Me at myself: exCUSE ME, WHY HAVE YOU NOT UPDATED SINCE JULY?!

Also probably what's on your mind too and the sad thing is, I have no explanation. Okay, that's a lie, I do but it feels lame in my head. The big project thing that held up my last chapter turned out to be way bigger than I thought it was and I have no idea how I churned out that monster in the first place. I still haven't finished what I set out to do. I also just haven't written in a very long time. Like, anything. Nothing has come out of me for months even though I have so many good ideas for things that could come out of my head. Hopefully, I can manage to write regularly until the end of the year. (crap, there's less than 3 weeks left of 2018).

Simone reached for the clipboard at the end of his bed and then began with an examination of some sort. He honestly wasn't sure what she was checking, just that she was pressing with a delicate balance of gentleness and firmness against the sides of his neck, his collar, and in his armpits. Then she moved with robotic habit to checking his chest, taking her stethoscope off her shoulders and putting the buds in her ears. She pulled the sheets down and carefully pressed it against his torso, giving extended attention to the area around his heart. Her face pinched in concentration but her guard was otherwise down and Infinite stared at her face, seeing the exhaustion in her sallow cheeks and dark, wrinkly eyebags. Too tired to make small talk or multi-task, he presumed but he was grateful that speaking wouldn't be required of him. He felt exhausted too just from that little bit of thinking and remembering he'd done in front of Miss Rose. Simone wordlessly took his temperature and yawned while taking his blood pressure. As much as he didn't want to talk the extended quiet unnerved him, allowing the bundles of emotions in him to ricochet around his head busily until he could barely take it anymore. He swallowed as she packed up the blood pressure machine.

"You can lay into me, if you want," he muttered.

Simone looked at him confusedly. "What do you mean?"

"I'm not taking care of myself. I'm doing a shit job at getting my life back together and now I'm back here with all the same problems."

"What?" Simone blinked, taking a while to process those words. "No! You're not doing a 'shit job', you were doing excellently as far as I could tell."

"Right…" Infinite murmured with flat disbelief.

"No, really! From what I saw of the notes that your nurse managed to take before the incident, you've been taking your recovery very seriously. Your wound looked like it had been healing well up until the point that it must have tore open during the incident and a post-op blood test showed no evidence of infection, or inflammation above expected levels. You were clearly keeping up a regular wound care and medication regime."

Infinite snorted and went back to staring at the ceiling silently. Simone turned over one of the pages on the clipboard to add more notes to his file.

"The only reason…" Infinite began. Simone paused her writing. He couldn't see (or rather, wouldn't look) but he could imagine her staring at him, pen poised above the page in wait for him to continue. "The only reason I did it was because of Gadget's nagging."

It was quiet while Simone waited to see if Infinite would speak up again. When he didn't, she responded: "That's not a bad thing. In my professional opinion, I don't think anybody really recovers on their own. It takes a lot of time and following the strict instructions is quite difficult for most people. Even those who don't have live-in carers have people around them to support them and assist with recovery."

"He doesn't get anything out of helping me," Infinite said, bristling at the thought of Gadget being his 'carer'.

"Perhaps not but you don't need to get anything out of it when you care about someone a lot. He seems to care about you a lot."

"Why would he do something dumb like that?"

"I don't know," she said, putting the clipboard in her lap and folding her arms over it. "You'd have to ask him yourself. All I can really say is that I think you're very lucky to have him."

She smiled at him. Infinite nearly opened his mouth to refute that in no uncertain terms but aborted the process when he realised that she was right. He'd probably be dead by now if it wasn't for Gadget. While he did still have some vanity, enough to believe that he may have survived his injuries and gotten by with his heart problems, at the very least he needed someone in his corner to protect him from the wrath of the resistance. In particular, one black hedgehog.

"In the meantime," Simone continued, looking down at her notes again, "your body is physically recovering as well as it possibly can. I'm getting very concerned, though, since this is your third major operation that had to be done under general anaesthetic in the past two months and the cumulative effects are taking their toll. Even after the transfusions, your blood pressure is so low that I'm not recommending that you be discharged yet and when it gets back up to a safe level I don't recommend discharging you unless you're being discharged into someone's care."

"No problems there," Infinite grumbled. "I've got a literal army keeping their eyes on me."

Simone shook her head. "In your case, I was thinking of someone specific."

Infinite turned his head and they engaged in a short stare-off. He frowned intensely at her but she didn't look cheeky for how brazen that remark at been, only tired. She broke eye-contact first, eschewing a childish standoff to put her pen in her lab coat pocket.

"You'll need to keep up with the anti-coagulant since your vena cava tear still hasn't completely healed but I want you off the beta-blockers until further notice. Other than that, there's nothing I would recommend that I haven't already recommended. Just keep doing as you have been."

She stood up and hung the clipboard with his file over the end bedrail again. "You're in relatively good shape right now, so I'll put it on your record that the kitchen can send you liquid foods. It's good to get back into the habit of eating since you've only had nutrients injected intravenously for the past couple of days but you don't have to eat what you don't feel up to eating. I'll come back and check on you when I'm next available. 'Til then…"

Simone turned to leave after that vague goodbye but when she opened the door the pink hedgehog from earlier came tumbling in, blocking her way. Amy Rose looked up at the doctor and chuckled sheepishly, flustered at being caught attempting to eavesdrop through the door. With no dignity whatsoever, she sat up to scoot out of the way and let Simone past awkwardly before she stood up, folding her hands in front of her in embarrassment. As Simone's footsteps disappeared down the hall she turned to Infinite.

"Sooo…. How did it go?" she asked.

Infinite's eyelids lowered. Tolerating her felt exhausting to him so he didn't grace her with a response, choosing instead to lie back and examine the ceiling again.

Ten days he stayed in hospital. Ten days of the hospital routine, barely palatable food and the rotating roster of colourful resistance members keeping vigil at his bedside with varying degrees of diligence. Despite his initial displeasure at the pink hedgehog's company ("Miss Rose!?" she had tittered and blushed when he had called her by the only name he knew for her. "I had no idea you were such a gentleman. But you can just call me Amy."), Amy Rose was one of the members he got along better with. She was easy and flippant in her manner, lacked the venom present in most of his interactions with her colleagues and she had a wide-open weak spot in the form of a certain blue hedgehog that he could exploit should their amity ever breakdown. Just one thing stood between him and his desire to project any goodwill towards her and that was how, next to Gadget, she seemed to care the most about his wellbeing.

Whereas most of the resistance seemed to wish he would stay immobile in a hospital bed, Amy kept asking how he was, commenting on the readings on the equipment as if she knew what they meant, and brought him things such as the flowers cluttering his bedside table in paper cups from the cafeteria that she had found growing through the concrete all around the ruined city. It threw him every single time. He couldn't shake the thought that he didn't deserve any of it and therefore shouldn't allow himself to enjoy her kindness. So when ten days had passed and Simone told him that she was finally happy to discharge him he practically threw himself to his feet. Or he would have, if his legs weren't suddenly so weak. Simone laughed a little bit less than politely.

"You've been in bed so long that your muscles have atrophied a bit," she explained. "I'll ask someone to bring a wheelchair up."

"You will do no such thing," Infinite growled from his undignified place on the floor.

"We'll see how you go, then. It's a good idea for you to get back on your feet as quickly as possible, even light and leisurely walking at this stage will help build back your strength."

"Thanks for letting me know," Infinite deadpanned sarcastically, pushing himself up on shaky arms. He reached for the side of the bed to crawl his way back up to standing. "Now, where do I sign to get out of here?"

"Ultimately, whether you get discharged or not is your own choice but I did tell you that I would not recommend leaving the hospital without a guarantee that you would have someone to take care of you and that condition still stands." Infinite rolled his eyes, muttering curses under his breath. Simone returned it with an eyeroll of her own, hers rather more amused. "Luckily for you, the resistance has someone ready to take you. He's in the waiting area for the ward at the moment."

Infinite paused in his focus on trying to walk his way to the end of the bed with his hands and elbows as much as his feet and turned to look at her quizzically. "How did he get here so fast?"

Simone smirked. "I think I know you well enough by now. I figured you'd try to do the same sort of runner you attempted last time, so I made sure your escort was here before I discharged you. Do you think you can make it down the hall?"

Infinite narrowed his eyes at her. He stepped back from the bed as far as his arms would allow him, then carefully took each hand off the mattress one after the other. When he didn't fall immediately, he allowed himself a triumphant smirk and then tried to take one wobbly step towards the door. His knees buckled.

To Simone's credit, she didn't laugh that time but her smile turned more pitying. "Shall we try crutches, then?"