Actions Speak Louder Than Fortune Cookies

56 - From 1-10

She turned closer towards him, his eyes started fluttering open. "Seb? Baby?"

Sebastian's right eye opened fully, his left one was swollen shut, a dark ring of black, blue, and purple swirled together around it. He looked lost and honestly flat out scared, looking towards the ceiling.

"Ry?" He whispered in a panic, voice raspy, looking around the room, his open eye landing on her.

"Shh, Shh. Hey. It's okay." Rylee said, running  her fingers back through his hair, trying to comfort him. "You're in the hospital, you had an accident at work." She reached over and pressed the nurse call button.

"I know it's hard but just try to relax." Rylee noticed that some of the monitors he was connected to started beeping more out of rhythm.

Laura came jogging into the room, a sweet smile set on her face as she saw Sebastian's blue eyes for the first time, even if it was just one. She reached over and cancelled the nurse call.

"Hi there, Sebastian. I'm Laura." She said, calm and sweet as can be, thick southern accent on every word. "I'm just gonna check a few things and then we'll have a chat about what's going on, okay?" She patted his good leg as she walked around to the machines, clicking a few buttons as she went and wrote down numbers on his chart. This all took her a few minutes.

Sebastian still didn't say anything. He just watched Laura walk her lap of the room and then she sat down, tapping a few buttons on the pager on her hip.

She looked at Rylee, encouraging her to sit down as well. Rylee did, but made sure she still had a grip on Sebastian's hand, trying to give him some form of comfort. He tried to grip back hard, but a sharp pain shot up through his wrist.

"Well first off, I just introduced myself, but do you remember my name?"

Sebastian sat still for a moment, blinking slowly, almost like he thought it was a trick question. His mouth was so dry. "Y-You're Laura." He groaned, a pain rushing up from the back of his jaw.

"And you are?"

"Sebastian Stan," he barely got out, voice raspy from lack of use.

"Great," she smiled again, "and do you know who is sitting on your other side?"

He tilted his head over and a small lopsided smile grew across his lips, "Rylee Summers. My gorgeous girlfriend." Rylee still got butterflies every time he said it. She smiled back, rubbing his knuckles with her thumb.

"Yes indeed she is," Laura smiled, she looked back down as her pager beeped. "Dr. Singh said he'll be here in about two minutes."

"Give me one minute..." She held up a finger and walked out of the room, and she came back less than a minute later with a small plastic cup filled with small ice chips and a spoon. 

"Okay, so, Dr. Singh's going to go through the nitty gritty. But in the mean time, we're just going to relax and eat some ice. What do you say?"

"That. Sounds amazing." Sebastian said slowly, like his mouth was full of molasses. His voice was still raspy and rough from lack of use, jaw still occasionally sharp with pain.

Laura took a scoop of ice and started towards his mouth with it. He was going to sit up more but he physically couldn't, pain seared through his shoulder when he tried. He allowed her to feed him the ice and he had never been more thankful for anything in his life. He let the ice melt on his tongue, sighing as he swallowed the water that formed. They did this a few more times as Rylee watched on, just happy to see Sebastian awake and aware.

A man in a white lab coat knocked on the door and entered before anyone even responded. Laura set the ice cup on the side table and walked Sebastian's chart over to the doctor.