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“So, uh, when do visiting hours finish up again?”
“You can stay with him for as long as you would like to.”
Instead of relief, those words only made pain sink deep into Dick’s chest because he knew full well what they meant.
“He’s that bad? You… You don’t think he’s going to make it?”
“Right now, Damian’s vitals are holding steady, Mr. Grayson. That’s good news.”
Dick’s gaze drifted, one thin sheet of fabric was all that hung between himself and his baby brother. Hell, he could even hear the machines from here, those incessant beeps and tones and whirling, the machines that were the only reason why Damian had made it this far at all.
“I won’t lie to you,” The Doctor said. “Damian’s injuries are significant. There is a risk that the shock that his body has gone through is too much for him to handle. So yes, it is possible that Damian could die tonight.”
“Right.” Dick breathed. “Thanks, for all you’ve done.”
Every step that Dick took felt wrong and while he knew that it was only a few feet, it might as well have been miles.
Dick was careful with the drape that hid Damian from the rest of the ICU, pulling it back in place as if to keep Damian’s privacy. As if Damian himself could care about it at all.
There had already been a chair set beside Damian’s bed but Dick found himself unable to go to it, his feet sticking in place completely as he saw his baby brother for the first time in three days.
Damian was small amongst the wires and tubes and fabric, his arm somehow frail where it lay gently over his abdomen as if he were simply resting and not unconscious. Even his skin was wrong, the bruises that Dick could see on his arms and neck far worse than even his imagination had come up with when he had been told of the attack.
Even where there wasn’t bruising, Damian’s skin was wrong.
All of it was wrong. The monitors, the IV’s giving him not only fluids but medication and even blood. The too steady beeping, the very same beeping that would have irritated Damian beyond measure if he had been awake to hear it.
Every rise and fall of Damian’s chest was distinctly off, Damian never breathed like that, he always ensured that he was subtle in everything he did unless he had deemed it time to be loud about something, most commonly when he decided to antagonise Tim or someone else.
No, this rise and fall, it was artificial. The tube in Damian’s throat was forcing air into his lungs, air that the Doctors were not confident he would receive without the intervention.
Damian had never wanted to be on a ventilator, Dick knew he had never wanted to be on a ventilator. It had been an emergency measure, one made when Damian had been little more than a John Doe child that had been found half dead on the street.
As Dick forced himself to come closer, he saw that there was still the slightest bit of blood in Damian’s hair as if in their rush to get him stabilised and in all the time after, it simply had not been a priority.
Damian’s chest rose, fell, rose fell, and it was wrong. All of it was wrong.
The Doctor would return soon, Dick knew that they would, the paperwork to get Damian off the ventilator had already been signed. There was a risk in doing it, Dick had been told in no uncertain terms that if he was taken off too soon the reason why he’d been put onto it in the first place may very well kill him.
It was the right call, it needed to be the right call, Dick had promised him that he would never be kept on a ventilator no matter the circumstance.
Dick took another step forward, and another, finding yet more bruising on his brother’s small body.
Even the fact that Damian was in a hospital gown was unnerving; he would have never tolerated the insult of being treated like a normal patient if he were awake.
All of this was so fucking wrong.
Dick inched a little more closer, trying and failing to drown out the beeps and the whirls and the whispered conversations. One of the nurses were laughing, the sound light and sweet and like acid to his ears because they were laughing while Damian was lying here far too still except for the forced breaths.
No, that wasn’t fair, those nurses saw tragedy every day, they deserved to be able to share a joke.
Damian’s chest rose again, fell.
Stupidly, despite the medications coursing through Damian’s body, despite the vent, despite his injuries, Dick almost expected Damian to sit up and declare himself cured. He would jump right up out of that bed and he would curse Dick out for having been so worried and everything would be fine.
It could go back to normal, it could go back to how things were meant to be.
Damian did not rise. He did not declare himself cured. He did nothing except lay there, the only movements he made because there were machines that made him do it.
Another shuffle forward and Dick was at last fully at Damian’s side and yet now that he was here, he didn’t know what had been the point in the first place.
There was no way to touch Damian, not without risking pain from brushing up against any one of the million bruises or cuts or IV’s or wires or the thousand other things that made his little Robin so fragile.
No, Dick could not even so much as hold Damian’s hand.
Dick’s own hand hovered instead, an inch above Damian’s skin as if one single touch would be enough to make Damian stop regardless of the machines.
“Oh Bud,” Dick murmured.
Damian did not, could not, answer him.
His chest simply rose and fell, not so much as a finger twitching otherwise.
“You know,” Dick said to him. “The Doc’s said I could stay as long as I want. I’m going to be right here with you the whole time, okay? You’re going to get so sick of me, Dami, just you wait.”
Damian breathed. He existed. He did little else.
Dick’s lip wobbled but he stilled it, keeping his voice as light as he could.
“I think you just wanted to scope the place out, didn’t you? Work out some info about this place that only patients can know about, right?”
A machine toned and Dick’s heart stuttered right in his chest but it was only an IV, it was only declaring that one of the infusions were complete, it was only saying that Damian was still fighting. He was fighting, Dick knew that he was, he knew that no matter what, whatever happens, Damian would be fighting for himself.
He was fighting, Dick told himself, even as his small body seemed like little more than an empty shell.
He was fighting, Dick told himself, even though Damian’s eyes did not so much as flutter in response to Dick’s voice, his body so still except for the occasional breath.
He was fighting.
But, as impossible as it was, he might very well be losing.
There were no visiting hours tonight, not for Damian, not when it could very well be his last night.
It was kind, that they let Dick be here for him, even as the very notion as to why there were no limits on visiting hours tore Dick’s heart straight in two.
Damian would either make it through the night, spend God knows how long trying to recover from all that had been done to him, or he simply wouldn’t. He would pass, either in their attempts to extubate him or in the hours after.
He would pass and there would be nothing Dick could do for him at all.
No, that wasn’t true, Dick could be here for him and that was enough.
Dick would keep vigil, the whole night through. No matter what came of tonight, no matter what happened, Dick would be right here with his baby brother.
So he leant forward, careful of the wires and tubes and bruises, and he kiss his little Robin’s temple and promised that he will be right there with him, forever more.