In The Light

Bloom and Grow Pt. 5: You Look Happy To Meet Me

Aaron did not leave Tor's side for five days.

One of the nurses had given him a pair of gloves so he could hold her hand, and he cradled it like a bird with an injured wing, careful not to disturb the IV line. He bought a tube of chapstick from the gift store and carefully applied it to her chapped skin, moving around the bed to reach the corners of her lips held open by the breathing tube. He wrote down all of the medications she was prescribed and did his best to research them. He didn't have a mind for medical jargon on his best days, but after running on too little sleep for over a week, he couldn't comprehend any of the words on his phone.

Yet he would not sleep.

The rest of the team took turns sitting beside him in the hospital room. If any of them noticed the petals peeking out from his collar or from between the bandages around Tor, they did not comment on it. They just held her other hand and spoke to her.

Morgan ocellated between praising her for her "badassery" and demanding to know what she had been thinking going into the field with a hundred-and-three-degree fever. "I know I call you 'hot stuff,'" he said with a bitter laugh, "but I was speaking metaphorically, not literally." He held her hand like a football, protecting it from above and below. "If I call you Vanilla Ice, will you wake up?" he asked, almost hopeful. Tor did not stir. Morgan kissed her cheek, never letting go of her hand.

JJ fussed over her almost as much as Aaron did. She brought Tor's toiletry bag from the motel and dug through it until she found a hairbrush and lotion. Aaron helped her shift Tor's head so JJ could comb through all of the knots with the tenderness of a sister. Once her hair was braided into a golden band, she wiped Tor's face clean with a washcloth and opened the bottle of facial lotion. "Eau de edelweiss," JJ read aloud from the bottle. She sniffed it and held it out to Aaron, but he declined. The scent of flowers permeated what little sleep he stole. As he watched JJ carefully blot it onto Tor's pallid skin before massaging it in, he realized it would also fill his every waking moment.

Reid took Aaron's phone when he realized Aaron was trying to research Tor's medications. Aaron almost protested until he saw the young doctor sign into every medical journal he had a subscription to and start reading. "I should really go to med school," he said, more to himself than Aaron. "People I care about keep ending up in hospitals." Aaron frowned and opened his mouth to assure the young genius that it wasn't his job to save everybody, but by the time he thought of the words, Reid was already immersed in Tor's medical file and the journal articles he had found.

Emily sat in silence at Tor's bedside. It took her two hours to be convinced that she could hold Tor's hand without causing her pain. It took another hour for Aaron to be able to look at her. Emily was a brilliant profiler. If anyone on this team could figure out that this was all his fault without so much as speaking a word to him about it, it was her. Emily was also a decisive woman. She had decided months ago to look out for Tor, and part of that sororal affection was deciding to hate anyone who caused her harm. Yet when he finally summoned the courage to look up and face her fearsome glare, he found her dark eyes locked onto Tor's face and brimming with tears.

David was equally worried about Tor and Aaron despite only one of them being in a medically induced coma. He arrived at the hospital room laden with food, water, flowers, fresh pillows, and a down blanket. He refused to sit until Aaron had consumed an acceptable amount of sustenance, and Tor's bedding was refreshed with the help of a young nurse charmed by the Italian's silver tongue. Once satisfied with those tasks, he set about finding everything he could fuss over, from the lack of sunlight in the room to the dark bags beneath Aaron's eyes. He decidedly avoided mentioning the coma Tor was in or the infection that had settled into wounds across her body. Those were problems that could not be solved with elbow grease, sweet talking, or a copious amount of food.