Happy 3x4 day!
Orange
This piece is dedicated to Dentelle-Noir, who left me the prompt 'soda.' It got a little longer than drabble-size! Happy 3x4 day!
Orange. The young man gave a half-sob as he shook his head at the doctor. Sighing, the busy man scribbled a hasty ‘John Doe’ at the top of the clipboard he was holding next to the words ‘head trauma’ and ‘concussion.’ The highlighter mark through the words ‘non-life threatening’ evidently made his patient low priority. He made a gesture to a nurse, who until that moment had been standing discreetly in the shadows, and turned to walk out of the examination room.
“Wait!” the young man called out. There was something terribly important. Something he’d forgotten! It was orange; that much he did know. But he didn’t… he couldn’t just say it like that. The doctor was waiting, running an impatient hand through unruly hair. He looked exhausted.
“Well?”
“I… it was orange! It had to be orange. That’s all I remember.”
Tears of frustration welled up in the patient’s eyes, and the doctor dredged up what sympathy he could for the young man. It had been a long two days. Adjusting his glasses, he began,
“Look, I know this must be terribly frightening for you-the tears spilled over-but amnesia is usually a temporary condition. You may remember everything in just a few days! You should count yourself lucky. There are patients in this hospital that will not make it through the night after yesterday’s earthquake.”
His patient turned his penetrating, blue gaze directly at the doctor.
“What if I don’t? What if the only thing I ever remember is that I was looking for… that it was supposed to be-his voice broke-orange?!”
The doctor sighed heavily.
“Then, young sir, you will not be alone in having to begin again.”
There was a pregnant pause as the young man considered his doctor’s words.
“Do you think someone will come for me?”
“Many people were killed. I cannot say. I am sorry, but there are others who need my care.”
“Of course. I understand.”
The patient finally gave in to the sedatives in his bloodstream; he closed his eyes and dreamt. He dreamt in a myriad of colour, but the most prominent were of course, orange, and, oddly enough, green.
**********************************************************
Trowa Barton ran a hand through his greasy, unkempt hair as he descended the steps to the hospital morgue. He had made the trip down there twice daily, since the night of the ‘quake. This was his third time in the morgue, and every time a hospital attendee brought him down to look at a young man who matched the description he had given of Quatre, he knew it was more likely that it would actually be him.
Quatre and Trowa had been staying in St. Joseph, a small, mostly European town in the former Sank Kingdom. They, or Quatre rather, had been called over for an ESUN peace conference. The talks were ongoing and had been for several months, and so they had rented a small apartment and settled in for a while, managing their affairs from afar. It had been their anniversary the night of the earthquake and Quatre’s disappearance. Quatre had made dinner, something he rarely had the time to do, though he was an excellent cook. They’d just been sitting down to a candle-lit table when Quatre had sat bolt upright and rushed out the door, yelling:
“Forgot something! Be back soon.”
He left the apartment with only the coins in his pocket.
The massive earthquake, 8.1 on the Richter Scale, had occurred moments later, causing carnage in the tiny town. St. Joseph’s General Hospital had been converted to a ‘quake victims recovery centre; all victims were brought there and treated there. The waiting rooms were packed: filled with anxious relatives and friends, waiting for their loved ones to be found, dead or alive. So when an attendee who was known to work in the morgue stood in front of the reception desk to make an announcement, the whole room was filled with nervous silence. The tension only grew as exhausted people heard what he had to say.
“We have an unidentified body in the morgue. He was male, between 20 and 25 years old with blond hair and blue eyes, measuring 169 centimetres and weighing 55kg,” he finished with a sigh. This was the fifth such announcement he had made today.
Trowa stood reluctantly, joining the ashen-faced woman and man who were also waiting for a young, blond-haired man, measuring 169 centimetres and weighing 55 kg. Now they were following the attendant into the morgue, each perversely hoping the body belonged to the other. When they got to the body bag, none of them wanted to look first. The woman clutched the man’s hand, and the man gestured for Trowa to go first. Trowa felt an irrational surge of anger at that, but he stepped forward and unzipped the bag, hands steady when his heart was not. When the zipper had come down two inches, Trowa knew it wasn’t Quatre; the hair was gelled into spikes and wasn’t the right shade of blond. He let out a gasp of relief even as the woman behind him screamed. He left the pair to their grief, barely making it up the stairs before collapsing against the wall.
Trowa was disoriented. Someone was shaking him awake. He must have taken a wrong turn when he got up the stairs from the morgue, because he certainly wasn’t back in the waiting room. He opened his eyes blearily and looked into the face of the man shaking him. The attendee from the morgue! Trowa groaned and covered his face with his hands, his exhaustion loosening his tongue.
“Not you again!”
“Sir, you are sleeping on the floor.”
Trowa muttered something unintelligible and undoubtedly rude.
“Sir, I might have some good news for you if you would only wake up!”
Trowa’s eyes snapped open.
“That’s better. Follow me, please.” The man led him into a small, unused room.
“Doctor O’malley said to wait here.”
Shortly, they were joined by a large man with heavy black eyebrows and a moustache.
“Doctor O’Malley,” the man said briskly and did not offer his hand. “I have very little time, but I am concerned about one of my patients.”
“Mr. Barton,” Trowa suppressed a hysterical laugh as he realized he had been so often in the morgue attendant’s company that the man had learned his name, “is looking for a 24 year old blond male-
“Do you have a photograph of this man, Mr. Barton?” the doctor cut the attendant off impatiently.
Trowa was grateful for this; he didn’t think he could listen to Quatre’s stats one more time without going ballistic. He reached into his pocket and pulled out Quatre’s wallet, forgotten in haste days before. He flipped it open and showed the doctor Quatre’s driver’s license, concealing the more personal pictures in the wallet.
“Yes,” Doctor O’Malley nodded, and Trowa felt his knees grow weak, “Yes, that’s him.”
Trowa remained silent, observing the doctor, whose eyes darkened as he sighed.
“What relation is he to you, Mr. Barton?”
Trowa hesitated; he didn’t like revealing personal information to strangers.
“My husband.”
“Then, Mr. Barton, there are a few things you need to know about,” he glanced at the license,” Quatre’s condition. The doctor took a deep breath to begin, but Trowa cut him off.
“Is he conscious?”
“Well, yes, but-“
“Can I see him?”
“Just… let me explain.”
**********************************************************
The young man’s heart pounded. His name was Quatre. His husband’s name was Trowa. Trowa was coming to see him. It all seemed comfortingly familiar, but he couldn’t quite grasp the memories. He’d tried to make himself look presentable, running a hospital regulation comb through his matted and dirty hair. It was useless. Twiddling his thumbs nervously, he glanced at the door. Presently, Dr. O’Malley walked in, followed by a dirty, tired looking, but incredibly handsome young man with eyes the same shade of green he had dreamt of.
“Quatre?” The name was familiar, but at the same time not.
The blank look on Quatre’s face was more than Trowa could bear, and he almost turned away.
“I’m sorry. I’ve upset you.”
“No!” Trowa cautiously approached the bed. “Do you know how long I’ve been looking for you?”
“No,” Quatre replied shyly.
Trowa leaned forward, grasping his husband’s upturned face in unsteady hands.
“It seemed like ages,” he breathed.
Doctor O’Malley turned to leave. He would give the young couple some privacy.
“Will he recover?” Trowa’s question stopped him short.
“Physically, yes.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“It is possible. Talk to him about your lives. The more you remind him, the faster his memories may return.”
So Trowa talked. He talked more than he’d ever talked before in one day. He talked of the war, he talked of their friends, their jobs, their wedding. He talked of Catherine, of the Circus, of WEI, and the Preventers, an organization they were both members of. They even talked of what Quatre could be remembering as orange. There was a new tiger at the circus, Trowa said, that he’d told Quatre about on the night of the ‘quake. Most of all, though, he talked about them; their first awkward kiss on Peacemillion, when Trowa himself had had amnesia, their first ‘date’ when Quatre came to watch him perform at the circus and they went ‘out’ to dinner at Trowa’s trailer, and the day Trowa proposed. At around 1 am, when both of them were falling asleep, Trowa said,
“I don’t usually talk this much.”
“I know,” Quatre murmured sleepily.
************************************************************************
When Quatre woke up the next morning, he looked around the room. Trowa’s head and arms were pillowed on Quatre’s lap, and he was leaning awkwardly over the bed, his lower half on the edge of an old wooden chair. Suddenly, the past few days hit Quatre like a train. He remembered. And he laughed. He laughed long and hard, almost hysterically. Trowa sat up and rubbed his eyes, peering at Quatre cautiously and uncertainly.
“I remember, Trowa!” but Quatre kept giggling.
A slow smile spread across his lover’s face. He knew how to stop this nonsense. Trowa leaned in and kissed Quatre. What started out warm and sweet quickly turned hot and heavy, and Trowa moved onto the bed, without breaking the kiss, pulling Quatre close. Finally, they broke apart, gasping. Quatre climbed fully onto Trowa’s lap, and laid his head in the crook of Trowa’s neck.
“So what was this all-important orange thing?” Trowa asked, grinning slightly when he felt Quatre shaking with silent laughter.
“I ran out to get you orange pop!”
“Come again?” Trowa’s eyebrows shot up and disappeared into his hair.
“Oh, Trowa! Did you really think I wouldn’t notice you hiding piles of the stuff in our garage? I mean, behind your motorbike really isn’t a subtle hiding spot.”
Trowa’s cheeks coloured slightly.
“Why did you try to hide it from me in the first place?”
“Oh, c’mon, Quatre. You know as well as I do that you have an obnoxious streak when it comes to health food.”
Quatre’s grin could have split his face.
“Wait a minute,” said Trowa, clearly trying to divert the attention from himself and his orange habit, “Let me get this straight. You ran out of the apartment on a whim to get me orange pop?”
“More like because I’d discovered your nefarious addiction.”
Trowa scowled.
“It’s not that funny. And why were you near my motorbike, anyway?”
It was Quatre’s turn to colour slightly. Things were going to be okay.
This piece is dedicated to Dentelle-Noir, who left me the prompt 'soda.' It got a little longer than drabble-size! Happy 3x4 day!
Orange. The young man gave a half-sob as he shook his head at the doctor. Sighing, the busy man scribbled a hasty ‘John Doe’ at the top of the clipboard he was holding next to the words ‘head trauma’ and ‘concussion.’ The highlighter mark through the words ‘non-life threatening’ evidently made his patient low priority. He made a gesture to a nurse, who until that moment had been standing discreetly in the shadows, and turned to walk out of the examination room.
“Wait!” the young man called out. There was something terribly important. Something he’d forgotten! It was orange; that much he did know. But he didn’t… he couldn’t just say it like that. The doctor was waiting, running an impatient hand through unruly hair. He looked exhausted.
“Well?”
“I… it was orange! It had to be orange. That’s all I remember.”
Tears of frustration welled up in the patient’s eyes, and the doctor dredged up what sympathy he could for the young man. It had been a long two days. Adjusting his glasses, he began,
“Look, I know this must be terribly frightening for you-the tears spilled over-but amnesia is usually a temporary condition. You may remember everything in just a few days! You should count yourself lucky. There are patients in this hospital that will not make it through the night after yesterday’s earthquake.”
His patient turned his penetrating, blue gaze directly at the doctor.
“What if I don’t? What if the only thing I ever remember is that I was looking for… that it was supposed to be-his voice broke-orange?!”
The doctor sighed heavily.
“Then, young sir, you will not be alone in having to begin again.”
There was a pregnant pause as the young man considered his doctor’s words.
“Do you think someone will come for me?”
“Many people were killed. I cannot say. I am sorry, but there are others who need my care.”
“Of course. I understand.”
The patient finally gave in to the sedatives in his bloodstream; he closed his eyes and dreamt. He dreamt in a myriad of colour, but the most prominent were of course, orange, and, oddly enough, green.
**********************************************************
Trowa Barton ran a hand through his greasy, unkempt hair as he descended the steps to the hospital morgue. He had made the trip down there twice daily, since the night of the ‘quake. This was his third time in the morgue, and every time a hospital attendee brought him down to look at a young man who matched the description he had given of Quatre, he knew it was more likely that it would actually be him.
Quatre and Trowa had been staying in St. Joseph, a small, mostly European town in the former Sank Kingdom. They, or Quatre rather, had been called over for an ESUN peace conference. The talks were ongoing and had been for several months, and so they had rented a small apartment and settled in for a while, managing their affairs from afar. It had been their anniversary the night of the earthquake and Quatre’s disappearance. Quatre had made dinner, something he rarely had the time to do, though he was an excellent cook. They’d just been sitting down to a candle-lit table when Quatre had sat bolt upright and rushed out the door, yelling:
“Forgot something! Be back soon.”
He left the apartment with only the coins in his pocket.
The massive earthquake, 8.1 on the Richter Scale, had occurred moments later, causing carnage in the tiny town. St. Joseph’s General Hospital had been converted to a ‘quake victims recovery centre; all victims were brought there and treated there. The waiting rooms were packed: filled with anxious relatives and friends, waiting for their loved ones to be found, dead or alive. So when an attendee who was known to work in the morgue stood in front of the reception desk to make an announcement, the whole room was filled with nervous silence. The tension only grew as exhausted people heard what he had to say.
“We have an unidentified body in the morgue. He was male, between 20 and 25 years old with blond hair and blue eyes, measuring 169 centimetres and weighing 55kg,” he finished with a sigh. This was the fifth such announcement he had made today.
Trowa stood reluctantly, joining the ashen-faced woman and man who were also waiting for a young, blond-haired man, measuring 169 centimetres and weighing 55 kg. Now they were following the attendant into the morgue, each perversely hoping the body belonged to the other. When they got to the body bag, none of them wanted to look first. The woman clutched the man’s hand, and the man gestured for Trowa to go first. Trowa felt an irrational surge of anger at that, but he stepped forward and unzipped the bag, hands steady when his heart was not. When the zipper had come down two inches, Trowa knew it wasn’t Quatre; the hair was gelled into spikes and wasn’t the right shade of blond. He let out a gasp of relief even as the woman behind him screamed. He left the pair to their grief, barely making it up the stairs before collapsing against the wall.
Trowa was disoriented. Someone was shaking him awake. He must have taken a wrong turn when he got up the stairs from the morgue, because he certainly wasn’t back in the waiting room. He opened his eyes blearily and looked into the face of the man shaking him. The attendee from the morgue! Trowa groaned and covered his face with his hands, his exhaustion loosening his tongue.
“Not you again!”
“Sir, you are sleeping on the floor.”
Trowa muttered something unintelligible and undoubtedly rude.
“Sir, I might have some good news for you if you would only wake up!”
Trowa’s eyes snapped open.
“That’s better. Follow me, please.” The man led him into a small, unused room.
“Doctor O’malley said to wait here.”
Shortly, they were joined by a large man with heavy black eyebrows and a moustache.
“Doctor O’Malley,” the man said briskly and did not offer his hand. “I have very little time, but I am concerned about one of my patients.”
“Mr. Barton,” Trowa suppressed a hysterical laugh as he realized he had been so often in the morgue attendant’s company that the man had learned his name, “is looking for a 24 year old blond male-
“Do you have a photograph of this man, Mr. Barton?” the doctor cut the attendant off impatiently.
Trowa was grateful for this; he didn’t think he could listen to Quatre’s stats one more time without going ballistic. He reached into his pocket and pulled out Quatre’s wallet, forgotten in haste days before. He flipped it open and showed the doctor Quatre’s driver’s license, concealing the more personal pictures in the wallet.
“Yes,” Doctor O’Malley nodded, and Trowa felt his knees grow weak, “Yes, that’s him.”
Trowa remained silent, observing the doctor, whose eyes darkened as he sighed.
“What relation is he to you, Mr. Barton?”
Trowa hesitated; he didn’t like revealing personal information to strangers.
“My husband.”
“Then, Mr. Barton, there are a few things you need to know about,” he glanced at the license,” Quatre’s condition. The doctor took a deep breath to begin, but Trowa cut him off.
“Is he conscious?”
“Well, yes, but-“
“Can I see him?”
“Just… let me explain.”
**********************************************************
The young man’s heart pounded. His name was Quatre. His husband’s name was Trowa. Trowa was coming to see him. It all seemed comfortingly familiar, but he couldn’t quite grasp the memories. He’d tried to make himself look presentable, running a hospital regulation comb through his matted and dirty hair. It was useless. Twiddling his thumbs nervously, he glanced at the door. Presently, Dr. O’Malley walked in, followed by a dirty, tired looking, but incredibly handsome young man with eyes the same shade of green he had dreamt of.
“Quatre?” The name was familiar, but at the same time not.
The blank look on Quatre’s face was more than Trowa could bear, and he almost turned away.
“I’m sorry. I’ve upset you.”
“No!” Trowa cautiously approached the bed. “Do you know how long I’ve been looking for you?”
“No,” Quatre replied shyly.
Trowa leaned forward, grasping his husband’s upturned face in unsteady hands.
“It seemed like ages,” he breathed.
Doctor O’Malley turned to leave. He would give the young couple some privacy.
“Will he recover?” Trowa’s question stopped him short.
“Physically, yes.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“It is possible. Talk to him about your lives. The more you remind him, the faster his memories may return.”
So Trowa talked. He talked more than he’d ever talked before in one day. He talked of the war, he talked of their friends, their jobs, their wedding. He talked of Catherine, of the Circus, of WEI, and the Preventers, an organization they were both members of. They even talked of what Quatre could be remembering as orange. There was a new tiger at the circus, Trowa said, that he’d told Quatre about on the night of the ‘quake. Most of all, though, he talked about them; their first awkward kiss on Peacemillion, when Trowa himself had had amnesia, their first ‘date’ when Quatre came to watch him perform at the circus and they went ‘out’ to dinner at Trowa’s trailer, and the day Trowa proposed. At around 1 am, when both of them were falling asleep, Trowa said,
“I don’t usually talk this much.”
“I know,” Quatre murmured sleepily.
************************************************************************
When Quatre woke up the next morning, he looked around the room. Trowa’s head and arms were pillowed on Quatre’s lap, and he was leaning awkwardly over the bed, his lower half on the edge of an old wooden chair. Suddenly, the past few days hit Quatre like a train. He remembered. And he laughed. He laughed long and hard, almost hysterically. Trowa sat up and rubbed his eyes, peering at Quatre cautiously and uncertainly.
“I remember, Trowa!” but Quatre kept giggling.
A slow smile spread across his lover’s face. He knew how to stop this nonsense. Trowa leaned in and kissed Quatre. What started out warm and sweet quickly turned hot and heavy, and Trowa moved onto the bed, without breaking the kiss, pulling Quatre close. Finally, they broke apart, gasping. Quatre climbed fully onto Trowa’s lap, and laid his head in the crook of Trowa’s neck.
“So what was this all-important orange thing?” Trowa asked, grinning slightly when he felt Quatre shaking with silent laughter.
“I ran out to get you orange pop!”
“Come again?” Trowa’s eyebrows shot up and disappeared into his hair.
“Oh, Trowa! Did you really think I wouldn’t notice you hiding piles of the stuff in our garage? I mean, behind your motorbike really isn’t a subtle hiding spot.”
Trowa’s cheeks coloured slightly.
“Why did you try to hide it from me in the first place?”
“Oh, c’mon, Quatre. You know as well as I do that you have an obnoxious streak when it comes to health food.”
Quatre’s grin could have split his face.
“Wait a minute,” said Trowa, clearly trying to divert the attention from himself and his orange habit, “Let me get this straight. You ran out of the apartment on a whim to get me orange pop?”
“More like because I’d discovered your nefarious addiction.”
Trowa scowled.
“It’s not that funny. And why were you near my motorbike, anyway?”
It was Quatre’s turn to colour slightly. Things were going to be okay.