Apollo Sleeps (SarawatTine)

Chapter 2

Everywhere ached. Sarawat's entire body throbbed with varying degrees of intensity. Even his eyelids pulsed and felt ten times heavier than normal. Deciding it was too much effort to open them he groaned groggily, instinctively reaching out for Tine's reassuring warmth and in doing so made three realisations.

· Firstly: something was seriously restricting his arm movement.

· Secondly: the bed he was on was far too narrow to be his own.

· Thirdly: Tine was not within reaching distance.

This last one, in and of itself, was not necessarily unusual. Tine often woke before him, and would take advantage of the situation to use the bathroom without competition for the shower – shared showers were a lot more fun, but also a lot more time consuming, and, on work days, almost always resulted in a frantic dash to get Tine to his office on time – but Tine's absence in combination with the other discoveries made Sarawat's gut churn and clench uncomfortably.

Dragging himself out of the arms of Morpheus (another Tine-inspired song, this time about the comfort of falling asleep in his embrace), Sarawat forced his eyes open. A feat that required significantly more energy than it should. After some determined blinking he was able to focus on the plain white ceiling above him. A plain white ceiling that was definitely not his own.

The sound of muffled voices from one side caught Sarawat's attention and he turned his head to look, only to stop almost immediately and let out a gasp as pain shot through his neck. Panting as the pain subsided, he carefully resumed the motion at a far slower speed.

Casting his eyes around Sarawat realised he was in a bed at the end of a hospital ward. He could see a couple of other occupants – nobody he knew – and three empty beds. The noise that had attracted his interest was coming from a dishevelled Boss who was heading from the ward door towards him, dragging a harried looking Pear behind him. Instead of halting where he could see her Pear walked around to the left side of his bed, habitually grabbing his medical chart on her way past and forcing Sarawat to turn his head again, suffering through the deep ache in his neck.

In full doctor mode Pear drew a penlight from her coat's top pocket and flashed it in his eyes, checking Sarawat's reflexes, while asking him how he was feeling. Sarawat was confused, his thoughts muddled. He had only been awake a few moments and had had little time to process anything except for the most important fact.

"Tine?" he croaked.

"Tine is being treated in another room. How do you feel? Do you remember what happened?"

Distracted by Pear raising the top half of the bed so he could sit up Sarawat ran through his memories in his head. As he contemplated how to answer the question, he missed Pear silencing Boss with a stern warning look.

"Not... not really. We were in a taxi," Sarawat recollected, "heading home and then suddenly everything was all over the place... and now I'm here. There, there was a song... I think?" Sarawat went to run a hand through his hair, as he so often did when frustrated, but instead his forehead collided with something hard. Looking at it he realised his right arm was in a cast.

"You were in a car accident," Pear explained in a controlled voice, calling on all her years of training and experience to prevent her emotions from overwhelming her, knowing she owed it to Tine, and Sarawat, to be the one to break the news to him. "A drunk driver, a young lad, was racing another car and ran into the side of you.

You've got three cracked ribs and multiple fractures to your right radius and ulna." She gestured to the cast, to the arm he had wrapped around Tine, holding him close. "You also had whiplash, a mild concussion and you burst your right ear drum." Well, that explained the headache and neck pain, Sarawat thought. And the reason why Pear had walked around to the left side of the bed – so he could hear her clearly. "You're going to have a lot of bruises, but fortunately most of your cuts are superficial. You've got a couple of stiches just here," she softly touched his right cheek, just above the corner of his jaw, "and another twelve just here." A touch to his upper right bicep. "Other than that, you're in remarkably good shape."