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He wakes to the press of someone's lips against his.
Dragging himself to the surface from somewhere deep, he opens his eyes and sees pale, delicate eyelids tipped with dark lashes. His nose is tucked neatly in the curve alongside hers; it's comforting, the way they fit.
Her — and he doesn't know how he knows it's a woman, just that it is — mouth remains against his for a moment more and then he feels the tiniest tug of her lip sticking to his as she pulls away. The motion is slow, dreamlike, and she holds the pause for the span of several heartbeats. Then she opens her eyes and he's looking into irises like two polished discs of tiger's eye, beautiful and wary. All of her is golden in the gauzy morning light.
"I just had to do that once before you die," she says with a voice as soft as her kiss had been.
"I'm not dying," he says, the words coming from somewhere beyond conscious thought. It's barely more than a whisper from his dry and swollen throat.
Her head tilts just slightly. "I know." She gives him a tiny nod and the barest hint of a smile.
There's a muted sadness on her face almost like goodbye, but he's not dying and she doesn't appear to be leaving. He feels as if he could lie here for hours just like this, in this quiet calm with her lovely face poised so close above him. Her kiss had been tender and warm and he would like it to happen again.
The sound of heels clacking on a hard floor has her rising, moving away from him, and he feels a pang of loss.
Another woman enters the room in a flurry of motion and walks to the other side of his bed. "Thank god, you're awake."
The pitch of her voice is a discordant clang that shatters the hush of the room.
"He's, uh... a little stunned from the surgery, still," says his awakener, speaking soft and low. Everything about her conveys an impression of softness: soft as her lips, her hair, the gray cloud of her sweater. That softness encloses him. She sips from a paper cup and her eyes never stray from his face.
The second woman leans over the bed rail and takes his hand in both of hers. "Hey, you feeling okay?"
He considers the question. "Yeah," he decides.
It must be the right thing to say because she smiles.
"Okay enough to answer some questions?" asks his awakener.
"Uh huh."
"What the hell happened?"
He gropes for an explanation. "I got, um—"
"And if you say you got shot, I am gonna punch you."
Her statement is not as startling as it probably should be.
"Beyond that, I... don't know."
And it's only then that he begins to comprehend the profound absence where there should be something. Panic lances into him.
"The bullet went through and through, Dad."
Dad?
"But it only hit soft tissue, so there's minimal damage. They say you took a pretty hard blow to the head. Five stitches."
"Who was it, Walt?"
The words are only a smear of sound; his thoughts have grown into fuzz and white noise. I'm in a hospital, he confirms to himself as his eyes track his surroundings. He's searching for clues in the room, in the cavity of his skull, desperate to find something familiar, some key to unlock this mystery.
There's only her, the woman who woke him, who he knows somehow without knowing. "What?" he asks, holding to their shared gaze as his anchor.
Her eyes widen and a change passes over her face. "Cady, you should get the doctor," she says without looking away from him.
The second woman — Cady, he repeats silently — pulls back. "What's going on?" she asks, looking between them. "Vic?"
"Just get the doctor."
The quiet command holds a firm authority and Cady responds in a staccato rush of heel clicks.
His eyes are still on the woman in front of him. He has to close them when she starts to blur in his vision. "Vic," he says, liking the way it feels in his mouth. Something heavy seems to be tugging him back under, to where he was before. "Don't go."
In the instant before it swallows him whole, he hears her say, "I won't."
*
When he wakes again the light through the window has changed. There's a hand wrapped around his and a blonde head resting on the bed by his hip. Vic. The sight fills him with a soft swell of happiness. She didn't leave. He asked her to stay and she did.
He watches the slight rise and fall of her back as she breathes and thinks, I know you. It's not memory or recognition; it's something deeper than that. He doesn't know what they are to one another, but her presence feels familiar in a way he can't explain.
As if his thoughts have woken her, she takes a deep, slow breath and raises her head. "Hi."
"Hi," he says. It comes out raspy and his throat spasms with a cough, which triggers another when he tries to swallow, and pain explodes in his abdomen.
Then a straw pokes against his lip and he's sucking down water in blessed relief.
"Just a little. Not too fast," Vic says, as she holds the cup steady.
"Thank you," he says when he's done.
She sets the cup down and stands, just looking at him. There's something different about her now, a pallor or shadow that wasn't there before.
"Are you okay?" he asks her.
She breathes a laugh, and shakes her head. "I'm not the one who got shot."
"Right." He reaches out and fumbles for her hand, needing the connection of touch. "Vic," he begins, but breaks off at the look on her face.
"I should get the doctor," she says, backing away, and he knows he's done something wrong but not what, and not how to fix it. Just as she reaches the door, she stops. "You don't remember anything, do you?"
"No," he admits after a long moment.
She gives him a wan, half-hearted smile, and then she's gone.
He doesn't even know her last name.