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Author's Chapter Notes:
Thanks again to Tanit for the once-over. Any typos, errors etc still hanging about are all my fault.
Chapter 16
I Wanna Hold You Hand



He wanted to know how long he had been here. He wanted to know what the hell had happened to him. He wanted to know why he couldn’t stay awake long enough to ask any questions.

He needed to know where Beth was.

He’d tried to ask, of course. Unfortunately, the nurse who had understood him the first time hadn’t been back, and the younger woman who had taken her place just smiled at him and added something he was absolutely certain was putting him to sleep to his IV. He didn’t think it could possibly be pain medication, because the pain wasn’t fading at all.

The last thing he was sure he remembered was being in her house. He wasn’t sure exactly when that was, but it felt like years ago. He couldn’t stop himself from thinking that if he could just get there, everything would stop hurting. He knew that was some drug addled fantasy, but he couldn’t imagine anything being wrong inside those particular walls.

But she wasn’t here. And the doctor had said that he’d been here for more than a week.

The good news was, they’d promised to revisit the idea of taking the damn breathing tube out in the morning. Unless that had passed already. His sense of time was completely buggered.

“Calm down.” The nurse was frowning at him, her eyes darting back and forth between his face and the monitor somewhere above his head and to the left.

He shook his head, lifting his hand again. He’d tried this the last time he woke, but she didn’t seem to get the message.

“You need to rest. You’ve been hurt.” One of her hands was stroking his arm, and her she was shushing him like he was a small child. She was trying to be kind, but she still wasn’t getting it.

He made his annoying I’m trying to talk but there’s a tube down my throat noise at her.

“The tube is to help you breathe.”

Bloody hell, he wanted the older nurse back. The pretty one just wasn’t catching on at all.

And then, just when he was about to lose his ongoing battle with sleep again, she appeared in the door as if summoned.

He tried to smile, and raised his hand again.

“You want to talk a bit, do you?” She said, smiling. She dismissed the youngster with the good intentions, and brought him the white board.

He tried to smile at her.

“Oh, you’re a charmer, I can tell.” She was supporting his arm again, which helped more than he wanted to admit.

Now for the hard part. He wanted to know if she’d been here. He wanted to know if she knew he was here at all. He wanted to know if what he remembered was still true, because the doctor had hinted that he’d lost a bit of time to head injuries. He wanted to know if they were an us.

He wrote Beth’s name with a question mark, and figured if the nurse had no clue what he was talking about it would tell him something at least.

“Well, I should have been able to guess that one.” He couldn’t turn his head completely toward her because of all of the tubes, wires and what felt like possibly a neck brace. She leaned over him. “Well, there’s been a lady named Beth in the waiting room since you got here, but she can’t come back just yet. The doctor hasn’t cleared you for visitors who aren’t immediate family. You need your rest.”

She was out there. She’d been out there for over a week? And working on top of that, probably. She needed to get some rest. She would wear herself into exhaustion. And all that would do would be convince her that she didn’t need the aggravation and heartache of him in her life, and she’d be gone like a shot. She’d be thinking alone was easier again. Bloody hell.

He underlined her name three times.

Then he wrote please, and he saw when the older woman broke.

“Just for a minute. If you promise not to tell.” She raised her eyebrows at him, and he tried to nod.





Elizabeth stood outside stood just outside the partition to the ICU cubicle where Will was listening to the nurse’s whispered admonishment that she could have no more than five minutes and that she wasn’t supposed to be back here at all.

“Now, it’s important that you try not to react to his appearance. Don’t upset him. He needs all of his energy for healing right now. I wouldn’t be doing this if I wasn’t convinced seeing you will help him.”

“I understand.” She nodded, still staring at the curtain. She was ignoring the glares from Attila the Nurse in the corner, who was obviously not in agreement with the breaking of the rules. Mostly ignoring her. She felt like she was going to throw up, but she wasn’t sure if that was nerves or that other thing that had been making her throw up lately.

“He’s on a lot of medications, but he was awake and lucid when I left to find you.”

“Can I see him now?” She sounded slightly rude, but the other woman just nodded with a little half smile that suggested she understood the rudeness.

And then he was there. In front of her.

His face was swollen almost beyond recognition, his left eye swollen completely together. A line of stitches bisected one eyebrow, and another ran from the edge of his hairline to just behind his ear. His hair was partially shaven, a thick line of scalp half an inch on either side of the stitches. What hair was left was flattened to his head, with only a stray curl sticking out here and there, and tinged pink in places. The tube that was helping him breath obscured her view a bit, but she could still make out the livid bruising around his jaw.

Oh, God.

She moved slowly to the side of the bed, leaning over into his line of sight.

“Will? Are you awake?”

The eye that wasn’t swollen shut opened, focused on her, and he blinked a couple of times before trying to smile around the breathing tube.

He was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen in her life. He was in there, awake and aware and trying to smile at her. A tear she’d not noticed dripped off the end of her nose and hit his cheek, and she started laughing.

“You have no idea how happy I am to see you, William Rupert Giles.” Her voice was shaking, and she felt his hand move against the back of her arm, reaching.

She slid her fingers between his and squeezed, then rested their joined hands on the mattress. She was never letting go of that hand again.

Later, she would think about being so sure of him when before all of this she’d been anything at all but sure. She might wonder if the emotion she felt was amplified by stress and the fear of raising a child alone. She might even regret all of it when he got tired of her and walked away.

But right now, in this room, she was never more sure of anything in her life than she was of him. Of the fact that had he not made it, had he actually been just another dead body in the park, she would have never felt anything resembling true contentment again. It would have killed the part of her that he had only begun to bring back to life.

“I love you.” She said the words, watched as he blinked and grasped her hand tighter.

“I’m afraid your time is up. We don’t want to get caught.” The whisper came from behind her, but she couldn’t seem to tear her eyes away from him for an acknowledgment.

The heart rate on the monitor sped up, and his hand tightened almost painfully around hers.

“No.” She said it softly, but with certainty. “Not yet. He wants me to stay until he falls asleep.”

“Officer, I’m not even supposed to have let you back here.”

“I know. I appreciate it. But he’s not letting go here, and I can’t just walk out. Not now.” She ran her fingers through his curls, wondering if there wasn’t some way they could wash his hair for him. She knew it would make him more comfortable. “Did you hear me, Will? I promise. I’m not going anywhere until you fall asleep. I can be pretty stubborn when I have to be, you know.”

He smiled a bit, and his thumb started making circles on the back of her hand.

How could she pull away from him now?

She was still there thirty minutes later when the doctor came in, and she really hoped the nurse didn’t get into trouble. She explained that they were together, that they hadn’t gotten see one another since Will took the job that landed him here, and that he wasn’t letting go of her hand anytime soon.

The doctor didn’t seem the least bit interested, but maybe it would help keep the nurse from getting into trouble. And hey, it meant she got to be there when the breathing tube came out. It had to hurt like the devil, too. She had to bite her lip to keep from grunting when Will’s hand nearly crushed hers.

Somewhere in the back of her mind was the knowledge that she had to tell him she was pregnant. She was three months along as far as she could tell. It happened that first weekend at her house, and when they said that no form of protection was a hundred percent effective they meant it. But how does one broach that subject? Some very small voice in the back of her mind, that sounded suspiciously like her mother, kept saying that this is what happens when you do things all out of order. That this is news that wives are supposed to tell husbands and when you go having sex without the commitment firmly in place first you ended not knowing if you’re about to lose him over it or not.

She told it to shut up, and leaned over to place a kiss on the side of Will’s face.

“Now I can see you properly.” She grinned at him, then at the nurse who was now on his other side holding a cup of ice chips.

“Love you.” Of course, it wasn’t that clear. His voice was scratchy with lack of use, and his tongue was thick from the dry mouth, but she knew what he said.

“You going to rest now?” He was savoring the ice, his eyes closed, but he opened them again when she spoke.

“Stay?” She may be stubborn, but she knew when not to push it.

“I’ll be right outside. And they’ll let me back in at the next visiting hours.” That was really the only reason she was leaving, the fact that the doctor had told her she could come back. In front of the nurse.

“No.”

“You need to rest, Will.” The list of things that had been wrong with him was too long. It was scary. He didn’t have a spleen anymore, she remembered that much. And there were words like skull fracture and punctured lung in there, too. His left knee would never be the same again. He needed to rest and heal.

“Stay.” He was pouting at her.

“There’s no chair here. We really need to give your buddy here a break, okay? That’d be some reward for being nice to us, getting her into even more trouble.” She nodded toward the nurse, who backed her up with a nod and a raised eyebrow at the patient.

Will sighed. “Soon?”

“Yeah. I’ll be back soon.”

“Get sleep, Beth. No working today.”

She rolled her eyes at him, and said, “Yes, sir. All bright eyed Buffy when I get back.”

“Buffy?” He was smirking at her.

“Oh, no. I said it, didn’t I? Old nickname. Very old. Not to be bandied about. Beth I’m starting to actually like a bit. Use that one.”

“Like Buffy.”

“No. Sleep. Now.” Blushing furiously, she slipped back out the doors.


Chapter End Notes:
Next update next Monday. Just when you think this things almost over.....



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