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The so-called ‘cancellation’ of the apocalypse came with a flurry of emotions —joy, relief, grief, confusion— and so, humanity did what humanity is wont to do when faced with intense and perplexing feelings: they broke out the booze and partied like college freshmen.
The whole staff body of the Shatterdome —those who remained, that is— gathered in the Jaeger bay with red plastic cups, cans of beer, and bottles and bottles of all varieties of spirits and wines. Someone raided the kitchen and the closest convenience store for snacks. Tendo broadcasted feel-good EDM over the whole PA system and dimmed the lights.
Dr. Hermann Gottlieb was decidedly not a party person. In general, he greatly disliked environments that were loud, dark, or chaotically crowded, which made a party or a club his personal circle of hell. He didn’t want to look like a wet blanket, though, and while he would shuffle off to his quarters and call it a night, he knew that there was absolutely no way he was getting to sleep that night. So, he planted himself about nine feet from the door with his back against the wall and stayed, watching the celebration and drinking in the surreality of it all.
It was over. They had won. They stood there, the victors, on the precipice of the rest of humanity’s existence, on the verge of the rest of their lives.
Twelve years of their lives had been dedicated to this fight. It was far from the longest war their species had faced. In the grand scheme of the universe, twelve years was nothing but a blip. Even so, everyone knew that those twelve years would go down as the most important period in the history of the human race, and, hopefully, the future as well.
Hermann was shocked back into the present moment as an arm snaked around his shoulders and clapped him on the back. At some point, Tendo had sidled up beside him, beaming like a child on Christmas.
“Hermann, my man!” he cried. His voice carried that distinctive edge of someone just starting to edge out of the realm of being sober. Hermann estimated he would be properly inebriated within the next quarter of an hour. Tendo shoved a red cup into Hermann’s hand. “Loosen up, brother!”
Hermann squinted into the cup. “What is this?” he asked. It was definitely a cocktail of some sort, but not one he recognized.
Tendo chuckled. “Take a wild guess.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea, Mr. Choi.”
With the smirk of a man holding back hysteric laughs, Tendo gestured to their surroundings. “It’s a Jager bomb.”
Hermann rolled his eyes at the pun. “Naturally.” He gripped the brim of the cup with his fingertips and passed it back to Tendo. “I think I’ll have to decline, though. I’ve seen what energy drinks do to Newton, and I have no desire to suffer that fate myself.”
“Suit yourself,” shrugged Tendo, tipping the cup back and taking a sip himself. “Where is Newt, anyway?” he asked.
“Around here somewhere, I imagine,” said Hermann. “Inhaling the snack table, I’m sure.”
“He’s definitely not by the snacks.” Tendo shook his head. “I was over there a minute ago, and I'm tellin’ you—” he broke off to stifle a hiccup. “Totally Newt-free. No Newts at all, man.” He scanned the rows of heads across the Jaeger bay. “I don’t think he’s here, brother.”
“Strange,” mused Hermann. “This is the sort of thing that ridiculous man would enjoy.”
“I think he said he had a headache,” Tendo said. “Like…” He paused to think hard. “He said… was a lightning headache or something.”
Hermann spent the next little while surveying the party to try to pick out Newton’s messy brown bedhead or his infuriatingly skinny tie with no luck. Hermann had a keen eye, he had the benefit of being completely sober, and Dr. Geiszler was not exactly a subtle presence. It wasn’t likely Hermann would miss him in the crowd.
Hermann let out a sigh and dragged himself into motion as he slipped out the door. If experience had taught him anything, it was that an unsupervised Newton Geiszler was almost certainly getting up to some kind of trouble.
He knew Newton well enough to know that, after a day like they’d just had, despite how exhausted the man probably was, there was no way he would be able to sleep. It was unlikely for Newton to have been in his quarters. The laboratory was a far more sensible place for Hermann to begin his search.
When he got to the lab, he immediately and automatically looked to his right towards Newton’s side. It was still a mess, with kaiju entrails shoved to the side to make room for the old machinery and greasy detritus he had rejected for his jury-rigged PONS system. Seeing no one, Hermann whipped his head to the other side, expecting to see the biologist drawing anatomically correct Kaiju genitalia on his chalkboard (again), but he found it undisturbed.
A sound suddenly registered in his mind; it had been hard to hear under the music blaring from the PA speakers. It was soft, but unmistakably the sound of whimpering and crying.
Hermann tracked the sound to its source and almost dropped his cane when his mind processed what he was seeing.
Newton was lying on the old couch where they’d take their breaks, clearly in agony. He was curled up in the fetal position, his whole body shaking as he pressed his palms to his head, as if he was trying to hold his skull together. Tears streamed down his cheeks and blood oozed from his nose.
“Newton!” For the second time that day, Hermann rushed to his lab partner’s side and laid a gentle, worried hand on his shoulder. “Newton, what’s happening?”
Newton’s eyes moved into an unfocused approximation of looking at Hermann through a crack in his eyelids. “... H’rm’n…” His voice was choked and hardly audible.
“Yes, Newton, it’s me.” Panic bubbled in Hermann’s chest and boiled up his throat. “Newton, what is it? Tell me what’s wrong.”
There was a long pause before Newton mustered up enough strength to answer him. “... head hur’s…” he murmured.
Dread stabbed through Hermann’s heart, remembering Tendo’s slightly slurred words before. “Your head is hurting?” he asked.
“Head hur’s…” Newton said again. “... m’ head hur’s… bad...” He groaned, tapering off into a pinched off sob. “... real bad.”
Hermann couldn’t breathe as his mind flooded with all of the possibilities of what horrible things could be happening to Newton. Could this be from the Drift? His unaccompanied meld with the kaiju hive mind had sent him into a seizure, but he had seemed all right afterwards. And after the second Drift with Hermann, Newton had been running, screaming into microphones, and smiling along with everyone else when the clock had been stopped. Hermann had thought he’d been fine, he’d thought everything would be all right.
“... H’rm’n…” Newton writhed weakly on the sofa. “Please, H’rm’n ... make it stop…” He gasped in a strangled inhale. “...please make it stop…”
It was as if a South-American snake had coiled around Hermann’s heart and crushed it with its scaly body. Earlier that day, when he’d walked in on Newton seizing and bleeding on the floor, Hermann had been just as terrified as he was now, but Newton had been unconscious then. Now that he was awake, and every inch of his face showed the profound agony he was in, Hermann was utterly floored with soul-crushing helplessness.
Hermann hadn’t the first clue of what to do. Quick thinking under pressure was not a skill he possessed. He was a mathematician and a physicist. He calculated risk and weighed probabilities. He was a man of proactivity, and so, when the situation called for reactivity, he tended to crumble.
There weren't any numbers telling him what to do now, no Marshal Pentecost to make orders for Hermann to follow. It was up to him.
Hermann was endlessly thankful for whatever instinct had possessed Newton to crawl to the lab rather than anywhere else. Because of Newton's propensity for handling rather volatile substances, the lab had been fitted with an emergency panic button to summon a medical team as quickly as possible. It pained Hermann to leave Newton's side, even for the short few seconds it took for him to limp across the yellow Line of Demarcation to press the button.
An alarm sounded and a pre-recorded loop came over the internal PA system, replacing Tendo’s party mix. “Please remain calm,” it said. “A medical team is being dispatched to your location.”
On the sofa, Newton cried out and slammed his hands against his ears, the sound of the alarm adding to his agony.
Hermann rushed back to his colleague. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, I know it hurts, but help is coming, Newton.”
One of Newton’s hands grabbed at Hermann’s sleeve and held tight to it like a drowning swimmer would hold onto a buoy. He whimpered pitifully, and it was all Hermann could do to not pull the man into his arms. “... ‘m I dying?” he asked breathlessly. “... Feels like… ‘m dying...”
“Absolutely not.” Hermann wouldn't stand for that. “Newton Geiszler, you haven't given me a moment of peace since I met you, and you are not to start now.”
“Ha.” Despite everything, Newton cracked a faint smirk. “... you care,” he murmured teasingly. His eyes were distressingly vague and listening to him was quickly becoming an exercise in slurred lip-reading.
“Of course I care, you imbecile.” Hermann carded his fingers through Newton's hair in a way that was hopefully soothing and not panicked and terrified. “I'm not a bloody psychopath!”
“‘S weird…” said Newton. “... thought… you hated me.”
“Well, I'm terribly sorry to disappoint you, Newton, but, against my better judgement and to the detriment of my sanity, you are one of the few people my foolish sentimental side has chosen to grow attached to.” It was true, as much as Hermann loathed to admit it.
Most people tended to assume that the two of them were mortal enemies, but they were far from it. Enemies did not nag each other to get enough sleep, nor did they remind each other to take their respective medication every morning. Enemies did not yell at superior officers, “if you don’t want to design an ADA-approved accessible building, then you can’t expect a person with a cane to get to meetings on time!” and enemies certainly did not ‘accidentally’ stick their cane out to trip J-techs who make particularly nasty comments about how the world might actually have a chance at survival if the PPDC hadn’t hired a ‘psycho bipolar freak.’
It wouldn’t quite be right, however, to call them friends. Hermann hadn’t had many friends in his life and so he wasn’t the most experienced in how friendships were meant to work, but he was fairly certain most friends were not in the habit of insulting one another six ways to Sunday. Even if they were, Hermann certainly didn’t feel like the word ‘friend’ quite covered what Newton was to him.
On the sofa, Newton moaned indistinctly. “... don’ feel good…” he slurred. “... feel sick…” His warning came only seconds before he retched and vomited onto the sofa. He clearly hadn’t eaten much of anything lately, judging by the little more than water and bile that came up.
Hermann tore his handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped Newton’s mouth clean. Newton had often poked fun at Hermann’s penchant for carrying a handkerchief around, but Hermann was glad it was seeing some use. “It’s all right,” he soothed, rubbing a hand along Newton’s back. “You’re all right.”
Hermann wasn’t certain if he believed his own reassurances. Newton was frightfully pale, verging on grey, and he trembled and shivered as he continued to dry heave, even though it was clear his stomach had nothing left to produce. His left eyelid drooped over an angry, blood-stained iris. As a matter of fact, the whole left side of his body seemed to be almost melting, ever so slightly sagging like Hermann’s baggy clothing.
The ‘doctor’ in Dr. Hermann Gottlieb came from theoretical physics, which was about as far from any medical sense of the term as one could get, but he had seen enough NHS ads to know that muscle weakness on one side of the body was a sign of pretty serious brain damage, possibly a stroke. That was a terrifying possibility that Hermann didn’t want to consider.
He swallowed and slowly and protectively curled his fingers around Newton’s hand. “I’m here,” he whispered. “I won’t leave you, Newton.”
When the medical team finally arrived, they brought a stretcher and several big bags of equipment and supplies with them. One of them, a slim Chinese woman with the ends of her hair dyed red, knelt down beside the sofa. “Dr. Geiszler?” she asked. “Can you hear me?”
Newton groaned. He tried to nod, but the motion was clearly far too painful for him to manage. “Mmhm,” he mumbled.
She smiled without it reaching her eyes. “My name is Dr. Li. We’re going to see if we can get you feeling a little better, okay?” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a penlight. “I’m just going to take a look at your eyes, try not to blink.”
Newton blinked the second the light hit them, and it looked like it took a lot of effort for him to keep them open.
Dr. Li trained the penlight on his left bloodshot eye longer than his right. It was ridiculously hard to read medical personnel, but Hermann thought he caught the faintest frown as she studied his pupils. “Hey, Uri?” she said, glancing over her shoulder at one of her colleagues. “Put a call through for an imaging tech who’s sober right now, I want a CT for this one ASAP.” She met Newton’s eyes again and put on a tight smile. “We’re going to get you up to the infirmary in just a second, but can you tell me where you are right now?”
Hermann didn’t like how long Newton took to answer that question. “... I ‘unno,” the biologist murmured. His voice sounded weaker than it had before. “... fee’s weir’…”
“What feels weird?” Dr. Li frowned.
Newton groaned and murmured something unintelligible. His eyelids fluttered, and god, Hermann couldn’t see his pupils anymore, just the whites of his eyes, and then his limbs fell limp.
“Dr. Geiszler?” Dr. Li reached to pinch a spot between Newton’s neck and shoulder. She watched as Newton’s unconscious reflexes brought his arm across his chest in a sort of curled, tyrannosaurus-esque way. She mumbled a swear under her breath. “Ooh, yeah, he’s going straight into the CT. Uri, help me load him up.”
Hermann stared uneasily at his unconscious colleague. “Will he be all right?” he asked.
Dr. Li glanced at him for a second. “We’re doing everything we can to help him, Dr. Gottlieb,” she said, which, from what Hermann knew of medical personnel code, meant things were not looking especially good.
The medical team was a well-oiled machine, the definition of efficiency as they attached Newton to a monitor, lifted him up and got him strapped into the stretcher. Hermann followed the medical team like an awkward, terrified shadow. He didn’t want to be in the way, but he would rather be eaten alive by a kaiju than leave Newton’s side.
Normally, numbers were a comfort, but the numbers on the monitor made little sense to Hermann. If their orange colour was anything to go off of, they weren’t desirable, but beyond that, he had no idea what any of it meant. For all he knew, they could have been counting down the minutes he had left to say he had a living lab partner.
The Shatterdome infirmary had limited privacy. There were rooms, yes, but they were practically fish bowls with all glass walls. Through the windows, nurses and techs sat chatting on cots, drinking in the end of the apocalypse. The only corner of the infirmary that seemed at all busy was where the two heroic rangers —Mako Mori and Raleigh Becket— were being checked out by a pair of nurses.
Newton’s arrival shattered the calm atmosphere. “Look alive, people, I need all hands on deck!” Dr. Li called the second she was within earshot of the other medical staff. “I’ve got a suspected TBI presenting with headache, vomiting, and hemiparesis. He was awake and confused when we arrived, passed out shortly after. We’re looking at a GCS of 5, abnormal flexion on M. BP is 190 over 70, HR 73 and dropping. I’m thinking we’ve got elevating ICP. I want a CT ASAP, and someone get Zhang from the drift med team on the phone.”
Dear god, there were far too many initialisms and acronyms in the field of medicine. It made Hermann dizzy trying to decipher it all.
A hoard of nurses and doctors swarmed around Newton’s stretcher, pushing Hermann out of the way and wheeling Newton away down the hall.
Once the gurney was out of view, Hermann’s knees fell weak. He pressed his back against the wall and let himself sink down to the floor. He closed his eyes. His hands trembled.
For the past decade of Hermann’s life, Newton had been there. Despite their squabbles and disagreements, they were a pair, a unit: Newton and Hermann, Drs. Geiszler and Gottlieb. They were Yin and Yang, opposing forces that only created harmony together.
Newton needed to be alright. Hermann needed him to be alright. He needed Newton. Without the sun, the moon was a dull, dark rock. Without the kaiju, the jaegers were merely oversized Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em robots.
What was Hermann without Newton?
He couldn’t bear to find out.
“Here—”
Hermann jumped as a croissant wrapped in a napkin materialized mere inches in front of his face.
“Sorry, man—” The hand holding the pastry was connected to an arm, which in turn connected to a person in suspenders with a gaudy bow tie. Tendo. “I thought you saw me.”
Hermann blinked. At some point, he’d migrated from the hallway floor to a rather uncomfortable chair in the lobby. If the clock on the wall was to be trusted, it had been hours since they had brought Newton in.
Tendo sat in the seat beside Hermann and waved the croissant again.
“No, thank you,” murmured Hermann.
“Take it.”
“I’m not hungry, Mr. Choi.”
“Hermann. You’ve been here for eight hours, brother, and unless you snuck in an afternoon tea during the apocalypse, then you haven’t eaten anything since breakfast yesterday. Now, I’m tired, extremely hungover, and frankly, I don’t have the patience for this.” Tendo pushed the croissant into Hermann’s hands. “Eat the damn croissant.”
Hermann sighed and murmured a thanks. He tore off a small piece of the croissant and ate it quietly.
They sat in silence for a short while, listening to the hum of the air conditioning and the sounds of the infirmary in the adjacent room.
Folding his hands in his lap, Tendo let out a breath. “I heard about Newt.” His voice was rougher than usual. “The logs weren’t super specific, but, uh—” He swallowed. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”
Staring numbly at a potted plant across the room, Hermann ripped another chunk off of the croissant. “Subarachnoid hemorrhage,” he said, reciting the little information the doctor had told him when he’d begged to know what was happening hours ago. “The solo Drift with the kaiju brain caused a hemorrhage. He’d been bleeding into his brain all day.” Hermann fiddled with his cane. “They are performing an emergency craniotomy. Brain surgery.”
Tendo nodded grimly. “Shit,” he breathed. “I thought maybe a concussion or another seizure, but…” he exhaled. “Fuck.”
Hermann swallowed. “Indeed.”
Tendo glanced at Hermann and studied him for a moment. “Hey—” He put a hand on Hermann’s knee. “Newt’s going to be okay. He’s a tough little guy.”
That was true, Hermann supposed. Newton was as hardy as a dandelion. The bloody little bugger truly had a talent for getting himself into trouble, but he also had the almost frightening ability to simply walk off the consequences, no matter how hairy the situation. In the years Hermann had spent working with the man, Newton had suffered through pneumonia, extreme sleep deprivation, a fall off of the top rung of Hermann’s ladder, several mishaps involving Kaiju Blue (one of which saw him in the Infirmary for several days), meningitis, two anaphylactic attacks, and a handful of rather harrowing mental health crises and manic episodes, and he’d pulled through them all with a truly astonishing ease. As terrifying as it was to be waiting to hear of the fate of his colleague, this was far from an unfamiliar position for Hermann to be in.
Therein lay the rub, however. Even before yesterday, Newton had been running on borrowed time. Drifting with a rotted slab of kaiju lunch meat, half-cooking his brain in the process, and sprinting through the Boneslums with nightmares snapping at his heels—those might’ve been the last shreds of luck he had left. And this time… there may have been no margin left for survival.
Tendo drew in a long breath. “When Newt gets better, I am absolutely going to wring his neck, though. This is a lot of stress to put us through, even for him.”
It was as if an egg had lodged itself in Hermann’s throat. “He… he was in so much pain,” he choked. “He was begging me to make the pain stop, and I couldn’t… I couldn’t help him.”
“Hermann—” Tendo turned to make full, unrelenting eye contact with him. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I couldn’t help,” repeated Hermann. “All I did was sit there while he…” He swallowed. “While he suffered…”
Tendo blinked and shook his head. “One of the smartest minds of our generation, and you’re still denser than a brick sometimes.” He sighed, turning to face Hermann head-on. “Put yourself in Newt’s shoes. You’re scared and confused. You’re in the worst pain of your life, you don’t know what’s happening, and everyone’s off partying somewhere, so you’re all alone until—” He gestured towards Hermann. “In comes your knight in shining armour who gets you help, stays with you, and tells you everything is going to be okay.” Tendo stared at him. “Hermann, you helped him. Hell, you saved him, man. If it weren’t for you, the medics would never have come. What you did meant everything to him, I promise you that.” He smiled reassuringly. “And when he’s recovered, he’ll definitely thank you for it.”
Hermann’s eyes met the floor and traced the looping patterns of the carpet. “If he recovers,” he murmured.
“He will.”
“I don’t even know where we stand anymore,” Hermann admitted. “And if I lose him now, I’ll never know.”
“Don’t give up on him, brother.” Tendo elbowed him. “Newt’s going to come out of this, just like he always does, and we’ll all have to tie him to his bed to stop him from running around before he’s ready, just like we always do.”
Hermann could only hope Tendo was right.
An hour later, Dr. Li —the doctor from earlier, the one with the red-dyed hair— approached the two of them. She had a clipboard in her hands. “Dr. Gottlieb.” She nodded at Tendo. “Mr. Choi.”
Despite his leg’s protests, Hermann jumped to his feet. “What’s happened?” he asked.
She wore that blasted, patented doctor expression on her face that was so infuriatingly vague, you couldn’t tell if she was about to say good news or bad news. “Dr. Geiszler is out of surgery and his condition is stable,” she said. “It went quite well, the surgeons were able to successfully relieve some of the pressure on his brain.”
“That’s good,” said Tendo. He had gotten up to stand beside Hermann and he nudged him encouragingly.
“Will he be all right?” demanded Hermann.
Dr. Li’s expression didn’t change. “It’s a bit early to say,” she said. “If this was a standard case, I’d say his prognosis is looking good, but nobody has Drifted with a kaiju before. We don’t know what to expect.” She skimmed over a few lines of the document on top of her clipboard. “We called Dr. Zhang from the Drift medicine team over in Lima for his opinion. After looking at his post-op CT scan, he’s a bit concerned about continued pressure on his brain and the risk of another seizure, so he’s suggested we put Dr. Geiszler in a medically-induced coma for a few days to minimize the risk of developing any problems.”
Tendo choked involuntarily. “A coma?” he asked. “Jesus. Is that safe?”
She nodded. “It’s a very controlled process,” she reassured. “He’s under very deep, continuous sedation, and the staff is monitoring constantly. It will allow his brain time to heal while his body rests.”
Hermann needed to see him. It was like an itch under his skin that he couldn’t scratch until he saw him. “Are we allowed to visit him?” he asked.
Dr. Li sized him up. “We typically only allow family this early on…” she began.
“They’re Drift partners,” Tendo put in.
She blinked, evidently perplexed as to why two k-scientists have been Drifting. “Drift partners?” Her confusion lasted only a few seconds before she shook her head. “In that case, yes. I’d actually recommend you being there, Dr. Gottlieb; patients often respond well to having their co-pilots near them during their recovery.” She anticipated Hermann's next question before he could even open his mouth. “They're just getting him settled in a room,” she said. “But once they're finished, you can see him for a little while.”
It was less than an hour later when a nurse led Hermann through to the back of the infirmary, but for Hermann, it felt like an eternity. His heart beat bloodily in his mouth as his Oxfords shuffled down the linoleum floors. He was trembling with silent terror, afraid of what he might be about to walk in on.
He couldn't look at the whole picture, not all at once, it was far too overwhelming and frightening. But if he looked at little pieces at a time, he thought he could just manage.
Newton's was one of the larger rooms in the infirmary. It was big to accommodate many large medical machinery and was thus usually reserved for patients requiring intensive care, a fact that did very little to ease Hermann's worries. The doors were transparent glass, with large, floor-to-ceiling windows surrounding it, ensuring that the room's inhabitants could be monitored at all times.
The amount of medical equipment in the room was staggering. Hermann was no stranger to hospital settings, and so some of it was familiar. He recognized the cardiac monitor standing to the side, with its screen facing the windows. It drew a steady, green zigzag up and down and tracked its speed and height. He knew the pulse oximeter, a little clip pinching a finger. Hermann had never needed a ventilator himself, but he was familiar with its rhythmic, mechanical hisses and clicks. Other machines were more foreign. There were a handful of devices of varying shapes and sizes that baffled Hermann, and he hadn't the faintest idea of where to even begin deciphering their purposes. Wires and tubes tangled in on themselves like hibernating snakes. The bed was neatly covered in white sheets and a thin blue blanket was draped over the bottom portion of the bed's occupant.
Hermann inhaled deeply and steeled himself to look at who was in the bed. When he managed to look, he vaguely felt like he might be sick, because comatose, post-surgery Newton looked awful.
Newton's freckles stood out like black grains of pepper on a plate of mashed potatoes. The monstrous tattoos decorating his chest were smothered in stickers and monitoring wires. A halo of gauze framed his head like a saint in a Byzantine painting. His hair, typically a controlled kind of unruly, stuck out in limp strands between the swathes of bandages. Parts of it had been clearly shaved away. A swarm of tubes attacked him from all sides, connected to ports in the crooks of both of his elbows and trailing out of his nose, his wrist, the side of his neck, and even out the back of his head. A thick, rigid endotracheal tube was taped to his lips and shoved down his throat, forcing his mouth open and sucking breaths in for him.
He looked wrong. Not injured, not sleeping—just wrong . If Hermann hadn’t known better, if not for the steady hum of machines and the beeping of the heart monitor, he might’ve thought he was looking at a corpse. He tried to find the difference—the thing that made this different from sleep or even unconsciousness—but there was nothing to pinpoint. Newton’s face was still, drained of expression. His body didn’t stir, not even in the way a resting one naturally would. He was too still, too quiet, too absent, and though Hermann knew he was alive, he had never seen Newton look so convincingly dead.
The nurse brought Hermann a cheap, foldable plastic chair. “We’re working on getting you something more comfortable,” he said apologetically. “We’re just a little short-staffed.” He leaned in with a conspiratorial smile. “Most people are still sleeping off last night, if you catch my drift.”
Hermann nodded faintly. The chair creaked as he settled down into it. He swallowed, not daring to take his eyes off of Newton, just watching his chest rise and fall.
The nurse studied Hermann for a second, a sympathetic smile growing on his face. “Talk to him,” he said.
“Can he hear us?”
“Maybe,” shrugged the nurse. “Sometimes they can.” Hermann bristled slightly as the nurse rested a hand on his shoulder. “Take it from me, though: even if he doesn’t hear you, it’ll feel better for you to get things off your chest.” He patted Hermann’s back encouragingly. “I’ll leave you two alone,” he said.
As the door slid shut behind the nurse, the sounds of the Infirmary outside grew muffled. Hermann was left with Newton’s silence and the horrible hisses, clicks and beeps of the machines keeping him alive.
Hermann swallowed, looking at his comatose lab partner. He cleared his throat. “You can’t even stay quiet in a bloody coma,” he said softly— too loud to be a whisper, but too quiet for anyone else to hear. “That heart monitor of yours is far too noisy with that infernal beeping. It’s ridiculous, though, I suppose, rather appropriate for you.”
Newton remained still, except for the soft and steady rising and falling of his chest.
“I need you to wake up,” murmured Hermann. His fingers found one of Newton’s cold, limp hands and gripped it tightly. “I don’t know what this is,” he admitted quietly. “Us. What we have. I don’t know what we are to each other, or what we could become, but…” He chewed on his lower lip. “I do know that I couldn’t bear it if I were to lose you.” Tears burned and bristled behind Hermann’s eyes. “They say your odds are improving, that the pressure’s coming down. But I need more than numbers—I need you. I need you to come back.” He sucked in a shaking breath. “So you need to get well, Newton,” he whispered. “Because I am not ready— I will never be ready—to live in a world without you.”
Over the next few days, Hermann only left Newt’s room once, when Tendo practically dragged him out to get some food from the mess hall.
“He’s doing better,” Tendo said. “He’s stable now, so his heart’s not going to stop at any given time, and he’s still sedated, so it’s not like he’s going to wake up. He’ll be fine for half an hour, brother. Eat something before you end up in a cot beside him.”
In the mess hall, Hermann ran into Mako and Raleigh in the food line.
“Dr. Gottlieb—” Mako tapped his shoulder. “We wanted to say thank you.”
Raleigh nodded. “Without you science boys, we’d all be dead.”
“You ought to be thanking Newton,” said Hermann. “It was his genius that saved us all. I merely… assisted in sharing the load.”
“Oh, we plan to thank him,” Mako said. “Once he’s well.”
“Yeah, but, still,” said Raleigh, looking at Hermann with a raised eyebrow. “He couldn’t have done it without you, man.”
Hermann avoided making eye contact by gazing numbly into his pile of mashed potatoes.
When Newt finally woke up, he did not do so calmly or quietly. His eyes slowly peeled open, but once awareness dawned on him, the poor man clearly began to panic. He didn’t move much, and he couldn’t speak, but he made the most terrified-sounding choking noises behind the endotracheal tube, and his eyes were wild with terror.
Hermann was at his side in a second. “Newton,” he called, gripping his lab partner’s hand. “Newt, you’re safe, you’re all right.”
Newt whined, trying to move but too weak to do much more than lift his hand. His eyes met Hermann’s— wide and full of fear.
Hermann cupped a hand to Newt’s face. “It’s all right,” he soothed. “You’re intubated. Just breathe with it, Newton, it’s helping you, I promise.”
He didn’t appear to understand much of what Hermann was saying, but Hermann’s presence and his calm tone of voice was enough to settle him down.
For the next few hours, Newt was extremely drowsy. He would open his eyes and blink groggily until he spotted Hermann and then drift off to sleep again. Once, his fingers shifted to feebly claw at Hermann’s sleeve. Hermann clasped his hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze, holding it long after Newt had fallen asleep again.
When Newt finally woke up for good, it was so late at night that it could have been considered early in the morning. His eyes opened first, his gaze quickly swimming around the room until it came to rest on Hermann. His breathing tube had been removed a few hours before, but it was clear that his throat was still sore and uncomfortable from it when he slowly rasped out Hermann’s name. “... H’rm’nn…”
Hermann’s smile was so wide that it was a wonder it didn’t shatter his whole face. “Newton,” he breathed. “No, no—” He gently gripped Newton’s shoulders to keep him from sitting upright. “Just lie still.”
Newt blinked groggily and his voice cracked through the rawness in his throat. “... what happened?” he murmured.
“What do you remember?” Hermann asked gently, internally praying that Newton wouldn’t remember much. He couldn’t think of a more awful memory than lying in agony, just waiting to die.
Newt swallowed thickly. His eyelids were heavy. “... I remember you,” he said after a while of thoughtful silence. “... you held my hand.”
Hermann blinked. “I… yes. Yes, I did.”
Newt yawned. “... you stayed.”
“Of course I did.”
“Mhmm.” The ghost of a grin tugged on the edges of Newt’s dry lips. “... I knew you’d save me.” His eyes slid closed again; he didn’t have the energy to keep them open any longer.
Hermann felt himself smile. “Always,” he said, rubbing his thumb against Newt’s.
Newt breathed the faintest of chuckles. “Sap,” he mumbled.
“Idiot.”
Newt’s eyes fluttered as he fought against his exhaustion to get the last word. “... you love me,” he whispered.
Blinking, Hermann squeezed Newt’s hand. “Go to sleep, Newton,” he said, but from the look on Newt’s face, they both knew—he was really saying yes .