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Alex looked tiredly up from the floor to regard his wife. He'd been staring at that same tile for about twenty minutes straight now, trying to count the little grainy dot... things... that were embedded into the material. It was tedious and wasn't getting anything done, but it was that or look at the weak, tiny body of his son--the mind-numbing task put to him by the tiles was better. Much better.

"In another ten, I think," he muttered, eyes turning quickly to the clock above Graciela's head and then back down again quickly to the floor, grazing over Zacharias too quickly to get a glance. He didn't want a glance, not when he was looking like that. All it did was fill him with pain and guilt--guilt because he was his father, he shouldn't be sitting there completely useless. He was--he was supposed to protect him from things, not let him lay and suffer, burning up with a fever.

He had heard the whispers, of course, seen the sympathetic looks of the healers whenever they went near the room. They were saying he didn't have a chance, that as a baby there was no way his immune system was strong enough to fight the virus that had gotten a hold of him. It was just--it made Alex want to go and deck each and every one of them for saying things like that, for not having hope for Zac. But then somewhere deep down, there was a voice telling him that he knew that everything they were saying was true. Babies just didn't have the ability to fight disease like adults did, especially not babies as young as him. Alex wished very hard that that voice would just shut up, because he hated sitting here, counting spots on a tile, feeling tired and defeated. He wanted to go over there and touch him and put an arm around Gracie and be able to look at him because he knew everything was going to be okay, but...

Bloody healers. Who cared when they were coming back? Apart from Santiago, Alex never wanted to see another healer as long as he was here. He needed someone to really fight for Zac, he needed someone who would believe that he could get over this.

Groaning in frustration, Alex ran his hands over his face furiously and leaned his head back against the wall. He closed his eyes and let out a deep breath of air. "I can go look for one of them if you want."