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Alaric feels awkward standing in the cold white hospital hall. He hardly belongs here. It shows in how he’s standing, he’s sure, hands tucked into his jeans pockets and shoulders curled in.
Somewhere down the hall a shrill alarm sounds and a moment later a thick pack of sea green dressed nurses travel past. -That’s the second time he’s seen that in the twenty minutes he’s been standing in the critical ward. - If at all possible he tucks his six foot frame tighter against the wall and watches the scuffed toe of his shoe.
He shouldn’t be the one standing here but Damon is chasing after Elena, trying to rekindle lost memories and forgetting the world spins on beyond her.
Alaric can’t even remember why he’s here, respect or maybe sympathy a driving force he doesn’t understand. Feels a lot like guilt in his gut.
Thinks of leaving but the Jo is coming up the hall, professional and grim.
"Has anyone been by today?" He asks, already knows the answer though. Her lips pull into a sad looking frown and she hardly shakes her head.
"No, but that may be best. Why are you here?" She probably didn’t mean for it to sound so cold, it’s a valid question. What the hell is he doing here?
"I came to see him." He shrugs, because any further response then that is blank even to him.
Jo frowns tighter, uncharacteristically worries the clipboard in her hand. Thinking. Of their suddenly stopped relationship? Of how Alaric’s not here to see her? “Follow me, I shouldn’t be letting visitors in-but it’s you and I get the feeling you’d compel your way through behind my back.”
She’s turning heel and leading him down the hall and through a double door that reads quarantine. An overly alert looking nurse behind a desk watches them pass but doesn’t question Jo, or his, presence. She’s right, he’d have had to compel his way through…
"I shouldn’t be doing this, but seeing what you are- you can’t get sick and you can’t carry a virus." She looks stressed and Alaric is sorry for it. Stopping them before a door and crossing her arms under her very nice breasts, clipboard clasped like a shield. Alaric tries not to stare at the door over her shoulder like he can see through it.
"Listen, Ric. He’s dying."
Flinching, he shakes his head, forces himself to meet her eyes and finds little sympathy there. “Jesus, Jo. Show a little optimism.”
"I’m a doctor, Alaric. If you want hope or prayers, go find a church." She snaps back, but there’s something a little broken there too and a moment later she sighs, reaches for the door handle and holds it. "There’s nothing we can do at this point aside from make him comfortable."
The way she says that, the slight infliction to her voice, it tells him their not very successful in offering that comfort.
She’s still not letting him through though, her eyes stubbornly holding his -he could have loved her, brave and smart and all the dog ears of an incredible woman if things had gone differently - “I’m not going to apologize for not taking him back over the border, but-” she pauses, drops her eyes and steps away from the door to let Alaric through but he’s not moving till she finishes that sentence. “-but if I could do it again I’d have saved you instead.”
The word almost slips out and his annoyance must show on his face in the form of dark veins because she nods once and turns back down the hall. “Goodbye Alaric.”
Whatever doubt and confusion about his own presence here he’d felt before disappeared long enough to give him the courage to open the door and enter the room. It dissipates the second the door clicks shut behind him though and he’s grounded there like an oak only a foot into the room. Eyes locked through the dim lighting on the man on the bed.
'He's dying' his mind helpfully supplies, looped over by the sight he wishes he could un-see of the street just two nights ago. Dark and slightly damp with rain, Tripp’s trucks headlights had cast twin bright beams of yellow light. Rubs the echo of pain he can remember in his chest where he'd laid gasping for breath and choking on his own blood from a stab wound that had killed him once already almost two years ago. The hazy vision of Stefan dragging him and Damon across the street.
Watching in wild shock as Jo didn’t bring Enzo over, instead struggled to assist.
Alaric’s not sure if her doctoral merits had anything to do with Enzo surviving this long, or if it has more to do with the slow death consumption has to offer.
Alaric’s not sure if it would have been better to let Enzo die in the street not here in a cold hospital. Alone…
Damon should be here.
Sinks himself into a plastic chair just off to the side of the room and stares at the speckled tiles under his feet. Doesn’t watch the shallow rise and fall of Enzo’s chest under the flimsy sheet, he can hear the rattle of his breathing from here. Wet and desperate.
Rubs his thumb into his knuckles till it hurts, swallows around guilt and shame.
"Damon, he’ll be here later." He says lamely, only knows by the subtle change of breath that the other is awake. Somehow more struggled, tired. Lifts his eyes and hazel meet tired chocolate with quiet regret.
They both know he’s lying.