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Kleya was there, exactly where Vel thought she might be after Mon's call. Her stomach twisted, and bile rose in her throat. Kleya was there, sitting on the sterile, pale blue chairs in the waiting area. Kleya was there, and she was hurt.
Blood trickled down her forehead from her hairline, past swollen skin and a black eye, and traced down her temple to her jaw. A blood-soaked rag was clenched in a white-knuckled fist. Vel pushed past a couple trying to leave and ducked around the desk attendant who tried to get her attention. Something was seriously wrong. There were too many people in here. Several with broken arms or legs, several head wounds, and a few with what looked to be glass shard injuries. Something else was seriously wrong: Kleya had not moved. Vel could not see if she was breathing, and her eyes were a thousand miles away. There was not a frown, not a tear, not even a quiver. She was so still, she may as well have been a statue.
“Kleya,” she breathed, dropping to a crouch in front of her. Kleya turned to face her, eyes sliding sluggishly to hers. Vel opened her mouth to ask if she was okay, but the words died in her throat at the outright excruciating pain in those dark eyes. Of course she wasn’t okay. She opened her mouth again to ask what happened when her eyes locked with Kleya’s and saw the visibly different size of her pupils. A concussion. A very bad concussion. “Kleya,” she repeated, loudly enough to be heard over the hubbub in the waiting room, and she gingerly set a hand over her knee. “Have you been seen yet?”
Kleya’s lips parted and trembled a moment before her voice warbled out rough and fragile and completely un-Kleya-like. “No.”
Desperate panic and disproportionate irritation surged through Vel, and she breathed a shaky exhale to balance the pressure rising in her chest. “Did they tell you a wait time?”
A shake of the head and a wince were the only given responses. “This is not okay,” she muttered, rising to her feet and looking around for the attendant. Just as she took a deep breath to steady herself for confrontation, Kleya grabbed her arm.
“Vel,” she murmured so quietly that Vel struggled to hear. “Leave it.”
Every bit of the vaporous irritation dissipated. She lowered herself again, so that Kleya did not have to tilt her head. “Would it be okay if I wait with you?” she asked, softening her voice.
Kleya nodded. As Vel settled next to her, perched on the edge of the seat to be a little closer to Kleya, Kleya’s eyes widened as if something occurred to her. She turned sharply towards Vel, wincing and gripping her ribs. “Why are you here? Is Mon…?”
The unguarded concern dripping from her voice took Vel by surprise. There was something layered in her expression… a fragile fear beyond normal concern. It was as if one more bit of bad news would shatter her. “No, no, Mon is okay, Kleya. I’m here for you.” Concern softened to surprise. Kleya raised her eyebrows and sat back, looking reproachfully at her. Sighing, Vel relaxed back in her seat next to her. “Mon and Luthen have been emergency contacts for a while. She called me after she got the call. We were worried about you.” I was worried about you.
At the mention of Luthen, Kleya became distant again. “Luthen… he…”
Vel wanted to take her hand, to touch her, to comfort her, whatever would help in easing this tension and torment. The twisting despair anchoring nausea in her stomach whispered that there was nothing she could possibly do to ease Kleya’s torture. She knew that voice was right.
“I know.” Vel spoke softly, hoping she would understand that she did not need to finish that sentence unless she wanted to. Kleya looked down at her lap, and for the first time, Vel noticed how much blood was soaked and drying into her clothes. “Kleya,” she breathed, panic rising back up into her throat. “Your clothes.” The lack of her usual jacket became immediately apparent. Where was it?
“It’s not mine,” Kleya deadpanned. “Most of it… Most of it is not mine.”
Vel tried to contain her urge to scream for help. She took a deep breath in, held it for a few seconds, and then shakily exhaled it. Rather than scream, rather than march to the available desk and demand a doctor, she shrugged her own coat from her shoulders and wrapped it around Kleya. “You must be cold.”
Kleya pulled the coat around herself tightly and stared at the back of the seat in front of them. Vel sat back next to her and tried not to let their legs touch.
--
Kleya had a severe concussion, several lacerations, and two broken ribs. She was given a torso brace, two pain medications, an anti-nausea prescription, an anti-inflammatory drug, and an anti-vertigo medication. Notably, Kleya fought that last one. “What’s the point if I’m going to be so drugged up that I won’t know my left from my right anyway?” Personally, Vel thought that she was just looking to fight someone to distract herself. She was discharged—with the anti-vertigo medication—under the condition that she would have close supervision for three days until her concussion improved. “How are they supposed to know if I’ve improved or if it’s just the damn drugs?” Vel supposed she might be more perceptive than most, but she was getting the vague impression that Kleya might not like being on so many medications.
Kleya was silent throughout the ride back to the driveway separating the Mothma house and the Rael-Marki house. Vel trailed along behind her as they climbed the steps to the Rael-Marki house, pausing wordlessly behind her as she stopped at the front door. Still, Kleya did not say a word. She stared at the door’s lock, key in hand, head up, back ramrod straight, motionless. Her face, while she clearly attempted to force it into an emotionless mask, radiated nothing but crushing sadness.
“Would you like me to go in first?” Vel asked softly.
Kleya’s head twitched towards her, almost imperceptibly. Then, she reached forward, unlocked the door, and strode inside. Vel followed.
Once inside, Vel set about turning on some lights, adjusting the heat, boiling hot water for tea, and getting dinner plated up for her. Kleya stood in the dead center of the kitchen, staring towards the nearly-completed radio that she and Luthen had tested the morning before. The house key was still clutched in her hand, the bag of medication still hanging loosely between long fingers. No amount of noise that Vel made drew those distant eyes back to her. Nothing startled her, nothing moved her, not even by a muscle.
“Kleya?” she asked, hoping to break the trance. Nothing. “Kleya? Dinner is ready.” Silence. With a sigh, Vel set the kettle back on the stove to keep it warm and moved to face her directly. She planted herself between the radio and Kleya, repeating her name. Sluggish eyes shifted to meet hers.
“Sorry,” Kleya whispered, although her voice held no shame or regret whatsoever.
Vel tilted her head. “No apologies. Is someone coming to stay with you? I can stay until they get here.”
A humourless chuckle twitched the corner of Kleya’s mouth. “You don’t have to stay.” Then she swept by Vel to set the key on the counter too precisely for her current disorientation. “I will be fine.” The words were off-kilter, too slow, and a little too thin.
“Is someone else coming?”
Kleya cast a glare at her. “What part of my typical demeanor makes you think anyone would give a shit about what happens to me?”
She may as well have slapped Vel across the face. “I care,” she protested, her voice rising to the indignation of the assumed insult.
Turning fully to face her, Kleya’s eyes were hard, and her posture was sharp. It was a vision, for a moment, of the old Kleya come out to haunt them. “Let us not pretend that the last person on earth to care about me is not lying alone in a hospital bed, unable to breathe without assistance.”
That was a stab to the heart. In the silence that followed, Kleya’s expression softened, despair creeping back into wide brown eyes, and she lowered her gaze under the weight of Vel’s stare. “You can lash out at me, Kleya, I understand. I cannot fathom how this must feel for you… How painful this must be.” Kleya closed her eyes for a moment before looking away and leaning against the counter. “But I will not let you insult my reality by attempting to assert that I do not care about you.” Vel stepped towards her, gently gripping her arm and turning her back to make eye contact. “I came to the hospital for you. And I am staying here for you. I am not letting you suffer alone, and I am not letting you circumvent doctor’s orders by being alone, concussed, and unsupervised just because you’re too fucking stubborn to accept help. Do you understand?”
Rubbing a hand across her face, Kleya nodded, and suddenly the stiffness, the firmly masked face, and the sharpness of posture all disappeared as tiredness and the truth of Vel’s words settled in their place. Vel nodded in return and stepped away to busy herself by texting Mon to bring over whatever they had dinner after Kleya fell asleep. Kleya drifted away, muttering about changing clothes, but stopped in the entry to cast over her shoulder, in the softest voice Vel had ever heard,
“I’m sorry for what I said, Vel.”