Chicago Med fic: Suckerpunched (4/10)
Dec. 23rd, 2021 04:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
faye_dartmouthPART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE
PART FOUR
PART FIVE
PART SIX
PART SEVEN
PART EIGHT
PART NINE
PART TEN
-o-
Jay liked his job. He really did. Being a cop had always been sort of a natural choice for him. After leaving the army, he’d needed something to do, and he wasn’t about to pretend like he was the kind of guy who could sit in an office and push papers. He probably could have made do as a mechanic or got some kind of hands-on training like his old man, but there was no way in hell he was going to make his father proud.
Cops were there to serve and protect, and that sounded a little like the army when he got down to it. Plus, it was the only other job that would allow him to use his skills as a sharpshooter, so there it was.
And truthfully, Jay was good at it. He’d taken to it immediately, and he’d thrived in it ever since. Sure, he sometimes had issues with rules and regulations and whatever, but that was all part of the vibe. It was possible he could have been trained to be more compliant -- it was also possible he could have been kicked out of the CPD on his ass -- but Voight had found him and that was that.
So, Jay had no actual complaints. The hours were long, and the pay wasn’t great. The rules were cumbersome and the push and pull between hero and villain did get a bit exhausting. But he took it one case at a time. That was how he made the world a better place. One case at a time.
This case, though, it was brutal. A double murder. Drug ties. Possible gang involvement. Throw in a few illegal weapons charges, and Jay figured they were going to check all their boxes here. They were knee deep in the investigation, trying to unearth some new lead, when his phone rang.
His phone rang -- a lot. He was a cop. He had contacts; he had colleagues. He had leads to follow up on, and he had facts to check.
Also, occasionally, he did have friends.
But whatever.
His phone rang.
Jay barely glanced at the number -- not in his contacts list -- and answered.
“Halstead,” he said.
There was a pause on the end of the line, and Jay almost thought it was a telemarketer, but before he hung up, a voice came one. “Jay?”
Female and uncertain. But familiar. He knew the voice, but couldn’t place it.
“It’s Maggie Lockwood over at Med,” she continued.
That put a face with the voice, at least, but he couldn’t say it provided anything in the way of clarity. If anything, that only made it more confounding. He had contact with a few people at Med, but very few were social calls.
More disconcerting, Maggie didn’t sound like she was calling in a professional capacity.
No, Maggie sounded upset.
“Maggie, hi,” he said, trying to measure his own response as he gauged just what was wrong. “What’s up?”
He’d been a cop long enough to understand that emotion made normally reliable people much more unpredictable. If Maggie needed help with a patient, if there was some unexpected need for police involvement, then Jay had to retain professional control of the situation -- at least, from his end of things.
Maggie’s breathing was audible on the line. “Um, there’s been an accident.”
Jay inclined his head, wondering if he needed to be writing anything down. This was certainly not how cases typically went, but sometimes things needed a more finessed touch. “Okay,” he said, rocking back in his chair thoughtfully. “And do the police need to be involved?”
“No, Jay,” she said, and the ragged quality to her voice picked up a notch. “There’s been an accident with Will.”
That was the kind of line they were trained to say -- all of them. First responders had to say that kind of crap, and they all worked on ways to say it without losing their cool. Doctors, nurses, cops -- the lot of them -- needed to be able to deliver bad news to people on a regular basis. It was a skill they had all mastered, even if it was one none of them ever enjoyed using.
Jay had been on the other side of it a few times in his life.
But nothing prepared him how it still felt like an absolute punch to the gut.
He stopped rocking, going very, painfully still. “What kind of accident?”
This time, the sadness in her voice came into focus, grounded by an urgency that twisted in Jay’s gut. “You just need to get here,” she said flatly. “Fast.”
In his line of works, orders were a thing. The idea of time being of the essence -- that was also a thing. And frankly, it was a thing he was good at. Grace under pressure, and all that.
Except this wasn’t work.
This was…
Well, what was this?
At the desk nearby, Hailey was watching him. She didn’t try to hide it, and when he still looked flummoxed, staring at his phone screen blankly for several long seconds, she interjected herself into his confusion. “Hey,” she said, nodding at his phone. “Who was that?”
“Maggie Lockwood,” he said, barely cognizant of his own voice. He looked up from the phone to meet her gaze. “From Med.”
“Med?” Hailey repeated, and she looked taken aback. “What did she need? Is everything okay?”
The simple, obvious question without a simple, obvious answer. His mind worked numbly around it, struggling to come to terms with it. He didn’t get very far. “She, uh, she said something happened,” he said, and he looked at her. “Will’s been in an accident.”
The answer was vague, but his look was disconcerted. Hailey knew him well enough by now to read between the lines. “What kind of accident?”
The ambiguity was still roiling in his gut. He looked at her, feeling at a loss. He didn’t want to freak out, but here he was, on the verge of completely freaking out. “They didn’t say.”
He wasn’t trying to be obtuse, but he wasn’t exactly working with all the facts here. Worse, the facts he did have weren’t adding up.
Or they were.
They just weren’t adding up to anything good.
Hailey was sitting forward now, poised and still on the edge of her seat. “Well, is he okay?”
He looked back at his phone, starting to feel a little numb inside. “They didn’t say that either.”
Hailey’s brow was darkening, and he could feel her ready to approach. They’d worked hard to keep things professional at the office, but this was about to spiral out of control if Jay didn’t keep it in check. “Well, what did they say?” she asked.
And he had to keep it in check.
He forced himself to breathe, finding a way to swallow. “To get there,” he said, looking up again. “Fast.”
They sat there, eyes locked for a moment. Hailey’s expression faltered, somewhere between loyal partner and girlfriend. “Do you want me to come?”
The question jarred him, and he got up, shoving his phone in his pocket as he shook his head. “No,” he said. “I mean. No. I’m sure it’s fine.”
She got up after him, lingering by his side. “Yeah,” she said, though her enthusiasm didn't quite make it. “I’m sure it is. You’ll keep me updated?”
She reached out, tentative and small. Her hand latched on his.
It sent a flush down his spine. “Yeah,” he said. He smiled as best he could. “It’s probably just Will being an asshole.”
She laughed, too, and they could almost pretend like that was it as Jay headed to the door.
-o-
It was tempting at first to go full-on cop to the hospital. They had rules about using sirens and stuff, but he was pretty sure he could pull it off without getting in too much trouble. But still.
That was for emergencies.
This wasn’t an emergency.
Jay had managed to talk himself into that mindset while on the drive over, muttering it under his breath as his fingers went white around the wheel. Will had always been prone to stupidity. He used to get into fights all the time. Jay had had to drag his ass home more than once. He was the kind of guy who accidentally ingratiated himself into the goodwill of a gangster and performed brain surgery on his wedding day.
That was just Will, okay?
The smartest guy Jay knew.
And the absolute dumbest one, too.
Jay was always picking up after Will. He’d go to the hospital, find Will nursing a black eye or a split lip -- and he’d take him home, scold him, all of it. It was just like it always with Will. Fixable, self-inflicted disasters.
He was so convinced of this line of thought that he went ahead and parked in the visitor’s lot, taking a longer time to get into the building. He was going through the security checkpoint, explaining to the receptionist why he was there, when Maggie came out to greet him.
Personally.
She wasn’t smiling.
Jay was good at reading people -- he was a cop, after all -- and though Maggie was keeping her composure, it was obviously not easy. She was scared -- she was worried.
Hell, he could tell that she’d been crying. The eye makeup had been removed.
So it was bad, then. Like, bad bad. If he was getting a personal escort, then they were looking at the real deal.
“Jay,” she said, and her voice sounded hollow. She visibly swallowed, coming closer and taking him by the arm. She turned to the receptionist. “It’s okay. He’s with me.”
Jay followed her, step for step, as she led him back toward the ED. The numbness was starting to creep back in, but he forced his voice to work. “You said it was an accident,” he said. “What kind of accident? How is he?”
Asking two questions at once was bad police work, but Jay had a thousand more questions burning in the back of his mind. The fact that he only asked two was actually a sign of restraint and self control.
Maggie’s fingers flexed briefly before she dropped the touch. “Will was in a fight,” she said, drawing him into the doctor’s lounge. So it wasn’t just bad, then. Jay was getting more than the personal escort. He was being given privacy. It was really bad. She swallowed again and drew a breath, as though this was something she’d been bracing for. “He started something, some kind of physical altercation. I don’t know for sure, but I do know after he started the fight, he took a punch.”
So they were going with the how and not the what here. Now, Jay was curious about the who. “He started a fight? With who?”
“Dr. Archer,” Maggie said, a bit more collected than before.
Truthfully, that wasn’t the answer he’d expected, though Jay wasn’t sure he’d expected any answer. Will could piss anyone off, and he’d had points of conflict with a lot of people he’d worked with. The guy had never fully told him why they’d fired his ass in New York, but he was sure that Will hadn’t left on good terms with his colleagues.
But Archer?
Will’s boss, even if only temporarily?
Will was on probation. Playing nice had been part of the assigned role in order to stay employed. All the times Will had cut and run, he’d made a choice to see this one out, and he’d been true to it.
Honestly, Jay was a little proud of him for it.
Everyone could be an idiot.
It took courage -- and in Will’s case, a lot of personal growth -- to own up to it and see it through.
So, for Will to pick a fight with his boss? Now?
Was something.
“Archer?” he repeated, unable to make sense of that information. This whole thing was a series of impossible truths, and that fact just made things so much worse. He shook his head, trying to parse it out. “The SOB in charge?”
“The temporary chief, yes,” Maggie said, still visibly keeping herself in check.
Jay made a face with a small huff. Maggie was doing okay with her self control, but Jay not so much. “Well, from the sound of it, the guy had it coming. Will can’t stand him, and he says no one likes him. So I mean if the guy is crying assault or something stupid--”
Maggie’s expression only grew more somber as he spoke. “Jay, stop. You don’t understand.”
But Jay did understand. He’d been Will’s brother all his life; he knew how his brother operated. He had never been shy to get into fights, and he was always the guy who got up. “Will’s taken hits before--”
“Yes,” she said, eyes bright as she stepped forward and stilled. “But when he fell this time he hit his head. Hard.”
She was trying to make a point, that much was clear. But Jay was struggling to put two and two together and come up with anything that resembled four. “Okay,” he said, venturing the acknowledgement with a cautious uncertainty.
Jay was growing uneasy. Maggie, on the other hand, just looked sick by now. “Jay, it caused a bleed in his brain. A hemorrhage.”
He was no good at the medical stuff -- by design, of course, as he naturally hated it -- but he wasn’t an idiot. He’d been around blood and death too much not to recognize when something was going south.
When something had already gone south.
Still, this wasn’t a case. Jay wasn’t chasing a suspect. He wasn’t helping a victim.
They were talking about Will.
His brother.
Beyond that, nothing else computed. “What are you saying, Maggie?”
She gathered a breath, but it did nothing to calm her down. “I’m saying he’s in surgery,” she said. “Right now.”
Simple, to the point, and still utterly impossible to make sense of. Jay felt his heart quicken in his chest, a cold sweat breaking out across his back. “Surgery?” he asked, almost laughing now. It had to be a joke. This whole thing had to be a joke, but there was no damn punchline. “Wait? You mean he’s in brain surgery?”
He asked it like it was an impossibility.
But Maggie did not offer him the ready denial he needed. “I’m sorry, Jay.”
The apology only made the situation more surreal. His face contorted. “Wait? What?” he asked, his voice starting to rise again. “You’re sorry? For what?”
She looked like she was ready to cry now. “It’s very serious. His condition -- we just don’t know yet.”
They didn’t know? They didn’t know what? He scrambled to come up with an answer that was somewhat palatable, and he came up with nothing. “Are you telling me he could die? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
He was seething now, brimming with a frustration he couldn’t even name. His mother had died of cancer, slow and terrible. A fire had taken their father, sudden and unplanned. Jay had been there both times.
And to think he’d missed this?
To think Will had died and he wasn’t even there?
That he was in surgery -- brain surgery -- and Jay hadn’t even known?
It couldn’t be happening. Denial was a powerful motivator, and Jay had been here before. He shook his head. He had to shake his head. “You’re not making any sense, Maggie,” he said. “Will’s in brain surgery? Because of a fight? With that Archer asshole?”
The bits and pieces were all there, but Jay couldn’t put it together into a coherent picture. He didn’t want to, maybe.
Maggie almost winced. “Honestly, I don’t know the full story myself,” she said with a sigh. “I just know they got into it -- somehow -- and Will ended up nonresponsive. We rushed him into surgery, but he’s showing signs of a very serious brain injury. At this point, I couldn’t even pretend to give you a prognosis.”
It was medical talk -- the kind that Jay hated. It was couched in niceties, but that didn’t obscure the bald, basic truth. “That’s it?” he asked with a scoff. “You’re telling me this Archer guy took a shot at Will, and now what? He’s going to die? I mean, is that what you’re actually telling me right now.”
Maggie’s shoulders fell, and she looked crestfallen. “Jay, I don’t even know for sure what I’m telling you. I only know what I know, and I want to tell you more -- and I will tell you more as soon as there’s anything to tell.”
“But you haven’t told me anything!” Jay said, and his voice was rising now, and he didn’t give a damn.
Maggie, to her credit, didn’t flinch. “Jay, I wasn’t on Will’s case. I talked to April -- and she was on Will’s case. She’s the one who told me I needed to call you because you need to be here for him,” she said simply, reasonably. As if this was simple or reasonable. “And you need to be here for yourself.”
“Fine,” he said, maintaining some semblance of his self control for her sake. “But I need to see him. No more talk. No more posturing. I need to see my brother now.”
It was supposed to be a good thing, getting what he wanted. Except, it was possible he hadn’t thought this one through. What he wanted was his brother.
What he was getting, however, was a view of his brother on the operating table.
During brain surgery.
He was starting to wonder if that was a bad idea when Maggie led him through a network of hallways and then opened the door into a smaller area, banked by windows on one side. He caught a glimpse of the surgical team -- and a few smears of blood -- when his attention was drawn to something else, something a lot closer.
It was a doctor.
At first glance, Jay would have taken that for what it was. They were in a hospital, after all. They were even in a restricted area that would be accessed by, you guessed it, doctors. And doctors did all sorts of strange stuff like second opinions and follow up and observation, so it probably wasn’t particularly unusual or anything.
But then, Jay saw who it was.
After this many years with CPD, Jay had a good working knowledge of the ED staff. This just happened, both from following up with cases and from his own tendency to be injured in the line of duty. The fact that he had a brother on the staff only made it that much easier. He knew most of them by name; some of them might be considered drinking buddies. Even the ones he didn’t know well, he knew, and someone like the chief of the ED? Was pretty hard not to know.
Especially when that person hated your brother.
Even more so when that person -- that very person -- was the one who had fought his brother to get to this position.
It took him a long moment to process through that series of revelations, and he had come to a stop, staring dumbly, while Maggie’s eyes widened and Archer seemed to brace himself.
And for a moment, no one moved.
They were stuck in that moment, on the precipice of something. What? No one knew, but Jay realized quite suddenly that it was up to him to decide. Maggie was running mitigation. Archer was on defense. And Will was on the operating table and Jay couldn’t think straight anymore.
“What’s he doing here?” he asked, looking at Maggie.
She looked just as surprised as he was. “He’s been on Will’s case, but I didn’t know--”
“No, what is he doing here?” Jay asked, his voice rising precipitously. “I mean, this is him, right? The guy who did this to Will?”
The question carried weight, but it was impossible to imbue it with the severity it needed. He’d been called out of work, and Maggie was telling him Will might not make it. Will was in brain surgery, and right here, standing happy as he pleased, was the asshole who was responsible.
They didn’t know the whole story, they said.
They didn’t know the whole story, whatever.
The story was: Archer hit his brother, and now his brother might not live. There didn’t need to be more.
Maggie was trying to explain -- or something -- but Jay wasn’t really in a position to be listening.
Stepping forward, he shook his head, more adamant than before. “You did this?” he asked, nodding to the operating room behind him. “You did this, and what? You’re just watching? Just standing here to see if you need to finish what you started?”
It was wild speculation, and there was a small, rational part of Jay’s brain that recognized it. But that rational part was indeed very small.
And it was totally irrelevant.
Maggie was still fumbling over her words, but Jay’s eyes were locked in on Archer. Archer didn’t back away, but he put his hands up. If it was meant to be disarming, it wasn’t going to be an effective gesture.
Not now.
Not here.
“What did you do to him?” Jay asked -- all but demanded.
Archer shook his head. “Nothing--”
Jay took another step forward, and he wasn’t trying to be menacing. He was, however, pissed as hell. He could feel the anger vibrating through every nerve in his body at the moment. “Like hell.”
“Look, I’m sorry for what happened, I am,” Archer said, his hands still up in front of him. “But Dr. Halstead started this whole mess.”
To say it, to say it here, like that, Jay just couldn’t. His brother had his skull open in the next room and Jay couldn’t. “That’s crap. It’s total crap, and you know it.”
“That’s not crap,” Archer said, and he had a surly disposition. It was clear to Jay without even knowing the guy why everyone on staff hated his guts. “I mean, you’re his brother, right? You know him. You know how hard the last few months have been, how his behavior has been erratic. And it’s understandable, it is--”
To couch the critical assessment in something like sympathy? Jay shook his head, increasingly vehement. “You don’t know anything about my brother or what he’s been through,” he snapped. “And I do know my brother, and I know he’s been working his ass off.”
Most doctors would have the common sense courtesy not to have this fight during the actual surgery.
The fact that Archer didn’t seem ready to back down?
Well, that just solidified the notion in Jay’s gut that there was something seriously, seriously wrong here.
“Look, he’s been purposefully evocative,” Archer started to explain.
Jay’s expression contorted. “Are you kidding me?” he asked, eyes flashing to Maggie. “Is this guy for real? He’s sitting here blaming Will--”
Maggie looked to intervene, but Archer was an asshole and a half. “I’m a soldier, so I defend myself as necessary, but I never intended--”
Oh, so now he was going to play the soldier card?
That was where they were? Self defense?
This son of a bitch had no idea who he was talking to.
Jay stepped forward, chest puffed out. “And I’m a soldier, too,” he snapped. “And we’re called to serve and protect, so I’m pretty sure that means we aren’t supposed to punch out civilians.”
Archer shook his head, still fully deflective. “I really am sorry, but you know he has impulse control issues. Everyone at Med knows he has impulse control issues.”
It was too much. Serve and protect? Yeah, that didn’t stand a chance against the asshole who put his brother in surgery at the moment.
In the moment, it didn’t matter who was right or wrong. Questions of justification were irrelevant.
Will was in surgery.
And this son of the bitch was the one who put him there.
Jay had questions, sure, but for now, he had all the knowledge he needed to know that he wanted to wipe this bastard out of existence.
Growling now, Jay’s fingers tightened into fists. “I’ll show you impulse control--”
He knew it was stupid. He knew it was brash and violent and childish and really, really stupid.
The thing was, though -- the real thing was -- Jay didn’t care.
All he cared about was the fact that his brother was in surgery right now -- actual brain surgery -- and this flippant bastard was the one who put him there.
If this guy wanted to throw punches, then Jay would show him what happened when you threw punches at a Halstead.
He got one good punch off, square in the center of the face, and the older man reeled back in surprise. Jay surged forward to pound him again, but Maggie’s hand was suddenly a vice around his arm.
“Jay -- stop!” she said, voice rising now. Jay was ready to ignore her, but her nails bit into his biceps. “We’re in the gallery of the OR. Your brother is right over there with his brain exposed. Do you think maybe you want to pull yourself together?”
Breathing hard, Jay eased back. Her words hit home -- and they hit hard. He didn’t feel sheepish exactly -- the bastard deserved it -- but context.
He glanced through the window, catching sight of the blood.
Will’s blood.
Maggie’s grip didn’t abate, but her eyes turned like ice to Archer. “Both of you,” she said firmly.
For a moment, Jay could only see red, but he looked from Will across to Archer. At a distance now, Archer was dabbing at his nose. It was bloody; but not bloody enough, as far as Jay was concerned.
“Well, it looks like it runs in the family,” Archer said, pressing the back of his hand to his nose once more, testing to see how bloody it was. “At least we can say Dr. Halstead comes by his aggression honestly.”
He was about to lunge at the bastard again, but Maggie’s grip was firm. She all but dragged him out, and it was only the shock of the situation that allowed Jay to comply.
Even so, by the time he was in the hall, he was seething.
He was visibly shaking, he was so pissed off.
Maggie held fast to his arm, leaning down to look him in the eyes. “There is no way you can be doing what you’re doing,” she said sternly. “If you attack any person on staff here, they will throw you out and there will be nothing I can do to stop it. And that is no way for you to help Will right now.”
His nerves was singing, and he could feel the throbbing of his pulse as his adrenaline spiked and peaked. He pointed hotly back to the door. “That bastard did this to him--”
“I told you,” Maggie said, weary with her patience as she let go of him finally. “We don’t know the whole story. Will started that fight--”
Jay shook his head, falling back stubbornly as his jaw went rigid. “We don’t know the story, but we know Will started it?”
Maggie sighed. “Jay--”
“No,” Jay said, voice starting to rise again. “What we do know is that the asshole threw a punch, and now Will’s in surgery--”
His pulse was picking up again, and he nearly bounced on the balls of his feet, jerking himself in direction of the room Maggie had just forcibly dragged him out of.
She held up her hands, clearly ready to intervene again if the occasion should arise. Normally, Jay would like his odds against her, but she had the wherewithal even if he had the passion.
“Jay,” she said, slow and clear in her words. “If you do not calm down, I will kick you out myself until you do. Archer is the chief of the ED.”
Jay snorted. “Temporarily,” he said derisively. “Where the hell is Ethan anyway?”
“Not here, mostly,” Maggie said sharply, telling Jay what he already knew. “So that means Dr. Archer is in charge. If you don’t play by the rules, then no one can help you -- or Will.”
Will.
Jay had to keep that in perspective.
He was here for a reason. And that reason was Will.
Drawing back, he willed his heart to settle, and he eased back his stance. He refused to be sheepish, but if he felt a little guilty, then at least it was understandable.
“How is he?” he finally asked, once he felt properly in control of his emotions again.
Maggie eased as well, apparently mollified by the change in his stature. “Are you calm now?”
Jay drew another breath, letting it out through his nose. “Yes.”
“Good,” she said. “Then, let’s find out.”
“Fine,” Jay said, doing his best to acquiesce. “But I want him gone.”
Maggie nodded in agreement. “Okay--”
“Now,” Jay added, giving the single word all due stress.
“I can make that happen,” Maggie agreed.
“He goes nowhere near my brother -- or me,” Jay said.
“Okay,” she said, the calm in her voice more audibly strained now. She held up her hands to him, as if she might try to physical restrain him if he made another move. In truth, she might, but when he stayed still, she settled for a gentle glare. “Just wait here.”
Waiting was, in actuality, the very last thing Jay wanted to do.
Well, that was hyperbolic. There were a lot of other worse things. He could be identifying his brother’s body in a morgue.
But then again, that was a pretty low bar to set.
Waiting was, no matter how Jay tried to frame it, still pretty bad.
And waiting.
Waiting for what?
For someone to tell him that Will had died? For someone to tell him that Will was okay? For someone to explain what the hell had happened?
It didn’t even make sense. Will had been fine. Will had been more than fine. Will had been doing well. For all that Will had screwed up in the last six months, the guy had been making amends. Like, legit making amends.
And that was a new thing for Will. Will had spent a lot of his life cutting and running when things got hard, but not this time. This time, Will had owned up to his mistakes. He’d faced the consequences. He’d actually made the effort to rebuild.
And it had been working.
Now he was, what? Picking fights? With his boss?
None of it made sense.
Not one single bit of it.
Maggie was still inside while Jay paced, tracking a small line up and down the hallways. Then, from the far end, he saw another familiar face.
April.
She was one of the ED nurses, one of the few who had been here as long as Will had.
“Hey,” he said, eyes widening as she approached, clearly making a direct line toward him. He was doing a piss poor job of processing information at the moment, but a few salient details were standing out. Namely, April. “You were working on him? Maggie said you were on his case.”
The look on her face told him that he had remembered correctly.
It also told him that it hadn’t been good.
Maggie looked scared.
April looked a little sick.
He didn’t know April as well as he knew Maggie, but then, he didn’t have to. Some things were just easy to see.
“I was,” she said. She breathed in slowly, and she exhaled heavily. “Jay, I don’t know exactly what to tell you.”
“How about the truth?” Jay asked, his tone cutting sharply. “I mean, he’s in brain surgery right now. They’ve got his skull open--”
He was saying it for shock value, but April looked numb to the shock. As a nurse, maybe. As someone who had already faced it, more likely. “He had a hemorrhage -- a bleed,” she said. “A pretty bad one in his brain.”
Those were facts, at least. Not good facts, and not facts Jay knew exactly what to do with, but he had to start somewhere. “So? What does that mean?”
“Jay, a brain bleed is really serious,” she said. “Bleeds like the one Will had -- they can be devastating. Think -- a stroke. Because that’s basically what we’re talking about. A lot of people die from these things.”
She wasn’t sugarcoating it, which Jay wanted to appreciate.
If it didn’t scare him out of his mind.
“So, it’s bad,” she said. “But it happened while he was here, and we diagnosed it quickly. We got him to surgery within 30 minutes of the hit. That kind of response time is nearly unprecedented. It can have a huge impact on his outcome here.”
Jay tried to think of it in the optimistic spin she was presenting, but he was having a hard time getting past the idea of a unchecked bleed in Will’s brain for half an hour.
And doctors said crap like outcome, when what they really meant was death and impairment.
“His outcome,” he said, his own voice starting to waver. He wet his lips and took a breath that didn’t help. “You’re talking, what? Brain damage? Death? I mean, I’ve been here before.”
She nodded along, her brow creasing sympathetically. “I know, and I know that nothing I say now is going to make any of this easier, but we don’t know,” she said. “The severity of his injury is bad, Jay. But he got fast treatment from our best doctors. That does help his odds.”
“You’ve got to tell me more,” he said, and his demand was clouded by his desperation. “I mean, Will’s a doctor. He’s my brother. You’ve got to tell me more.”
“I know, and I wish I could,” she said. “We’re going to have to wait until they’re done, and the surgeon will be able to tell you more. Because honestly, he’s not going to know anything until he’s done either -- and we might not know anything for a few days, really. At this point, you have to assume that no news is good news.”
No news was no news, and Jay was rapidly running out of any ability to deal with these ridiculous attempts at optimism. However, Jay wasn’t completely incorrigible. Asking questions about Will’s condition was only going to get him ramming his head against a brick wall. He decided to pursue a different line of thought.
It was back to the how.
How the hell did Will end up with a brain bleed anyway?
“Maggie told me it was a fight,” he said, nodding his head and bringing his mind back around to some form of mildly rational thought. “And I know it was with Archer, but that asshole is the one who what? Was treating Will? How does that work?”
April took another breath and seemed to nod along with him. “I wasn’t there when the fight happened,” she said. “I only saw the aftermath.”
“Did anyone see it happen?” Jay asked. “Because we’re putting an awful lot of faith into this guy’s word.”
“Jay, I know you’ve got questions. I’ve got questions,” April said. “All I know is there was a fight. Whatever went down, it’s been building for weeks. Archer has been after him ever since he signed on as Temporary Chief. Will’s been pretty good about deflecting it, but I’ve seen how Archer’s been with him. I would have hauled off and hit him if I were Will.”
Speculation wasn’t going to be useful, especially when it seemed to suggest that Will could have been the aggressor. Will was an idiot, and he didn’t always know when to back down from a fight, but he wasn’t the guy who started throwing punches. Jay knew this from being the more aggressive brother since, well, forever.
“So what was it about today?” Jay asked, trying to keep his focus.\.
April shrugged, almost helplessly. “I told you: I wasn’t there. But Will did have a hard case. A bad one. A DNR.”
Of course he did. Jay’s medical knowledge was willfully scant, but he wasn’t an idiot. More than that, he knew his brother pretty well, and he knew that Will and DNRs? Were not a good combination. “So, did he get in trouble? Did he do it wrong? I know Will’s got a history of cases like that.”
The question seemed to make April think. “No, actually. The case worked out fine. Will did everything right by the book.”
Now the narrative made even less sense. “I don’t get it, then. We all work in difficult fields. We all deal with hard stuff. If he did it all right, then what’s the big deal?”
“Nothing, except that Archer wasn’t going to let it drop,” April explained. “I thought it was annoying at the time, the way he went on about it even while Will was in there with the patient. He was grandstanding, like he was trying to prove some point. Everyone at the desk knew it was bogus. The nurses had been talking all morning about the case, and Will did nothing wrong. In fact, he went above and beyond to make sure he did it right.”
That sounded accurate to Jay, and it went along with his overall assessment of Will’s mindset these days. He’d been focused on making amends. If not amends, then proving that he did still have what it took to be a leader in the ED, even if that meant paying attention to the tedious parts.
If this was all stuff he knew, then he was still coming up short on how the hell his brother ended up in surgery today.
“Okay, and then what?” he asked, prompting April to keep talking.
She looked like she was a bit at a loss, too, however. “Then? I mean, they fought. That’s what I can assume based on how this turned out.”
An assumption was a tool people used to make sense of their own realities, but they left room for doubt in police work. Legally, assumptions were shaky ground, and Jay couldn’t justify his brother’s condition with assumptions.
He was too much a cop.
He was too much a brother.
“What does that even mean? They fought? Over a case?” Jay asked, increasingly skeptical. “Will’s been a doctor for years now, and I’ve never once heard of him coming to blows -- especially over a case. That’s not normal, is it?”
It was a consideration for her. “Certainly not normal,” she ventured. “But--”
But Jay wasn’t ready to listen to posturing. Or crappy explanations that tried to justify things that just didn’t make sense. “And the story doesn’t even add up, even if it was a fight,” Jay pointed out, his ire starting to rise as his hackles stood on edge. “I mean, if this Archer asshole was part of the fight, why was he running lead? These two doctors get into a fight, and Will ends up unresponsive, and Archer’s the one in charge? He’s the one making the life and death decisions? After a physical fight?”
At this, her brow darkened as she fully understood his insinuation. “I was in the exam room, Jay,” she said. “Dr. Archer’s treatment plan was right on. His quick thinking is the only reason Will has a chance right now. I don’t like the guy either, but I can’t pretend like Dr. Archer hasn’t done everything possible to save Will’s life. We’re medical professionals. We are able to separate personal conflict from professional contexts.
Jay frowned, still trying to work that out. She had a point, of course. As professionals, they all knew what lines could be crossed and which ones couldn’t.
And still.
Something about this didn’t make sense.
April’s account was what it was, but the details grated. The omissions were glaring.
Archer had been after Will. Will had been deflecting. After a hard case, Archer made a ploy in front of the ED to egg Will on. Then, in private, fighting broke out. Punches were thrown, and Will ended up bleeding in his brain. Archer saved his life, like a good medical professional would.
Except, Jay was still caught up on one relevant detail. “But who started it?”
He’d asked it so many times that April, even in her obvious sympathy to Jay, seemed to be slightly exasperated. “Jay, I told you. I didn’t see it.”
“Fine,” Jay said. “But someone had to see it. This is a busy hospital. You’re telling me that Will and Archer, who have been publicly going at each other for weeks, just happened to get into a fight with no witnesses?”
Clearly, he had a point there. It didn’t take a genius to string the questions of uncertainty together, but maybe it did take a cop. Jay was crap at medical stuff, but he was a damn good detective.
This time, when April replied, she appeared thoughtful. “I really don’t know -- I’m not lying to you about that,” she said. “Just from what I’ve heard around the ED, no one knows. I think they must have been alone.”
As a cop -- and as a brother -- Jay’s hackles went up. “Wait, we’re literally talking no witnesses here?” he said. “We’re just taking Archer’s word on how this whole thing went down? How Will ended up in brain surgery? I mean, we keep coming back to that, and it keeps sounding worse and worse every time we do.”
His incredulity was palpable, and he could feel his anxiety starting to vibrate in his chest. He had a strong sense of justice under normal circumstances. The last time he’d felt like this, his father had been killed in an arson and he’d hunted down the bastard who did it at his own personal and professional peril.
April wasn’t blind to this, and her own response was more muted. “I guess, but again, Dr. Archer was the most ardent person on Will’s case,” she said. But she shook her head, brow furrowing somewhat. “But it is weird.”
People said stuff like that -- when they didn’t want to say anything but couldn’t help themselves. “Weird how?” Jay asked.
“Just -- I mean, it’s no secret,” she said. “Dr. Archer doesn’t like Will. At all.”
“In what way?” he pressed.
“All ways,” she said, matter of fact. “If you had asked me yesterday, I would have told you, no question, that Archer is out to get Will fired.”
Jay felt that anxiety reached its peak, and he forced his jaw to lock, lips pursed as he stated the next obvious point. “And now it’s a coincidence that Will is in surgery?”
April’s eyes widened at the clear implication. She shook her head, immediately recoiling from the insinuation Jay was making. “No. It’s one thing to say Dr. Archer didn’t like Will, but to suggest that this intentional…”
She trailed off as she seemed to follow her own line of thought.
“I mean, Will had been actively trying to diffuse the tensions in the ED. He was always telling people to just let Dr. Archer be. Will was trying to be the peacemaker for once, but that doesn’t mean that Dr. Archer did something untoward,” she said. “Come on, he’s a doctor. The acting chief. He wouldn’t.”
She was attempting to sound certain.
She wasn’t certain, though.
Jay, from his vantage point, was even less certain. “Would he?”
This time, she hesitated and chewed the inside of her lip. “I don’t know. Like I said, Dr. Archer saved Will’s life.”
And in Jay’s book, that didn’t put him in the clear. In fact, given what he knew of Will’s time in the ED lately and April’s corroboration of certain details, Archer’s role in this was murkier than ever. Most people weren’t monsters. Most people -- average people -- weren’t killers at heart. When harm was caused, most of them tried to fix it.
Some of them tried to cover it up.
Especially when they were part of the cause.
Before he could pursue that -- and before April could talk herself out of any more conclusions, Maggie made her way back. He watched as Dr. Archer exited as well, turning down a different hallway without even a look in Jay’s direction.
Soberly, Maggie came straight for him, nodding at April.
“The surgery?” April asked.
“Still going,” Maggie said. She offered a smile that was probably meant to be reassuring. “No change.”
April nodded, and she looked back to Jay. Her smile was even weaker than Maggie’s. “I know this is a lot, so I’m not going to crowd you,” she said. “But if you need anything or have other questions, you can find me in the ED. I’ll check back later, too. Just to see how Will’s doing.”
With that, she turned and headed back, and Jay looked back at Maggie with renewed vigor. “So, what do you think about this?”
“About the surgery?” she asked, a little taken aback by the directness of his tone. “I can pull up his chart for you.”
But Jay shook his head. “No, about the fight,” he said, refusing to be deterred now. He was a practical man. He liked problems he could fix. Will’s surgery was out of his hands. The circumstances of this so called accident, however, were not. “I’ve been putting the story together, looking at the timeline, the motives, and it’s not adding up. And everyone I’ve asked has been surprised. April said it was weird, Will taking a shot at Archer.”
“It’s no secret they didn’t get along,” Maggie said.
“But Will was playing nice,” Jay said, terse. He wasn’t going to pretend like his brother was an angel, but there was no way in hell he was going to act like Will hadn’t set himself to change recently. “And that’s not just me saying it. I know I’m biased, but April’s account jives with everything Will has told me. He knows his career is on the ice. He’s been toeing the line. He talked everyone out of action against Archer, and then he picks a fight? It doesn’t fit.”
Maggie pursed her lips and tilted her head thoughtfully. “It is a little weird. Unexpected just given how he’s been acting lately,” she agreed, as if she was allowing herself to consider this fully for the first time. “But what are we saying is the alternative? Assault?”
“Are we?” Jay asked. “And aren’t we saying it anyway if Will threw the first punch? It’s just a question of who punched first.”
“But Archer saved Will’s life,” Maggie argued, going back to the same line of defense April had used to justify her thoughts. “Why would he do that if he threw the first punch?”
“That’s all the more reason he would. He could have felt guilty,” Jay posited. “I mean, think about it. April said Archer’s been out to get Will -- and Will told me the same thing countless times. So, what if he tried to provoke Will? If the guy lost his temper, the whole thing could have been an accident.”
Maggie frowned, more disconcerted than before. “Jay, I know you're upset, but what’s the point?”
“Just this whole narrative,” he said, frustration almost eclipsing him now. “Will’s no saint, I know that better than anyone, but he’s been trying to make it right. And now I’m just supposed to believe that he threw it all away in some asshole who literally nobody likes. It’s convenient. He’s the guy throwing the punch, and he’s the only one left standing to tell the story. And I’m supposed to take his word that Will was the aggressor?”
This point held sway with Maggie, but she still dithered. “It could have been mutual. They were known to hate each other. Will has been trying hard, but like you said, he’s not perfect. He’s got his limits. Maybe things got out of control, an accident like you said.”
“But he’s saying Will threw the first punch, and I say there’s no way. Will wouldn’t risk his career for this guy. Not after everything he’s done to salvage things. No way,” Jay insisted.
“Maybe,” she conceded. “But that’s not the priority right now. Right now we need to focus on Will waking up so he can tell us his side of the story himself.”
He was a detective, true, but he was a brother first. The investigative train of thought withered just that fast in the face of something much more pressing. “Can I see him?”
Maggie nodded, but her eyes were serious. “I can let you into the gallery, and if you promise to be on your best behavior, you can watch,” she said, but her voice cut with a warning. “But you have to be quiet. Not a word of disruption.”
It was in Jay’s nature to be a part of things -- being a bystander didn’t suit him, especially when his family was involved -- so he readily acquiesced. He thought that being close to the process -- being close to Will -- might help him calm down. It might help him focus.
But when he got into the gallery, he realized quickly the limitations of his fortitude.
He was close to the action, that was true.
And he was close to his brother, that was also true.
But Will was hardly Will right now. Will was intubated, positioned awkwardly on the table. A portion of his hair had been shaved away -- and that was hard enough -- but to see the open flap of skin? The missing portion of his skull?
And the blood on the surgeon’s hands. The glinting of the tools as they poked into Will’s brain again and again and again--
Maggie had stayed with him, close as she dared. Her touch startled him, and he flinched even as he was unable to look away.
“We don’t have to watch,” she said softly. “This is only if it makes you feel better, so you see we’re doing everything we can--”
“Can he survive this?” he asked, his voice suddenly high and tight.
“He can,” Maggie said.
Jay blinked, hard and fast. “Can he survive this and still be Will?”
Maggie’s voice was softer still. “Yes,” she said. “Some patients make it through brain surgery just fine.”
The doctor -- gowned and gloved -- pulled a magnifying device closer, lifting a needle as he reached for Will’s exposed brain matter once more.
Flushing, Jay felt the blood rush to his head. Everything for a moment, and he hovered somewhere between throwing up and passing. In a rush, he turned, walking stiffly from the room with Maggie right behind him.
She followed him into the hall, and he turned back toward her and shook his head. “They’re operating on his brain,” he said, even though she already knew that. His eyes were burning, and his chest was tight. “You’re telling me, he can still come through this, even though they’re literally putting needles into his brain?”
His voice was nearly unhinged now, hitching wildly as the emotions overcame his reason. In cop mode, he’d been able to cope by solving the mystery. Back in brother mode, he was struck with how little there was he could do. With his brother’s skull open, there was literally nothing Jay could do.
Maggie drew a breath and nodded gently. “He can, but honestly? I don’t know right now,” she said. “I need to believe that he’s going to be okay, because Will’s my friend. But I can’t lie to you, Jay. I can’t pretend like everything is all right.”
Jay squeezed his eyes shut, taking in tight, small bursts of air. All those years, his brother had run away from his responsibilities. All those years, Will had been an inconsistent presence in his life. And he finally had Will back, and they were closer than ever. Will was making things right, he’d been making amends. They were brothers. Jay hadn’t even got to ask him to be the best man at his wedding--
Eyes open again, his resolve wavered. He wasn’t strong; he wasn’t impenetrable.
And the thought of losing his brother--
Threatened to break him entirely.
“How -- uh,” he started, but had to stop to clear his throat. “How much longer will he be in surgery?”
“Another hour,” Maggie said. “Maybe two, if they find more bleeders.”
Jay nodded, as if that assessment of his brother’s brain being exposed for another few hours was reasonable and understandable. “I’ll just use the waiting room,” he said stiffly.
Maggie nodded in sympathetic understanding. “I can find you a better place,” she said. “Some place more private.”
She was trying to be nice, but it didn’t matter. Public, private -- all that mattered was that Will was in that operating room. Will was fighting for his life.
And there wasn’t a damn thing Jay could do to help.
-o-
Maggie showed him to a room -- Jay had probably been there before on police business -- and she left him alone. It was clear she was willing to stay, but Maggie had been a nurse for a long time. She obviously knew a thing or two about reading people, and for the moment, Jay would get no benefit from company.
At the moment, Jay would get no benefit from anything -- that was the hard truth of the matter. He’d run the gamut between denial and anger, throwing punches and asking questions, and now here he was. Relegated to a waiting room to contend with the depth of his shock.
That was what it was, too. Jay wasn’t so far gone that he didn’t recognize it. It happened all the time -- victims and their families, in the face of the impossible, were left scrambling to put together the pieces and make sense of whatever was left of their lives.
And for Jay, it was even more than that. It was limbo. A state between what had happened and what might still happen. This was a story that, if Maggie and April were to be believed, might still have a happy ending. Will might be fine. They might laugh over drinks about this when they were old, gray and retired together.
But it might still be a tragedy. Will might still die on that table -- or worse.
Will might not be Will.
How would that even work? Jay had spent years coming to terms with his brother’s impossible contradictions, and as soon as they find their common ground, what? Jay loses him again? Loses him forever?
As a cop, he dealt with the facts. He came in after the matter and sorted out the truth.
This, though. This was unfolding in real time. The tragedy wasn’t defined yet.
The cusp of disaster or salvation.
Jay paced the small room, back and forth, back and forth. When his legs felt numb, he sat down on one of the chairs and stared blankly at the wall, unable to form coherent thoughts. Sometimes, he wanted to cry. Other times, he wanted to slam his hand against the wall repeatedly until something broke -- his hand or the wall, it didn’t matter which.
Finally, after a lost period of time, Jay took out his phone. The rote habit didn’t require much thought, and he logged in, scrolling through his missed calls and messages. Most were work related -- they had no idea that Jay wasn’t even at the office, much less that there was anything wrong. Voight knew something was up -- Hailey had probably told him as a way to cover for Jay’s absence -- but he couldn’t deal with an inquiry from his boss.
Hailey, though. He needed Hailey.
She had texted the most, with a string of messages over the course of the last hour. They were short and unprovocative, clearly careful in their inquiry. He read them, but he couldn’t make sense of them. And there was no way in hell he was going to get his fingers to function well enough to actually type a reply.
But he needed Hailey.
He wanted Hailey.
With fumbling fingers, he pulled up her number. Pressing call, he put the phone on speaker and held it in front of him while it rang. Hailey answered on the first ring.
“Jay?” she asked, sounding expected. She seemed to catch herself, scaling back from outright concern. “Hey. I was wondering when I’d hear from you. What did you find out? How’s Will?”
He’d wanted to call her because she was always so good at helping keep him in check. She was a stabilizing force in his life; around her, he knew how to get ahold of his emotions, even when under duress.
Hearing her voice, though, had almost the opposite effect.
He’d kept it together so far, but she was his safe spot. Just that quickly, his resolve threatened to undo itself, and his throat constricted as his eyes burned. “It’s bad,” he said, almost choking on the words. “It’s, um. It’s really bad.”
For a second, she was quiet on the other end of the phone. She seemed to be gathering herself, and when she spoke, her voice was careful and measured. “Bad how? What happened?”
“There was this fight -- or something,” Jay said, and the words sounded hollow, like they were coming from someone else’s throat. “I can’t put all that together yet, but Will took a punch. He went down hard, I guess -- hit his head, whatever. He’s in surgery right now.”
He could hear the intake of her breath -- surprise. When she spoke, however, she seemed to control it well. “Surgery? What for?”
The sight of Will on the operating table, brain exposed was still fresh in his mind. He did what he could not to shudder. “Brain surgery. Something about a hemorrhage. They’re trying to stop it, get it in check -- whatever.”
This time, however, she couldn’t hide her surprise. “Wait? Brain surgery? What do you mean, brain surgery?”
He’d moved from denial, at least. He was a practical man. There was no way around this but acceptance. “Brain surgery,” he said again, and the words still tasted bitter in the back of his throat. “I know how it sounds -- and I know how it is. They’re not sure if he’ll make it, or you know, what he’ll be like if he does.”
She scoffed, plainly grappling with the impossible. “But how? A fight? This doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know,” Jay said. “Trust me, I’ve been over this, too. Something’s not right here, but there’s nothing I can do about it -- not while Will’s still….”
He couldn’t finish. He didn’t even know how to finish.
While Will was unconscious? While Will was in surgery? While Will’s skull was still open? While Will’s fate was still up in the air?
“Do you want me to come?” Hailey asked. “I can be there in 20 minutes.”
“No--” he started, shaking his head.
“20 minutes, Jay,” Hailey said. “I can be there for as long as you need. For you and Will.”
It was tempting, of course. The comfort she could provide -- the reassurance she might offer. If Jay was adrift in his emotions, she could be his emotional island, anchoring him to something stable when everything else felt unmoored.
But Will was his brother, the last of his family. He didn’t know what to make of that right now, and he just needed -- he just needed to think. He just needed some time, some space. He just needed Will to wake up and for everything be okay.
“No,” he said again, voice dropping low. He reached up and rubbed his forehead with his free hand. “Just -- not yet, okay? Not yet.”
“Sure,” she said obligingly. “But as soon as you need anything--”
“I know,” he said, dropping his hand wearily again.
“Anything, Jay,” she said. “And as soon as you know anything--”
“I know,” he said again, almost drawing his lips into a sad smile. “Thanks, Hailey.”
He hung up, then, staring at the screen as it ended the call and slowly faded to off. He stared at it longer still, wishing there was something there, something more, anything.
There was nothing, though.
Jay looked up at the blank wall again.
There was just nothing.
PART TWO
PART THREE
PART FOUR
PART FIVE
PART SIX
PART SEVEN
PART EIGHT
PART NINE
PART TEN
-o-
Jay liked his job. He really did. Being a cop had always been sort of a natural choice for him. After leaving the army, he’d needed something to do, and he wasn’t about to pretend like he was the kind of guy who could sit in an office and push papers. He probably could have made do as a mechanic or got some kind of hands-on training like his old man, but there was no way in hell he was going to make his father proud.
Cops were there to serve and protect, and that sounded a little like the army when he got down to it. Plus, it was the only other job that would allow him to use his skills as a sharpshooter, so there it was.
And truthfully, Jay was good at it. He’d taken to it immediately, and he’d thrived in it ever since. Sure, he sometimes had issues with rules and regulations and whatever, but that was all part of the vibe. It was possible he could have been trained to be more compliant -- it was also possible he could have been kicked out of the CPD on his ass -- but Voight had found him and that was that.
So, Jay had no actual complaints. The hours were long, and the pay wasn’t great. The rules were cumbersome and the push and pull between hero and villain did get a bit exhausting. But he took it one case at a time. That was how he made the world a better place. One case at a time.
This case, though, it was brutal. A double murder. Drug ties. Possible gang involvement. Throw in a few illegal weapons charges, and Jay figured they were going to check all their boxes here. They were knee deep in the investigation, trying to unearth some new lead, when his phone rang.
His phone rang -- a lot. He was a cop. He had contacts; he had colleagues. He had leads to follow up on, and he had facts to check.
Also, occasionally, he did have friends.
But whatever.
His phone rang.
Jay barely glanced at the number -- not in his contacts list -- and answered.
“Halstead,” he said.
There was a pause on the end of the line, and Jay almost thought it was a telemarketer, but before he hung up, a voice came one. “Jay?”
Female and uncertain. But familiar. He knew the voice, but couldn’t place it.
“It’s Maggie Lockwood over at Med,” she continued.
That put a face with the voice, at least, but he couldn’t say it provided anything in the way of clarity. If anything, that only made it more confounding. He had contact with a few people at Med, but very few were social calls.
More disconcerting, Maggie didn’t sound like she was calling in a professional capacity.
No, Maggie sounded upset.
“Maggie, hi,” he said, trying to measure his own response as he gauged just what was wrong. “What’s up?”
He’d been a cop long enough to understand that emotion made normally reliable people much more unpredictable. If Maggie needed help with a patient, if there was some unexpected need for police involvement, then Jay had to retain professional control of the situation -- at least, from his end of things.
Maggie’s breathing was audible on the line. “Um, there’s been an accident.”
Jay inclined his head, wondering if he needed to be writing anything down. This was certainly not how cases typically went, but sometimes things needed a more finessed touch. “Okay,” he said, rocking back in his chair thoughtfully. “And do the police need to be involved?”
“No, Jay,” she said, and the ragged quality to her voice picked up a notch. “There’s been an accident with Will.”
That was the kind of line they were trained to say -- all of them. First responders had to say that kind of crap, and they all worked on ways to say it without losing their cool. Doctors, nurses, cops -- the lot of them -- needed to be able to deliver bad news to people on a regular basis. It was a skill they had all mastered, even if it was one none of them ever enjoyed using.
Jay had been on the other side of it a few times in his life.
But nothing prepared him how it still felt like an absolute punch to the gut.
He stopped rocking, going very, painfully still. “What kind of accident?”
This time, the sadness in her voice came into focus, grounded by an urgency that twisted in Jay’s gut. “You just need to get here,” she said flatly. “Fast.”
In his line of works, orders were a thing. The idea of time being of the essence -- that was also a thing. And frankly, it was a thing he was good at. Grace under pressure, and all that.
Except this wasn’t work.
This was…
Well, what was this?
At the desk nearby, Hailey was watching him. She didn’t try to hide it, and when he still looked flummoxed, staring at his phone screen blankly for several long seconds, she interjected herself into his confusion. “Hey,” she said, nodding at his phone. “Who was that?”
“Maggie Lockwood,” he said, barely cognizant of his own voice. He looked up from the phone to meet her gaze. “From Med.”
“Med?” Hailey repeated, and she looked taken aback. “What did she need? Is everything okay?”
The simple, obvious question without a simple, obvious answer. His mind worked numbly around it, struggling to come to terms with it. He didn’t get very far. “She, uh, she said something happened,” he said, and he looked at her. “Will’s been in an accident.”
The answer was vague, but his look was disconcerted. Hailey knew him well enough by now to read between the lines. “What kind of accident?”
The ambiguity was still roiling in his gut. He looked at her, feeling at a loss. He didn’t want to freak out, but here he was, on the verge of completely freaking out. “They didn’t say.”
He wasn’t trying to be obtuse, but he wasn’t exactly working with all the facts here. Worse, the facts he did have weren’t adding up.
Or they were.
They just weren’t adding up to anything good.
Hailey was sitting forward now, poised and still on the edge of her seat. “Well, is he okay?”
He looked back at his phone, starting to feel a little numb inside. “They didn’t say that either.”
Hailey’s brow was darkening, and he could feel her ready to approach. They’d worked hard to keep things professional at the office, but this was about to spiral out of control if Jay didn’t keep it in check. “Well, what did they say?” she asked.
And he had to keep it in check.
He forced himself to breathe, finding a way to swallow. “To get there,” he said, looking up again. “Fast.”
They sat there, eyes locked for a moment. Hailey’s expression faltered, somewhere between loyal partner and girlfriend. “Do you want me to come?”
The question jarred him, and he got up, shoving his phone in his pocket as he shook his head. “No,” he said. “I mean. No. I’m sure it’s fine.”
She got up after him, lingering by his side. “Yeah,” she said, though her enthusiasm didn't quite make it. “I’m sure it is. You’ll keep me updated?”
She reached out, tentative and small. Her hand latched on his.
It sent a flush down his spine. “Yeah,” he said. He smiled as best he could. “It’s probably just Will being an asshole.”
She laughed, too, and they could almost pretend like that was it as Jay headed to the door.
-o-
It was tempting at first to go full-on cop to the hospital. They had rules about using sirens and stuff, but he was pretty sure he could pull it off without getting in too much trouble. But still.
That was for emergencies.
This wasn’t an emergency.
Jay had managed to talk himself into that mindset while on the drive over, muttering it under his breath as his fingers went white around the wheel. Will had always been prone to stupidity. He used to get into fights all the time. Jay had had to drag his ass home more than once. He was the kind of guy who accidentally ingratiated himself into the goodwill of a gangster and performed brain surgery on his wedding day.
That was just Will, okay?
The smartest guy Jay knew.
And the absolute dumbest one, too.
Jay was always picking up after Will. He’d go to the hospital, find Will nursing a black eye or a split lip -- and he’d take him home, scold him, all of it. It was just like it always with Will. Fixable, self-inflicted disasters.
He was so convinced of this line of thought that he went ahead and parked in the visitor’s lot, taking a longer time to get into the building. He was going through the security checkpoint, explaining to the receptionist why he was there, when Maggie came out to greet him.
Personally.
She wasn’t smiling.
Jay was good at reading people -- he was a cop, after all -- and though Maggie was keeping her composure, it was obviously not easy. She was scared -- she was worried.
Hell, he could tell that she’d been crying. The eye makeup had been removed.
So it was bad, then. Like, bad bad. If he was getting a personal escort, then they were looking at the real deal.
“Jay,” she said, and her voice sounded hollow. She visibly swallowed, coming closer and taking him by the arm. She turned to the receptionist. “It’s okay. He’s with me.”
Jay followed her, step for step, as she led him back toward the ED. The numbness was starting to creep back in, but he forced his voice to work. “You said it was an accident,” he said. “What kind of accident? How is he?”
Asking two questions at once was bad police work, but Jay had a thousand more questions burning in the back of his mind. The fact that he only asked two was actually a sign of restraint and self control.
Maggie’s fingers flexed briefly before she dropped the touch. “Will was in a fight,” she said, drawing him into the doctor’s lounge. So it wasn’t just bad, then. Jay was getting more than the personal escort. He was being given privacy. It was really bad. She swallowed again and drew a breath, as though this was something she’d been bracing for. “He started something, some kind of physical altercation. I don’t know for sure, but I do know after he started the fight, he took a punch.”
So they were going with the how and not the what here. Now, Jay was curious about the who. “He started a fight? With who?”
“Dr. Archer,” Maggie said, a bit more collected than before.
Truthfully, that wasn’t the answer he’d expected, though Jay wasn’t sure he’d expected any answer. Will could piss anyone off, and he’d had points of conflict with a lot of people he’d worked with. The guy had never fully told him why they’d fired his ass in New York, but he was sure that Will hadn’t left on good terms with his colleagues.
But Archer?
Will’s boss, even if only temporarily?
Will was on probation. Playing nice had been part of the assigned role in order to stay employed. All the times Will had cut and run, he’d made a choice to see this one out, and he’d been true to it.
Honestly, Jay was a little proud of him for it.
Everyone could be an idiot.
It took courage -- and in Will’s case, a lot of personal growth -- to own up to it and see it through.
So, for Will to pick a fight with his boss? Now?
Was something.
“Archer?” he repeated, unable to make sense of that information. This whole thing was a series of impossible truths, and that fact just made things so much worse. He shook his head, trying to parse it out. “The SOB in charge?”
“The temporary chief, yes,” Maggie said, still visibly keeping herself in check.
Jay made a face with a small huff. Maggie was doing okay with her self control, but Jay not so much. “Well, from the sound of it, the guy had it coming. Will can’t stand him, and he says no one likes him. So I mean if the guy is crying assault or something stupid--”
Maggie’s expression only grew more somber as he spoke. “Jay, stop. You don’t understand.”
But Jay did understand. He’d been Will’s brother all his life; he knew how his brother operated. He had never been shy to get into fights, and he was always the guy who got up. “Will’s taken hits before--”
“Yes,” she said, eyes bright as she stepped forward and stilled. “But when he fell this time he hit his head. Hard.”
She was trying to make a point, that much was clear. But Jay was struggling to put two and two together and come up with anything that resembled four. “Okay,” he said, venturing the acknowledgement with a cautious uncertainty.
Jay was growing uneasy. Maggie, on the other hand, just looked sick by now. “Jay, it caused a bleed in his brain. A hemorrhage.”
He was no good at the medical stuff -- by design, of course, as he naturally hated it -- but he wasn’t an idiot. He’d been around blood and death too much not to recognize when something was going south.
When something had already gone south.
Still, this wasn’t a case. Jay wasn’t chasing a suspect. He wasn’t helping a victim.
They were talking about Will.
His brother.
Beyond that, nothing else computed. “What are you saying, Maggie?”
She gathered a breath, but it did nothing to calm her down. “I’m saying he’s in surgery,” she said. “Right now.”
Simple, to the point, and still utterly impossible to make sense of. Jay felt his heart quicken in his chest, a cold sweat breaking out across his back. “Surgery?” he asked, almost laughing now. It had to be a joke. This whole thing had to be a joke, but there was no damn punchline. “Wait? You mean he’s in brain surgery?”
He asked it like it was an impossibility.
But Maggie did not offer him the ready denial he needed. “I’m sorry, Jay.”
The apology only made the situation more surreal. His face contorted. “Wait? What?” he asked, his voice starting to rise again. “You’re sorry? For what?”
She looked like she was ready to cry now. “It’s very serious. His condition -- we just don’t know yet.”
They didn’t know? They didn’t know what? He scrambled to come up with an answer that was somewhat palatable, and he came up with nothing. “Are you telling me he could die? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
He was seething now, brimming with a frustration he couldn’t even name. His mother had died of cancer, slow and terrible. A fire had taken their father, sudden and unplanned. Jay had been there both times.
And to think he’d missed this?
To think Will had died and he wasn’t even there?
That he was in surgery -- brain surgery -- and Jay hadn’t even known?
It couldn’t be happening. Denial was a powerful motivator, and Jay had been here before. He shook his head. He had to shake his head. “You’re not making any sense, Maggie,” he said. “Will’s in brain surgery? Because of a fight? With that Archer asshole?”
The bits and pieces were all there, but Jay couldn’t put it together into a coherent picture. He didn’t want to, maybe.
Maggie almost winced. “Honestly, I don’t know the full story myself,” she said with a sigh. “I just know they got into it -- somehow -- and Will ended up nonresponsive. We rushed him into surgery, but he’s showing signs of a very serious brain injury. At this point, I couldn’t even pretend to give you a prognosis.”
It was medical talk -- the kind that Jay hated. It was couched in niceties, but that didn’t obscure the bald, basic truth. “That’s it?” he asked with a scoff. “You’re telling me this Archer guy took a shot at Will, and now what? He’s going to die? I mean, is that what you’re actually telling me right now.”
Maggie’s shoulders fell, and she looked crestfallen. “Jay, I don’t even know for sure what I’m telling you. I only know what I know, and I want to tell you more -- and I will tell you more as soon as there’s anything to tell.”
“But you haven’t told me anything!” Jay said, and his voice was rising now, and he didn’t give a damn.
Maggie, to her credit, didn’t flinch. “Jay, I wasn’t on Will’s case. I talked to April -- and she was on Will’s case. She’s the one who told me I needed to call you because you need to be here for him,” she said simply, reasonably. As if this was simple or reasonable. “And you need to be here for yourself.”
“Fine,” he said, maintaining some semblance of his self control for her sake. “But I need to see him. No more talk. No more posturing. I need to see my brother now.”
It was supposed to be a good thing, getting what he wanted. Except, it was possible he hadn’t thought this one through. What he wanted was his brother.
What he was getting, however, was a view of his brother on the operating table.
During brain surgery.
He was starting to wonder if that was a bad idea when Maggie led him through a network of hallways and then opened the door into a smaller area, banked by windows on one side. He caught a glimpse of the surgical team -- and a few smears of blood -- when his attention was drawn to something else, something a lot closer.
It was a doctor.
At first glance, Jay would have taken that for what it was. They were in a hospital, after all. They were even in a restricted area that would be accessed by, you guessed it, doctors. And doctors did all sorts of strange stuff like second opinions and follow up and observation, so it probably wasn’t particularly unusual or anything.
But then, Jay saw who it was.
After this many years with CPD, Jay had a good working knowledge of the ED staff. This just happened, both from following up with cases and from his own tendency to be injured in the line of duty. The fact that he had a brother on the staff only made it that much easier. He knew most of them by name; some of them might be considered drinking buddies. Even the ones he didn’t know well, he knew, and someone like the chief of the ED? Was pretty hard not to know.
Especially when that person hated your brother.
Even more so when that person -- that very person -- was the one who had fought his brother to get to this position.
It took him a long moment to process through that series of revelations, and he had come to a stop, staring dumbly, while Maggie’s eyes widened and Archer seemed to brace himself.
And for a moment, no one moved.
They were stuck in that moment, on the precipice of something. What? No one knew, but Jay realized quite suddenly that it was up to him to decide. Maggie was running mitigation. Archer was on defense. And Will was on the operating table and Jay couldn’t think straight anymore.
“What’s he doing here?” he asked, looking at Maggie.
She looked just as surprised as he was. “He’s been on Will’s case, but I didn’t know--”
“No, what is he doing here?” Jay asked, his voice rising precipitously. “I mean, this is him, right? The guy who did this to Will?”
The question carried weight, but it was impossible to imbue it with the severity it needed. He’d been called out of work, and Maggie was telling him Will might not make it. Will was in brain surgery, and right here, standing happy as he pleased, was the asshole who was responsible.
They didn’t know the whole story, they said.
They didn’t know the whole story, whatever.
The story was: Archer hit his brother, and now his brother might not live. There didn’t need to be more.
Maggie was trying to explain -- or something -- but Jay wasn’t really in a position to be listening.
Stepping forward, he shook his head, more adamant than before. “You did this?” he asked, nodding to the operating room behind him. “You did this, and what? You’re just watching? Just standing here to see if you need to finish what you started?”
It was wild speculation, and there was a small, rational part of Jay’s brain that recognized it. But that rational part was indeed very small.
And it was totally irrelevant.
Maggie was still fumbling over her words, but Jay’s eyes were locked in on Archer. Archer didn’t back away, but he put his hands up. If it was meant to be disarming, it wasn’t going to be an effective gesture.
Not now.
Not here.
“What did you do to him?” Jay asked -- all but demanded.
Archer shook his head. “Nothing--”
Jay took another step forward, and he wasn’t trying to be menacing. He was, however, pissed as hell. He could feel the anger vibrating through every nerve in his body at the moment. “Like hell.”
“Look, I’m sorry for what happened, I am,” Archer said, his hands still up in front of him. “But Dr. Halstead started this whole mess.”
To say it, to say it here, like that, Jay just couldn’t. His brother had his skull open in the next room and Jay couldn’t. “That’s crap. It’s total crap, and you know it.”
“That’s not crap,” Archer said, and he had a surly disposition. It was clear to Jay without even knowing the guy why everyone on staff hated his guts. “I mean, you’re his brother, right? You know him. You know how hard the last few months have been, how his behavior has been erratic. And it’s understandable, it is--”
To couch the critical assessment in something like sympathy? Jay shook his head, increasingly vehement. “You don’t know anything about my brother or what he’s been through,” he snapped. “And I do know my brother, and I know he’s been working his ass off.”
Most doctors would have the common sense courtesy not to have this fight during the actual surgery.
The fact that Archer didn’t seem ready to back down?
Well, that just solidified the notion in Jay’s gut that there was something seriously, seriously wrong here.
“Look, he’s been purposefully evocative,” Archer started to explain.
Jay’s expression contorted. “Are you kidding me?” he asked, eyes flashing to Maggie. “Is this guy for real? He’s sitting here blaming Will--”
Maggie looked to intervene, but Archer was an asshole and a half. “I’m a soldier, so I defend myself as necessary, but I never intended--”
Oh, so now he was going to play the soldier card?
That was where they were? Self defense?
This son of a bitch had no idea who he was talking to.
Jay stepped forward, chest puffed out. “And I’m a soldier, too,” he snapped. “And we’re called to serve and protect, so I’m pretty sure that means we aren’t supposed to punch out civilians.”
Archer shook his head, still fully deflective. “I really am sorry, but you know he has impulse control issues. Everyone at Med knows he has impulse control issues.”
It was too much. Serve and protect? Yeah, that didn’t stand a chance against the asshole who put his brother in surgery at the moment.
In the moment, it didn’t matter who was right or wrong. Questions of justification were irrelevant.
Will was in surgery.
And this son of the bitch was the one who put him there.
Jay had questions, sure, but for now, he had all the knowledge he needed to know that he wanted to wipe this bastard out of existence.
Growling now, Jay’s fingers tightened into fists. “I’ll show you impulse control--”
He knew it was stupid. He knew it was brash and violent and childish and really, really stupid.
The thing was, though -- the real thing was -- Jay didn’t care.
All he cared about was the fact that his brother was in surgery right now -- actual brain surgery -- and this flippant bastard was the one who put him there.
If this guy wanted to throw punches, then Jay would show him what happened when you threw punches at a Halstead.
He got one good punch off, square in the center of the face, and the older man reeled back in surprise. Jay surged forward to pound him again, but Maggie’s hand was suddenly a vice around his arm.
“Jay -- stop!” she said, voice rising now. Jay was ready to ignore her, but her nails bit into his biceps. “We’re in the gallery of the OR. Your brother is right over there with his brain exposed. Do you think maybe you want to pull yourself together?”
Breathing hard, Jay eased back. Her words hit home -- and they hit hard. He didn’t feel sheepish exactly -- the bastard deserved it -- but context.
He glanced through the window, catching sight of the blood.
Will’s blood.
Maggie’s grip didn’t abate, but her eyes turned like ice to Archer. “Both of you,” she said firmly.
For a moment, Jay could only see red, but he looked from Will across to Archer. At a distance now, Archer was dabbing at his nose. It was bloody; but not bloody enough, as far as Jay was concerned.
“Well, it looks like it runs in the family,” Archer said, pressing the back of his hand to his nose once more, testing to see how bloody it was. “At least we can say Dr. Halstead comes by his aggression honestly.”
He was about to lunge at the bastard again, but Maggie’s grip was firm. She all but dragged him out, and it was only the shock of the situation that allowed Jay to comply.
Even so, by the time he was in the hall, he was seething.
He was visibly shaking, he was so pissed off.
Maggie held fast to his arm, leaning down to look him in the eyes. “There is no way you can be doing what you’re doing,” she said sternly. “If you attack any person on staff here, they will throw you out and there will be nothing I can do to stop it. And that is no way for you to help Will right now.”
His nerves was singing, and he could feel the throbbing of his pulse as his adrenaline spiked and peaked. He pointed hotly back to the door. “That bastard did this to him--”
“I told you,” Maggie said, weary with her patience as she let go of him finally. “We don’t know the whole story. Will started that fight--”
Jay shook his head, falling back stubbornly as his jaw went rigid. “We don’t know the story, but we know Will started it?”
Maggie sighed. “Jay--”
“No,” Jay said, voice starting to rise again. “What we do know is that the asshole threw a punch, and now Will’s in surgery--”
His pulse was picking up again, and he nearly bounced on the balls of his feet, jerking himself in direction of the room Maggie had just forcibly dragged him out of.
She held up her hands, clearly ready to intervene again if the occasion should arise. Normally, Jay would like his odds against her, but she had the wherewithal even if he had the passion.
“Jay,” she said, slow and clear in her words. “If you do not calm down, I will kick you out myself until you do. Archer is the chief of the ED.”
Jay snorted. “Temporarily,” he said derisively. “Where the hell is Ethan anyway?”
“Not here, mostly,” Maggie said sharply, telling Jay what he already knew. “So that means Dr. Archer is in charge. If you don’t play by the rules, then no one can help you -- or Will.”
Will.
Jay had to keep that in perspective.
He was here for a reason. And that reason was Will.
Drawing back, he willed his heart to settle, and he eased back his stance. He refused to be sheepish, but if he felt a little guilty, then at least it was understandable.
“How is he?” he finally asked, once he felt properly in control of his emotions again.
Maggie eased as well, apparently mollified by the change in his stature. “Are you calm now?”
Jay drew another breath, letting it out through his nose. “Yes.”
“Good,” she said. “Then, let’s find out.”
“Fine,” Jay said, doing his best to acquiesce. “But I want him gone.”
Maggie nodded in agreement. “Okay--”
“Now,” Jay added, giving the single word all due stress.
“I can make that happen,” Maggie agreed.
“He goes nowhere near my brother -- or me,” Jay said.
“Okay,” she said, the calm in her voice more audibly strained now. She held up her hands to him, as if she might try to physical restrain him if he made another move. In truth, she might, but when he stayed still, she settled for a gentle glare. “Just wait here.”
Waiting was, in actuality, the very last thing Jay wanted to do.
Well, that was hyperbolic. There were a lot of other worse things. He could be identifying his brother’s body in a morgue.
But then again, that was a pretty low bar to set.
Waiting was, no matter how Jay tried to frame it, still pretty bad.
And waiting.
Waiting for what?
For someone to tell him that Will had died? For someone to tell him that Will was okay? For someone to explain what the hell had happened?
It didn’t even make sense. Will had been fine. Will had been more than fine. Will had been doing well. For all that Will had screwed up in the last six months, the guy had been making amends. Like, legit making amends.
And that was a new thing for Will. Will had spent a lot of his life cutting and running when things got hard, but not this time. This time, Will had owned up to his mistakes. He’d faced the consequences. He’d actually made the effort to rebuild.
And it had been working.
Now he was, what? Picking fights? With his boss?
None of it made sense.
Not one single bit of it.
Maggie was still inside while Jay paced, tracking a small line up and down the hallways. Then, from the far end, he saw another familiar face.
April.
She was one of the ED nurses, one of the few who had been here as long as Will had.
“Hey,” he said, eyes widening as she approached, clearly making a direct line toward him. He was doing a piss poor job of processing information at the moment, but a few salient details were standing out. Namely, April. “You were working on him? Maggie said you were on his case.”
The look on her face told him that he had remembered correctly.
It also told him that it hadn’t been good.
Maggie looked scared.
April looked a little sick.
He didn’t know April as well as he knew Maggie, but then, he didn’t have to. Some things were just easy to see.
“I was,” she said. She breathed in slowly, and she exhaled heavily. “Jay, I don’t know exactly what to tell you.”
“How about the truth?” Jay asked, his tone cutting sharply. “I mean, he’s in brain surgery right now. They’ve got his skull open--”
He was saying it for shock value, but April looked numb to the shock. As a nurse, maybe. As someone who had already faced it, more likely. “He had a hemorrhage -- a bleed,” she said. “A pretty bad one in his brain.”
Those were facts, at least. Not good facts, and not facts Jay knew exactly what to do with, but he had to start somewhere. “So? What does that mean?”
“Jay, a brain bleed is really serious,” she said. “Bleeds like the one Will had -- they can be devastating. Think -- a stroke. Because that’s basically what we’re talking about. A lot of people die from these things.”
She wasn’t sugarcoating it, which Jay wanted to appreciate.
If it didn’t scare him out of his mind.
“So, it’s bad,” she said. “But it happened while he was here, and we diagnosed it quickly. We got him to surgery within 30 minutes of the hit. That kind of response time is nearly unprecedented. It can have a huge impact on his outcome here.”
Jay tried to think of it in the optimistic spin she was presenting, but he was having a hard time getting past the idea of a unchecked bleed in Will’s brain for half an hour.
And doctors said crap like outcome, when what they really meant was death and impairment.
“His outcome,” he said, his own voice starting to waver. He wet his lips and took a breath that didn’t help. “You’re talking, what? Brain damage? Death? I mean, I’ve been here before.”
She nodded along, her brow creasing sympathetically. “I know, and I know that nothing I say now is going to make any of this easier, but we don’t know,” she said. “The severity of his injury is bad, Jay. But he got fast treatment from our best doctors. That does help his odds.”
“You’ve got to tell me more,” he said, and his demand was clouded by his desperation. “I mean, Will’s a doctor. He’s my brother. You’ve got to tell me more.”
“I know, and I wish I could,” she said. “We’re going to have to wait until they’re done, and the surgeon will be able to tell you more. Because honestly, he’s not going to know anything until he’s done either -- and we might not know anything for a few days, really. At this point, you have to assume that no news is good news.”
No news was no news, and Jay was rapidly running out of any ability to deal with these ridiculous attempts at optimism. However, Jay wasn’t completely incorrigible. Asking questions about Will’s condition was only going to get him ramming his head against a brick wall. He decided to pursue a different line of thought.
It was back to the how.
How the hell did Will end up with a brain bleed anyway?
“Maggie told me it was a fight,” he said, nodding his head and bringing his mind back around to some form of mildly rational thought. “And I know it was with Archer, but that asshole is the one who what? Was treating Will? How does that work?”
April took another breath and seemed to nod along with him. “I wasn’t there when the fight happened,” she said. “I only saw the aftermath.”
“Did anyone see it happen?” Jay asked. “Because we’re putting an awful lot of faith into this guy’s word.”
“Jay, I know you’ve got questions. I’ve got questions,” April said. “All I know is there was a fight. Whatever went down, it’s been building for weeks. Archer has been after him ever since he signed on as Temporary Chief. Will’s been pretty good about deflecting it, but I’ve seen how Archer’s been with him. I would have hauled off and hit him if I were Will.”
Speculation wasn’t going to be useful, especially when it seemed to suggest that Will could have been the aggressor. Will was an idiot, and he didn’t always know when to back down from a fight, but he wasn’t the guy who started throwing punches. Jay knew this from being the more aggressive brother since, well, forever.
“So what was it about today?” Jay asked, trying to keep his focus.\.
April shrugged, almost helplessly. “I told you: I wasn’t there. But Will did have a hard case. A bad one. A DNR.”
Of course he did. Jay’s medical knowledge was willfully scant, but he wasn’t an idiot. More than that, he knew his brother pretty well, and he knew that Will and DNRs? Were not a good combination. “So, did he get in trouble? Did he do it wrong? I know Will’s got a history of cases like that.”
The question seemed to make April think. “No, actually. The case worked out fine. Will did everything right by the book.”
Now the narrative made even less sense. “I don’t get it, then. We all work in difficult fields. We all deal with hard stuff. If he did it all right, then what’s the big deal?”
“Nothing, except that Archer wasn’t going to let it drop,” April explained. “I thought it was annoying at the time, the way he went on about it even while Will was in there with the patient. He was grandstanding, like he was trying to prove some point. Everyone at the desk knew it was bogus. The nurses had been talking all morning about the case, and Will did nothing wrong. In fact, he went above and beyond to make sure he did it right.”
That sounded accurate to Jay, and it went along with his overall assessment of Will’s mindset these days. He’d been focused on making amends. If not amends, then proving that he did still have what it took to be a leader in the ED, even if that meant paying attention to the tedious parts.
If this was all stuff he knew, then he was still coming up short on how the hell his brother ended up in surgery today.
“Okay, and then what?” he asked, prompting April to keep talking.
She looked like she was a bit at a loss, too, however. “Then? I mean, they fought. That’s what I can assume based on how this turned out.”
An assumption was a tool people used to make sense of their own realities, but they left room for doubt in police work. Legally, assumptions were shaky ground, and Jay couldn’t justify his brother’s condition with assumptions.
He was too much a cop.
He was too much a brother.
“What does that even mean? They fought? Over a case?” Jay asked, increasingly skeptical. “Will’s been a doctor for years now, and I’ve never once heard of him coming to blows -- especially over a case. That’s not normal, is it?”
It was a consideration for her. “Certainly not normal,” she ventured. “But--”
But Jay wasn’t ready to listen to posturing. Or crappy explanations that tried to justify things that just didn’t make sense. “And the story doesn’t even add up, even if it was a fight,” Jay pointed out, his ire starting to rise as his hackles stood on edge. “I mean, if this Archer asshole was part of the fight, why was he running lead? These two doctors get into a fight, and Will ends up unresponsive, and Archer’s the one in charge? He’s the one making the life and death decisions? After a physical fight?”
At this, her brow darkened as she fully understood his insinuation. “I was in the exam room, Jay,” she said. “Dr. Archer’s treatment plan was right on. His quick thinking is the only reason Will has a chance right now. I don’t like the guy either, but I can’t pretend like Dr. Archer hasn’t done everything possible to save Will’s life. We’re medical professionals. We are able to separate personal conflict from professional contexts.
Jay frowned, still trying to work that out. She had a point, of course. As professionals, they all knew what lines could be crossed and which ones couldn’t.
And still.
Something about this didn’t make sense.
April’s account was what it was, but the details grated. The omissions were glaring.
Archer had been after Will. Will had been deflecting. After a hard case, Archer made a ploy in front of the ED to egg Will on. Then, in private, fighting broke out. Punches were thrown, and Will ended up bleeding in his brain. Archer saved his life, like a good medical professional would.
Except, Jay was still caught up on one relevant detail. “But who started it?”
He’d asked it so many times that April, even in her obvious sympathy to Jay, seemed to be slightly exasperated. “Jay, I told you. I didn’t see it.”
“Fine,” Jay said. “But someone had to see it. This is a busy hospital. You’re telling me that Will and Archer, who have been publicly going at each other for weeks, just happened to get into a fight with no witnesses?”
Clearly, he had a point there. It didn’t take a genius to string the questions of uncertainty together, but maybe it did take a cop. Jay was crap at medical stuff, but he was a damn good detective.
This time, when April replied, she appeared thoughtful. “I really don’t know -- I’m not lying to you about that,” she said. “Just from what I’ve heard around the ED, no one knows. I think they must have been alone.”
As a cop -- and as a brother -- Jay’s hackles went up. “Wait, we’re literally talking no witnesses here?” he said. “We’re just taking Archer’s word on how this whole thing went down? How Will ended up in brain surgery? I mean, we keep coming back to that, and it keeps sounding worse and worse every time we do.”
His incredulity was palpable, and he could feel his anxiety starting to vibrate in his chest. He had a strong sense of justice under normal circumstances. The last time he’d felt like this, his father had been killed in an arson and he’d hunted down the bastard who did it at his own personal and professional peril.
April wasn’t blind to this, and her own response was more muted. “I guess, but again, Dr. Archer was the most ardent person on Will’s case,” she said. But she shook her head, brow furrowing somewhat. “But it is weird.”
People said stuff like that -- when they didn’t want to say anything but couldn’t help themselves. “Weird how?” Jay asked.
“Just -- I mean, it’s no secret,” she said. “Dr. Archer doesn’t like Will. At all.”
“In what way?” he pressed.
“All ways,” she said, matter of fact. “If you had asked me yesterday, I would have told you, no question, that Archer is out to get Will fired.”
Jay felt that anxiety reached its peak, and he forced his jaw to lock, lips pursed as he stated the next obvious point. “And now it’s a coincidence that Will is in surgery?”
April’s eyes widened at the clear implication. She shook her head, immediately recoiling from the insinuation Jay was making. “No. It’s one thing to say Dr. Archer didn’t like Will, but to suggest that this intentional…”
She trailed off as she seemed to follow her own line of thought.
“I mean, Will had been actively trying to diffuse the tensions in the ED. He was always telling people to just let Dr. Archer be. Will was trying to be the peacemaker for once, but that doesn’t mean that Dr. Archer did something untoward,” she said. “Come on, he’s a doctor. The acting chief. He wouldn’t.”
She was attempting to sound certain.
She wasn’t certain, though.
Jay, from his vantage point, was even less certain. “Would he?”
This time, she hesitated and chewed the inside of her lip. “I don’t know. Like I said, Dr. Archer saved Will’s life.”
And in Jay’s book, that didn’t put him in the clear. In fact, given what he knew of Will’s time in the ED lately and April’s corroboration of certain details, Archer’s role in this was murkier than ever. Most people weren’t monsters. Most people -- average people -- weren’t killers at heart. When harm was caused, most of them tried to fix it.
Some of them tried to cover it up.
Especially when they were part of the cause.
Before he could pursue that -- and before April could talk herself out of any more conclusions, Maggie made her way back. He watched as Dr. Archer exited as well, turning down a different hallway without even a look in Jay’s direction.
Soberly, Maggie came straight for him, nodding at April.
“The surgery?” April asked.
“Still going,” Maggie said. She offered a smile that was probably meant to be reassuring. “No change.”
April nodded, and she looked back to Jay. Her smile was even weaker than Maggie’s. “I know this is a lot, so I’m not going to crowd you,” she said. “But if you need anything or have other questions, you can find me in the ED. I’ll check back later, too. Just to see how Will’s doing.”
With that, she turned and headed back, and Jay looked back at Maggie with renewed vigor. “So, what do you think about this?”
“About the surgery?” she asked, a little taken aback by the directness of his tone. “I can pull up his chart for you.”
But Jay shook his head. “No, about the fight,” he said, refusing to be deterred now. He was a practical man. He liked problems he could fix. Will’s surgery was out of his hands. The circumstances of this so called accident, however, were not. “I’ve been putting the story together, looking at the timeline, the motives, and it’s not adding up. And everyone I’ve asked has been surprised. April said it was weird, Will taking a shot at Archer.”
“It’s no secret they didn’t get along,” Maggie said.
“But Will was playing nice,” Jay said, terse. He wasn’t going to pretend like his brother was an angel, but there was no way in hell he was going to act like Will hadn’t set himself to change recently. “And that’s not just me saying it. I know I’m biased, but April’s account jives with everything Will has told me. He knows his career is on the ice. He’s been toeing the line. He talked everyone out of action against Archer, and then he picks a fight? It doesn’t fit.”
Maggie pursed her lips and tilted her head thoughtfully. “It is a little weird. Unexpected just given how he’s been acting lately,” she agreed, as if she was allowing herself to consider this fully for the first time. “But what are we saying is the alternative? Assault?”
“Are we?” Jay asked. “And aren’t we saying it anyway if Will threw the first punch? It’s just a question of who punched first.”
“But Archer saved Will’s life,” Maggie argued, going back to the same line of defense April had used to justify her thoughts. “Why would he do that if he threw the first punch?”
“That’s all the more reason he would. He could have felt guilty,” Jay posited. “I mean, think about it. April said Archer’s been out to get Will -- and Will told me the same thing countless times. So, what if he tried to provoke Will? If the guy lost his temper, the whole thing could have been an accident.”
Maggie frowned, more disconcerted than before. “Jay, I know you're upset, but what’s the point?”
“Just this whole narrative,” he said, frustration almost eclipsing him now. “Will’s no saint, I know that better than anyone, but he’s been trying to make it right. And now I’m just supposed to believe that he threw it all away in some asshole who literally nobody likes. It’s convenient. He’s the guy throwing the punch, and he’s the only one left standing to tell the story. And I’m supposed to take his word that Will was the aggressor?”
This point held sway with Maggie, but she still dithered. “It could have been mutual. They were known to hate each other. Will has been trying hard, but like you said, he’s not perfect. He’s got his limits. Maybe things got out of control, an accident like you said.”
“But he’s saying Will threw the first punch, and I say there’s no way. Will wouldn’t risk his career for this guy. Not after everything he’s done to salvage things. No way,” Jay insisted.
“Maybe,” she conceded. “But that’s not the priority right now. Right now we need to focus on Will waking up so he can tell us his side of the story himself.”
He was a detective, true, but he was a brother first. The investigative train of thought withered just that fast in the face of something much more pressing. “Can I see him?”
Maggie nodded, but her eyes were serious. “I can let you into the gallery, and if you promise to be on your best behavior, you can watch,” she said, but her voice cut with a warning. “But you have to be quiet. Not a word of disruption.”
It was in Jay’s nature to be a part of things -- being a bystander didn’t suit him, especially when his family was involved -- so he readily acquiesced. He thought that being close to the process -- being close to Will -- might help him calm down. It might help him focus.
But when he got into the gallery, he realized quickly the limitations of his fortitude.
He was close to the action, that was true.
And he was close to his brother, that was also true.
But Will was hardly Will right now. Will was intubated, positioned awkwardly on the table. A portion of his hair had been shaved away -- and that was hard enough -- but to see the open flap of skin? The missing portion of his skull?
And the blood on the surgeon’s hands. The glinting of the tools as they poked into Will’s brain again and again and again--
Maggie had stayed with him, close as she dared. Her touch startled him, and he flinched even as he was unable to look away.
“We don’t have to watch,” she said softly. “This is only if it makes you feel better, so you see we’re doing everything we can--”
“Can he survive this?” he asked, his voice suddenly high and tight.
“He can,” Maggie said.
Jay blinked, hard and fast. “Can he survive this and still be Will?”
Maggie’s voice was softer still. “Yes,” she said. “Some patients make it through brain surgery just fine.”
The doctor -- gowned and gloved -- pulled a magnifying device closer, lifting a needle as he reached for Will’s exposed brain matter once more.
Flushing, Jay felt the blood rush to his head. Everything for a moment, and he hovered somewhere between throwing up and passing. In a rush, he turned, walking stiffly from the room with Maggie right behind him.
She followed him into the hall, and he turned back toward her and shook his head. “They’re operating on his brain,” he said, even though she already knew that. His eyes were burning, and his chest was tight. “You’re telling me, he can still come through this, even though they’re literally putting needles into his brain?”
His voice was nearly unhinged now, hitching wildly as the emotions overcame his reason. In cop mode, he’d been able to cope by solving the mystery. Back in brother mode, he was struck with how little there was he could do. With his brother’s skull open, there was literally nothing Jay could do.
Maggie drew a breath and nodded gently. “He can, but honestly? I don’t know right now,” she said. “I need to believe that he’s going to be okay, because Will’s my friend. But I can’t lie to you, Jay. I can’t pretend like everything is all right.”
Jay squeezed his eyes shut, taking in tight, small bursts of air. All those years, his brother had run away from his responsibilities. All those years, Will had been an inconsistent presence in his life. And he finally had Will back, and they were closer than ever. Will was making things right, he’d been making amends. They were brothers. Jay hadn’t even got to ask him to be the best man at his wedding--
Eyes open again, his resolve wavered. He wasn’t strong; he wasn’t impenetrable.
And the thought of losing his brother--
Threatened to break him entirely.
“How -- uh,” he started, but had to stop to clear his throat. “How much longer will he be in surgery?”
“Another hour,” Maggie said. “Maybe two, if they find more bleeders.”
Jay nodded, as if that assessment of his brother’s brain being exposed for another few hours was reasonable and understandable. “I’ll just use the waiting room,” he said stiffly.
Maggie nodded in sympathetic understanding. “I can find you a better place,” she said. “Some place more private.”
She was trying to be nice, but it didn’t matter. Public, private -- all that mattered was that Will was in that operating room. Will was fighting for his life.
And there wasn’t a damn thing Jay could do to help.
-o-
Maggie showed him to a room -- Jay had probably been there before on police business -- and she left him alone. It was clear she was willing to stay, but Maggie had been a nurse for a long time. She obviously knew a thing or two about reading people, and for the moment, Jay would get no benefit from company.
At the moment, Jay would get no benefit from anything -- that was the hard truth of the matter. He’d run the gamut between denial and anger, throwing punches and asking questions, and now here he was. Relegated to a waiting room to contend with the depth of his shock.
That was what it was, too. Jay wasn’t so far gone that he didn’t recognize it. It happened all the time -- victims and their families, in the face of the impossible, were left scrambling to put together the pieces and make sense of whatever was left of their lives.
And for Jay, it was even more than that. It was limbo. A state between what had happened and what might still happen. This was a story that, if Maggie and April were to be believed, might still have a happy ending. Will might be fine. They might laugh over drinks about this when they were old, gray and retired together.
But it might still be a tragedy. Will might still die on that table -- or worse.
Will might not be Will.
How would that even work? Jay had spent years coming to terms with his brother’s impossible contradictions, and as soon as they find their common ground, what? Jay loses him again? Loses him forever?
As a cop, he dealt with the facts. He came in after the matter and sorted out the truth.
This, though. This was unfolding in real time. The tragedy wasn’t defined yet.
The cusp of disaster or salvation.
Jay paced the small room, back and forth, back and forth. When his legs felt numb, he sat down on one of the chairs and stared blankly at the wall, unable to form coherent thoughts. Sometimes, he wanted to cry. Other times, he wanted to slam his hand against the wall repeatedly until something broke -- his hand or the wall, it didn’t matter which.
Finally, after a lost period of time, Jay took out his phone. The rote habit didn’t require much thought, and he logged in, scrolling through his missed calls and messages. Most were work related -- they had no idea that Jay wasn’t even at the office, much less that there was anything wrong. Voight knew something was up -- Hailey had probably told him as a way to cover for Jay’s absence -- but he couldn’t deal with an inquiry from his boss.
Hailey, though. He needed Hailey.
She had texted the most, with a string of messages over the course of the last hour. They were short and unprovocative, clearly careful in their inquiry. He read them, but he couldn’t make sense of them. And there was no way in hell he was going to get his fingers to function well enough to actually type a reply.
But he needed Hailey.
He wanted Hailey.
With fumbling fingers, he pulled up her number. Pressing call, he put the phone on speaker and held it in front of him while it rang. Hailey answered on the first ring.
“Jay?” she asked, sounding expected. She seemed to catch herself, scaling back from outright concern. “Hey. I was wondering when I’d hear from you. What did you find out? How’s Will?”
He’d wanted to call her because she was always so good at helping keep him in check. She was a stabilizing force in his life; around her, he knew how to get ahold of his emotions, even when under duress.
Hearing her voice, though, had almost the opposite effect.
He’d kept it together so far, but she was his safe spot. Just that quickly, his resolve threatened to undo itself, and his throat constricted as his eyes burned. “It’s bad,” he said, almost choking on the words. “It’s, um. It’s really bad.”
For a second, she was quiet on the other end of the phone. She seemed to be gathering herself, and when she spoke, her voice was careful and measured. “Bad how? What happened?”
“There was this fight -- or something,” Jay said, and the words sounded hollow, like they were coming from someone else’s throat. “I can’t put all that together yet, but Will took a punch. He went down hard, I guess -- hit his head, whatever. He’s in surgery right now.”
He could hear the intake of her breath -- surprise. When she spoke, however, she seemed to control it well. “Surgery? What for?”
The sight of Will on the operating table, brain exposed was still fresh in his mind. He did what he could not to shudder. “Brain surgery. Something about a hemorrhage. They’re trying to stop it, get it in check -- whatever.”
This time, however, she couldn’t hide her surprise. “Wait? Brain surgery? What do you mean, brain surgery?”
He’d moved from denial, at least. He was a practical man. There was no way around this but acceptance. “Brain surgery,” he said again, and the words still tasted bitter in the back of his throat. “I know how it sounds -- and I know how it is. They’re not sure if he’ll make it, or you know, what he’ll be like if he does.”
She scoffed, plainly grappling with the impossible. “But how? A fight? This doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know,” Jay said. “Trust me, I’ve been over this, too. Something’s not right here, but there’s nothing I can do about it -- not while Will’s still….”
He couldn’t finish. He didn’t even know how to finish.
While Will was unconscious? While Will was in surgery? While Will’s skull was still open? While Will’s fate was still up in the air?
“Do you want me to come?” Hailey asked. “I can be there in 20 minutes.”
“No--” he started, shaking his head.
“20 minutes, Jay,” Hailey said. “I can be there for as long as you need. For you and Will.”
It was tempting, of course. The comfort she could provide -- the reassurance she might offer. If Jay was adrift in his emotions, she could be his emotional island, anchoring him to something stable when everything else felt unmoored.
But Will was his brother, the last of his family. He didn’t know what to make of that right now, and he just needed -- he just needed to think. He just needed some time, some space. He just needed Will to wake up and for everything be okay.
“No,” he said again, voice dropping low. He reached up and rubbed his forehead with his free hand. “Just -- not yet, okay? Not yet.”
“Sure,” she said obligingly. “But as soon as you need anything--”
“I know,” he said, dropping his hand wearily again.
“Anything, Jay,” she said. “And as soon as you know anything--”
“I know,” he said again, almost drawing his lips into a sad smile. “Thanks, Hailey.”
He hung up, then, staring at the screen as it ended the call and slowly faded to off. He stared at it longer still, wishing there was something there, something more, anything.
There was nothing, though.
Jay looked up at the blank wall again.
There was just nothing.
