Chapter Text
The hospital room, despite a multitude of whirring, clicking, and beeping machines tracking her father's every twitch, feels empty. It's been an hour since they got the call, and Roxy is the only one there.
"Miss Hart?" She swivels on her heels when the door opens, and finds a man in a doctor's coat peering inside the room. He's a powerfully built man, bald-headed and with intense eyes, but he manages to project an air of calm sympathy in spite of his intimidating demeanour.
"I'm a friend of your father's," he says, glancing at her father's still form on the bed. "I'll be his attending physician during his stay at the hospital, and I can assure you he will only receive the best of care." He sets his clipboard on an empty tray and holds out a large hand. His nails are blunt and neat.
"Call me Merlin, please," he says. Roxy shakes his hand, and when she drops it they both turn to look at her father. His head is almost entirely swathed in bandages. There's a tube down his throat, steadily pushing air into his lungs, and what looks like half a dozen IV lines are attached to his body. It can't be that many, she thinks. She's panicking.
"He's doing much better than we thought he would," Merlin says, gently. "He's stable, for the now. If there isn't any swelling or infection, he may come through."
"Okay," Roxy says, taking a deep breath. She spent two years in Iraq, dodging mortars and snatching sleep in sodden graves. She's seen people die before. This is nothing like that; be strong, she thinks.
Apparently no one else in their bloody family gives a shit. She sinks down into the padded visitor's chair, stifling a sob behind her hand.
"Would you like some water?" Merlin asks, and she shakes her head. He touches her shoulder, brief and impersonal, and leaves a card on the arm of the chair.
"If you need anything at all, call me at this number," he says, and then he leaves the room, closing the door gently behind him.
If she needs anything- Roxy drags the chair closer to the bed. She takes her father's hand; it's cool and limp in her grasp. He was shot in the face twenty hours ago. He shouldn't be alive. She squeezes his hand, drops her face into his pillow, and lets herself cry for the first time since she got the call.
x
Charlie breezes in an hour later, when she's mostly managed to mop up her mascara and clean her face up.
"Nice of you to make it," she snaps, and he bares his teeth at her in a sneer that she knows is mostly a nervous reflex. Everything's dulled, a little too distant to really needle her. She ignores him.
"How is he?" Charlie asks, walking over to look down at the bed.
Still alive, she thinks. Charlie wouldn't give two shits if their father died in his arms. All he cared about was the money. Still, it was nice of him to try.
"He's stable," she says. "For now."
"Good," Charlie says. He drops into the visitor's seat, slinging his coat over the empty one. "Has anyone told mother? Do we know what happened?"
"Mother knows," Roxy says. "She said we're free to use her flat, if we want to." It's closer to the hospital, darling, her mother had said. She'd divorced their father nearly twenty years ago, and barely spoken to him since, so Roxy supposed she should have expected it.
"It looks like it was a mugging gone wrong," she says. The police had said something about CCTV footage; they were still looking into it. Harry Hart was a respected judge, but he never shied away from controversial cases. He had his fair share of enemies, and it wasn't beyond the realm of possibility that someone had staged an attack on him.
"No cops at the door," Charlie says, following her train of thought.
"Just a mugging," Roxy says. Just a mugging, Christ. She'll call the detective tomorrow, though, and check in.
"I'll call," Charlie says. He digs his phone out of his pocket, stabs a number in, and wanders out of the room. She listens to his pleasant, wheedling voice filtering through the door. He always likes to feel important.
The machines beep and whistle and her father lies silently in his bed. She can't even see his eyes, just the familiar jut of his chin and the line of his mouth. His throat is exposed and vulnerable, and she has to resist the urge to tug the blankets up to his chin.
She takes Charlie's empty chair and settles it beside the bed again, and sits down to hold her father's hand a little longer. When Charlie comes back in, looking satisfied and a little-red eyed, he sits gingerly on the edge of the bed.
"Hey, Roxy," he says, "It'll be okay. We can afford the best care you can get. He'll be okay."
"It took you two hours to get here," Roxy says.
"Traffic," Charlie says. "You know how London gets."
"Jesus," Roxy says. She reaches out for her dad, and leans into the hand that Charlie settles on her shoulder. It's his constipated version of being comforting. At least he hasn't mentioned planning for the future yet. She gives it three days.
When visiting hours end, she's an exhausted mess, even though she spent most of the day sitting at her father's bedside, working her way through a spate of sympathetic texts from her friends and trying not to snipe at Charlie. Merlin checks in at lunch time, speaking to her brother in the same calming tones he'd used with her earlier, and he comes in again to let them know that visiting hours are over.
"I'll walk you down to the lobby," he says. Roxy trails behind her brother and the doctor, watching them talk without paying much mind to what they're saying. Merlin's card is still in her pocket, his mobile number scrawled on it in nearly-illegible handwriting. She wonders if she should give it to Charlie.
When they reach the lobby, she glances over the other people there, wondering how they're coping, what life has thrown at them. There's someone's granny, half-asleep on the uncomfortable waiting couches, and a pair of young parents huddled together in a corner with a doctor. A chav is hunched over the front counter, arguing with the nurse.
Merlin shakes hands with Charlie and then squeezes her shoulders briefly, shaking her out of her study of the waiting room.
"I'll keep you both updated," he says.
The chav looks up at them, frowning.
"Thank you," Charlie says. "There should be, er, police coming along tomorrow."
"Merlin?" the chav says. "Merlin! I've been calling you all day!"
Merlin drops his hands from Roxy's shoulders and looks up at the young man. His brow wrinkles, but he doesn't seem surprised to see him.
"Eggsy," Merlin says. "I'll be with you in a moment."
"Go on home," he says, turning back to Roxy. She nods, looks back at the closed doors that stand between her and her father, and lets Charlie loop an arm through hers.
She glances back over her shoulder again when she heard Merlin speaking.
"I know Eggsy, I know- he's fine. You know how visiting hours work," he's saying. He's pulled the young man into a half-hug, curled an arm around his back.
Charlie tugs on her arm and Roxy follows his lead, heading out into the brisk London evening and her first night of waiting.