Noel woke up reaching for his waist.
The pain wasn't sharp, it was more like a deep ache, the kind that settled into the muscle and stayed. He pressed his hand against it, winced, and tried to sit up.
Joel was out of the chair before Noel had finished the movement, one hand behind his back and one at his arm.
"Easy," he said. "Are you okay?"
Noel blinked at the room, trying to figure out where he was. The walls were white. Clean linen. The smell of antiseptic underneath everything.
"Where—"
"Ashford hospital," Joel interrupted him before he fully asked.
Noel looked at him and looked back at the ceiling.
He was trying to figure out why and how he had ended up here.
'What the hell happened?'
He looked at his own hands and that's when it came back to him all at once, the whole sequence of it landing in his chest as something dropped from a height.
He covered his mouth and bent forward.
Joel's arms came around him immediately, just there, pulling him in.
