Chicag Med fic: Suckerpunched (5/10)
Dec. 23rd, 2021 04:55 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 was still sitting in the same damn chair when the surgeon finally came in. Maggie had stopped in to tell him that Will had made it through, and she promised that the doctor would talk to him as soon as he had scrubbed out. He was still sitting when the guy came in, and Jay got up to greet him, and felt his stomach twist.
He knew this guy.
Dr. Abrams.
The head of neurosurgery.
Also the son of a bitch who had declared their father brain dead and told Jay that there were better uses for the ventilator.
Jay recognized him, and from the look on the asshole’s face, he clearly recognized Jay.
But where Jay felt shock and disdain, Dr. Abrams seemed to be embarrassed. Worse, he seemed to be sympathetic.
“Detective Halstead,” he said, not bothering to offer his hand. He did offer up a wan smile. “We met once before--”
“Yeah, I remember,” Jay said, still bristling from the recollection. He had half a mind to pop the guy, but Will had always said he was the best. And besides, this asshole was also the one who was presumably in charge of saving Will’s life. “So?”
It wasn’t a graceful transition, but the straightforward nature of it seemed to be something the not-so-good doctor appreciated. He had a no-nonsense attitude, that much was clear, but he had taken time to do the little things. Jay noted that he had changed out of his blood scrubs, no doubt because talking to Jay with his brother’s blood all over him might send the wrong message.
Not that Jay was sure there was a right message outside of one that said Will was awake and fine.
“So,” Dr. Abrams said, posturing for the slightest moment. “I understand you have been briefed on the injury?”
“A little,” Jay said. “Admittedly, medicine’s not my thing.”
Dr. Abrams nodded with an unexpected amount of patience. “Well, for as technical as the surgery was, the mechanisms involved are pretty simple. Will took a hit to the head -- several hits in a row, actually, from hitting the floor and a countertop from what I’ve been told. The force of the impact caused a closed wound. Essentially, it burst several vessels in his brain, causing a significant bleed.”
Jay nodded. It wasn’t easy to hear, but he had heard this much before. “That’s what they told me,” he said. “Though no one has told me how it happened. Not really, anyway.”
“And I can’t speak to you on that,” Dr. Abrams said. “But I can tell you about the surgery to repair the damage.”
“Did it work?” Jay asked, unable to sit and listen to more explanation. “Did you stop the bleed?”
He knew the question was too simplistic, but Dr. Abrams nodded. “I did,” he said. “And I think I was able to do it effectively and quickly. Most patients who have this type of injury die before they can even get to the hospital. The only hope is fast treatment -- basically immediate surgery. And that is what I was able to do for Will.”
That sounded like good news, but Jay was afraid of a thing like optimism right now. Especially when this asshole didn’t look optimistic. “But you’re still not saying he’s okay,” he concluded knowingly.
“It’s still far too early to say anything definitive about his condition,” Dr. Abrams said. “He’s going to be heavily sedated for awhile, and frankly, I wouldn’t expect to see much neural activity for a period of time after a surgery this invasive. However, I can say that stopping the bleed the way I did will give Will the best possible chance of a meaningful recovery. The fact that he’s still alive is an excellent sign.”
Optimistic words.
But something was missing.
Jay shook his head. “But what aren’t you telling me?”
He drew a breath, lips tightening. If Jay didn’t know any better, he might say it looked like regret. “Will’s condition is still very serious. The simple truth is that brain surgery can cause as many problems as it solves sometimes. Stopping the bleed was the first step, but the surgery itself has led to significant swelling in the brain.”
He was sure that to someone with medical know-how, the implications of this were obvious. Jay had a few guesses, but he wasn’t going to make any assumptions -- not with this much, not with Will’s life, on the line. “Meaning what exactly?”
“Meaning that, between the initial injury and the surgical intervention, the swelling is a risk in and of itself,” he explained. “With the increased pressure, we start to see reduced blood flow. As the brain presses against the skull, it just runs out of room. We start to see the death of brain cells if it doesn’t abate.”
Jay thought he’d done an okay job so far, listening and learning and keeping his crap together. But they were veering deeper into the medical side of things, and with Jay’s limited understanding, the only thing he was making out was that Will might not be okay.
That Will might really be not okay.
“Okay,” he said, slowly and carefully. This asshole doctor wasn’t the enemy right now. He’d already slugged one doctor in this hospital and threw him off Will’s care; he was pretty sure doing it twice might be a mistake. “So how do you fix it? What are you doing for my brother?”
The question had practical implications, and that was clearly something Dr. Abrams could deal with. “For now, we’ve taken a multifaceted approach,” he said. “It sounds disconcerting, but we’ve gone ahead and left a portion of his skull open. This helps with the healing process and sometimes is enough to keep the swelling down.”
That sounded more than disconcerting. That sounded horrifying. “So you’re saying Will’s brain is still open? Just exposed?”
“I wouldn’t say open,” Dr. Abrams said quickly. “Obviously, we’ve got it covered and protected. I’ve also started Will on an aggressive medication schedule in an attempt to keep things in check.”
He was answering the question, but with clarifications like aggressive and attempt, Jay felt his confidence waver. Not that he’d had much in the first place. “And if that’s not enough?”
The guy was an asshole, as Jay already knew, but he didn’t shirk the hard questions.
And he didn’t mince the harder answers. “There are more extreme measures that would be on the table, but I’d rather not cross those bridges until we see how he responds over the next few days.”
The next few days. In other words, Jay deduced, Will’s prognosis was just as much a question mark now as it had been earlier. Hope hadn’t been taken off the table, but there certainly wasn’t much to anchor it yet. This was still a waiting game, and Jay needed something more concrete. “What are his odds?” he asked, and his voice was surprisingly composed this time.
The question was probably to be expected, but it still smacked of irony. It had been several years since their old man had died, but Jay still remembered looking this guy down, the same question on the table.
From the look on Dr. Abrams’ face, he remembered it too.
He sighed, but eventually the doctor nodded. “It’s really hard to say right now,” he admitted. “I’m like you. I like absolutes, and I do my best to provide clear answers, but right now, that’s just not possible. There are too many variables at play right now. At this point, we don’t know what damage was sustained in the initial injury, and we have no way of measuring just yet how well he tolerated the surgery. Add all that to the risks of ongoing swelling, and it’s really just a waiting game.”
The bastard. He’d been flippant with Jay’s dad, but this time he was deflecting. He knew the odds. Conceited son of a bitch that he was, of course he knew the odds.
He just didn’t want to say them.
Not to Jay, maybe.
Not about Will, probably.
But Jay wasn’t here to play nice. He wasn’t here for something soft or touchy feely. If his brother’s life was at risk, then Jay wanted to know. Jay needed to know.
He didn’t balk now. He didn’t back down. The shock had coalesced inside him, and it offered him a stability he wouldn’t have otherwise, a stability he sure he wouldn’t have later, maybe even as soon as he got the answer to the question.
“The odds,” he said again. “What are his odds?”
Another doctor would have kept deflecting. Hell, Jay was sure most of Will’s friends would have caved and started offering him all the makeshift hope they could right about then. But Dr. Abrams held his gaze and he nodded. “10 to 1,” he said. “Definitely not a lost cause.”
Not a lost cause.
Jay couldn’t even begin to make sense of that. Except for this: “But it’s not a great one.”
Dr. Abrams almost shrugged at that. “Detective Halstead, I don’t give false hope, which is why I’m telling you about Will’s condition exactly like it is,” he said. “But that also means you should believe me when I say he has a chance.”
A chance, then.
All of Jay’s work, all of Will’s work, all that they’d been through and come to together. Their choices, their effort, their hopes and dreams -- and it was reduced to a chance.
But that chance was better than nothing.
Jay finally nodded. “Okay,” he said. “So, you said he’s out of surgery. I want to see him.”
He didn’t make it a question, and there was no way in hell he would make it a request. Dr. Abrams considered that just as much as he considered Jay himself. “Hospital policy dictates that families wait until after patients are clear from recovery.”
That wasn’t a yes, but it sure as hell wasn’t a no.
“But I’m pretty sure no one is going to stop me from letting you in there,” he said. He jerked his head to the door. “Come on.”
-o-
Talking to the surgeon in clear and certain terms had afforded Jay some level of control. He’d been asking questions, and he’d been receiving answers. It had been simple and straightforward, and it had been well within Jay’s ability to cope.
He had not fully appreciated just how tenuous that control was -- just how fragile it was. How utterly inane it had been to think of control at all in a situation like that.
Until he was led to his brother’s bedside.
Dr. Abrams did indeed live up to his word, and he got Jay into the recovery ward with little more than a few simple words and direction to the charge nurse. She took him -- and Maggie, who had apparently taken him as her own personal pet project today -- down the line of beds until they arrived at one curtained off at the end. She busied herself opening it, and then directed Jay to not touch anything while he was there.
She probably said something else, but Jay couldn’t hear her. His memory stopped functioning. Hell, his entire body stopped functioning.
Because lying in that bed was Will.
He knew it logically, but none of the facts made sense. His sense of disbelief returned. His brother had been fine this morning. They’d exchanged a few quips over text. Hell, they’d had plans for tonight.
And now here he was. Will was in a hospital bed, looking more dead than alive.
More than that, he didn’t even look like Will.
His red hair had been sheared away in spots, and the rest of his head was wrapped in a thick pile of gauze. The breathing tube snaked from his mouth, held in place by a bulky connector piece that was strapped around Will’s head. There was another tube that had been run down his nose, and several IV lines had been hung at his bedside. The rest of the wires were attached to the monitors, and Jay didn’t know enough about any of it except to know that Will was technically still alive.
But it felt more and more like a technicality.
Will was pale, and his complexion was pallid. He was lifeless under the thin hospital sheets. It was intellectually incongruous. Jay was usually the one in a hospital bed. These were Will’s halls to stalk. And how were they here?
But really, how were they here?
There was no answer, of course. Will could offer him no explanation. Will couldn’t do anything except stay alive.
Ten to one suddenly seemed like the most impossible odds yet.
-o-
It was awkward as hell, but Jay waited for the lack of something better to do. He didn’t dare leave; he wasn’t even sure where he would go. Instead, he stood by Will’s side, watching as his chest rose and fell. He had been instructed not to touch anything, and he even refrained from taking Will’s hand in his own, just to let his brother know that he was there.
Because Jay was there.
It just wasn’t clear to him if Will was.
Dr. Abrams had talked a little about brain activity, about how Will probably wouldn’t have any for a few days -- if he ever regained any at all. At any rate, that meant there was no way for Will to know he was there. Any comfort at this point would be entirely for Jay’s benefit.
That wasn’t the kind of line Maggie or April or even Ethan would use, but Jay kind of appreciated that kind of bluntness. The situation was overwhelming as it was. The practical implications made Dr. Abrams’ insistence that Will had a chance even more viable.
Stepping back, Dr. Abrams gave Jay some space, and Maggie flanked the other side of the bed. From the doorway, Dr. Abrams was busy on his iPad, and Jay felt conspicuous.
For the neurosurgeon in the room.
For the lifeless figure of his brother in the room.
For all of it.
“Sorry for taking up so much of your time,” Dr. Abrams said. “I won’t be staying much longer, but paperwork is what it is.” He glanced up, giving Jay a benign look. “I’m sure you know that from CPD.”
Voight wasn’t big on paperwork, but yeah, Jay knew it.
He looked at his brother, though, and couldn’t find the words to share in the commiseration. They were making small talk, and Will was lying there, more dead than alive. Words didn’t even make sense right now
“Normally, I leave this to residents, but I’m invested in this case,” Dr. Abrams continued to explain, tapping a few things on his iPad. This time, he glanced at Maggie. “You might want to talk to the charge nurse. See if we can limit his visitors.”
Maggie nodded circumspectly.
Jay snorted, almost hysterical in its recklessness. “Lots of people asking you about Will?”
Dr. Abrams lifted his eyebrows to look at Jay over his tablet once more. “As is to be expected, I’m sure. And their questions don’t bother me,” he said. He went back to tapping a few things. “But I’ve worked with your brother extensively over the years. I wouldn’t go so far as to call us friends, but I certainly appreciate his work.”
That was a surprisingly congenial answer. Jay softened his position slightly as he looked at Will once more. Will had always been deferential with most of his colleagues, and he only had good things to say about neurology. That had never made sense to Jay, given that this was the asshole who told them their dad was brain dead.
But maybe he understood it now.
The need for truth. It was the only thing that gave hope any teeth at all. “Well, he’d be glad to know it was you on his case.”
It was the nicest thing he could think to say. Will would have approved.
Dr. Abrams tipped his head to the side dryly. “Because there’s no one else in the hospital capable of my caliber of work,” he said, and there was nothing ironic in his tone. He was being dead serious. “All the same, this hospital has lost too many good doctors in the last year. The ED is already being overrun by insufferable staff members. The idea of losing your brother when he is needed most carries a personal stake for me.”
Jay had to smile, even if only wryly, at that. He was still out of his element -- hospital rooms in general sucked, and being in his brother’s sucked worse -- but he was finding something of his confidence again. Something of his voice.
His ability to question.
Because Dr. Abrams could tell him all day long about the surgery and Will’s prognosis. Those answers were readily available.
Even while other questions -- relevant questions -- persisted. “So what do you think of Dr. Archer?” he asked.
It wasn’t a casual question. Pausing, Dr. Abrams regarded him more cautiously now. “I’ve already heard the story, as I’m sure you have,” he said. “If you’re asking me about my opinion of Dr. Archer’s role in this incident--”
Jay shook his head, cool and nonplussed. “I’m just asking about your opinion of Dr. Archer.”
Dr. Abrams was clearly not a stupid man. He nodded a little bit. “No one likes Dean Archer, but I usually don’t hold that against people,” he said. “But working with him is a little like working with a jackass who thinks he’s a stallion. I’m not sure what plane of existence that man is on, but it’s certainly not one the rest of us share.”
It was a candid answer, one that only prompted more questions.
Dr. Abrams dropped his iPad to his side, and he looked at Jay more fully now. “I don’t know what happened between Dr. Archer and your brother, I really don’t. I don’t know who started it, and I don’t know who was right and who was wrong. But then, I’m a neurosurgeon. I don’t solve cases; I fix brains,” he said. He tweaked his head to the side and raised his eyebrows. “That sounds like the kind of thing a cop needs to figure out.”
No answers, then.
Jay sighed as the doctor left, and he looked at his brother once more.
No answers.
Only questions he had to wait to answer.
-o-
He’d been in recovery before, but most of the time, he was the one being sedated. He remembered a few other instances, specifically when he’d had Connor Rhodes wake up a witness who could tell them where the Burke family might have taken Will. In truth, though, he’d spent as little time there as possible because, who the hell would want to chill in a recovery room?
People up and down the ward were in various stages of sedation. They were in terrible shape, across the board, and sometimes he heard them groaning. Someone cried and begged for help. Jay was pretty sure someone a few beds down actually died while he was sitting there.
By contrast, Will’s room was pretty calm, but he didn’t actually think that was a good thing.
Other patients were coming out of their sedation. They were showing signs of consciousness.
Will, though, didn’t as much as twitch.
If not for the steady rise and fall of his chest and the rhythm of his heart on the monitors, there’d be no way to even tell that his brother was still alive. He looked that bad.
And he wasn’t getting better. Even if he was cleared from recovery -- and Maggie seemed to think that would happen soon based on Will’s vitals -- Will wasn’t going to be extubated. He wasn’t going to be waking up. Comatose was one way of putting it. They refused to call it brain death since it had been such a short period of time.
But Dr. Abrams had been pretty frank. Will was going to be like this for awhile.
Will might always be like this.
In that sense, Jay didn’t even know what to make of the recovery ward. It seemed like a bad place for someone like Will, when they didn’t even know what recovery would look like at this point.
Maggie stayed with him, and she was mostly quiet. He didn’t know if she was worried about what he’d do if left to his own devices, or maybe she was just worried about him. Hell, she might just want to be there for Will as much as Jay did.
As it was, she answered a few questions. Not about the incident -- she steadfastly maintained that she knew nothing -- but about Will’s condition. She explained a few of the tubes. She pointed out the function of a few of the monitors. It was meant to allay his anxieties, but Jay didn’t feel any better about the multitude of medications in Will’s system or the feeding tube that had been shoved up his nose and down his esophagus. In short, all Maggie could do was tell Jay just how bad off Will was.
The result was that Jay felt worse.
Her intentions were good, but there was no way around this one.
Sometimes there was no silver lining.
Jay just had to hope that there was still some chance at a happy ending, even if he could possibly see how.
-o-
Within an hour, there was a fresh flurry of activity. When Dr. Abrams reappeared, Jay assumed the absolute worst, but the doctor assured him that they were just ready to transfer him.
“The ICU,” Dr. Abrams said. “I assume you know a little bit about that.”
Jay did, but not in any positive context.
“He’s going to need to be there for a few days, at least,” Dr. Abrams explained. “I wouldn’t put him in any kind of step down ward until we have the chance to reattach his skull. His intracranial pressure is still more elevated than I’d like, and I’ve never had a patient clear the ICU in this condition in less than three days.”
Jay tried to will himself into believing that was a good thing. “Three days, then?”
Dr. Abrams didn’t quite smile, though his look seemed to be an attempt at reassurance. “I know it’s annoying, but we’re on Will’s timeline for now,” he said. “All we can do is provide the appropriate care when he needs it.”
“And how will we know?” Jay asked, glancing anxiously at his brother. “How will we know when he needs it?”
Dr. Abrams drew a slow breath. “Trust me,” he said. “We’ll know.”
-o-
It was always hard to say what made people break. Everyone crossed the poin5 of no return at different times, and sometimes it was the strange, insignificant things that made the burden too much to bear. He’d seen it before. Witnesses who kept it together throughout all the questioning, making it through identifying the body before losing their control collecting their things from the front desk.
It was unpredictable, the way grief and shock interacted.
Jay had made it through everything so far, but when Dr. Abrams started gearing up to move Will from recovery to ICU, Jay couldn’t do it.
There was nothing too overt about it. No blood. No trauma. No near-death anything.
He watched as Will was rounded up. The machines were disconnected to portable versions, the IVs unlocked and pulled close. One of the nurses started to manually ventilate him, and he was rolled slightly to get a better position on the gurney.
Will showed no sign of discomfort, but he showed no sign at all. They wheeled him through the hallways, the bag of his personal belongings shoved beneath the gurney as Dr. Abrams led the team with a steady stream of quiet orders.
He made it to the room, though, a few steps behind the gurney. He made it to the doorway and he watched as the gurney was put in place and the wheels were locked. He stood there, watching as the IVs were hung and the monitors were set up. Will was hooked back up to a waiting ventilator, and another nurse started to smooth the blanket. They adjusted Will’s head, giving him some semblance of a comfortable pose, before his hands were curled gently by his sides with all care and attention.
And that was it, then.
That.
For reasons Jay couldn’t explain, for reasons he couldn’t begin to justify.
The straw broke the camel’s back.
Jay had reached his maximum load.
And he couldn’t.
Dr. Abrams was still overseeing the transition, and the team of nurses was preoccupied. Maggie, however, was still close to him, and Jay gave her a blank look and shook his head. “I can’t do this.”
She frowned, stepping toward him with apparent concern.
He drew back, inhaling sharply. “I just -- I just need a little bit,” he said.
“Jay--”
“I’ll be back,” he promised, and his eyes were burning now. “I just -- need a minute. Just a minute.”
Because Jay was strong -- but not impenetrable. Because Jay was steady -- but not unrockable. Because Jay was tenacious -- but not indefatigable.
Because Jay was human.
And his brother was dying.
And what the hell, he just needed a minute.
Maggie might have said something else; the doctor might have looked at him. Jay didn’t care; Jay didn’t listen. He dug his phone from his pocket, turned on his heel and left the ICU as fast as he could.
-o-
He wasn’t proud of it, of course.
Leaving his brother like that. When Will needed him most, here Jay was, turning tail. Will was the one suffering here, and Jay was what? Running away?
He could almost guilt himself into going back, but not quite. Because that was the real problem, in the end. Will wasn’t suffering. Will didn’t need him.
Will was comatose.
There was no brain activity.
Will was completely out of it; he might already be gone.
The entire exercise was one of appearance. Futility.
He made it down the hall, staring at his phone so hard that his eyes couldn’t focus.
He brought up the number by reflex. When his legs couldn’t move any longer, he pressed the call button and pressed the phone to his ear, gripping it like the lifeline it was. Surrounded by death; haunted by worst case scenarios. He needed something else, something more, something--
“Hello?” Hailey’s voice sounded on the other end. She sounded expectant. To call it eager would be wrong, but she had clearly been waiting for him to call. “Jay?”
Her voice broke the numbness, and he started to pace once more. He had a thought to posture, to make like this wasn’t as bad as he thought. Like Will might be okay. Like Jay hadn’t just lost his cool and bolted from his brother’s bedside in the ICU for no good reason.
“Hey,” he said, and he immediately felt his control start to slip. His voice cracked before he even finished the syllable, and when he inhaled to recover, it all just fell apart.
“Jay?” Hailey asked, sounding even more concerned than when she’d answered. She knew him too well; she could hear it in his voice. “How’s Will?”
He opened his mouth to answer, to recite whatever medical gibberish he could remember, but his mind went blank. It all left him in a rush, and the flood of emotions he’d somehow kept at bay for other people was too much now.
“Jay?” she asked again, sounding increasingly concerned. “Are you okay? Is Will okay?”
And he couldn’t do it. He’d kept it together with Maggie. He’d stayed in control of himself with April. He’d channeled aggression with Archer. He’d held his own with Abrams.
But it was too much.
Jay was standing there in a hospital while Will was being set up in a bed. He had a tube down his throat breathing for him, and his skull had been removed, and Will was lying there, unconscious and unaware, and this was his brother, the last of his family, and it was too much.
And he couldn’t do it at all. The self control. The directed anger and frustration. The swell of emotions he hadn’t allowed himself to experience came to a head and broke him in the quiet right then and there.
He broke on a sob, and the flood overwhelmed him quickly. Knees going weak, he sank down to the chair, sucking in gulping breaths that he choked on as he cried. Time was suspended as he pulled in on himself, the heat in his face radiating down his spine as he gave in. He couldn’t think; he couldn’t breathe; he couldn’t be. Not while Will was--
Not while Will was in such bad shape.
The intensity of the emotion peaked, and the adrenaline reached its breaking point. As the sobs tapered off, he drew in longer, slower breaths until finally he was able to hear over the sound of his own ragged breathing.
The phone was still in his hand, still pressed to his ear.
“I’m already on my way, okay?” Hailey said. “Stay there, just a little longer. I’ll be right there.”
Because Jay just needed a minute.
And in that moment, he just needed Hailey.
-o-
Waiting, then. He was back to waiting.
Waiting for Hailey; waiting for a nurse or a doctor. Waiting for Will.
How much of his life had he spent waiting for Will? For Will to come home? For Will to come back to his family? For Will to stay?
He’d hated him for it. For leaving, for building his own life. For not needing Jay as much as Jay needed him. He had never wanted to frame it sympathetically -- and why would he? He’d been stuck coming home. He’d left the army. He’d been the one to take Mom to the appointments. He’d endured the brunt of his father’s anger all those years.
Context hadn’t mattered to him then. He said Will had been partying, but Will had been in med school. He’d been pulling long hours, putting his way through residency. He had to think he was better than Canaryville, or he’d never have gotten out.
And why come back? To a family that derided every choice he made? A father who rolled his eyes when he said he wanted to be a doctor? A brother who scorned him for taking the best opportunities instead of settling for what worked for the family? Will was flighty, sure. Because that was how he coped, just as much as Jay got pissy and threw punches. They were products of their upbringing, and it had just taken them this long to understand it in each other, to come to terms with what it meant to be the last ones standing.
And Will had never denied it, not any of it. He’d never fought Jay. He’d never defended himself. He’d accepted that mantle of bad son, neglectful brother. No wonder he’d wanted to leave. He’d never had the backbone Jay had, the one their father had had. Will took and took until he ran out of room for derision and ran away instead.
So Jay waited for him. To come back, to come home.
And this time Will had stayed.
And this time Jay had understood.
And this time it was working.
But then one punch.
One punch.
And Jay was back to waiting.
And Will might never come back.
-o-
He was still pacing aimlessly, lost in a waiting room he didn’t quite recognize, when one of the nurses found him. It wasn’t Maggie this time, but it was an ICU nurse. She gave her name, but Jay didn’t remember it, but she smiled kindly when she explained that she was in charge of Will’s care for the rest of the day.
Jay nodded, as though this all surely had some meaning to him, and then she gestured back toward the ICU wing.
“He’s settled now, so it’s a lot less chaotic back there,” she said with a little sympathetic nod. “I know how overwhelming it can be, and if you have any questions, really, I’m here for you as much as I am him.”
Jay couldn’t be sure how much of this was because Med really did hire the best staff -- and how much was just because this was Will. Will was the kind of guy who could piss half the people off -- and somehow still get half the people to love him. He’d won over a hardass like Dr. Abrams. Whatever the impact was, this nurse seemed as sincere as they came.
“Uh, my girlfriend--” he started, but he had to pause to clear his throat. He blinked hard a few times and found himself moderately put together. “Um, she’s coming in. You know. To be here. Is that going to be okay?”
“Well, we do try to have some visitor limitations in ICU, but I’m sure we can work something out,” she said. She nodded behind her once more. “Would you like to see him?”
The answer was both yes and no, but Jay ultimately found he could say nothing. Instead, he allowed the nurse to guide him back, and he walked on numb feet back through the ward. This time, when they arrived at Will’s room, he forced himself to go inside.
It was clear they’d taken some time to make the scene as minimally intimidating as possible. The curtains had been drawn to give the room a better sense of privacy, and the machines and equipment had been pushed to the side and organized. It made the room less chaotic, to be sure, but there was no way to obscure just how much of it was still needed to keep Will alive. As a finishing touch, there was a comfortable chair there, one he hadn’t seen before, and it had been positioned near the bed.
That was the room. They could do a lot to make the room more inviting, but none of it changed Will.
Will had been stretched out on the bed with his gown arranged neatly and his hands tucked by his sides on top of the blanket. The blanket itself had been positioned with extra care, the edges nipped securely under the edges of the mattress.
Someone had taken time to clean up the badnages, which looked fresh. There wasn’t much to be done for the worst of it, though. The tube was still in Will’s throat, and the heavy bandages were still prominent around his skull. Will still looked lost under the weight of the interventions intended to save his life.
It couldn’t be sugarcoated. It couldn’t be normalized.
Jay sat heavily in the chair, not sure what else to do.
The more unsettling revelation: there was nothing else for him to do. It wasn’t the first time he’d waited on Will. He had to hope it wasn’t the last.
From behind him, someone shuffled at the door with a small knock. Jay assumed it was one of the nurses -- or residents or whatever -- and he barely spared a glance back. When he did, he realized it wasn’t any medical professional.
There, framed in the doorway, was Hailey.
Her eyes were on him, and only him. Jay had been around people all day, people who offered him sympathetic smiles and an understanding nod. People who listened and who cared.
But Hailey was the first one who had seen him.
Stepping inside, she seemed to be careful in her approach. She allowed her eyes to wander to Will for the first time, and Jay could see her resolve visibly tremble. She had come here to be strong for Jay, but the sight of Will would rattle anyone.
Jay couldn’t help himself. He got up, reaching out to her with a hug. He allowed himself this, burying his face into her hair, squeezing his eyes closed until he heard the sound of his heart pounding in his ears.
Her grip was firm in return. She didn’t waver, and she held him until he was the one who finally pulled back.
She looked at him, reaching up a hand and stroking the side of his cheek. “How are you holding up?”
Jay stepped back, sniffling. “I’ve definitely been better,” he said. “But I mean, it’s not me--”
He nodded to his brother, letting his gaze linger.
“Yeah,” she said quietly. She paused to bit her lower lip. “I know you said it was bad--”
“I know,’ Jay said, looking down at his brother. It was hardly a new sight to him by now, his brother unconscious in the bed and breathing through a tube, but he hadn’t acclimated to it -- at all. “It still doesn’t seem real.”
She reached forward, enveloping him into another hug. “I’m so sorry,” she said, arms tight around him. “How is he?”
Jay pulled back first, mostly because her comfort would threaten to undo him. If he was going to keep his crap together right now -- for Will’s sake -- then he needed to stay strong. Taking a shaky breath, he looked back at his brother. “I don’t even know,” he admitted, shaking his head. He ran a shaky hand over the top of his head. “I mean, he’s not good, but he could be worse.”
“So, the surgery,” she said, attempting to clarify. “They think it worked?”
“I guess,” Jay said. “He’s not bleeding anymore.”
“So that’s good, right?” Hailey asked. She didn’t look convinced, and at the look on his face, whatever hope she’d plastered together faltered even more.
“It’s, like, swelling,” he said, gesturing vaguely to his own head as if to demonstrate. “Like with the injury and the surgery -- there’s too much swelling.”
Hailey’s brows drew together, but she seemed to know what he was talking about. “I’ve heard of that,” she said. “The brain runs out of room.”
Jay nodded, eyes lingering on the bandages wrapped around his brother’s marred head. “Apparently they left the skull flap off,” he said. “Trying to help or something.”
Hailey looked at Will as well, but she could only do it for a second before her gaze dropped. “Just as long as they’re treating it,” she said. She forged a smile again, looking at Jay once more. “It means he’s still fighting.”
It was an optimistic spin on things, and the optimism seemed a little forced considering just how bad Will looked.
But Hailey was trying.
Will was trying.
Jay had to try, too.
He just wished there was more.
Turning away, he paced to the wall and shook his head. His eyes randomly burned, and he caught on a sob that he just barely managed to swallow back. “This just doesn’t make sense.”
She didn’t trail after him, but she turned toward him to watch his progress. “These things never do,” she said. “We see it all the time -- bad things that happen to people who don’t deserve it.”
“No,” Jay said, and he looked at her. “It’s not just some random accident. Everyone keeps telling me that this was an accident or something. That it’s just bad luck that Will hit his head and started to bleed.”
Hailey looked a little helpless, and he knew she wasn’t in an easy position -- trying to comfort him without indulging the worst of his fears and doubts.
Because those fears and doubts.
Were pretty pressing at the moment.
“Well, accidents do happen,” she said, almost noncommittal in her delivery. She was feeling him out, trying to take her cues accordingly.
And Jay shook his head, almost refusing to accept the cliches no matter how well intentioned they were -- even from Hailey. “Sure, and I know that better than most,” Jay said. He jerked his head toward his brother again. “But this was a fight. A fight? The whole idea of it just feels wrong. I mean, Will wakes up this morning, comes into work and hauls off to punch his boss? His actual boss?”
“Who was an asshole, I thought,” Hailey pointed out. “I don’t know for sure. But like I’ve said. I know Halsteads. Fighting’s not outside your wheelhouse, especially if you feel justified. And from what you’ve said, this guy probably had it coming one way or another.”
The logic was there, but Jay didn’t buy it. He couldn’t buy it. It wasn’t just the impossibility of it -- that Will might have done this to himself -- it was that it just didn’t add up. At all. Yeah, Jay was a loyal brother to the point of stubborn insanity, but his cop instincts were still valid. And they weren’t shutting up now.
Especially now.
He shook his head again, even more adamant. “But Will’s been walking on eggshells ever since he got hired back. His only priority was to get off probation,” he said. “He has bent over backward, taking extra shift, going above and beyond with his paperwork. There’s no way in hell he’d throw that all away over a guy like Archer.”
Hailey didn’t look wholly convinced, but it was pretty clear she wasn’t about to argue with Jay, not while they were standing in Will’s ICU room. She cast an anxious glance toward Will and took a deep breath before looking back at Jay. “Okay,” she said, somewhat plaintively. “So what do you think happened?”
If he’d ever doubted that she loved him, this pretty much sealed the deal. He could see it on her face -- she had reason to think that the official narrative so far was true, that this was an accident, a fluke, nothing. But she was willing to put that aside for Jay.
She would take a stand with Jay for no other reason than she trusted him.
More than that, she really cared about him.
He knew he was lucky to have her, but luck wasn’t really the right way of thinking about things at the moment. They would need more than luck to get Will through this, and Jay knew that all too well. “I don’t know for sure,” he admitted. “You’re right about Halsteads and fights. We find our way in them, even when we’re not trying. But I’m not buying the line that Will started this. Like Archer’s the victim here.”
“Okay,” she said, continuing to nod along carefully. “You said there are no witnesses?”
“Best I can tell, this is just Archer’s word against Will’s,” Jay said.
“But it’s not even Will’s word,” Hailey said. “Will’s be out this whole time, hasn’t he? So we’re just going off of Archer’s account of things?”
“Seems that way,” Jay said. “I haven’t had time to ask around too much, though.”
“But you do think Archer is lying?” she said for clarity.
Jay sighed, eyes drifting back to his brother. Unconscious like this, it was easy to forget how abrasive and annoying Will could be. Hell, Jay had taken swings at him more than once throughout their lives together. Will was the kind of guy you either loved or hated, and it would be easier if he wasn’t such an idiot.
An idiot who had worked so hard to change.
Six months ago, he probably would have assumed the worst about Will, too.
But these six months? When he’d hit rock bottom?
And picked himself back up?
“Maybe,” Jay said, sighing reluctantly. “I should be looking into it for Will’s sake, but I just -- I can’t.”
He was at a loss almost. He’d been pushed to the brink of his self control, and Will was fighting for his life. To leave him now, when Will had finally made the choice to stay, was untenable for him.
“Hey, of course you can’t,” Hailey said. She reached out again, a hand on his arm. “You belong here with your brother, nowhere else. Being here for him -- that’s all you should be doing.”
He turned back toward her, overwhelmingly grateful for her comfort. “I know, but none of this feels right,” Jay said, almost imploring her now. “Will shouldn’t be here. Not like this. Not when he might -- he might be--”
He couldn’t finish it. He just couldn’t.
Hailey squeezed his arm again, nodding in her understanding. “I know,” she said, even gentler than before. Her voice was soft but clear over the sound of the machines keeping Will alive. “So, let me.”
All of this had been out of left field today, and Jay had been scrambling to keep up ever since Maggie first called him. The hits had kept on coming, from one conversation in the hospital to the next.
Yet, somehow, this one still totally caught him off guard.
“What?” he asked.
Hailey’s grip dropped away and she shrugged, almost nonplussed. “Let me do it. I can ask around, see what I can find out about what happened.”
Balanced ineffectively between brother and cop, Jay shook his head. “But you can’t,” he said. “I mean, this isn’t an official investigation.”
He was at a loss, but Hailey clearly wasn’t. “It doesn’t have to be,” she said. “All I’m going to do is ask questions, see if I can find someone who can tell us anything more. That is exactly what any normal person would do in this situation. Will’s your brother. Of course you want to know more about what happened. And I’m with you.”
He had to admit, her logic was pretty good there. She was also telling him exactly what he wanted to hear. Knowing that he was emotionally compromised in this situation -- both by Hailey and Will -- Jay hesitated. “You sure?”
Hailey didn’t hesitate in return. “I’m sure.”
Jay looked anxiously back at Will. “What about Voight?”
“I told him not to expect me -- or you -- back,” she said. “He had questions, but when I told him that it was about Will, he understood.”
Jay wasn’t sure what surprised him most. That Hailey had told him knowing the implications of her leave or that Voight would allow it all so willingly. “Really?”
She nodded, almost smiling. “Really.”
There was nothing quite right to fix all this. There was no easy solution, no safe out. Will was suffering -- Will could be dying -- and Jay was at the end of himself.
Which was, not coincidentally, exactly where he found Hailey.
Despite everything, he smiled. He loved her so damn much. He reached out, pulling her into a hug once more. “Thanks, Hailey,” he said, allowing himself to bury his face in her hair.
She hugged back, strong and sure. “Of course,” she said, her voice steady in his ear. “Of course.”
-o-
Jay couldn’t bring himself to leave, that much was true, but there wasn’t a lot to do while he stayed. Hospital vigils were probably necessary in these situations, but that didn’t erase their utter futility. There was nothing Jay could do by staying, even if the idea of leaving was more than he was willing to take.
At this point, it felt like he was waiting to see if Will would live or die.
The worst part was thinking about how it might already be a moot point.
What if Will’s brain didn’t recover? What if there had been too much damage? What if Will was already gone and they just didn’t know it yet? What if Jay was holding vigil for a lost cause?
He’d been ready when his mom had died, and he’d fought tooth and nail when his old man had passed. This situation with Will was somewhere in between. The outcomes for their parents had been clear. It had just been Jay’s job to accept it and see it through.
Nothing was clear now.
Will was deeply medicated with IVs and tubes everywhere. The nurses checked his vitals and said he was stable, but then there was a part of his skull literally missing. The idea of progress had been badly warped now, and Jay was contending with an outcome he couldn’t predict. One he wasn’t even sure he wanted to know.
The idea that Will was already gone -- made him physically ill.
But the notion of hope? That he would stay here and cling to the idea that things might be okay?
Hurt like hell.
Because Will--
This didn’t even look like Will. It looked like some approximation of his brother, and sitting there, watching his brother’s chest rise and fall, he was sure Will would have a thousand explanations for why things were they way they were. He would explain the tubes. He would tell Jay what the nurses were doing when they bustled about. He would let Jay know if it was okay to hope or not.
Thinking about that just made it worse.
Will couldn’t do any of those things because they were happening to him.
This was happening to Jay all over again.
And people wondered why he hated hospitals. They wondered why he chafed under medical care.
This was why.
Watching his mom waste away. Seeing his dad slip right through his damn fingers. And now Will.
An accident. Bad luck. A single punch.
And Will might be gone, even though he was right here, in front of him.
Jay would stay, then.
Just in the off chance that Will might, too.
PART TWO
PART THREE
PART FOUR
PART FIVE
PART SIX
PART SEVEN
PART EIGHT
PART NINE
PART TEN
-o-
Jay was still sitting in the same damn chair when the surgeon finally came in. Maggie had stopped in to tell him that Will had made it through, and she promised that the doctor would talk to him as soon as he had scrubbed out. He was still sitting when the guy came in, and Jay got up to greet him, and felt his stomach twist.
He knew this guy.
Dr. Abrams.
The head of neurosurgery.
Also the son of a bitch who had declared their father brain dead and told Jay that there were better uses for the ventilator.
Jay recognized him, and from the look on the asshole’s face, he clearly recognized Jay.
But where Jay felt shock and disdain, Dr. Abrams seemed to be embarrassed. Worse, he seemed to be sympathetic.
“Detective Halstead,” he said, not bothering to offer his hand. He did offer up a wan smile. “We met once before--”
“Yeah, I remember,” Jay said, still bristling from the recollection. He had half a mind to pop the guy, but Will had always said he was the best. And besides, this asshole was also the one who was presumably in charge of saving Will’s life. “So?”
It wasn’t a graceful transition, but the straightforward nature of it seemed to be something the not-so-good doctor appreciated. He had a no-nonsense attitude, that much was clear, but he had taken time to do the little things. Jay noted that he had changed out of his blood scrubs, no doubt because talking to Jay with his brother’s blood all over him might send the wrong message.
Not that Jay was sure there was a right message outside of one that said Will was awake and fine.
“So,” Dr. Abrams said, posturing for the slightest moment. “I understand you have been briefed on the injury?”
“A little,” Jay said. “Admittedly, medicine’s not my thing.”
Dr. Abrams nodded with an unexpected amount of patience. “Well, for as technical as the surgery was, the mechanisms involved are pretty simple. Will took a hit to the head -- several hits in a row, actually, from hitting the floor and a countertop from what I’ve been told. The force of the impact caused a closed wound. Essentially, it burst several vessels in his brain, causing a significant bleed.”
Jay nodded. It wasn’t easy to hear, but he had heard this much before. “That’s what they told me,” he said. “Though no one has told me how it happened. Not really, anyway.”
“And I can’t speak to you on that,” Dr. Abrams said. “But I can tell you about the surgery to repair the damage.”
“Did it work?” Jay asked, unable to sit and listen to more explanation. “Did you stop the bleed?”
He knew the question was too simplistic, but Dr. Abrams nodded. “I did,” he said. “And I think I was able to do it effectively and quickly. Most patients who have this type of injury die before they can even get to the hospital. The only hope is fast treatment -- basically immediate surgery. And that is what I was able to do for Will.”
That sounded like good news, but Jay was afraid of a thing like optimism right now. Especially when this asshole didn’t look optimistic. “But you’re still not saying he’s okay,” he concluded knowingly.
“It’s still far too early to say anything definitive about his condition,” Dr. Abrams said. “He’s going to be heavily sedated for awhile, and frankly, I wouldn’t expect to see much neural activity for a period of time after a surgery this invasive. However, I can say that stopping the bleed the way I did will give Will the best possible chance of a meaningful recovery. The fact that he’s still alive is an excellent sign.”
Optimistic words.
But something was missing.
Jay shook his head. “But what aren’t you telling me?”
He drew a breath, lips tightening. If Jay didn’t know any better, he might say it looked like regret. “Will’s condition is still very serious. The simple truth is that brain surgery can cause as many problems as it solves sometimes. Stopping the bleed was the first step, but the surgery itself has led to significant swelling in the brain.”
He was sure that to someone with medical know-how, the implications of this were obvious. Jay had a few guesses, but he wasn’t going to make any assumptions -- not with this much, not with Will’s life, on the line. “Meaning what exactly?”
“Meaning that, between the initial injury and the surgical intervention, the swelling is a risk in and of itself,” he explained. “With the increased pressure, we start to see reduced blood flow. As the brain presses against the skull, it just runs out of room. We start to see the death of brain cells if it doesn’t abate.”
Jay thought he’d done an okay job so far, listening and learning and keeping his crap together. But they were veering deeper into the medical side of things, and with Jay’s limited understanding, the only thing he was making out was that Will might not be okay.
That Will might really be not okay.
“Okay,” he said, slowly and carefully. This asshole doctor wasn’t the enemy right now. He’d already slugged one doctor in this hospital and threw him off Will’s care; he was pretty sure doing it twice might be a mistake. “So how do you fix it? What are you doing for my brother?”
The question had practical implications, and that was clearly something Dr. Abrams could deal with. “For now, we’ve taken a multifaceted approach,” he said. “It sounds disconcerting, but we’ve gone ahead and left a portion of his skull open. This helps with the healing process and sometimes is enough to keep the swelling down.”
That sounded more than disconcerting. That sounded horrifying. “So you’re saying Will’s brain is still open? Just exposed?”
“I wouldn’t say open,” Dr. Abrams said quickly. “Obviously, we’ve got it covered and protected. I’ve also started Will on an aggressive medication schedule in an attempt to keep things in check.”
He was answering the question, but with clarifications like aggressive and attempt, Jay felt his confidence waver. Not that he’d had much in the first place. “And if that’s not enough?”
The guy was an asshole, as Jay already knew, but he didn’t shirk the hard questions.
And he didn’t mince the harder answers. “There are more extreme measures that would be on the table, but I’d rather not cross those bridges until we see how he responds over the next few days.”
The next few days. In other words, Jay deduced, Will’s prognosis was just as much a question mark now as it had been earlier. Hope hadn’t been taken off the table, but there certainly wasn’t much to anchor it yet. This was still a waiting game, and Jay needed something more concrete. “What are his odds?” he asked, and his voice was surprisingly composed this time.
The question was probably to be expected, but it still smacked of irony. It had been several years since their old man had died, but Jay still remembered looking this guy down, the same question on the table.
From the look on Dr. Abrams’ face, he remembered it too.
He sighed, but eventually the doctor nodded. “It’s really hard to say right now,” he admitted. “I’m like you. I like absolutes, and I do my best to provide clear answers, but right now, that’s just not possible. There are too many variables at play right now. At this point, we don’t know what damage was sustained in the initial injury, and we have no way of measuring just yet how well he tolerated the surgery. Add all that to the risks of ongoing swelling, and it’s really just a waiting game.”
The bastard. He’d been flippant with Jay’s dad, but this time he was deflecting. He knew the odds. Conceited son of a bitch that he was, of course he knew the odds.
He just didn’t want to say them.
Not to Jay, maybe.
Not about Will, probably.
But Jay wasn’t here to play nice. He wasn’t here for something soft or touchy feely. If his brother’s life was at risk, then Jay wanted to know. Jay needed to know.
He didn’t balk now. He didn’t back down. The shock had coalesced inside him, and it offered him a stability he wouldn’t have otherwise, a stability he sure he wouldn’t have later, maybe even as soon as he got the answer to the question.
“The odds,” he said again. “What are his odds?”
Another doctor would have kept deflecting. Hell, Jay was sure most of Will’s friends would have caved and started offering him all the makeshift hope they could right about then. But Dr. Abrams held his gaze and he nodded. “10 to 1,” he said. “Definitely not a lost cause.”
Not a lost cause.
Jay couldn’t even begin to make sense of that. Except for this: “But it’s not a great one.”
Dr. Abrams almost shrugged at that. “Detective Halstead, I don’t give false hope, which is why I’m telling you about Will’s condition exactly like it is,” he said. “But that also means you should believe me when I say he has a chance.”
A chance, then.
All of Jay’s work, all of Will’s work, all that they’d been through and come to together. Their choices, their effort, their hopes and dreams -- and it was reduced to a chance.
But that chance was better than nothing.
Jay finally nodded. “Okay,” he said. “So, you said he’s out of surgery. I want to see him.”
He didn’t make it a question, and there was no way in hell he would make it a request. Dr. Abrams considered that just as much as he considered Jay himself. “Hospital policy dictates that families wait until after patients are clear from recovery.”
That wasn’t a yes, but it sure as hell wasn’t a no.
“But I’m pretty sure no one is going to stop me from letting you in there,” he said. He jerked his head to the door. “Come on.”
-o-
Talking to the surgeon in clear and certain terms had afforded Jay some level of control. He’d been asking questions, and he’d been receiving answers. It had been simple and straightforward, and it had been well within Jay’s ability to cope.
He had not fully appreciated just how tenuous that control was -- just how fragile it was. How utterly inane it had been to think of control at all in a situation like that.
Until he was led to his brother’s bedside.
Dr. Abrams did indeed live up to his word, and he got Jay into the recovery ward with little more than a few simple words and direction to the charge nurse. She took him -- and Maggie, who had apparently taken him as her own personal pet project today -- down the line of beds until they arrived at one curtained off at the end. She busied herself opening it, and then directed Jay to not touch anything while he was there.
She probably said something else, but Jay couldn’t hear her. His memory stopped functioning. Hell, his entire body stopped functioning.
Because lying in that bed was Will.
He knew it logically, but none of the facts made sense. His sense of disbelief returned. His brother had been fine this morning. They’d exchanged a few quips over text. Hell, they’d had plans for tonight.
And now here he was. Will was in a hospital bed, looking more dead than alive.
More than that, he didn’t even look like Will.
His red hair had been sheared away in spots, and the rest of his head was wrapped in a thick pile of gauze. The breathing tube snaked from his mouth, held in place by a bulky connector piece that was strapped around Will’s head. There was another tube that had been run down his nose, and several IV lines had been hung at his bedside. The rest of the wires were attached to the monitors, and Jay didn’t know enough about any of it except to know that Will was technically still alive.
But it felt more and more like a technicality.
Will was pale, and his complexion was pallid. He was lifeless under the thin hospital sheets. It was intellectually incongruous. Jay was usually the one in a hospital bed. These were Will’s halls to stalk. And how were they here?
But really, how were they here?
There was no answer, of course. Will could offer him no explanation. Will couldn’t do anything except stay alive.
Ten to one suddenly seemed like the most impossible odds yet.
-o-
It was awkward as hell, but Jay waited for the lack of something better to do. He didn’t dare leave; he wasn’t even sure where he would go. Instead, he stood by Will’s side, watching as his chest rose and fell. He had been instructed not to touch anything, and he even refrained from taking Will’s hand in his own, just to let his brother know that he was there.
Because Jay was there.
It just wasn’t clear to him if Will was.
Dr. Abrams had talked a little about brain activity, about how Will probably wouldn’t have any for a few days -- if he ever regained any at all. At any rate, that meant there was no way for Will to know he was there. Any comfort at this point would be entirely for Jay’s benefit.
That wasn’t the kind of line Maggie or April or even Ethan would use, but Jay kind of appreciated that kind of bluntness. The situation was overwhelming as it was. The practical implications made Dr. Abrams’ insistence that Will had a chance even more viable.
Stepping back, Dr. Abrams gave Jay some space, and Maggie flanked the other side of the bed. From the doorway, Dr. Abrams was busy on his iPad, and Jay felt conspicuous.
For the neurosurgeon in the room.
For the lifeless figure of his brother in the room.
For all of it.
“Sorry for taking up so much of your time,” Dr. Abrams said. “I won’t be staying much longer, but paperwork is what it is.” He glanced up, giving Jay a benign look. “I’m sure you know that from CPD.”
Voight wasn’t big on paperwork, but yeah, Jay knew it.
He looked at his brother, though, and couldn’t find the words to share in the commiseration. They were making small talk, and Will was lying there, more dead than alive. Words didn’t even make sense right now
“Normally, I leave this to residents, but I’m invested in this case,” Dr. Abrams continued to explain, tapping a few things on his iPad. This time, he glanced at Maggie. “You might want to talk to the charge nurse. See if we can limit his visitors.”
Maggie nodded circumspectly.
Jay snorted, almost hysterical in its recklessness. “Lots of people asking you about Will?”
Dr. Abrams lifted his eyebrows to look at Jay over his tablet once more. “As is to be expected, I’m sure. And their questions don’t bother me,” he said. He went back to tapping a few things. “But I’ve worked with your brother extensively over the years. I wouldn’t go so far as to call us friends, but I certainly appreciate his work.”
That was a surprisingly congenial answer. Jay softened his position slightly as he looked at Will once more. Will had always been deferential with most of his colleagues, and he only had good things to say about neurology. That had never made sense to Jay, given that this was the asshole who told them their dad was brain dead.
But maybe he understood it now.
The need for truth. It was the only thing that gave hope any teeth at all. “Well, he’d be glad to know it was you on his case.”
It was the nicest thing he could think to say. Will would have approved.
Dr. Abrams tipped his head to the side dryly. “Because there’s no one else in the hospital capable of my caliber of work,” he said, and there was nothing ironic in his tone. He was being dead serious. “All the same, this hospital has lost too many good doctors in the last year. The ED is already being overrun by insufferable staff members. The idea of losing your brother when he is needed most carries a personal stake for me.”
Jay had to smile, even if only wryly, at that. He was still out of his element -- hospital rooms in general sucked, and being in his brother’s sucked worse -- but he was finding something of his confidence again. Something of his voice.
His ability to question.
Because Dr. Abrams could tell him all day long about the surgery and Will’s prognosis. Those answers were readily available.
Even while other questions -- relevant questions -- persisted. “So what do you think of Dr. Archer?” he asked.
It wasn’t a casual question. Pausing, Dr. Abrams regarded him more cautiously now. “I’ve already heard the story, as I’m sure you have,” he said. “If you’re asking me about my opinion of Dr. Archer’s role in this incident--”
Jay shook his head, cool and nonplussed. “I’m just asking about your opinion of Dr. Archer.”
Dr. Abrams was clearly not a stupid man. He nodded a little bit. “No one likes Dean Archer, but I usually don’t hold that against people,” he said. “But working with him is a little like working with a jackass who thinks he’s a stallion. I’m not sure what plane of existence that man is on, but it’s certainly not one the rest of us share.”
It was a candid answer, one that only prompted more questions.
Dr. Abrams dropped his iPad to his side, and he looked at Jay more fully now. “I don’t know what happened between Dr. Archer and your brother, I really don’t. I don’t know who started it, and I don’t know who was right and who was wrong. But then, I’m a neurosurgeon. I don’t solve cases; I fix brains,” he said. He tweaked his head to the side and raised his eyebrows. “That sounds like the kind of thing a cop needs to figure out.”
No answers, then.
Jay sighed as the doctor left, and he looked at his brother once more.
No answers.
Only questions he had to wait to answer.
-o-
He’d been in recovery before, but most of the time, he was the one being sedated. He remembered a few other instances, specifically when he’d had Connor Rhodes wake up a witness who could tell them where the Burke family might have taken Will. In truth, though, he’d spent as little time there as possible because, who the hell would want to chill in a recovery room?
People up and down the ward were in various stages of sedation. They were in terrible shape, across the board, and sometimes he heard them groaning. Someone cried and begged for help. Jay was pretty sure someone a few beds down actually died while he was sitting there.
By contrast, Will’s room was pretty calm, but he didn’t actually think that was a good thing.
Other patients were coming out of their sedation. They were showing signs of consciousness.
Will, though, didn’t as much as twitch.
If not for the steady rise and fall of his chest and the rhythm of his heart on the monitors, there’d be no way to even tell that his brother was still alive. He looked that bad.
And he wasn’t getting better. Even if he was cleared from recovery -- and Maggie seemed to think that would happen soon based on Will’s vitals -- Will wasn’t going to be extubated. He wasn’t going to be waking up. Comatose was one way of putting it. They refused to call it brain death since it had been such a short period of time.
But Dr. Abrams had been pretty frank. Will was going to be like this for awhile.
Will might always be like this.
In that sense, Jay didn’t even know what to make of the recovery ward. It seemed like a bad place for someone like Will, when they didn’t even know what recovery would look like at this point.
Maggie stayed with him, and she was mostly quiet. He didn’t know if she was worried about what he’d do if left to his own devices, or maybe she was just worried about him. Hell, she might just want to be there for Will as much as Jay did.
As it was, she answered a few questions. Not about the incident -- she steadfastly maintained that she knew nothing -- but about Will’s condition. She explained a few of the tubes. She pointed out the function of a few of the monitors. It was meant to allay his anxieties, but Jay didn’t feel any better about the multitude of medications in Will’s system or the feeding tube that had been shoved up his nose and down his esophagus. In short, all Maggie could do was tell Jay just how bad off Will was.
The result was that Jay felt worse.
Her intentions were good, but there was no way around this one.
Sometimes there was no silver lining.
Jay just had to hope that there was still some chance at a happy ending, even if he could possibly see how.
-o-
Within an hour, there was a fresh flurry of activity. When Dr. Abrams reappeared, Jay assumed the absolute worst, but the doctor assured him that they were just ready to transfer him.
“The ICU,” Dr. Abrams said. “I assume you know a little bit about that.”
Jay did, but not in any positive context.
“He’s going to need to be there for a few days, at least,” Dr. Abrams explained. “I wouldn’t put him in any kind of step down ward until we have the chance to reattach his skull. His intracranial pressure is still more elevated than I’d like, and I’ve never had a patient clear the ICU in this condition in less than three days.”
Jay tried to will himself into believing that was a good thing. “Three days, then?”
Dr. Abrams didn’t quite smile, though his look seemed to be an attempt at reassurance. “I know it’s annoying, but we’re on Will’s timeline for now,” he said. “All we can do is provide the appropriate care when he needs it.”
“And how will we know?” Jay asked, glancing anxiously at his brother. “How will we know when he needs it?”
Dr. Abrams drew a slow breath. “Trust me,” he said. “We’ll know.”
-o-
It was always hard to say what made people break. Everyone crossed the poin5 of no return at different times, and sometimes it was the strange, insignificant things that made the burden too much to bear. He’d seen it before. Witnesses who kept it together throughout all the questioning, making it through identifying the body before losing their control collecting their things from the front desk.
It was unpredictable, the way grief and shock interacted.
Jay had made it through everything so far, but when Dr. Abrams started gearing up to move Will from recovery to ICU, Jay couldn’t do it.
There was nothing too overt about it. No blood. No trauma. No near-death anything.
He watched as Will was rounded up. The machines were disconnected to portable versions, the IVs unlocked and pulled close. One of the nurses started to manually ventilate him, and he was rolled slightly to get a better position on the gurney.
Will showed no sign of discomfort, but he showed no sign at all. They wheeled him through the hallways, the bag of his personal belongings shoved beneath the gurney as Dr. Abrams led the team with a steady stream of quiet orders.
He made it to the room, though, a few steps behind the gurney. He made it to the doorway and he watched as the gurney was put in place and the wheels were locked. He stood there, watching as the IVs were hung and the monitors were set up. Will was hooked back up to a waiting ventilator, and another nurse started to smooth the blanket. They adjusted Will’s head, giving him some semblance of a comfortable pose, before his hands were curled gently by his sides with all care and attention.
And that was it, then.
That.
For reasons Jay couldn’t explain, for reasons he couldn’t begin to justify.
The straw broke the camel’s back.
Jay had reached his maximum load.
And he couldn’t.
Dr. Abrams was still overseeing the transition, and the team of nurses was preoccupied. Maggie, however, was still close to him, and Jay gave her a blank look and shook his head. “I can’t do this.”
She frowned, stepping toward him with apparent concern.
He drew back, inhaling sharply. “I just -- I just need a little bit,” he said.
“Jay--”
“I’ll be back,” he promised, and his eyes were burning now. “I just -- need a minute. Just a minute.”
Because Jay was strong -- but not impenetrable. Because Jay was steady -- but not unrockable. Because Jay was tenacious -- but not indefatigable.
Because Jay was human.
And his brother was dying.
And what the hell, he just needed a minute.
Maggie might have said something else; the doctor might have looked at him. Jay didn’t care; Jay didn’t listen. He dug his phone from his pocket, turned on his heel and left the ICU as fast as he could.
-o-
He wasn’t proud of it, of course.
Leaving his brother like that. When Will needed him most, here Jay was, turning tail. Will was the one suffering here, and Jay was what? Running away?
He could almost guilt himself into going back, but not quite. Because that was the real problem, in the end. Will wasn’t suffering. Will didn’t need him.
Will was comatose.
There was no brain activity.
Will was completely out of it; he might already be gone.
The entire exercise was one of appearance. Futility.
He made it down the hall, staring at his phone so hard that his eyes couldn’t focus.
He brought up the number by reflex. When his legs couldn’t move any longer, he pressed the call button and pressed the phone to his ear, gripping it like the lifeline it was. Surrounded by death; haunted by worst case scenarios. He needed something else, something more, something--
“Hello?” Hailey’s voice sounded on the other end. She sounded expectant. To call it eager would be wrong, but she had clearly been waiting for him to call. “Jay?”
Her voice broke the numbness, and he started to pace once more. He had a thought to posture, to make like this wasn’t as bad as he thought. Like Will might be okay. Like Jay hadn’t just lost his cool and bolted from his brother’s bedside in the ICU for no good reason.
“Hey,” he said, and he immediately felt his control start to slip. His voice cracked before he even finished the syllable, and when he inhaled to recover, it all just fell apart.
“Jay?” Hailey asked, sounding even more concerned than when she’d answered. She knew him too well; she could hear it in his voice. “How’s Will?”
He opened his mouth to answer, to recite whatever medical gibberish he could remember, but his mind went blank. It all left him in a rush, and the flood of emotions he’d somehow kept at bay for other people was too much now.
“Jay?” she asked again, sounding increasingly concerned. “Are you okay? Is Will okay?”
And he couldn’t do it. He’d kept it together with Maggie. He’d stayed in control of himself with April. He’d channeled aggression with Archer. He’d held his own with Abrams.
But it was too much.
Jay was standing there in a hospital while Will was being set up in a bed. He had a tube down his throat breathing for him, and his skull had been removed, and Will was lying there, unconscious and unaware, and this was his brother, the last of his family, and it was too much.
And he couldn’t do it at all. The self control. The directed anger and frustration. The swell of emotions he hadn’t allowed himself to experience came to a head and broke him in the quiet right then and there.
He broke on a sob, and the flood overwhelmed him quickly. Knees going weak, he sank down to the chair, sucking in gulping breaths that he choked on as he cried. Time was suspended as he pulled in on himself, the heat in his face radiating down his spine as he gave in. He couldn’t think; he couldn’t breathe; he couldn’t be. Not while Will was--
Not while Will was in such bad shape.
The intensity of the emotion peaked, and the adrenaline reached its breaking point. As the sobs tapered off, he drew in longer, slower breaths until finally he was able to hear over the sound of his own ragged breathing.
The phone was still in his hand, still pressed to his ear.
“I’m already on my way, okay?” Hailey said. “Stay there, just a little longer. I’ll be right there.”
Because Jay just needed a minute.
And in that moment, he just needed Hailey.
-o-
Waiting, then. He was back to waiting.
Waiting for Hailey; waiting for a nurse or a doctor. Waiting for Will.
How much of his life had he spent waiting for Will? For Will to come home? For Will to come back to his family? For Will to stay?
He’d hated him for it. For leaving, for building his own life. For not needing Jay as much as Jay needed him. He had never wanted to frame it sympathetically -- and why would he? He’d been stuck coming home. He’d left the army. He’d been the one to take Mom to the appointments. He’d endured the brunt of his father’s anger all those years.
Context hadn’t mattered to him then. He said Will had been partying, but Will had been in med school. He’d been pulling long hours, putting his way through residency. He had to think he was better than Canaryville, or he’d never have gotten out.
And why come back? To a family that derided every choice he made? A father who rolled his eyes when he said he wanted to be a doctor? A brother who scorned him for taking the best opportunities instead of settling for what worked for the family? Will was flighty, sure. Because that was how he coped, just as much as Jay got pissy and threw punches. They were products of their upbringing, and it had just taken them this long to understand it in each other, to come to terms with what it meant to be the last ones standing.
And Will had never denied it, not any of it. He’d never fought Jay. He’d never defended himself. He’d accepted that mantle of bad son, neglectful brother. No wonder he’d wanted to leave. He’d never had the backbone Jay had, the one their father had had. Will took and took until he ran out of room for derision and ran away instead.
So Jay waited for him. To come back, to come home.
And this time Will had stayed.
And this time Jay had understood.
And this time it was working.
But then one punch.
One punch.
And Jay was back to waiting.
And Will might never come back.
-o-
He was still pacing aimlessly, lost in a waiting room he didn’t quite recognize, when one of the nurses found him. It wasn’t Maggie this time, but it was an ICU nurse. She gave her name, but Jay didn’t remember it, but she smiled kindly when she explained that she was in charge of Will’s care for the rest of the day.
Jay nodded, as though this all surely had some meaning to him, and then she gestured back toward the ICU wing.
“He’s settled now, so it’s a lot less chaotic back there,” she said with a little sympathetic nod. “I know how overwhelming it can be, and if you have any questions, really, I’m here for you as much as I am him.”
Jay couldn’t be sure how much of this was because Med really did hire the best staff -- and how much was just because this was Will. Will was the kind of guy who could piss half the people off -- and somehow still get half the people to love him. He’d won over a hardass like Dr. Abrams. Whatever the impact was, this nurse seemed as sincere as they came.
“Uh, my girlfriend--” he started, but he had to pause to clear his throat. He blinked hard a few times and found himself moderately put together. “Um, she’s coming in. You know. To be here. Is that going to be okay?”
“Well, we do try to have some visitor limitations in ICU, but I’m sure we can work something out,” she said. She nodded behind her once more. “Would you like to see him?”
The answer was both yes and no, but Jay ultimately found he could say nothing. Instead, he allowed the nurse to guide him back, and he walked on numb feet back through the ward. This time, when they arrived at Will’s room, he forced himself to go inside.
It was clear they’d taken some time to make the scene as minimally intimidating as possible. The curtains had been drawn to give the room a better sense of privacy, and the machines and equipment had been pushed to the side and organized. It made the room less chaotic, to be sure, but there was no way to obscure just how much of it was still needed to keep Will alive. As a finishing touch, there was a comfortable chair there, one he hadn’t seen before, and it had been positioned near the bed.
That was the room. They could do a lot to make the room more inviting, but none of it changed Will.
Will had been stretched out on the bed with his gown arranged neatly and his hands tucked by his sides on top of the blanket. The blanket itself had been positioned with extra care, the edges nipped securely under the edges of the mattress.
Someone had taken time to clean up the badnages, which looked fresh. There wasn’t much to be done for the worst of it, though. The tube was still in Will’s throat, and the heavy bandages were still prominent around his skull. Will still looked lost under the weight of the interventions intended to save his life.
It couldn’t be sugarcoated. It couldn’t be normalized.
Jay sat heavily in the chair, not sure what else to do.
The more unsettling revelation: there was nothing else for him to do. It wasn’t the first time he’d waited on Will. He had to hope it wasn’t the last.
From behind him, someone shuffled at the door with a small knock. Jay assumed it was one of the nurses -- or residents or whatever -- and he barely spared a glance back. When he did, he realized it wasn’t any medical professional.
There, framed in the doorway, was Hailey.
Her eyes were on him, and only him. Jay had been around people all day, people who offered him sympathetic smiles and an understanding nod. People who listened and who cared.
But Hailey was the first one who had seen him.
Stepping inside, she seemed to be careful in her approach. She allowed her eyes to wander to Will for the first time, and Jay could see her resolve visibly tremble. She had come here to be strong for Jay, but the sight of Will would rattle anyone.
Jay couldn’t help himself. He got up, reaching out to her with a hug. He allowed himself this, burying his face into her hair, squeezing his eyes closed until he heard the sound of his heart pounding in his ears.
Her grip was firm in return. She didn’t waver, and she held him until he was the one who finally pulled back.
She looked at him, reaching up a hand and stroking the side of his cheek. “How are you holding up?”
Jay stepped back, sniffling. “I’ve definitely been better,” he said. “But I mean, it’s not me--”
He nodded to his brother, letting his gaze linger.
“Yeah,” she said quietly. She paused to bit her lower lip. “I know you said it was bad--”
“I know,’ Jay said, looking down at his brother. It was hardly a new sight to him by now, his brother unconscious in the bed and breathing through a tube, but he hadn’t acclimated to it -- at all. “It still doesn’t seem real.”
She reached forward, enveloping him into another hug. “I’m so sorry,” she said, arms tight around him. “How is he?”
Jay pulled back first, mostly because her comfort would threaten to undo him. If he was going to keep his crap together right now -- for Will’s sake -- then he needed to stay strong. Taking a shaky breath, he looked back at his brother. “I don’t even know,” he admitted, shaking his head. He ran a shaky hand over the top of his head. “I mean, he’s not good, but he could be worse.”
“So, the surgery,” she said, attempting to clarify. “They think it worked?”
“I guess,” Jay said. “He’s not bleeding anymore.”
“So that’s good, right?” Hailey asked. She didn’t look convinced, and at the look on his face, whatever hope she’d plastered together faltered even more.
“It’s, like, swelling,” he said, gesturing vaguely to his own head as if to demonstrate. “Like with the injury and the surgery -- there’s too much swelling.”
Hailey’s brows drew together, but she seemed to know what he was talking about. “I’ve heard of that,” she said. “The brain runs out of room.”
Jay nodded, eyes lingering on the bandages wrapped around his brother’s marred head. “Apparently they left the skull flap off,” he said. “Trying to help or something.”
Hailey looked at Will as well, but she could only do it for a second before her gaze dropped. “Just as long as they’re treating it,” she said. She forged a smile again, looking at Jay once more. “It means he’s still fighting.”
It was an optimistic spin on things, and the optimism seemed a little forced considering just how bad Will looked.
But Hailey was trying.
Will was trying.
Jay had to try, too.
He just wished there was more.
Turning away, he paced to the wall and shook his head. His eyes randomly burned, and he caught on a sob that he just barely managed to swallow back. “This just doesn’t make sense.”
She didn’t trail after him, but she turned toward him to watch his progress. “These things never do,” she said. “We see it all the time -- bad things that happen to people who don’t deserve it.”
“No,” Jay said, and he looked at her. “It’s not just some random accident. Everyone keeps telling me that this was an accident or something. That it’s just bad luck that Will hit his head and started to bleed.”
Hailey looked a little helpless, and he knew she wasn’t in an easy position -- trying to comfort him without indulging the worst of his fears and doubts.
Because those fears and doubts.
Were pretty pressing at the moment.
“Well, accidents do happen,” she said, almost noncommittal in her delivery. She was feeling him out, trying to take her cues accordingly.
And Jay shook his head, almost refusing to accept the cliches no matter how well intentioned they were -- even from Hailey. “Sure, and I know that better than most,” Jay said. He jerked his head toward his brother again. “But this was a fight. A fight? The whole idea of it just feels wrong. I mean, Will wakes up this morning, comes into work and hauls off to punch his boss? His actual boss?”
“Who was an asshole, I thought,” Hailey pointed out. “I don’t know for sure. But like I’ve said. I know Halsteads. Fighting’s not outside your wheelhouse, especially if you feel justified. And from what you’ve said, this guy probably had it coming one way or another.”
The logic was there, but Jay didn’t buy it. He couldn’t buy it. It wasn’t just the impossibility of it -- that Will might have done this to himself -- it was that it just didn’t add up. At all. Yeah, Jay was a loyal brother to the point of stubborn insanity, but his cop instincts were still valid. And they weren’t shutting up now.
Especially now.
He shook his head again, even more adamant. “But Will’s been walking on eggshells ever since he got hired back. His only priority was to get off probation,” he said. “He has bent over backward, taking extra shift, going above and beyond with his paperwork. There’s no way in hell he’d throw that all away over a guy like Archer.”
Hailey didn’t look wholly convinced, but it was pretty clear she wasn’t about to argue with Jay, not while they were standing in Will’s ICU room. She cast an anxious glance toward Will and took a deep breath before looking back at Jay. “Okay,” she said, somewhat plaintively. “So what do you think happened?”
If he’d ever doubted that she loved him, this pretty much sealed the deal. He could see it on her face -- she had reason to think that the official narrative so far was true, that this was an accident, a fluke, nothing. But she was willing to put that aside for Jay.
She would take a stand with Jay for no other reason than she trusted him.
More than that, she really cared about him.
He knew he was lucky to have her, but luck wasn’t really the right way of thinking about things at the moment. They would need more than luck to get Will through this, and Jay knew that all too well. “I don’t know for sure,” he admitted. “You’re right about Halsteads and fights. We find our way in them, even when we’re not trying. But I’m not buying the line that Will started this. Like Archer’s the victim here.”
“Okay,” she said, continuing to nod along carefully. “You said there are no witnesses?”
“Best I can tell, this is just Archer’s word against Will’s,” Jay said.
“But it’s not even Will’s word,” Hailey said. “Will’s be out this whole time, hasn’t he? So we’re just going off of Archer’s account of things?”
“Seems that way,” Jay said. “I haven’t had time to ask around too much, though.”
“But you do think Archer is lying?” she said for clarity.
Jay sighed, eyes drifting back to his brother. Unconscious like this, it was easy to forget how abrasive and annoying Will could be. Hell, Jay had taken swings at him more than once throughout their lives together. Will was the kind of guy you either loved or hated, and it would be easier if he wasn’t such an idiot.
An idiot who had worked so hard to change.
Six months ago, he probably would have assumed the worst about Will, too.
But these six months? When he’d hit rock bottom?
And picked himself back up?
“Maybe,” Jay said, sighing reluctantly. “I should be looking into it for Will’s sake, but I just -- I can’t.”
He was at a loss almost. He’d been pushed to the brink of his self control, and Will was fighting for his life. To leave him now, when Will had finally made the choice to stay, was untenable for him.
“Hey, of course you can’t,” Hailey said. She reached out again, a hand on his arm. “You belong here with your brother, nowhere else. Being here for him -- that’s all you should be doing.”
He turned back toward her, overwhelmingly grateful for her comfort. “I know, but none of this feels right,” Jay said, almost imploring her now. “Will shouldn’t be here. Not like this. Not when he might -- he might be--”
He couldn’t finish it. He just couldn’t.
Hailey squeezed his arm again, nodding in her understanding. “I know,” she said, even gentler than before. Her voice was soft but clear over the sound of the machines keeping Will alive. “So, let me.”
All of this had been out of left field today, and Jay had been scrambling to keep up ever since Maggie first called him. The hits had kept on coming, from one conversation in the hospital to the next.
Yet, somehow, this one still totally caught him off guard.
“What?” he asked.
Hailey’s grip dropped away and she shrugged, almost nonplussed. “Let me do it. I can ask around, see what I can find out about what happened.”
Balanced ineffectively between brother and cop, Jay shook his head. “But you can’t,” he said. “I mean, this isn’t an official investigation.”
He was at a loss, but Hailey clearly wasn’t. “It doesn’t have to be,” she said. “All I’m going to do is ask questions, see if I can find someone who can tell us anything more. That is exactly what any normal person would do in this situation. Will’s your brother. Of course you want to know more about what happened. And I’m with you.”
He had to admit, her logic was pretty good there. She was also telling him exactly what he wanted to hear. Knowing that he was emotionally compromised in this situation -- both by Hailey and Will -- Jay hesitated. “You sure?”
Hailey didn’t hesitate in return. “I’m sure.”
Jay looked anxiously back at Will. “What about Voight?”
“I told him not to expect me -- or you -- back,” she said. “He had questions, but when I told him that it was about Will, he understood.”
Jay wasn’t sure what surprised him most. That Hailey had told him knowing the implications of her leave or that Voight would allow it all so willingly. “Really?”
She nodded, almost smiling. “Really.”
There was nothing quite right to fix all this. There was no easy solution, no safe out. Will was suffering -- Will could be dying -- and Jay was at the end of himself.
Which was, not coincidentally, exactly where he found Hailey.
Despite everything, he smiled. He loved her so damn much. He reached out, pulling her into a hug once more. “Thanks, Hailey,” he said, allowing himself to bury his face in her hair.
She hugged back, strong and sure. “Of course,” she said, her voice steady in his ear. “Of course.”
-o-
Jay couldn’t bring himself to leave, that much was true, but there wasn’t a lot to do while he stayed. Hospital vigils were probably necessary in these situations, but that didn’t erase their utter futility. There was nothing Jay could do by staying, even if the idea of leaving was more than he was willing to take.
At this point, it felt like he was waiting to see if Will would live or die.
The worst part was thinking about how it might already be a moot point.
What if Will’s brain didn’t recover? What if there had been too much damage? What if Will was already gone and they just didn’t know it yet? What if Jay was holding vigil for a lost cause?
He’d been ready when his mom had died, and he’d fought tooth and nail when his old man had passed. This situation with Will was somewhere in between. The outcomes for their parents had been clear. It had just been Jay’s job to accept it and see it through.
Nothing was clear now.
Will was deeply medicated with IVs and tubes everywhere. The nurses checked his vitals and said he was stable, but then there was a part of his skull literally missing. The idea of progress had been badly warped now, and Jay was contending with an outcome he couldn’t predict. One he wasn’t even sure he wanted to know.
The idea that Will was already gone -- made him physically ill.
But the notion of hope? That he would stay here and cling to the idea that things might be okay?
Hurt like hell.
Because Will--
This didn’t even look like Will. It looked like some approximation of his brother, and sitting there, watching his brother’s chest rise and fall, he was sure Will would have a thousand explanations for why things were they way they were. He would explain the tubes. He would tell Jay what the nurses were doing when they bustled about. He would let Jay know if it was okay to hope or not.
Thinking about that just made it worse.
Will couldn’t do any of those things because they were happening to him.
This was happening to Jay all over again.
And people wondered why he hated hospitals. They wondered why he chafed under medical care.
This was why.
Watching his mom waste away. Seeing his dad slip right through his damn fingers. And now Will.
An accident. Bad luck. A single punch.
And Will might be gone, even though he was right here, in front of him.
Jay would stay, then.
Just in the off chance that Will might, too.
