The flicker of pain that Emyli felt at laughing did not go unnoticed by Toby. He tried his best to keep his smile from faltering with concern, but it didn’t erase the worry he suddenly felt. Even if he might have been able to come up with a mix of drugs to keep her from feeling pain, he was as far from a doctor as a person could possibly be. What if something happened and she got an infection? It was going to weeks or longer before she finally healed; if it had been him that was stabbed, it would be no longer than a couple days – if that. T.J. could always try to help her, if she really needed it. Despite his apprehension, he wasn’t about to tell Emyli no or insist that she stay in the hospital a little longer. “Your call boss,” he said as he gave her a salute and turned to grab her clothes and shut the door. He barely had time to set her things on the bed before Emyli began to undo the ties on her gown. It was true, he did walk around his house naked more often than not, and even if she had seen him without a stitch of clothes on a hundred times before, that didn’t mean that seeing Emyli naked left him equally unfazed. He wrote it off now just as he did every other time he saw her in something nearly as revealing: she was an attractive girl, extremely attractive. “Niiiice.” Toby drawled out the compliment, more so because it would have been strange if he hadn’t said anything. He was finally moved to action when she started to struggle with getting dressed. “Here,” he said as he stepped forward and took the underwear from her hands, holding it so that Emyli could use his shoulders as a prop to give her more balance. If she could have seen his face, or been in the right frame of mind to realize, she might have noticed that not once did his eyes move from the floor to look up at her body that was inches away from his face; Toby didn’t even notice that it wasn’t a conscious effort on his part. “You don’t even need to ask. Like hell I’m letting you stay alone.” He stood up and reached for her bra, throwing it over her head and helping to get her arms through so she didn’t have to over-stretch; he did, however, leave her to secure it into place by herself. “Can’t risk you popping a stitch trying to do something stupid, like go to the bathroom.” Toby winked and booped her nose with his finger to brush away any lingering seriousness in the room.
Once Emyli was fully dressed, or at least as dressed as she needed to be to make the great escape, Toby gestured for her to take a seat in his new wheelchair. “I’ll call the cabbie and tell him to ring us when he’s here, then we make our run. Sound good?” He was already re-dialing the number for the cab company he had used moments before. Hopefully the taxi would still be in the area and wouldn’t take too long. While they waited for word, he hopped himself onto the edge of the hospital bed and began playing with the needle end of the I.V.. It was a curious contraption and he was certain that even if he had been familiar with hospitals in general, he would have still felt the urge to fiddle with it. “Sooo…” Toby drawled out as he casually lifted his gaze from the needle to Emyli. “Are you going to seriously tell me what happened? Or are you going to leave me hanging? Because if so, I’m just going to have to start going with you every time you leave to hook up with someone. Hey! I like to watch, but that’s just going to do nothing but ruin your game.” He was trying his best to make the question as light as possible, knowing that if he pulled the old ‘reassuring hand on shoulder’ and ‘you’re safe here’ routine, he would get nothing out of Emyli.