If You Can't Be With the One You Love

He Believed In You, So Believe In Him

They waited patiently as the operation continued. Felicity had followed Iris to watch from outside the door. Oliver couldn't take it. He couldn't watch.
Every fiber inside of him wanted to drink his pain away. He wanted the aching and the worry to go away.

He sat in the hallway outside the cortex alone. His positions varied from his face being buried in his hands to the back of his head resting on the wall behind him as he tried to catch his breath. The world around him felt so far away. He felt completely detached from anyone and everything he came in contact with. He would feel his phone vibrate in his pocket, he wouldn't pick it up. He'd hear people calling out to him but he wouldn't respond. He couldn't. He was emotionally paralyzed.

He didn't want to be in the world around him.

Caitlin, who had been leading the procedure, came from the room to speak with Oliver privately. When he saw her, he immediately shot up. As if his trance were a bubble and she took a pin to it. He knew that she carried news. She had already told the others about his predicament.

"We got the bullet out." Caitlin told him with only partial assurance. "But he lost so much blood from both wounds, we don't know if his body is going to be able to heal the way it needs to."

She takes a deep breath. "And even if the wounds heal, the bullet fragments migrated to the lumbar of his spine and we had to remove them. Another thing we are unsure will heal. We cannot know exactly how or if his abilities will work."

He bites his bottom lip in an attempt to fight the cries trying to leave his system. Any kind of hope felt as if it was slowly fading away. Barry would either not wake up or he would wake up with the inability to walk, quite possibly ever again.

"Caitlin," Oliver began desperately. "Take him to the hospital. Maybe they'll know what do."

Caitlin took a deep breath, grabbing Oliver's arm and leading him to door that led into the med-bay. Oliver gets his first look at Barry through the small rectangular window that was on the door-- he was helpless. He immediately turns his head back to her. Caitlin musters up a telling smile. "They cannot treat him like we can."

"They have more doctors. More specialists who can give second opinions-" Oliver stopped to swallow the lump that rested in his throat. He felt his voice become weaker. "Please Caitlin."

Caitlin places her hand on his shoulder with assurance. "Oliver, we know and understand what goes on in his body more than anyone. We don't have the time to explain his physiology to every doctor at that hospital."

"We care about him too." Caitlin continues soothingly, taking notice of the sheer fear in Oliver's face. "We are doing everything we can to make sure he doesn't leave us."

"So what now?" Oliver asks as he stares at Barry through the window pane.

"It's a waiting game," Caitlin tells him. "We are doing what we can to wake him up. But we don't know how long that will take.

This isn't our first time waking Barry up from a coma." She tells him with an assuring smile. "And if the speedforce wasn't working inside of him, he'd be dead right now. So it's doing something."

He weakly grins at her as she pats his arm lightly before walking out of the cortex. He takes a deep breath as he begins to walk towards the med bay. Barry lays motionless on a bed. Wires and tubes run from areas on his chest and facial parts. He looks at peace. He looks as if he is thousands of miles away from this world.

For the first time since he found out about the accident, tears steadily fell down Oliver's cheeks.

He's already lost him.