Split Apart

Hospital

As soon as the three of them walked into the hospital, it all went scarily quiet. People stared at Logan and Remus for a few moments in shock. Logan cleared his throat. "We need help, please."

The room burst into loud action, nurses and doctors ushering them away, Thomas being taken from Remus's arms. Logan and Remus both being forced to sit in wheelchairs. The last thing Logan saw before being pushed onto an elevator was Remus being led into the physical therapy wing.

The elevator dings as it stops and the doors slide open. Logan's chair is pushed into a brightly lit doctors' room with patterned tiles. He's stopped in a corner of the room and a nurse takes his vitals, leaving him with a quiet, "Dr. Renshaw will be in shortly" as she closed the door.

The door eventually re-opened and a stout, older man with greying hair and sideburns waddled in. He had on typical scrubs an unnaturally white colour, and had a small clipboard that he set on the counter in the room.

He introduced himself and immediately started looking Logan over, scheduling an x-ray for Logan's leg, checking the scars on Logan's back, and examining the head wound that Logan had gotten over the vacation. He avoided Logan's finger like the plague throughout the examination, although Logan occasionally noticed him looking down at it. Finally, almost everything had been thoroughly checked over, and there was just one last thing to do.

"Hold your left hand out please."

Logan's hand shook slightly as he brought his hand up and let Dr. Renshaw grab it. They gripped it loosely, avoiding his ring finger entirely as they examined it. Logan looked away from his finger in disgust. After all that time he'd spent with it mostly healed, just burn scars around the half-imbedded ring, somehow Blaine and Alex had irritated it again. It looked just as bad as it had on the first day, worse, even.

"This is very..." Dr. Renshaw sucked in a breath. There was no nice way to say anything coming Logan's way. "Well, your chest healed finely from the burns it received, but these burns...They're mostly second degree, not the worst thing I've seen. There's a small area on this side-" Dr. Renshaw pointed it out, careful not to brush his finger against the skin. "-that is third degree. But we'll get everything looked at and sorted out."

Logan stared up at the ceiling. "I believe my captor used...A blowtorch. The scars on my chest are from heated metal."

Dr. Renshaw looked seconds from puking. Logan wondered a bit irritated why he had chosen this profession if he clearly couldn't handle gore. "Well. The burns were mostly healed, something just irritated them and caused an infection. How long has this been-?"

"I don't know." Logan admits. His throat was thick, but he forced himself not to cry. "I was taken mid-December, but I have no clue when the finger worsened, or what happened to cause it. I was mostly blindfolded. They had a nurse there, but-"

And that's where Logan stopped, memories of Joyce flying back to the surface of his conscious. Grabbing a box of tissues, Dr. Renshaw holds one out to him. "So, you've had treatment on the finger in the hopes of-"

"No." Logan corrects, his voice cracking. "I got the wound in early September. It was treated by a different doctor, and then in late December I was kidnapped again."

"Alright...I think I'm following now." Dr. Renshaw nods, scribbling down notes on his clipboard. "So, two different nurses, and two major points of healing?"

Logan nodded. "Do you know how Remus is doing? They looked like they were taking them to P.T."

"The man you came in with? They did. I believe to work on his hands for a bit while the police prepared to take your statements."

"What about Thomas? What about our baby? Where is he?" A few tears slipped down Logan's face unrestrained. "He's okay, right?"

"He got taken to the maternity floor. A nurse is looking over him, just making sure everything's okay. Getting him some food." Dr. Renshaw smiles, trying to be reassuring. "We really should be focusing on-"

"They're not gonna take him away, are they?" Logan croaks. "He's adopted. I know we probably seem like unfit parents, but we love him with our life, and we've spent months protecting him from-"

"Woah, slow down. No one's going to take your baby. Not while you're here." Dr. Renshaw promises. "You'll get to see him in a little bit. Now, I'm really sorry to have to tell you this, but with your finger-"

"Just tell me." Logan stared down at the brightly tiled floors. "I know it's bad."

"Well." Dr. Renshaw simply stared at Logan for a few seconds, his voice quiet. His cleared his throat and tried again. "Well. With how low the ring on your finger is, and the severity of the burns, and how the ring is embedded in the skin, I feel there's no other choice but to amputate."

Logan went scarily quiet. He thought about everything, his last ring, the way a ring seemingly had so much hold over people. The maiden's tale about how the ring finger was connected to the heart. How he'd always wanted a ring from someone else. How Patton somehow managed to always steal that from him. A ring could never be from anyone else, now.

But maybe he didn't need a ring. Maybe he could just be happy. With Remus, with Thomas. With their perfect family. A ring, marriage, it didn't define him.

"Just do it."