sleep for a few hours because I was stable enough to leave, and when I got back to the hospital, you were still on this chair, slumped and motionless! For a moment I was scared you were injured in the fight worse than you told us and..."

Porsche didn't finish the sentence, he just pulled me closer.  "I picked you up and carried you in the hospital bed they reserved for you, and that is the bed you just left."

That explained the infusion – probably some water or a nutrient solution. "I am so sorry, I didn't mean to cause trouble! I was just so worried about Vegas."

The name seemed to fill up the room for a moment, seemed to ask the question that I didn't speak out loud, and Porsche answered. "He is alive, don't worry. They didn't wake him up yet because they wanted to wait for you, but he is completely stable, the operations went well."

A rock with the size of the main family mansion seemed to fall from my heart. This time I was the one hugging Porsche so tight that he groaned. I buried my face in his neck, tearing up again with a giant relieved smile.

Vegas made it.

Vegas survived.

Vegas was alive.