BLAKE
The doctor came in to talk to Logan about an hour later, her hard brown eyes softening when she saw him awake in bed. "Hi Logan. My name is Dr. Garcia but please call me Ellen. Good to see you awake," she said, slipping the clipboard out of the plastic sheet attached to the bed and glancing down at it.
"Can't say the same about you," Logan muttered under his breath, and Blake swatted him.
"How do you feel?"
"I'm fine."
"Any nausea, vomiting, double vision?" she asked as she leaned over to shine a flashlight into his eyes.
"No, it's fine."
"I'm just going to check your heartbeat. Breathe in for me."
Logan shrunk into the bed and gripped the bed sheets until his knuckles went white when she touched the stethoscope and her slim fingers to his chest and ribs. He squeezed his eyes shut and Blake had to hold in the urge to please tell the doctor to stop for his brother's sake. By the time she was done removing the wires from his chest and the IV from his arm, Logan was white and sweating.
"You alright there, Logan?" the doctor said gently.
"Just peachy," he said tightly.
"Do you feel any bruises or cuts that you don't remember having before last night?"
"No."
"Any soreness around or in your-"
"No," Logan snapped.
"Logan, these are very important questions considering that you do not remember-"
"I said, I'm fine."
Dr. Garcia sighed but she let it go. She explained GHB and gently encouraged Logan to talk with the police, after which she said, "Well, you don't have any history of drug use, nor do you have any history of seizures, concussions, fainting, or blood loss - wait." She squinted at the clipboard and Blake resisted the urge to slap himself.
"Just to clarify, there is or there isn't fainting and blood loss?"
Blake had made more marks than he could remember on the paper when he'd corrected it because he kept going back and forth between deciding whether it was necessary to list that or whether that was even part of Logan's new witness protection hospital documents. In the end, however, he'd written out the word yes again and circled it three times to make sure his point was clear.
"There is," Logan grumbled quietly. "But it was only once."
The doctor looked at him so intensely that even Blake squirmed. "I see," she said finally, flipping the papers back onto the clipboard. "Well, in that case, there shouldn't be any need to keep you too long. You can go home after the 24-hour observation period. I want you to drink lots of water or I'm putting the IV back in. And the police are also wanting to question you once you feel well enough."
After she left, Olivia leaned in towards Logan curiously. "I didn't know you fainted, Logan. When was that?"
Logan blanched and pushed her away. "I don't know," he said gruffly. "It wasn't that important."
"Was it after the blood loss or before? Or because of it?"
"I said I don't know! Why can't a guy get a single moment of peace in this room?"
"Maybe because you were passed out for like thirteen hours!"
"What does that have to do with anything? Just get away from me!"
In the end, Olivia fell asleep with her head resting against her chin, and when her forehead slid off her hand onto Logan's shoulder, Logan didn't make a move to shift her away until a police officer knocked on the door and asked to speak with him. Then Blake picked her up off the chair and put her on the couch so she would be more comfortable.
The police officer talked to Logan for a long time, trying to get any information about what he remembered, but he couldn't give the officer anything. When they were done, the officer said, "We can't file criminal charges or conduct too much further investigation because you don't remember much, but we can complete a rape kit if you wish."
Logan's face twisted in discomfort and Blake took a deep breath, ready to fight him if he wanted to say no, but Logan surprised him. He clenched his jaw and said, "Fine."
"Very well. I'll wait for you outside."
Blake had to help Logan get out of bed even though Logan protested and threatened and snapped at him. He dizzily clutched Blake's shoulder when he tried to take a step and stumbled.
"You okay?" Blake asked, steadying him by the elbow.
"Quit asking me that."
"You want me to come with you?"
"I'm not five."
"I know."
They stood there silently. Blake could see both of Logan's hands trembling. He was not okay.
But Logan couldn't even bear the mere thought of letting someone in, of confessing his fear, let alone outwardly admit it. So Blake did the only thing he knew to in these situations.
He hugged his brother, holding him tighter when he felt that his whole body was shivering slightly. And it didn't bother him that Logan only stood there with one arm stiffly against his back because he knew how hard it was for him and he was just glad that his shaking eased.
"It's okay if you're scared," Blake said quietly. "I know Elijah's not here but I am. You can talk to me."
"Be quiet, you complete sap," Logan muttered, his arm nervously tightening around Blake.
They stood there for a little while until Logan gently pulled away and dragged his hands through his hair a few times. "Okay. I'm fine now. I'm going."
Blake stopped him. "Wait. Can I come with you? It would make me feel better," he said.
Logan sighed. "Do you have to?"
Blake gave him his best genuine face. "Please? I swear I won't do anything. I'll just stay outside."
"Fine. If you really want to."
Blake smiled to himself when Logan's shoulders relaxed a bit in response. It had taken him a while to figure out best how to cajole his brother into accepting help, but he'd learned. "Thanks."
*****
When they got back to the hospital room, the smell of spicy and garlicky meat made Blake's mouth water. Andy was sitting on one chair with his feet up on the other, a bag of food on the floor next to him. Olivia was still sleeping on the couch behind him, Andy's jacket draped over her shoulders.
"Hope you like Chinese," Andy said, lifting the plastic bag.
"I'll eat anything right now," Logan groaned, collapsing on the bed.
As Andy pulled out an assortment of boxes onto the plastic rolling table next to the bed, he kept pulling his lips into his mouth to squash a smile. "What're you laughing about?" Logan snapped, even more crabby after the hour-long ordeal he'd been through.
A lopsided smile pulled at Andy's lips. "I gotta say, dude, you are way less scarier in person."
Blake laughed. Andy was right. With how Logan was laying on the hospital bed, tired and weary, dressed in the flimsy green hospital gown after the police took his clothes as evidence, there was no way he looked like someone who would threaten to cut out your intestines and strangle you with them.
Nevertheless, Logan scowled. "Don't test me."
"I hear you," Andy said, but his grin got even worse. "You want rice or noodles?"
"Just give me either, I'm starving."
"Should we wake up Olivia?" Blake asked, glancing at her sleeping on the couch.
"No, let her sleep," Logan said, accepting the square white box that Andy held out to him. "What's going on with you her anyways? You two are always teaming up against me and now it's like the other way around."
Blake looked away from him. Ever since he'd hugged Olivia that morning, she'd been almost completely ignoring him. If she ever did catch him looking at her, she threw him a murderous glare. She had spoken more words to Andy in the past hour than she'd spoken to him all morning and it almost hurt more than he could handle. She'd never been this angry at him before and the guilt was eating him up from inside.
"She's still kinda pissed at me," Blake admitted. "She's practically replaced me with Andy."
Logan's lip curled in disgust as he looked at Andy. "What did you do to her?" he demanded of him. "Did you say something?"
"No, it was nothing," said Andy. "She just called me when you passed out because Blake had too much to drink."
"It was not nothing." Blake sighed. "When we got to the hospital, she hugged him before she hugged me. And I don't even think she's ever seen him before except that one time he was there when she Facetimed me."
"It's because you smelled like shit," Andy pitched in.
"I'm too hungover for this sort of honesty," Blake groaned. He slumped down in his chair. "This is unnecessary."
"Considering that you nearly threw up in my car, this is completely necessary," Andy retorted.
"Well, I didn't actually do it, did I?"
Andy rolled his eyes. "Only because I pulled over and hauled your ass out of the seat before you destroyed the leather."
"You said we wouldn't mention that!"
"God, you two are awful," Logan interrupted, glaring at them. "You sound exactly like Elijah and Malena. Just quit bickering and let me eat."
Blake looked down into his plate and silently begged the universe to make Andy quiet.
"Who's Malena?"
The universe was not on his side.
Blake saw Logan open his mouth and beat him to it. "Just someone we knew," he said before Logan could get a word in. "Back in - New York. She and Elijah didn't get along."
Logan narrowed his eyes at Blake but kept his mouth shut.
"Well, Blake can be annoying....but I wouldn't say we're terrible," Andy said, glancing at Logan.
Logan shrugged and continued shoveling food into his mouth, and Blake nearly died from relief.
When they finished eating, Logan shut the adjoining bathroom door and turned on the shower. Blake and Andy cleaned up the mess that had been accumulating since that morning. Then Blake told Andy he would be back and left to find the bathroom down the hall.
All morning, he'd been trying to hold it together and keep calm. He tried to comfort Olivia and talk to the officers and nurses she grew tired of talking to, and when Logan had to go with the police officers he'd tried to help him hold the burden but now, when he slid the lock shut in the bathroom stall only meaning to take a breath to get away from the constant anxiety he felt in that hospital room, he couldn't help it.
The enormous ache of guilt and fear that had been festering in his chest leaked out of his eyes faster than he could hold it in.
He cried because in the end, he really hadn't been able to do anything for his siblings. He cried because Olivia was mad at him for good reason and because he couldn't give her a good enough reason to forgive him. He cried because he couldn't help Logan and because he'd almost lost his brother last night and it would have been because he wasn't sober enough to hold a phone call with his sister.
He sat on the flimsy toilet lid with his head in his hands and hot tears dripping down onto his knees and his shoulders shaking with sobs.
If anything had gone differently, if they'd gotten to the hospital any later, if he'd had been drugged with just a little more - Logan would not have been alright. He could be still passed out - or worse. And all those years Blake had tried to help Logan fight his demons would have been for nothing if his alcohol-induced haze ruined everything.
Blake was so busy blowing his nose that he didn't even hear the door open and footsteps come into the bathroom until the white sneakers appeared under the door and stopped right outside his bathroom stall.
"Blake, is that you?"
Blake held his breath so Andy wouldn't hear his hiccuping, but he was adamant.
"I know you're in there."
Blake grimaced. If he said anything now, Andy was going to know he was crying. And if he didn't say anything, Andy was going to keep pestering him until he came out. The guy was stubborn as hell when he wanted to be.
"You've been gone for a while. I thought you died in the bathroom or something."
"I'm fine," Blake said, and cringed at his own horribly croaky voice. There was no way Andy was going to mistake it for anything else.
There was a silence. Blake wanted to slap himself for speaking. Now there was no other way this could go.
"Well, at least you're not dead," Andy said dubiously.
But Logan almost was, and that made even more tears start to come down his face.
"You want me to get your brother?"
"No, I can't -" Blake took a shallow breath and tried to quell his tears. "I can't lose my shit in front of Logan when he's already so freaked out."
"Well, good thing I'm not Logan."
Blake let out a shaky laugh. "Yeah, that's a plus."
The lock on the stall clinked slightly as Andy leaned back against the door, his shoes facing away from him. Blake pulled more squares of tissue from the toilet roll and tried to think of the best way to make Andy go away without being mean about it. He just wanted to have a good cry by himself and he couldn't do that with his roommate right on the other side of the stall door.
"You didn't know, Blake," Andy said softly before Blake could decide. "It's not your fault."
But it would have been, if Logan didn't wake up. It would have been, if something happened that they couldn't come back from and Blake would have to live the rest of his life knowing that if he'd just picked up the phone, none of this would ever have happened.
He couldn't imagine a time where he couldn't save Logan. He couldn't imagine a future where Logan wasn't there to roll his eyes at him when he begged him to take the motorcycle or half heartedly snap at him when he tried to hug him or sigh and talk to Elijah for him when Elijah wouldn't listen to Blake.
But it had almost happened.
"Don't blame yourself."
"I can't help it," he said, his voice horrendously raspy, but he found he didn't care. "I could've stopped it and if you weren't there-"
"There was nothing you could have done for him that Olivia wouldn't have done herself. There's no magic injection to cure a GHB overdose."
What if Olivia hadn't called an ambulance? What if, while Logan laid on the floor, he stopped breathing and-
"You'll kill yourself with whatever what-ifs you're imagining," Andy said gently, and Blake was worried for a moment he'd been muttering to himself. "They didn't happen."
"They almost did."
"But they didn't for a reason. So don't blame yourself over it."
"I don't really believe in reason."
Andy was quiet for a moment, and then in a hesitant voice he said, "I like to think there is."
After a bit of silence, he went on, "You still have your brother. And your sister. And your other brother, even if he's...you know. And if you feel bad about something - it's not the end. Maybe it's a good thing. Maybe it's time to change something."
It was time to change something. Blake hadn't been trying as hard as he could to figure out what was going on, but it was time he did. He wasn't going to make excuses for himself anymore.
He wiped the last of his tears. He'd been horrified that Andy had found him crying, but just his presence on the other side of the door and his calm voice had calmed his horrible thoughts for the moment. Whether he'd meant to or not, he had managed to make Blake think about something else and turn his attention away from his guilt. "You're right," he said.
"I usually am."
Blake cracked a smile, even though Andy couldn't see him through the door. "I think you just ruined that whole nice moment thing you had going on there."
"What are you talking about? I always have nice moments!"
"Then can you have another nice moment and leave the bathroom?"
"It's not like I've never seen anyone sweating out their eyes before."
"I'm too attractive when I cry. You might die from bedazzlement."
"I'm going to pretend you did not just say bedazzlement. Just come out. My sister's a way uglier crier than anything you could look like right now and I've seen her cry about a million times."
"Well, I don't think you need this image burned in your mind."
"Blake, I've held your shirt back for you while you almost puked all over my shoes. I'm pretty sure we're past that stage. Just get out of the bathroom."
Andy convinced him to come out, and after Blake washed his hands and face in the tiny bathroom sink, they walked back to the hospital room together.
"Thanks for telling Olivia what to do last night," Blake said to him before they went back in. "And for being there for her when I wasn't."
"It was nothing." Andy elbowed him in the ribs. "What's a roommate for if not to pick up your kid sister's calls when you're too trashed to?"
Blake let out a shaky laugh and tried to discreetly wipe a rogue tear from the corner of his eye. "Roommates are supposed to annoy the shit out of you."
"I can do that too if you want," Andy replied, grinning. "Just say the word."
Well, Wednesday didn't happen because I struggled with rewriting the ending of this chapter idk guys it feels kinda blah.
The next update will be SUNDAY.
Does it bother you guys if Olivia's POV isn't done for a couple of chapters?
For next time: Blake and Logan are on a detective mission