Sinnerman

Chapter 45 Falling & Losing Part II

He hates hospital waiting rooms. Maybe that stems from his childhood.

Mom, or Gran bringing Ben or him to get stitched up from one of Dad's particularly violent episodes. Paranoia from nurses or doctors smiling falsely at him. When they were really trying to ask how he got so badly hurt. That hint of suspicion in their voices. Telling him what a brave kid he was.

He doesn't feel very brave now.

He clung onto her hand in the ambulance. Clutches it as hard as he can. Hoping he'd feel her squeeze him back. She's just laying there. Limp and awful and bleeding and pale. She's barely responsive. But she's still breathing.

He's crammed onto the little fold out seat opposite. He doesn't take his eyes off her. More tears slide quiet and slow from his black eyes. The lights and sirens outside blare red and loud. So fucking loud. They're racing through the night, he's getting bumped and rocked and he's just watching the EMT's careful hands attend to her.

He really thinks he might have lost his last lingering scrap of sanity when even they start telling the driver to step on it. And call in a crash team the minute they get to the hospital doors.

His worried black eyes meet the paramedics. He says they need her in the OR as soon as they touch down. Kylo swallows. Looking over to her.

They've put a drip in her arm already. Goading it through the nasty big needle jammed in the back of her hand. There's blood and something else clear hung up being fed into her nearly lifeless body.

"We'll do our best for her buddy. She's hanging in there." He tries to reassure Kylo. Touching his shoulder in a gesture of comfort. He thinks he nods. He can't remember.

He just looks at her small limp little hand in his. He raises the back of it to his lips. And she's so cold. It shatters his heart. Tears and sticky dry blood mingle on her pale skin. He doesn't care. He kisses it.

"Be alright. Please be alright for me." He wills in a soft whisper on her skin. He'll never stop saying it. Or wishing it.

It's all a blur when they reach the hospital. She's taken swiftly out the ambulance. Swarmed by a team and whisked away on a gurney. Kylo's stood there as her hand is ripped away from him as she's taken away. He watches it as if in slow motion. Or behind a sheet of glass.

Anyone who assumed Kylo Ren didn't have a heart, would very much mistaken.

Because he stood there in the pouring rain spitting overhead, outside the ER doors, watching it - his heart - get ripped away from him.

Someone, a nurse, he thinks, brings him inside. Advanced towards him with a cautious step. Six foot three and bloodied didn't make for a very approachable figure. But she's seen worse. She's seen that forlorn anguished stare in family and friends before.

The look of people who'd do anything to save their loved one. He'd open his veins for her or give blood or his organs. Anything anything anything. He'd do it all for her if she needs it.

"Come on honey. Come wait inside." She guides him gently. Hand on his arm. They were rushed off their feet tonight. But she sees that big hulking man just haunted. Stood there in the bitter cold and wet. She lays a kind hand on his arm.

He looks at her. Slowly lumbers inside. He's just numb. Not there. He lets himself get manoeuvred through hallways and sounds of a busy ward shatter and break off his chest like water.

Drips beeping and alarms, and the hissing drag of curtains on rails being pulled. Coughs and groans and calls. And phones and the clack of keyboards. Pagers blurt, and doctors are being called over the tannoy.