Forgotten

Chapter 6

The next day, Adrien was back at the hospital, waiting for Sabrina to arrive. Earlier that day, he had told Sabrina she could visit Chloe for a short amount of time with supervision. Despite the restrictions, Sabrina was ecstatic to be given the chance to visit Chloe at all.

"I think Sabrina is here, I'll go and escort her up." Sick of sitting in the stifling waiting room, Adrien jumped up the second he saw Sabrina walk from her car to the main entrance of the hospital.

Neither Gabriel nor Nathalie responded, barely even acknowledging Adrien as he left the room. A few flights of stairs later and Adrien was walking through the sterile hallways towards the automatic sliding doors. He could see Sabrina standing on the other side, arguing with the guard standing outside.

Adrien walked through the door and stopped next to Sabrina. "Gabriel Agreste has allowed Sabrina to visit Chloe for a few minutes with adequate supervision. I'm here to escort her upstairs."

Only a moment passed before the security guard nodded and stepped aside, allowing both Sabrina and Adrien to walk inside the hospital. Sabrina was already gushing about how much she appreciated being allowed to visit Chloe and how much she wanted to thank Gabriel. For some reason, Adrien didn't think his father would appreciate a random teenager trying to speak to him, even if that teenager used to be the best friend of Chloe Bourgeois.

When Sabrina and Adrien walked back into the waiting room outside Chloe's hospital room, Nathalie was resting her hand on Gabriel's arm. The second they noticed they were no longer alone the two of them leapt apart, with Gabriel standing up completely. In an attempt to preserve his distant attitude, Gabriel spoke directly to Sabrina. "Miss Raincomprix, after your last visit to this hospital it has been decided that this will be your only visit, you will have five minutes, and you will not be left in the room alone with Miss Bourgeois. If you disagree with any of these terms you are welcome to leave the hospital and not return."

Sabrina nodded emphatically, beginning to look like a bobble-headed doll. Without another word, she followed Gabriel and Nathalie into Chloe's hospital room and the door closed behind them. Adrien was alone outside again.

His phone buzzed against his leg. When Adrien pulled his phone from his pocket, a text from Marinette lit up the screen. 'Where are you? Mama and Papa want me to give you some food from the bakery.'

Without meaning to, Adrien smiled down at the screen. 'We're at the hospital right now, we can drop past the bakery when we go home.'

'I'll be outside the hospital in a few minutes.'

Sure enough, a few minutes of looking out the window later, Marinette rode into the car park of the hospital. Adrien almost jogged down the stairs to greet her. The past few minutes had given him the chance to think a proper apology through. It was long overdue, just like the apologies he knew he had to make to Nino and Alya.

"Hey, Marinette." This was a lot more awkward than Adrien had thought. Had he really been that bad of a friend that he didn't notice how uncomfortable he was making some of the people closest to him? "I want to apologise."

They were standing just around the corner from the entrance, out of earshot from the guard. Marinette's brows furrowed and she looked at the concrete path behind Adrien, thinking. "Why are you apologising? You haven't exactly done anything wrong."

"I want to apologise for hugging you yesterday, I recognise I probably made you uncomfortable by touching you without your permission, so I'm sorry. Sincerely." Adrien paused, taking a deep breath. This wasn't so hard. "I also want to say I'm really, really sorry for being such a bad friend. You, Alya, and Nino have been nothing but comforting friends this entire time and I feel like I've pushed you away."