《 Skip a Beat 》

Back to emergency 2.0

So. There they were. It was happening all over again.

Heck, Newt was even in the same hospital room. In the same bed.

It was as if nothing had ever changed.

She would've laughed at the coincidence if she wasn't so worried for her friend's life. Glancing around the room, Leta could tell that everyone else was worried too.

Tina was hunched over in the cushioned chair right next to the bed, staring at the floor. Lost in thought, if Leta had to guess.

Theseus stood to his wife's left, hands in pockets and a pensive expression on his face.

Queenie had taken up Leta's right, standing behind Jacob's chair and bracing her hands on the back. Her head was bowed, her eyes squeezed shut.

The four of them waited, nobody daring to speak.

After what seemed like a million years, but in actual fact was only a minute or two, Queenie opened her eyes.

The whole room almost inhaled, holding its breath, until Queenie shook her head.

"He's not... it's like his mind isn't working. He's not thinking anything," she whispered finally, her unusually solemn voice cleaving through the thick silence.

You could almost hear the entire atmosphere in the room sink through the white hospital floors.

A few minutes of silence elapsed.

Nobody said anything. The clock ticked monotonously from its place above the green door. The steady beeps from the heart rate screen punctured each silence. Newt lay, eyes closed and unmoving, in the hospital bed.

Out of the corner of her eye, Leta could see Queenie watching the heart rate machine with a blank expression. Leta watched it too.

Newt was definitely alive. That was the best thing anyone could think of at the moment. Each spiked green line on the heart rate screen, each beeping sound reminded them that he wasn't gone. Not yet, at least.

But Newt's heartbeats were slow. Each beep was separated by what seemed to be more than a second at a time. Leta couldn't tell if they were getting slower or faster- she most sincerely hoped it was the latter.

"It wasn't meant to happen like this," murmured Tina, sotto-voiced.

Leta nodded her agreement. It was an obvious statement, yes, but they all needed to hear it being said out loud. Needed to know that they were all feeling the same hopelessness, that they could lean on each other when they needed to.

"It was meant to get better from then on," added Leta.

No one else said anything for a long while.

Leta found her gaze drawn to the documents Theseus had signed (being the closest present relative), which now lay in an unorganised pile on the small wooden table.

As soon as they'd arrived back at the hospital, Dr Mallord had thrust the papers into their hands and zipped off to run some basic tests on Newt, mainly to check that there was nothing drastically injured, bar his leg.

The six of them were anxiously waiting for any results- nothing had come back so far.

Leta glanced at the clock hanging above the green door, then back at the group, a calculating expression painted across her face.

"Theseus. Tina. You're meant to be at the ministry in ten minutes."

Tina's head whipped up- the first noticeable movement in a long time.