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It was a fever dream, the details of which would stick around with him for years. Everything occurred within the vacuum of that frigid hospital room as if a mason jar. Chief’s holographic figure glowed in front of the pearlescent curtains, which were tightly shut at 6 p.m. on the dot. Gray wrung his hands out neurotically as he waited for the agent to turn around, her leather gloves being picked off arduously, finger by finger, and stuffed into a pocket. Gray watched as the agent brushed a tight braid over her shoulder and closed the door, swallowed up by the rest of the dimly-lit hallways.
He hardly knew who the agent was, but the room suddenly felt so much more vacant.
Only two of them remained now; light and flesh.
The pain from his wound spread so much over the lower half of his body that he couldn’t tell the exact origin of it anymore (nor did he want to know). Gray’s gaze fixed itself on the tableau vivant of the town outside the hospital room—fairly new glass buildings varying in size, aglow with warm squares of light; road below as deadly as a whitewater current. Yet all of it was vague, unidentifiable. His hospital blanket appeared formal and starched white, still running long creases down the middle where they’d been folded.
Gray found that his eyelids weighed as much as a small child at the moment, but closing them was out of the option. Closing his eyes meant being swept up into the contrastingly idyllic museum again, his trembling hands awash in the pale moonlight, her wild eyes wishing death on his form, the wave of a rod. Part of him wishes he could remember his last thoughts. Did they involve him? Did they involve her?
“Don’t be so contrite.” Her voice swayed Gray back out of whatever plane he was in, a sweet-sad haze induced by gazing out the side window. The lack of identifying landmarks hindered his ability to hash out where exactly he was—a harbor out the side, somewhere, piers extended like fingers into the water. He could be anywhere—on any edge of a country at least. As much as he tries to suppress it, Grey can’t help but attempt to dredge up any remnants of his training. Search. Identify. Correlate.
It was like an unwilling survival instinct, similar to what happened in Iceland—that much he does remember.
His headache seemed to run jagged right down his head, sharp enough that he’d previously tried tracing it to Chief with a trembling finger. Lightning bolt—right down here. Feels like it. She’d claimed he sounded drunk and should rest, although not in a hostile manner. Perhaps like a weary aunt.
“I’m not being contrite.” Gray responded, and Chief fixed him with a stale look that somehow spoke volumes. The truth was, in its entirety, that contrition was the only flavor he could taste in the back of his throat, rising up like bile in his chest every time and washing over his teeth. His limbs splayed out all over the bed; were they always this long? He’d lost feeling in his left leg. It made him chuckle dryly. In that moment, he appeared like a retired greyhound, parts of his mind and body not working all too well.
Gray eyed the window once again, calculating how much it’d hurt to jump out. They weren’t too high up in the hospital.
“You did as much as you could for her,” Chief murmured. “and your actions are commendable.”
“But I—” He almost choked on his own spit, swallowing with a piercing strain. “I don’t know, like, to the extent that it even worked.”
Gray’s voice rose, thick with emotion. “For all I know, things might’ve been better if I’d kept my fucking nose out. Let it play out, and maybe…” He trailed off, about to say maybe things would’ve worked better out for both of us.
It wasn’t true. He knew well enough.
Chief seemed to know the reason for cutting himself off, walking closer to his side of the bed. Gray creased his eyebrows. Whether it was his own years of paternal deprivation or something else, her presence made him feel comfortable enough to sob. Sob with his whole chest, to have the racks of his heavy breaths wrap him in catharsis and mend everything. He'd rather do it here than anywhere else. She wouldn’t tell, anyway. He doubted it.
He hated how vulnerable she made him.
“It wouldn’t.” Chief said quietly. “You know how many injuries like this I see a month?”
Gray’s gaze was fixed on his hands. “I don’t know. Ten? Fifteen?”
A burst of pain manifested itself on his thigh. He winced.
“Twenty-two on average.”
He blinked for what felt like the first time in hours. “How many of them get stuck? You know… retire. Stay in beds for life.”
Chief folded her arms, looked out the very same window that Gray had been entranced in. The glow of the hologram casts itself on the walls, a bright beacon.
"All my agents are up and running, aren't they?"