"Hello?" Lincoln said, tucking the phone between his shoulder and chin so he'd have both hands free to tie his son's tennis shoes. "LJ, hold still."
"Is Lincoln Burrows there?" The familiar voice of Dr. Mahone came over the line.
"This is," Lincoln said. He quickly knotted LJ's shoe up, and let his son wriggle out of his grip. "Hello Dr. Mahone."
"Lincoln," Dr. Mahone replied. "Michael's doing very well."
Lincoln listened as Dr. Mahone ran through the usual stats: Michael's weight, his BMI, his vital signs, and the like. Finally, he came to the part Lincoln always waited for impatiently—what all those numbers meant.
"I think it's time," Dr. Mahone said.
"Time for what?" Lincoln asked.
He could practically hear the man smile over the phone. "I think Michael can go without the NG tube now, if he's willing. He'd have to eat more food than he's consuming right now, of course, because we wouldn't be able to supplement him at night, but he'd be free of the tube. Of course, you'd have to give us the go ahead too."
"Are you kidding?" Lincoln asked. He'd never liked the idea of the feeding tube in the first place. His brother's face covered with tears, and the way he'd fought and bucked when they'd put it in sometimes haunted his dreams, on bad nights. "Go ahead. Get rid of the damn thing."
"I thought that was what you'd say," Dr. Mahone said. "Now, I'm going to meet with Michael. Have a good day, Lincoln."
"You too," Lincoln replied, feeling a little dazed as he hung up the phone.
Michael sat down at the table next to Sara, feeling a little dazed.
"You okay, Papi?" Sucre asked, looking up from the popsicle sticks he was gluing together. Sara glanced over at him, her eyes wide with concern.
Michael nodded slowly. "Yeah," he said. "Dr. Mahone just told me…they're gonna remove the tube."
"What?" Sucre said.
"Michael, that's great!" Sara said. She dropped her embroidery to the table and tossed her arms around his neck. "Congratulations!"
His arms automatically wrapped back around her. Over her shoulder, he saw Sucre give him a big wink.
"They're taking out your tube, Michael?" he heard Didi's little voice pipe up from Sucre's other side.
Sara released him, and he looked over to Didi, who was scrawling something on a big piece of paper with crayons. She was watching him intently with big brown eyes.
He nodded. "Yeah," he said. "They told me they'd do it today, when the nurse had time." He felt his stomach roll a little at those words. He was…was he really nervous about this?
He saw the little girl lick her lips. "Oh," she said. She kept watching him for a long moment, then returned to her paper with intensity.
"Do what today?" he heard Sofia's voice say from behind him. She slipped into the chair between him and Sucre, a big smile on her face.
"Take out my tube," Michael said. He almost couldn't believe the words, but they were true.
"Oh. Congratulations, Michael," she said. She didn't seem surprised. That big grin was still on her face.
"Thanks," Michael said. "What are you grinning about?"
If anything, the smile got bigger. "Dr. Mahone told me I get to go home!"
"What?" Michael's voice was joined by the rest of the table.
"You're going home?" Sara asked.
"When?" Sucre asked.
"Tomorrow," Sofia said. "He already cleared it with my parents and everything, I guess."
"That's amazing," Sucre said.
"What are you going to do first?" Sara asked.
"That's easy," Sofia said. "Shave! It's been so long!" She laughed. "And check my email."
"No kidding," Sara commiserated. "My legs feel furry!"
"And I'm going to watch TV. I've missed like half a season of Bones!" she said. "David Borneaz? So cute!"
Sucre rolled his eyes at Michael. "Bones? Come on."
Michael was about to open his mouth to answer when he heard the door to the O.T. room open. The teens all turned to look.
It was Kim, Michael's nurse. "Come on, Michael," she said, smiling. "Let's get this done."
Michael scrunched up his nose experimentally. It felt so different. "Wow," he repeated, \rubbing at it again. "It's really gone." And thankfully, so was the feeling like he was going to hurl that he'd had as she'd pulled it up and out.
Kim smiled at him. "It's really gone," she said, dumping the tubing into a plastic bag with a biohazard label. "Feel good?"
"Feels weird," he said, scrunching up his nose again. Kim chuckled.
"Go find your friends," she said. "Show off that cute nose of yours."
"Cute nose?" he said. "I wouldn't call it that…" But obediently he stood up and followed her into the hallway and back towards the dayroom.
Sara saw him coming down the hall. He looked…whoa. She felt her eyebrows raise somewhere into her hairline.
He walked towards her. She saw a small wrinkle of worry appear between his eyes.
"Well?" he asked, holding out his arms. "Now you get a good look at me." He looked a little awkward. "Gonna toss me back? Decided you hate my nose?"
She stood up. "I've never seen a cuter nose," she replied softly. It was intended for Michael's ears only, but behind her, Sucre let out a wolf-whistle, and Sofia said something in Spanish that Sara didn't understood, but she bet was at least PG-13, from the looks on both of the Hispanic faces.
Michael raised an eyebrow. "Cute nose?" he asked.
"Yeah," she said. She made a decision.
It was Sara who looked around for watching nurses. She didn't see any.
"Come on," she said. "Follow me."
They'd never hustled down that hallway so fast, both of them falling into the stairwell panting and out of breath.
"Anyone see us?" Sara asked in a hushed whisper. It echoed slightly around them.
Michael shook his head, and wrapped his arms around her. "I've wanted to do this for a long time," he whispered back.
Her eyes met his. They were wide and bright and eager. "Do what?" she whispered. Michael could see that she knew, and that she had been wanting it just as bad as he had.
"This," he whispered.
His lips brushed against hers, gentle. He felt her breathe out as he breathed in, and the experience was like breathing her in, like breathing a little bit of Sara. He pulled back and looked into her eyes again.
"Michael," she said.
It said a lot. He leaned in again, and their lips pressed together with an urgency. They weren't necessarily practiced kissers, or patient kissers, but their want for each other made the nose bump go by unnoticed, and the fact that he accidentally kissed her teeth in a mismatched attempt for breath cute rather than embarrassing.
And then they heard a knock.
"Oh shit!" Michael mumbled into Sara's mouth, and before they could even untangle themselves from their awkward slouch against the wall, the door to the stairwell sprang open.
"What a stud," Michael heard. His heart was thumping so fast he thought he was going to have a heart attack, but he managed to turn and look at the intruder with what he thought was an exasperated glare.
"Lincoln!"
Sara hid her head in Michael's shoulder. Her face was, she was sure, an explosive shade of red. Perhaps it would light Michael's shirt afire, and she wouldn't have to face his older brother. And oh Lord…what if he told on them?
"Wow, Michael," she heard Lincoln's voice say. "What a romantic place you've got here."
"Do you mind?" Michael hissed back, his arms still locked protectively around her. She appreciated that; if she could, she would have fled down the stairs, but that would have been fun to explain to the nurses. "You're embarrassing Sara."
"I'm embarrassing her?" Lincoln said. "You're the one playing tonsil hockey with her in a stairwell."
Sara wanted to die. Right now. Oh God. What if they told her Dad? He'd kill her. Kill her!
"Lincoln, I swear to God—" Michael said.
"All right, Mike, don't have a cow. But you two better get down to the lounge before I come looking to visit you," Lincoln said. "Otherwise the nurses are gonna be looking for you, and you're going to be hiding down here with your girlfriend."
Sara felt Michael's shoulders heave in a sigh. "Give us five minutes," he said. His chin rested on the top of her down turned head for a moment.
"I think you two had your five minutes already," Lincoln said. Sara heard him chuckle as Michael released her with one arm to punch his brother's arm as they left the stairwell.