Emyli’s eager reaction to the candy made him smile. If she was okay enough to enjoy her favorite treat, then surely she was feeling alright. Even if he did believe it, Toby still knew her well enough not to trust the façade that she put out. Just like himself, he wasn’t entirely certain that Emyli would ever show if something was bothering her. That might have been one of the reasons that he liked her so much. Most girls, even if they had held strong up until now, would have broken down in hysterics the second they set eyes on a familiar face. But not Emyli. She was lying in a hospital bed with a new hole in her body and still she was making quips about the situation. “I always knew you were a trendsetter.” At the mention of his appearance, Toby ran another hand through his hair and smoothed out the obvious wrinkles in his days old shirt. “Hey, you call me out of bed in the middle of my prime sleeping time, you take what you can get,” he said with a return smirk. Truth be told, any part of the day could easily qualify as “prime sleeping time”, but most people that knew him that he usually was down for the count right after sunrise.
Even if she never broke down and cried on his shoulder, Toby always made sure to give her what he thought she needed in the moment. Right now, that seemed to be getting her out of the hospital. He steepled his fingers to his mouth, as though the request really needed that much consideration. There was no question about whether or not he would do it; hell, Toby had done much worse than this. “I don’t know, Ms. Parker.” His voice had gone into what he considered to be his serious, “adult” voice. He leaned forward moving his hands away to reveal a mischievous smile. “Does this mean that we get to steal one of those fancy wheelchairs too?” Toby could have easily carried her all the way home if he had to, but he also really wanted a wheelchair to play with at home. He had doubted that Emyli would have any problem with a little light theft, and he turned almost instantly after the question back to the door. This time when poked his head out, Toby was carefully looking for any nurses close by. There were some at the other end of the hall and a few at the nurse’s desk, but not a single one of them seemed to be giving any attention to what was happening outside of what they were busy with. It was going to be tricky snagging one of the wheelchairs. He decided to employ a trick that always worked in situations like this: so long as you looked like you knew what you were doing, people tended to ignore you completely. Acting shifty or the least bit nervous? Someone was bound to notice. He took a deep breath and focused all of his attention on walking as calmly and casually to the nearest wheelchair. Acting “squirrelly” was also an indicator that you were up to no good, which, unfortunately, was Toby’s natural manner of behavior. In order to come off like everyone else, it took a little extra effort on his part.
He did manage to make it back to Emyli’s room without anyone stopping him. He wheeled up to her bed with a look of pure victory. “Okay,” he said with a clap of his hands. “Now how many of these bleeps and bloopers are you hooked up to? Because something tells me they are going to be harder to smuggle out than you.”