[Sadrain]

December 14th, Chicago. Base. Hospital.

Ryan held Alice hugged for a long time, then finally let her go and helped her lay back in the pillows, with a smile. For her, he couldn't express any of those conflicting emotions right now. Alice needed calm, soothing atmosphere where she would recover and feel homily. Maybe then she would speak finally, and some things would clear up. He was dreading the moment he would have to tell the girl about the operations.

Pushing those thoughts away, knowing that if he would linger on them, the rage would return, Ryan tried to start up a casual chatter, so usual for them. "I see she brought you flowers. Do you like them? I am trying to guess now, if it has your favorite flower in it. Hmm." The man stared at the bouquet for a long time, because he was trying to picture Alice with flowers - and the image turned out to be really cute.

"I think... Your favorite could be lily. Or rose." In reality, those were basically the only flower names that Ryan knew. For him, all flowers were pretty, but he couldn't tell them apart. Not that he had any chance to learn them properly in his past. Lilies he remembered from his mother's wedding day. She had wedding bouquet of those. He had often stared at the photo, trying to will that smiling, happy woman from it to the present time. But the drunk, depressed version never left.

"I like lilies." "And wouldn't it be nice to have a big garden one day? With big trees, swings, fountains and what else goes with that..." Ryan tried to picture something out of tv shows about the rich people, or soap operas. The thought that she might never be able to walk on her own feet trough such scenery, made him frustrated and Ryan tried his best to think about something else.