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Smith entered the lobby of the hospital. You never knew when you had to make a quick exit, so he took in his surroundings with an eye for detail: Several people waiting in chairs, all relatively non-threatening, three hallways he could see, six doors close by, plastic tile floor, the requisite white walls, and, of course, a refreshing eau de disinfectant.
The only near way out was at his back.
For him, like most capes, hospitals were not happy places. Most capes didn't need them, healing factors and all, so they only visited hospitals when they stopped working (not good) or when someone else was there (even worse).
He told the nurse at the desk who he was there to see.
With her hand over a phone's mouthpiece, she whispered loudly, eyeing his tattoos, "It's gonna be a minute. Take a seat."
"Yes, sir, I know you need the..." she continued into the phone, and Smith tuned her out.
After what was only another couple of minutes going by the clock, but which felt much longer than that, he spotted Mrs. Reyes in her scrubs and sat up straighter. In hushed tones, she conferred with the nurse at the desk, who pointed at him and said something he didn't quite catch.
Mrs. Reyes turned and let the full force of her glare fall on him, eyes narrowed at him behind her glasses.
That quick exit sounded real good right about now. Instead, he lifted a hand in greeting.
"You're here to see Jaime." She sounded disapproving, which he didn’t get, because she was the one who had called him in the first place, leaving a panicked and desperate voicemail on his phone about problems the kid's scarab was having and whether he knew anything that could help.
He rubbed his hands together, then decided to stuff them in his pockets instead. "Yep."
She arched an eyebrow at him, putting her hands on her hips and looking at him over her glasses. "Visiting hours are almost over."
Shoulders hunching under the weight of her gaze, he had the distinct impression that he was being towered over, even though she had to be at least eight inches shorter than him and didn't come any higher than his shoulder.
"Better get on it then," he offered.
"Hmph." She studied him for another moment, and then seemed to make up her mind. "All right. Fine. Come with me."
Following her silently down one of the brightly lit hallways, he patted his pockets down to make sure he still had everything, and waited to see if she was going to say anything else. She didn't, until they reached a door and she swiveled all of a sudden to face him.
"It's been three days since I called you. Didn't you get my second message? That everything was fine?"
"What second message?" he asked. "I was busy, that's all. Came down first chance I could."
She crossed her arms. "Mm-hmm. Well, he'll be happy to see you. It better stay that way too."
With those ominous final words, she opened the door to the hospital ward and let him in.
He found Jaime several beds down, with the blue privacy curtain pulled around the bed – but not quite all the way. He looked over the kid's chart first. Then, through a crack about a foot wide, he could see a big cast lying on the hospital bed – and another person too.
He cleared his throat loudly. The bodies on the bed jumped apart and he heard a few squeaks before he saw Traci peek her head out from around the curtain, long black hair falling forward. When she saw who it was, though she relaxed—at least a little. Must have been worried it was Mrs. Reyes, he thought with amusement, though it didn't show on his face.
"Oh, hi. Peacekeeper, right?" She offered a tentative wave before looking back at the hospital bed, as if checking. "I'm going to . . . go. Over there. You two talk, catch up. I'll be back!" And she raced away before saying anything else.
"Bring kit-kats?" he heard Jaime call out plaintively.
Smith found a tiny chair nearby and pulled it up to the side of the bed. The kid didn't look so great: there was bruising on one side of his face, although the blue and purple had started giving way to some yellow. A few days old, he thought. It was ugly, but in terms of severity it was nothing compared to the several broken bones, which apparently included both of his legs.
And he wasn't saying anything, either. Smith usually relied on the kid to carry the bulk of their conversational weight. Fine, maybe he could give it a try.
"Hey."
"Seriously?" The kid propped himself up on his one good limb. "That's all you got?"
"What, uh . . ." Smith cleared his throat. "What happened to you? Scarab need to reboot again?"
"Not exactly." Jaime looked down at himself and sighed, slumping back on his pillow. "There was some kind of erase program someone tried to pull on the scarab. It almost deleted everything too. But I guess the hard drive or whatever is kind of like DNA. The information is in every cell? So the programming is rebuilding itself, one function at a time. It's supposed to be done tomorrow."
"And it decided not to heal you first?" said Smith skeptically.
Jaime groaned. "I know, right? But I wasn't listening to it when I got hurt, and now it thinks I 'need a lesson'."
His eyes unfocused, like he was looking at something far away. Or listening to someone, Smith thought.
"Yeah, yeah," muttered the kid, talking to the scarab. "I heard you the first time. Asshole."
"I heard that, mijo!" called Mrs. Reyes from the hallway.
Pulled back into the present moment, Jaime rolled his eyes with glorious disregard and looked back up at Smith. "But that's what friends are for, right?" He hesitated, then looked accusingly at Smith. "Well, when they're around."
Great. They were gonna have this conversation. It was too much to hope for that they wouldn't have to, he supposed. Smith wasn't much of a touchy-feely guy, and frankly would rather be facing down a giant space monster. Is there a giant space monster around? he thought, feeling a little desperate. It would be really convenient for one to barge through the window right about now, so of course one didn't.
"What do you want me to say?" he said instead, propping his feet up on the bed's rail. "You seemed good."
"Oh, yeah?" said the kid challengingly. "You find another teenaged superhero who needed your help?"
"No," he had to admit.
Jaime seemed to deflate. "Well, whatever." He plucked at some loose threads in the bedsheets.
Smith leaned against one arm of the chair. "Didn't seem like you needed my help anymore, that's all. You figured out the scarab, read Kord's book and knew how to use it, stopped an alien invasion." He shrugged. "You're all set up."
Jaime sighed in frustration and looked up at the ceiling. "It wasn't like . . . it's not you're just some guy who's just around to give me advice."
"Jeez, I hope not," Smith muttered. He could only imagine.
This time it was Smith on the receiving end of Jaime's eyerolling, then he grew serious again. "I mean--" Jaime squirmed uncomfortably. "You're like, my friend, right?"
Smith didn't think about his answer. "Sure."
"So you should hang around this time. Friends stay. Even if they're all dried up and the grasshopper has totally outstripped the master—hey!"
Smith had grabbed a pillow from another bed and whacked the kid over the head with it. Jaime dissolved into laughter, then clutched his chest in exaggerated pain.
"Hey, don't make me laugh, man. That rib won't be better till tomorrow."
"It's just bruising, says your chart," Smith said. "Can't even take a pillow, huh? Knew I shouldn'ta left. Can't take care of yourself at all."
"Well, it is a hospital pillow. So it's like a rock," Jaime grumbled. He had a point.
"Sides, thought I'd bring some more reading material for you." Smith pulled the worn little title out of his back pocket and tossed it on the bed where Jaime could reach.
"The Art of War," he read off the cover, and turned it over. "Hey, I've heard about this in school. It's thousands of years old, right?"
"Couple thousand, yeah. Good stuff in there. Nothing about capes, of course, but still."
"War," Jaime mused. "You think we'll be going to war very soon?"
"Hope not." Smith leaned back in the chair. "But it's mostly about avoiding war, really."
"That comes in handy." The kid held up the book between himself and Smith. "This what you came back for?"
Smith pulled a pack of cards out of his other pocket. "I couldn't stay away. I just really love El Paso," he deadpanned.
The kid gave him a look, then grinned. "No, no, no, I know why you're really here." At Smith's raised eyebrow, he continued, "It's about that hug, right? You never got it, and I know you wanted to."
"Don't push it," said Smith immediately, and began shuffling the cards. "What do you think, gin rummy?"
They only managed to play half a round, Jaime's arm slowing him down, before Traci poked her head in the door. "Jaime? Your mother says visiting hours are over." She had an impish smile that said she herself might not pay very close attention to them.
Standing up, Smith collected his cards and tucked them away, leaving the book.
"You're coming back tomorrow, right?" said the kid, feigning casualness.
For a moment, Smith wavered. It would be easy, really easy, to get back on his bike and back on the road. He'd done his duty and checked up on the kid, after all.
But he'd also pretended he hadn't gotten that second voicemail that said he wasn't needed, taking the opportunity he was given to come back down, hadn't he?
So he said instead, "Sure. We got a game to finish, don't we?"