Chicago Med fic: Suckerpunched (6/10)
Dec. 23rd, 2021 04:56 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-
The rest of the day was quiet, but not in any kind of restful or restorative way. Will liked to talk about how hospitals were places for healing; that was the kind of line he always gave when Jay was ruffled about being admitted to a place where people came to die.
He sort of wished Will was right this time.
But watching Will there.
All the signs point to Will being alive. His heart rhythm was clear and steady on the monitor. His chest rose and fell steadily.
But Will was nearly lost among the interventions. Between the tubes and wires, the medications and the machines -- it didn’t seem like living. It seemed like surviving.
And barely.
It felt like Will was being eeked out into existence, barely anchored to life by the wonders of modern medicine. He knew the advanced technology was responsible for his brother’s life, and he was grateful.
He was also appalled.
That Will should be reduced to this.
Hell, his brother might be gone already and they had no way of knowing it.
It was its own special kind of hell. The most unsettling limbo he’d ever found himself living through.
That didn’t get easier. No matter how many minutes or hours that passed. It didn’t get better.
The nurses came and went with some regularity, and they seemed to be taking a very proactive approach in Will’s care. However, outside of a professional capacity, Jay was surprised that the visitor list was scant. Maggie checked in more often than anyone else, asking Jay if he needed anything and answering any questions he might have. Sometimes she stayed to talk, but if Jay was withdrawn, she patted him on the shoulder and told him to stay strong. For Will, they all had to be strong.
He didn’t have the heart to disagree. He didn’t even have the heart to question her. Maggie was going out of her way to be there for Will -- and Jay. In fact, he was pretty sure that the limited number of visitors was her doing. Will needed a calm environment, and Jay needed to make sure there was no one close by to hit when his emotions got to be too much.
It was smart of her, of course. It was also a gesture of kindness. Will probably didn’t need the space -- Will still lacked any significant brain activity -- but Jay, on the other hand, needed all the space he could get. Seeing Will like this -- watching him like this was as much as he could bear. If he had to contend with pity--
Well, he didn’t think he could.
At any rate, he had no desire to find out.
Even so, the quiet was hard to endure. The way it felt to be so close to his brother and have him still so far away -- it was a loneliness that was hard to put into words. He wasn’t even sure he could make sense of it. All those years Will had been away, and Jay had severed all emotional ties. He’d let Will back in, he’d made a place for him in his life, and for once, Will hadn’t let him down.
Which just made it harder.
To hold something so close and feel it slip through his fingers. He could hold onto Will’s hand, but there was no way to hold Will. The distinction grated, rubbing his emotions raw and to the breaking point, with a ferocity he was helpless to fight.
By the time Hailey came back, he was more than a little relieved. He needed answers, sure. But mostly, he knew by now, he needed her.
She came offering both.
“Do you want the rundown?” Hailey asked. “Or should we get dinner or something first?”
The idea of food didn’t even make sense to him. One of the nurses had brought him something earlier. It was still mostly untouched on the tray he’d left discarded on one of the tables.
Hunger didn’t make sense at the moment.
Answers, on the other hand, did.
“Tell me,” he said, on his feet to greet her. “What did you find out?”
If Hailey had hesitations, she didn’t show it. This was the role she’d chosen, and she wasn’t taking the idea of family in half measures. “Well, I talked to a lot of people, basically everyone in the ED.”
That sounded good. As good as anything could sound right now, given the fact that he was keeping vigil over his comatose brother at the moment. “Okay. And?”
She tipped her head, indicating her regret. “I talked to everyone who was on duty -- I tracked some of them down all over the hospital -- and not a single person saw it,” she said. “No one knew anything was wrong at all until Dr. Archer came out of the doctor’s lounge, yelling for a backboard.”
Jay frowned, casting a look at his brother. How the hell had Will managed to get this messed up in things? “Not a single witness?”
“Since it was in the lounge, apparently not,” Hailey explained. She also looked at Will, her expression pinching off somewhat. “It was just the two of them by all accounts.”
With a sigh, Jay scrubbed his hand through his hair in exhaustion. “So that’s a dead end.”
“Maybe,” Hailey said, but she didn’t sound like the story was over. “But just because no one saw it, doesn’t mean they didn’t have context. A lot of people had a lot to say about the state of things between Dean Archer and Will.”
Jay perked up somewhat at that, bouncing just slightly on the balls of his feet. “Like what?”
“Mostly confirming what you already knew,” she said. “The conflict between these two had been stewing for a long time. Dr. Archer did not like Will, and he wasn’t afraid to let people know it. I got several detailed accounts of just how disparaging he could be -- openly, all throughout the ED.”
Will had said as much, though he had always tried to play it down. In the past, Will might have wallowed a bit more -- and he certainly wouldn’t have been shy in his criticisms. But with his probation being what it was, Will had been afraid to rock the boat, especially regarding someone who was technically his supervisor. The power discrepancy was worth noting.
“Though, in terms of full disclosure, this Dr. Archer wasn’t exactly making friends in the ED,” she said. “Since he took over for Dr. Choi, morale has tanked and badly. He likes to antagonize people. Sort of emotionally piss them off until they do what he wants.”
In some ways, this was exactly what Jay had expected, but now he had to make it parse with the official party line. “So, everyone says that Archer was the aggressor, and yet the story is still that Will threw the first punch?” he asked, letting his skepticism show. “But why would he do that? Do they think he snapped?”
She lifted one shoulder thoughtfully. “That’s harder to say for sure. Some people speculated -- and some of them said it was about time that Will snapped. With Dr. Choi and Natalie gone, Will was the one who had been here the longest. Everyone looks up to him. A lot of people I talked to wanted him to take a stand, like he was their only hope to get things back to normal.”
“And they believe that?” Jay asked. “They think he threw the first punch?”
This time, Hailey shook her head less confidently. “At this point, Jay, you know it’s just speculation. Some people didn’t question the narrative. Other people thought it was strange. I didn’t want to get to specific or I’d be leading the witness. It could contaminate the whole thing.”
That point was valid, and that was why he’d had Hailey do the interviews -- and not him. Jay’s bias would have been a little problematic.
His eyes flitted to Will, lifeless on the bed.
Very problematic.
“But this does confirm my angle, the one I’ve had since Maggie first told me what happened,” he said. “Archer was the antagonist. He was setting Will up for a fight -- one that everyone wanted him to take. But Will couldn’t. There was no way. He’s out of chances at Med, and there’s no way in hell he’d waste his chances on some asshole like Archer. Not with Goodwin watching every little thing he does.”
“Well, I can’t validate the theory completely, but there is corroborating evidence,” Hailey said. “Everyone I talked to -- and I do mean everyone -- said that Will had been on his best behavior. Like, they saw real changes in him. I talked to some guy named Crockett who went on about how they’d never gotten along before, but he respects the hell out of Will now. He’s had a massive turnaround.”
“Crockett?” Jay clarified, brows drawing together at the mention. It was a surprising reference. Dr. Marcel was a mainstay in the ED these days, but he had never been in Will’s fan club -- any more than Will had been in his. The lingering issue of Natalie had always been a sticking point.
“Marcel, I think?” Hailey said, confirming the reference.
“Yeah, he and Natalie -- I mean, for awhile, anyway -- they were a thing,” he said, sighing a little as he took it in. “It put him and Will at odds, like, all the time.”
“Well, you wouldn’t know it from talking to the guy now,” Hailey said. “He had glowing things to say about Will. I actually had to excuse myself or he would have kept talking about Will for another ten minutes. He sends his best, by the way.”
Jay hadn’t really needed confirmation that Will had been serious about earning his credibility back. But if he had mended fences with Crockett? Who had been sleeping with Natalie?
He couldn’t help but look at Will again. It turned out the idiot could still surprise him.
And for what?
For the possibility of brain damage?
For a premature death?
Will didn’t deserve it. Especially not now.
His eyes were burning again. His throat was tight. He tore his gaze away from Will and locked his sights back on Hailey. “So what the hell happened?” he asked, voice strangely hoarse. “Why did everything boil over today? He was due to get of probation soon. Why today?”
Hailey’s regret only deepened. “No one knows that for sure either,” she admitted. “But it was a hard morning, by all accounts. And not just for Will.”
Jay had been processing a lot of information today, but a few of the salient points still stood out. Hailey’s words triggered a memory from his conversation with April. “The DNR case?”
Hailey didn’t exactly look surprised that he knew, but that was how they were as partners. Romantically and professionally. Where one went, the other was never far behind. “Yeah, that one. I talked to a few of the nurses on that one, and they said it was a tough one,” she said. “Complicated, emotional, ethical questions -- you name it.”
“And Will’s got a bad history with that crap,” Jay said.
“But they all said Will handled it perfectly,” Hailey continued. “It stands out to me because a few of them sounded surprised. Like they had expected him to struggle, but he didn’t. They said it was textbook.”
Where was the conflict then? If the tough case was handled well, then what the hell was the sticking point that led to punches and brain damage? “I still don’t get it,” he said, teeming with frustration. “What’s Archer’s deal, then?”
“I think he just didn’t like Will,” Hailey said, letting the simplicity of her conclusion stand for what it was. “Despite Will’s handling of the case this morning, Archer went on and on about it. A lot of people heard him talking about it, openly questioning Will’s calls. One of the nurses on the case said Archer pulled her aside and grilled her for five minutes, looking for any lapse of protocol.”
Jay let his nose wrinkle even more, his sense of discontent deepening keenly. “I mean, everything you’re saying is telling me Archer was looking to pick a fight. Tell me if I’m wrong.”
“In my estimation, you’re not wrong,” she agreed. “That’s exactly what it sounded like in most of my interviews.”
He needed Hailey to slow him down, but she was giving him the all clear to keep on this line of thought. “So, Will was provoked.”
He was pushing, but Hailey wasn’t pushing back. “I haven’t made a case you can take to court or anything, but it’s compelling stuff. But we still have the fundamental problem. We don’t know who threw the first punch. The official story is still that Will hit first.”
Jay shook his head, vehement in his disgust as he paced a few steps and then back again. “After the bastard baited him all day. Hell, he baited him for weeks.”
Hailey chewed the inside of her lip, looking a little sorry again. “It sure looks that way.”
He forced himself to breathe, which was harder than he would have expected. He operated well under stress, but threats to his own life were a piece of cake compared to things like this. He hated that he had experience in this. Way too much experience.
Focusing on his breathing for another moment, Jay let his gaze linger on Will once more. That had to ground him. That had to guide him now when everything else was at this risk of flying apart at the seams.
“All the stupid stuff he’s done,” Jay muttered with a shake of his head. “And what the hell has he gotten into this time?”
She stepped closer to him, reaching out a gentle hand to place on his arm. “It was an accident, Jay.”
She was trying to absolve him from whatever guilt he felt about this, but his own guilt wasn’t the problem. Jay knew well enough he didn’t need to be absolved. He wasn’t to blame.
But someone else was.
He looked at her, jaw tight. “Was it, though?”
She dropped her hand, moving quickly from girlfriend to cop once more. Either way, she understood what he wasn’t saying here.
There were times for control. There were situations for restraints. Sometimes, you had to tread lightly. Jay knew that.
This wasn’t one of those times.
Hell, with Will comatose, Jay figured it was time to be a wrecking ball.
“The bastard provoked him,” he said, and he wasn’t hedging now. “Archer wanted this fight.”
Hailey was more cautious in her response. “But if Will threw the first punch…”
It was a thought she couldn’t finish. One he didn’t let her finish. “But what if he didn’t?” he said, giving voice to the idea, almost stubbornly insistent now. “What if he didn’t throw the first punch? What if he didn’t start this fight? It’s not that impossible. I wouldn’t even call it unlikely. We still have no witnesses. You said it yourself.”
His logic wasn’t bad, but Hailey followed it to its natural conclusion with a simple candor he needed to keep this in check. “Then, you’re saying that Archer is lying. And not just a little. But flat out, covering his role in this up.”
If she was trying to shock him out of the conclusion, her question had the opposite effect. The more it was said, the more he believed it. The more he knew it. “Come on, look at this evidence with that perspective,” he said, following the investigative line of thought. “You just told me, from all your witness interviews, everyone hated the guy. And Will was on the straight and narrow, they all vouch for that, too. So, what, today they just suddenly change roles? The evidence doesn’t hold out.”
Her brow was creased in necessary skepticism. She wasn’t second guessing him. She was being his sounding board. It was how they built cases, even if they weren’t usually so personal. “The evidence doesn’t hold out either way. It’s all speculation, and you have a higher bar to prove the guy is lying.”
“Maybe, but we can’t just give Archer the benefit of the doubt. He’s as much a suspect as a witness,” Jay countered. “It would be bad police work to only take his version of the events. He’s not unimpeachable. And there’s no way in hell we’re going to call him unbiased. We have to validate his story, or it’s inadmissible evidence.”
“Sure, but you still lack plausible cause,” she said. “And disliking Will is circumstantial evidence at best. You can’t prove intent. You barely have a motive.”
She was right, naturally.
Why did she have to be right?
Breathing hard, Jay shook his head, feeling the tension as it tightened in his jaw and ran like fire through his gut. “Damn it,” he muttered, flexing his fist in an insufficient attempt to relieve the pressure building in every synapse of his body.
He was close to breaking -- again. Hailey saw it just as much as he felt it. She stepped forward, pulling back from her investigative mode. She looked at him like a girlfriend once more. “Jay, you really should go home. Clean up, eat something. Rest and come back.”
She was being sympathetic, and he knew she meant well, but the idea made him recoil. “No, no way,” he said quickly, pulling back from her a step. “I can’t.”
It wasn’t a reaction that she was unprepared for. “Jay, he’s getting the best care here, you know that,” she said. “People around here love Will. They’re going to watch him like a hawk, and you know better than I do that it’s going to be awhile before he wakes up.”
If he woke up. She didn’t say it -- she wouldn’t -- but she didn’t have to. Jay shook his head, more stubborn than ever. “No,” he said, even more forceful now. “I’m not leaving him.”
She wasn’t looking for a confrontation, and he knew that. But she loved him, and she wasn’t about to leave him to deal with this alone. She wanted to protect him, just like he wanted to protect her -- like he wanted to protect Will. So, he saw her nod, finding her to be resolute. “Okay,” she agreed. “Then, I’ll stay, too.”
It was the perfect response, of course. As a girlfriend, as a cop, she’d found his weak spot. Jay would never be able to pick between his girlfriend and his brother, and she had made herself indispensable for a reason. Because she loved him just as much as he loved her. “No, Hailey--”
She was unswayed, though. “Jay, I want to. I want to be here for you, for you both. So if you won’t go, then I’ll stay with you. Lighten the load any way I can.”
There was no doubt in his mind that she meant it -- as if he needed a reminder of how much he loved her and how lucky he was that she tolerated him.
He drew a breath, finding a renewed calmness now. It wasn’t just about him and Will, then. It was about the three of them. All he could do for Will was stay, but Hailey was a different matter. “Look, you should go home,” he said. “You get the sleep, the rest, the whatever.”
She was already shaking her head, but he didn’t let her speak.
“And then you can come back in the morning, okay?” he said. “You can come back, bring me breakfast, keep me sane. This thing -- this whole mess -- it’s not going to get better tonight. I can’t leave, but I’m going to need you there when the adrenaline wears off. I’m going to need you if I’m going to be here for Will.”
He wasn’t saying that just to say it. He wasn’t trying to win an argument or force her into doing what he wanted.
It was simply the only option that made sense. He couldn’t leave Will, and he didn’t want Hailey to overextend herself. He knew there was little he could do for Will. He needed to do this for Hailey. He needed this semblance of control, this vestige of determination.
Across from him, she appeared hesitant but they knew each other well. Their years as partners had been formative. Their time as lovers had been the natural extension of everything they’d built together. It had taken them years to say it, but it had always felt right when they did.
She reached out, gentle now. Her fingers took his. “You sure?”
He squeezed her fingers back, finding solidarity there that he lacked elsewhere. He swallowed hard, wishing that this would be enough. “I’m sure.”
Pulling her hand free, Hailey smiled. It was a small gesture, but the depth of the emotion behind it mattered. He wasn’t alone. As bleak as it all seemed, he wasn’t facing this by himself. She would be here for him, so he could be there, no matter what, for Will.
“I’ll go,” she conceded. “But only if you promise you’ll rest. No investigating.”
She knew him. She knew him and for some reason, she loved him anyway. “Best behavior,” he said, because it felt good to make a promise he could actually keep today. “I’m not going anywhere.”
-o-
When Hailey left, Jay tried to settle in. It felt awkward and uncomfortable -- every part of it -- and while he fussed pointlessly about Will’s ICU room, he found himself wishing he’d asked her to stay. There was nothing for her to do any more than there was something for him to do, but it might have helped eased some of his anxiety.
That was the point, though. That was why he’d asked her to go.
She didn’t need to see Will like this.
More than that, she didn’t need to see him like this.
Helplessness made him restless, and it was all he could do not to convert that restlessness into something destructive. He’d use it productive if he could, but there was nothing to be done for it.
So he tidied Will’s room, even though there was nothing to organize, shifting the bag of Will’s belongings around about five times before arranging the tissues, water cup and phone on the table another ten times for the lack of something better to do. It didn’t make him feel better, but it kept him preoccupied for about ten minutes. All things considered, he counted it as a win.
The alternative, after all, was to sit there and stare at Will. That was awkward under any circumstances, and watching Will while he was in this state was just hard. A presence was supposed to be reassuring, but all the interventions only drove home just how dire things were. And he couldn’t get it out of his head. When he saw the bandages, he thought of the hole in Will’s skull, and the whole process of tidying had to start up again.
The nurses tried to make him more comfortable. Someone suggested a rollaway cot, but they weren’t standardly used in the ICU and Jay refused to let them go through the trouble. Eventually, he agreed to a pillow and some blankets, and when one of them mustered up a footrest to help him stretch out on the chair, he didn’t object.
It wasn’t comfortable, but it was as good as it was going to get. Jay settled in, kicked his feet up and made every pretense of sleep. It was all for show, though. There was no way in hell he was going to sleep. He couldn’t. Not with Will like that.
Will was no kind of company in this state, that much was true. But Jay was terrified to close his eyes. If he fell asleep and Will slipped away, he would never forgive himself.
Hell, he was having a hard enough time forgiving himself as it was.
He was tired, that much was true. But it was the kind of tired that wasn’t going to be fixed by a night’s sleep, good, bad or otherwise.
So he laid in the chair, curled up under the blanket. He turned off the lights, listening to the distant sounds of the ward as the night settled in. And he watched his brother, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. The slow hypnotic movement that almost allowed him to think things might be okay.
The night was long and dark and quiet, and Jay sat suspended, half hopeful, half terrified, that the morning would prove to him otherwise.
-o-
Morning did come, but the light did not offer a better take on things. If anything, the daylight just made the situation seem more bleak. Will’s condition had not changed.
Jay had stayed true to his promise -- the one he’d made explicitly to Hailey and the one he’d made in every other way to Will. He’d stayed; he hadn’t wavered.
He wasn’t sure what good it really did, but he took some comfort in keeping it. He’d done his part, and Will had done his.
Hailey, who showed up early with fresh food and a bag of things, did her part, too. She was true to her word; she was true to Jay.
They’d all done what they could, then.
And Jay had to hold out some hope that that would count for something.
-o-
Hailey had come back early while Jay was still dozing on and off. In addition to being very punctual, she also brought enough food to feed five people. Jay was certain that the large selection -- varying from donuts to hot pancakes -- was designed to make sure he ate something, but it made for an awkward setup in Will’s private ICU room.
All the same, he was hungry. He hadn’t even realized it, but when he started eating, he found he didn’t want to stop. He ate all the pancakes, a serving of hash browns, and downed it all with a donut and coffee.
Lots of coffee.
Hailey picked her way through a bagel on her own, and she asked him how Will had fared throughout the night.
There was nothing to tell, of course. Will was alive. That was the good news.
It was also the only news. Will’s condition had remained unchanged. He was still deeply unconscious, and his intracranial pressure was high. In short, things were still bad, but they could be worse. It wasn’t a great measuring stick, but Jay didn’t dare consider the alternative.
When they were finished eating, Hailey provided him with clean clothes and a few basic supplies. He excused himself to the bathroom, changing and washing up. By the time he got back to Will’s room, Hailey had tidied up there, and she appeared to have settled in for the day.
The idea of it gave him mixed feelings. Any day with Hailey was a good day -- and maybe that was part of the problem. This wasn’t some restful retreat. This wasn’t a carefree day off work. Jay was literally watching his brother on life support, spending every second wondering if he’d remember his own name when he woke up -- if he woke up at all.
There was a part of him that needed Hailey’s support or he was going to fall apart.
There was another part of him that was only going to keep it together without her support. She made it ten times easier to fall apart, and he had no business falling apart. Not now, not while Will was--
Not while Will was so out of it.
And maybe it was pride.
Maybe he didn’t want her to see him like this. Maybe he didn’t want to show her just how terrified he was, how overwhelming the idea of losing his brother was. It wasn’t macho nonsense; it was all about being a cop. They liked control; they liked working all the angles.
Jay had none of that here. He had no advantage, no utility, no control.
He just had a lonely ICU room and his brother’s vitals flashing on the screen above him.
“You don’t have to stay,” Jay blurted finally. They’d made small talk, quiet and subdued, throughout breakfast, but the shift in his tone and disposition made Hailey stop.
She hesitated as she looked at him. “I know,” she said.
She said it like it was obvious, but she made no move to get up. Feeling anxious, Jay wet his lips and swallowed hard. “I mean, you’ve got to get to work, right?”
This time, she blinked. The question seemed to surprise her, even though she was trying hard not to show it. “I, uh, took the day off,” she told him. “I told Voight I might be a few days. Both of us.”
She said it just like that, plain and matter of fact, and Jay tried to reckon what it might mean. That she loved him, sure. That she cared about him, yes.
That Will might be his last blood relative, yes.
But he wasn’t his last family.
He watched his brother for a moment, unchanged on the bed. It almost felt like Will was slipping away, edging further from him even while he sat stubbornly by his side. He’d always been scared of being alone.
He glanced back at Hailey.
He wasn’t alone, though.
He might not be able to hold onto Will this time -- God help him, he’d try, though -- but Hailey was the one holding onto him this time. He just had to let her.
“You sure?” he asked, the question couched tentatively on his tongue.
She smiled a little, giving him a nod back. “I’m sure.”
With his own lack of certainty at the moment, he could use all the surety she could offer.
-o-
Even with Hailey’s presence, there was little to be done to make the situation easier or more pleasant. She rambled on from time to time, talking about lines of thought he could never quite follow. He made vague replies that seemed to satisfy her, and he suspected that she was just using the sound of her voice to keep him from thinking too hard.
Because there was a lot to think about. During rounds, Dr. Abrams had found Will’s condition unchanged -- save for his rising ICP.
Intracranial pressure, that was. Jay was picking up on the medical jargon already, much to his chagrin. Like he wanted a better way to accurately describe just how messed up his brother was at the moment.
Besides that, his vitals were relatively stable. When Jay asked about brain activity, Dr. Abrams had told him not to expect anything yet. As if somehow the idea that his brother’s brain wasn’t working was supposed to be something he just accepted as a temporarily acceptable fact.
It wasn’t, of course, but there wasn’t anything Jay could do about it. Instead, he watched as Will was poked and prodded. He watched as new IVs were hung, and the nurse checked all the settings of the machines. He was producing urine, which everyone thought was super good, and Jay watched as a fresh foley bag was hung.
Yeah, he knew what a foley bag was.
He spent some of the morning mentally debating which intervention Will would object to most. He figured Will would actually be annoyingly okay with the foley. He’d dislike the feeding tube, and really, he’d probably resent having to be on a ventilator for any length of time, much less a full day. Will was a doctor, through and through. They all had stupid God complexes that made them impossible.
Of course, thinking about all that didn’t make any of it better. Ultimately, it didn’t matter what Will would object to because he couldn’t object. Will’s brain was swelling, and the medication might not be working, and they might never get to reattach his skull before his entire brain was turned to mush while Jay sat there and listened to Hailey tell him about the cost of apples at the grocery store.
It was jarring, but everything about this was inevitably jarring. It had been an alternative universe as far as Jay was concerned, the entire trajectory of his life redirected after Maggie’s phone call to him yesterday. Would he get his brother back? Would they make it through this, scrapping through by the skin of their teeth like always?
Or was this it? Was this the irrevocably turning point, the point of no return?
He asked himself that again and again, and there was no answer.
There was just Will in an ICU bed.
And hours and hours to waste while Jay surrendered what little control he had left.
In the mid morning, Haiely convinced him to clean up for a few minutes. He refused to leave the hospital, but Hailey had packed a small bag for him with enough essentials to make himself more presentable in the bathroom. A fresh change of clothes, some deodorant and a toothbrush and toothpaste. She packed a razor, too, but he didn’t trust himself to have a steady hand at the moment.
He’d tried to stay matter of fact about it. He was doing what had to be done. People didn’t survive tragedy because they were exceptionally strong or emotionally adjusted. They survived it because there was never any real choice. When facing the impossible, there was really nothing you could do about it. You just had to keep going forward.
Back in Will’s room, Jay fielded a few visitors. By now, he was certain that Maggie was limiting visitors, although both she and April stopped by. He thought he caught sight of Dr. Archer lingering in the hallway from time to time, but he refused to dwell on that any more than necessary. Getting his ass kicked out of the hospital was the last thing he wanted at the moment -- and he was pretty sure that any face to face with the bastard who did this would end up like that.
If it would help -- if it would change anything -- Jay might do it anyway.
But it wouldn’t bring Will back to him.
It would just piss Will off, if he knew.
He had to count on the idea that Will would know. That someday, Will would wake up, and they’d tell this story, and Will would know.
That was the only thought that kept him from committing a felony.
It was also the only thought that kept him relatively sane.
Relatively, of course.
He was parked out in his brother’s ICU room. Sanity was going to be a hard one to hold onto at this point. Will would be a mess if the situations were reversed. He’d be handling this so much worse than he was, pacing and wringing his hands and all that crap. The thought of it almost made him smile.
Almost, though.
Because the situations weren’t reversed.
And this was just how it was.
There was nothing relative about it.
-o-
Around the midday, Hailey suggested they go get some food. When Jay dithered, she offered to stay with Will while Jay went. When he rejected that proposal, she said she’d go get the food and bring it back. In the face of her concessions, it felt ridiculous to say no, so he let her kiss him gently, squeeze Will’s arm and head off.
Jay had amassed a collection of magazines from the well intended nurses, and for the lack of something better to do, he started flipping through the latest copy of Midwest Living, skimming recipes he’d never make and considering home interior styles he would never remember. It was after the lunch hour by a little bit, and Jay was hungrier than he’d realized.
“Look,” Jay said, pointing at one of the pages. He held it up toward Will, as if his comatose brother might see it. “People still make meatloaf. Do you remember when Mom used to make it? Dad loved that crap, but I thought it tasted like rotten eggs. Worcester sauce.”
He made a face, letting the page drop to his lap again. He sighed, flipping once more.
“You used to like peach pie, right?” he said, scanning another recipe. “I mean, apple’s better, but whatever. We both like cherry, though. Cherry’s pretty good.”
Hailey had found pointless small talk to be effective with him, so Jay figured there could be worse things to try. Besides, he was always talking about how he and Will needed to spend more time together, just to do the little things.
Of course, that time would be more effective were they both conscious and, you know, not possibly braindead.
But Jay wasn’t going to think about that right now.
“Although, I’ve never understood pie without ice cream,” Jay continued, even though the next page had a recipe for twice-baked potatoes. “But you can’t make ice cream, can you? Not without some ice cream maker or something?”
He thought this was amiable chitchat, at least, and he was quite pleased with his own effort when suddenly something pinged.
Looking up, Jay tried to get his bearings. There were a lot of machines, and they all did different things, and no matter how many times the nurses explained it all, it was still more than he could keep track of. Will didn’t look any different -- still as though he might be sleeping -- and Jay almost let himself believe it was nothing.
Then, the alarm pinged again. Another followed, and suddenly it seemed like the whole mess of them came alive. Eyes wide, Jay’s heart all but stopped in his chest. He went stiff, ready to act, but with nothing to act on. The alarms aside, Will showed no signs of distress.
Of course, he showed no signs of life, either.
With the wailing increasing, Jay was about to press the call button, but the racket had already attracted attention. Before he had the wherewithal to get out of his chair, the door opened and the nurse on call bustled back in.
She was frowning.
“It all just went off,” Jay explained, somewhat helplessly. “I didn’t touch anything, I swear.”
She didn’t seem to doubt his story, but she also didn’t seem to care about it much. She went straight to Will, checking a few of the leads before looking over the monitors. She adjusted the tubes, her frown deepening.
Something was wrong.
“What is it?” Jay demanded, and he had gone from heart stopping to nausea now. “Is he okay?”
She’d been friendly all morning, all smiles and reassurances. But this time, she couldn’t look Jay in the eye. “I’m going to go get the doctor,” she said hastily, moving quickly on her way out. “Just stay here.”
As if he was going to go somewhere.
Looking at his brother, he still couldn’t tell what was wrong. Of course, he’d look more dead than alive before, so it was hard to tell. But the tenuous level of comfort he’d built up over the last day had suddenly evaporated. It was possible for the human psyche to adapt to a lot of stressful situations, but it didn’t take much to throw that tentative balance out of whack.
To destroy it altogether.
He’d been through too much already -- Will had been through too much already. A massive brain bleed, brain surgery -- all of it. Jay had kept it together this long, but he couldn’t--
If Will died, he just couldn’t.
On the verge of completely panicking, Jay was still perched anxiously at Will’s side. The door opened again -- mere minutes later -- and he was surprised when Dr. Abrams himself strode in.
An attending? Responding to a call within three minutes?
This was bad, then.
This was really, really bad.
This time, Dr. Abrams spared no time for pleasantries. He didn’t even acknowledge Jay at all, making a straight line for Will. His exam was fast and focused, and when he stepped back to examine the monitors, his expression was nothing short of grim.
Just like that, Jay’s assumption of bad? Went to worse.
Picking up his tablet, Dr. Abrams pursed his lips and shook his head. He turned toward Jay without looking up. “Look, I’m not going to sugarcoat this for you,” Dr. Abrams said, finalizing a few more taps on the tablet before closing it. “We’re seeing Will’s vitals destabilize rapidly while his ICP soars. At this point, if we don’t intervene, there’s going to be nothing left to salvage.”
It was blunt, as was to be expected. Jay had gotten used to that, and frankly, he’d gotten used to hearing hard news.
April had been right about this much: no news was good news.
This news…
Jay swallowed, trying to wrap his mind around it. He’d run the gamut here -- shock and anger -- and fear. God help him, he was terrified. His voice shook, small and uncertain when he spoke. “He’s dying?”
Dr. Abrams nodded. “As we speak,” he said, looking at him fully now while he handed his tablet off to the nurse. “I can’t promise you we’re not too late, but further surgical intervention -- removing more of the skull and evacuating the fluid -- it really is our only option.”
Jay felt like his guts had been hollowed out. The sense of disconnection was surreal, standing there, debating course of treatment while Will--
While Will died.
He blinked hard; he had to get a grip on himself.
“And his odds?” he asked, voice barely audible.
Dr. Abrams sighed, lips flattening. “Getting worse,” he said. “But if I thought he was already gone, I wouldn’t be recommending the surgery. I promise you, there’s still enough of a chance to fight.”
The bar for good news was getting exceedingly low then.
Not that it mattered. He looked at his brother, still unconscious and oblivious to the mortal peril he was facing at the moment. He’d shared a lifetime with his brother, and he couldn’t give that up.
He looked back at the doctor. He nodded one more time. “Do it,” he said. “Do the surgery.”
The neurosurgeon gave him a brief look of understanding, and then he turned to the nursing staff. “Get him moved and prepped -- now,” he said, already on his way out. “I’ll be scrubbed in 10 minutes, and I expect him ready to go.”
With that, Dr. Abrams gave him one last night and he exited. The nurse was busily adjusting the monitors again before a team of two more support staff came in. The process of moving Will had been streamlined -- all ICU patients were considered high risk and primed for critical care directives -- but it was still disconcerting how quickly it happened.
Five minutes ago, Jay had been talking to Will about pie preferences and meatloaf.
Now, his gurney wheels were unlocked and all his monitors were mobilized. He was wheeled out the door, gone just like that, and Jay was left with nothing but a stack of consent forms and directions to the surgical waiting room.
There were no goodbyes. There were no well wishes. There were no promises.
Will was just gone.
And all Jay could hope was that he might still get his brother back.
PART TWO
PART THREE
PART FOUR
PART FIVE
PART SIX
PART SEVEN
PART EIGHT
PART NINE
PART TEN
-o-
The rest of the day was quiet, but not in any kind of restful or restorative way. Will liked to talk about how hospitals were places for healing; that was the kind of line he always gave when Jay was ruffled about being admitted to a place where people came to die.
He sort of wished Will was right this time.
But watching Will there.
All the signs point to Will being alive. His heart rhythm was clear and steady on the monitor. His chest rose and fell steadily.
But Will was nearly lost among the interventions. Between the tubes and wires, the medications and the machines -- it didn’t seem like living. It seemed like surviving.
And barely.
It felt like Will was being eeked out into existence, barely anchored to life by the wonders of modern medicine. He knew the advanced technology was responsible for his brother’s life, and he was grateful.
He was also appalled.
That Will should be reduced to this.
Hell, his brother might be gone already and they had no way of knowing it.
It was its own special kind of hell. The most unsettling limbo he’d ever found himself living through.
That didn’t get easier. No matter how many minutes or hours that passed. It didn’t get better.
The nurses came and went with some regularity, and they seemed to be taking a very proactive approach in Will’s care. However, outside of a professional capacity, Jay was surprised that the visitor list was scant. Maggie checked in more often than anyone else, asking Jay if he needed anything and answering any questions he might have. Sometimes she stayed to talk, but if Jay was withdrawn, she patted him on the shoulder and told him to stay strong. For Will, they all had to be strong.
He didn’t have the heart to disagree. He didn’t even have the heart to question her. Maggie was going out of her way to be there for Will -- and Jay. In fact, he was pretty sure that the limited number of visitors was her doing. Will needed a calm environment, and Jay needed to make sure there was no one close by to hit when his emotions got to be too much.
It was smart of her, of course. It was also a gesture of kindness. Will probably didn’t need the space -- Will still lacked any significant brain activity -- but Jay, on the other hand, needed all the space he could get. Seeing Will like this -- watching him like this was as much as he could bear. If he had to contend with pity--
Well, he didn’t think he could.
At any rate, he had no desire to find out.
Even so, the quiet was hard to endure. The way it felt to be so close to his brother and have him still so far away -- it was a loneliness that was hard to put into words. He wasn’t even sure he could make sense of it. All those years Will had been away, and Jay had severed all emotional ties. He’d let Will back in, he’d made a place for him in his life, and for once, Will hadn’t let him down.
Which just made it harder.
To hold something so close and feel it slip through his fingers. He could hold onto Will’s hand, but there was no way to hold Will. The distinction grated, rubbing his emotions raw and to the breaking point, with a ferocity he was helpless to fight.
By the time Hailey came back, he was more than a little relieved. He needed answers, sure. But mostly, he knew by now, he needed her.
She came offering both.
“Do you want the rundown?” Hailey asked. “Or should we get dinner or something first?”
The idea of food didn’t even make sense to him. One of the nurses had brought him something earlier. It was still mostly untouched on the tray he’d left discarded on one of the tables.
Hunger didn’t make sense at the moment.
Answers, on the other hand, did.
“Tell me,” he said, on his feet to greet her. “What did you find out?”
If Hailey had hesitations, she didn’t show it. This was the role she’d chosen, and she wasn’t taking the idea of family in half measures. “Well, I talked to a lot of people, basically everyone in the ED.”
That sounded good. As good as anything could sound right now, given the fact that he was keeping vigil over his comatose brother at the moment. “Okay. And?”
She tipped her head, indicating her regret. “I talked to everyone who was on duty -- I tracked some of them down all over the hospital -- and not a single person saw it,” she said. “No one knew anything was wrong at all until Dr. Archer came out of the doctor’s lounge, yelling for a backboard.”
Jay frowned, casting a look at his brother. How the hell had Will managed to get this messed up in things? “Not a single witness?”
“Since it was in the lounge, apparently not,” Hailey explained. She also looked at Will, her expression pinching off somewhat. “It was just the two of them by all accounts.”
With a sigh, Jay scrubbed his hand through his hair in exhaustion. “So that’s a dead end.”
“Maybe,” Hailey said, but she didn’t sound like the story was over. “But just because no one saw it, doesn’t mean they didn’t have context. A lot of people had a lot to say about the state of things between Dean Archer and Will.”
Jay perked up somewhat at that, bouncing just slightly on the balls of his feet. “Like what?”
“Mostly confirming what you already knew,” she said. “The conflict between these two had been stewing for a long time. Dr. Archer did not like Will, and he wasn’t afraid to let people know it. I got several detailed accounts of just how disparaging he could be -- openly, all throughout the ED.”
Will had said as much, though he had always tried to play it down. In the past, Will might have wallowed a bit more -- and he certainly wouldn’t have been shy in his criticisms. But with his probation being what it was, Will had been afraid to rock the boat, especially regarding someone who was technically his supervisor. The power discrepancy was worth noting.
“Though, in terms of full disclosure, this Dr. Archer wasn’t exactly making friends in the ED,” she said. “Since he took over for Dr. Choi, morale has tanked and badly. He likes to antagonize people. Sort of emotionally piss them off until they do what he wants.”
In some ways, this was exactly what Jay had expected, but now he had to make it parse with the official party line. “So, everyone says that Archer was the aggressor, and yet the story is still that Will threw the first punch?” he asked, letting his skepticism show. “But why would he do that? Do they think he snapped?”
She lifted one shoulder thoughtfully. “That’s harder to say for sure. Some people speculated -- and some of them said it was about time that Will snapped. With Dr. Choi and Natalie gone, Will was the one who had been here the longest. Everyone looks up to him. A lot of people I talked to wanted him to take a stand, like he was their only hope to get things back to normal.”
“And they believe that?” Jay asked. “They think he threw the first punch?”
This time, Hailey shook her head less confidently. “At this point, Jay, you know it’s just speculation. Some people didn’t question the narrative. Other people thought it was strange. I didn’t want to get to specific or I’d be leading the witness. It could contaminate the whole thing.”
That point was valid, and that was why he’d had Hailey do the interviews -- and not him. Jay’s bias would have been a little problematic.
His eyes flitted to Will, lifeless on the bed.
Very problematic.
“But this does confirm my angle, the one I’ve had since Maggie first told me what happened,” he said. “Archer was the antagonist. He was setting Will up for a fight -- one that everyone wanted him to take. But Will couldn’t. There was no way. He’s out of chances at Med, and there’s no way in hell he’d waste his chances on some asshole like Archer. Not with Goodwin watching every little thing he does.”
“Well, I can’t validate the theory completely, but there is corroborating evidence,” Hailey said. “Everyone I talked to -- and I do mean everyone -- said that Will had been on his best behavior. Like, they saw real changes in him. I talked to some guy named Crockett who went on about how they’d never gotten along before, but he respects the hell out of Will now. He’s had a massive turnaround.”
“Crockett?” Jay clarified, brows drawing together at the mention. It was a surprising reference. Dr. Marcel was a mainstay in the ED these days, but he had never been in Will’s fan club -- any more than Will had been in his. The lingering issue of Natalie had always been a sticking point.
“Marcel, I think?” Hailey said, confirming the reference.
“Yeah, he and Natalie -- I mean, for awhile, anyway -- they were a thing,” he said, sighing a little as he took it in. “It put him and Will at odds, like, all the time.”
“Well, you wouldn’t know it from talking to the guy now,” Hailey said. “He had glowing things to say about Will. I actually had to excuse myself or he would have kept talking about Will for another ten minutes. He sends his best, by the way.”
Jay hadn’t really needed confirmation that Will had been serious about earning his credibility back. But if he had mended fences with Crockett? Who had been sleeping with Natalie?
He couldn’t help but look at Will again. It turned out the idiot could still surprise him.
And for what?
For the possibility of brain damage?
For a premature death?
Will didn’t deserve it. Especially not now.
His eyes were burning again. His throat was tight. He tore his gaze away from Will and locked his sights back on Hailey. “So what the hell happened?” he asked, voice strangely hoarse. “Why did everything boil over today? He was due to get of probation soon. Why today?”
Hailey’s regret only deepened. “No one knows that for sure either,” she admitted. “But it was a hard morning, by all accounts. And not just for Will.”
Jay had been processing a lot of information today, but a few of the salient points still stood out. Hailey’s words triggered a memory from his conversation with April. “The DNR case?”
Hailey didn’t exactly look surprised that he knew, but that was how they were as partners. Romantically and professionally. Where one went, the other was never far behind. “Yeah, that one. I talked to a few of the nurses on that one, and they said it was a tough one,” she said. “Complicated, emotional, ethical questions -- you name it.”
“And Will’s got a bad history with that crap,” Jay said.
“But they all said Will handled it perfectly,” Hailey continued. “It stands out to me because a few of them sounded surprised. Like they had expected him to struggle, but he didn’t. They said it was textbook.”
Where was the conflict then? If the tough case was handled well, then what the hell was the sticking point that led to punches and brain damage? “I still don’t get it,” he said, teeming with frustration. “What’s Archer’s deal, then?”
“I think he just didn’t like Will,” Hailey said, letting the simplicity of her conclusion stand for what it was. “Despite Will’s handling of the case this morning, Archer went on and on about it. A lot of people heard him talking about it, openly questioning Will’s calls. One of the nurses on the case said Archer pulled her aside and grilled her for five minutes, looking for any lapse of protocol.”
Jay let his nose wrinkle even more, his sense of discontent deepening keenly. “I mean, everything you’re saying is telling me Archer was looking to pick a fight. Tell me if I’m wrong.”
“In my estimation, you’re not wrong,” she agreed. “That’s exactly what it sounded like in most of my interviews.”
He needed Hailey to slow him down, but she was giving him the all clear to keep on this line of thought. “So, Will was provoked.”
He was pushing, but Hailey wasn’t pushing back. “I haven’t made a case you can take to court or anything, but it’s compelling stuff. But we still have the fundamental problem. We don’t know who threw the first punch. The official story is still that Will hit first.”
Jay shook his head, vehement in his disgust as he paced a few steps and then back again. “After the bastard baited him all day. Hell, he baited him for weeks.”
Hailey chewed the inside of her lip, looking a little sorry again. “It sure looks that way.”
He forced himself to breathe, which was harder than he would have expected. He operated well under stress, but threats to his own life were a piece of cake compared to things like this. He hated that he had experience in this. Way too much experience.
Focusing on his breathing for another moment, Jay let his gaze linger on Will once more. That had to ground him. That had to guide him now when everything else was at this risk of flying apart at the seams.
“All the stupid stuff he’s done,” Jay muttered with a shake of his head. “And what the hell has he gotten into this time?”
She stepped closer to him, reaching out a gentle hand to place on his arm. “It was an accident, Jay.”
She was trying to absolve him from whatever guilt he felt about this, but his own guilt wasn’t the problem. Jay knew well enough he didn’t need to be absolved. He wasn’t to blame.
But someone else was.
He looked at her, jaw tight. “Was it, though?”
She dropped her hand, moving quickly from girlfriend to cop once more. Either way, she understood what he wasn’t saying here.
There were times for control. There were situations for restraints. Sometimes, you had to tread lightly. Jay knew that.
This wasn’t one of those times.
Hell, with Will comatose, Jay figured it was time to be a wrecking ball.
“The bastard provoked him,” he said, and he wasn’t hedging now. “Archer wanted this fight.”
Hailey was more cautious in her response. “But if Will threw the first punch…”
It was a thought she couldn’t finish. One he didn’t let her finish. “But what if he didn’t?” he said, giving voice to the idea, almost stubbornly insistent now. “What if he didn’t throw the first punch? What if he didn’t start this fight? It’s not that impossible. I wouldn’t even call it unlikely. We still have no witnesses. You said it yourself.”
His logic wasn’t bad, but Hailey followed it to its natural conclusion with a simple candor he needed to keep this in check. “Then, you’re saying that Archer is lying. And not just a little. But flat out, covering his role in this up.”
If she was trying to shock him out of the conclusion, her question had the opposite effect. The more it was said, the more he believed it. The more he knew it. “Come on, look at this evidence with that perspective,” he said, following the investigative line of thought. “You just told me, from all your witness interviews, everyone hated the guy. And Will was on the straight and narrow, they all vouch for that, too. So, what, today they just suddenly change roles? The evidence doesn’t hold out.”
Her brow was creased in necessary skepticism. She wasn’t second guessing him. She was being his sounding board. It was how they built cases, even if they weren’t usually so personal. “The evidence doesn’t hold out either way. It’s all speculation, and you have a higher bar to prove the guy is lying.”
“Maybe, but we can’t just give Archer the benefit of the doubt. He’s as much a suspect as a witness,” Jay countered. “It would be bad police work to only take his version of the events. He’s not unimpeachable. And there’s no way in hell we’re going to call him unbiased. We have to validate his story, or it’s inadmissible evidence.”
“Sure, but you still lack plausible cause,” she said. “And disliking Will is circumstantial evidence at best. You can’t prove intent. You barely have a motive.”
She was right, naturally.
Why did she have to be right?
Breathing hard, Jay shook his head, feeling the tension as it tightened in his jaw and ran like fire through his gut. “Damn it,” he muttered, flexing his fist in an insufficient attempt to relieve the pressure building in every synapse of his body.
He was close to breaking -- again. Hailey saw it just as much as he felt it. She stepped forward, pulling back from her investigative mode. She looked at him like a girlfriend once more. “Jay, you really should go home. Clean up, eat something. Rest and come back.”
She was being sympathetic, and he knew she meant well, but the idea made him recoil. “No, no way,” he said quickly, pulling back from her a step. “I can’t.”
It wasn’t a reaction that she was unprepared for. “Jay, he’s getting the best care here, you know that,” she said. “People around here love Will. They’re going to watch him like a hawk, and you know better than I do that it’s going to be awhile before he wakes up.”
If he woke up. She didn’t say it -- she wouldn’t -- but she didn’t have to. Jay shook his head, more stubborn than ever. “No,” he said, even more forceful now. “I’m not leaving him.”
She wasn’t looking for a confrontation, and he knew that. But she loved him, and she wasn’t about to leave him to deal with this alone. She wanted to protect him, just like he wanted to protect her -- like he wanted to protect Will. So, he saw her nod, finding her to be resolute. “Okay,” she agreed. “Then, I’ll stay, too.”
It was the perfect response, of course. As a girlfriend, as a cop, she’d found his weak spot. Jay would never be able to pick between his girlfriend and his brother, and she had made herself indispensable for a reason. Because she loved him just as much as he loved her. “No, Hailey--”
She was unswayed, though. “Jay, I want to. I want to be here for you, for you both. So if you won’t go, then I’ll stay with you. Lighten the load any way I can.”
There was no doubt in his mind that she meant it -- as if he needed a reminder of how much he loved her and how lucky he was that she tolerated him.
He drew a breath, finding a renewed calmness now. It wasn’t just about him and Will, then. It was about the three of them. All he could do for Will was stay, but Hailey was a different matter. “Look, you should go home,” he said. “You get the sleep, the rest, the whatever.”
She was already shaking her head, but he didn’t let her speak.
“And then you can come back in the morning, okay?” he said. “You can come back, bring me breakfast, keep me sane. This thing -- this whole mess -- it’s not going to get better tonight. I can’t leave, but I’m going to need you there when the adrenaline wears off. I’m going to need you if I’m going to be here for Will.”
He wasn’t saying that just to say it. He wasn’t trying to win an argument or force her into doing what he wanted.
It was simply the only option that made sense. He couldn’t leave Will, and he didn’t want Hailey to overextend herself. He knew there was little he could do for Will. He needed to do this for Hailey. He needed this semblance of control, this vestige of determination.
Across from him, she appeared hesitant but they knew each other well. Their years as partners had been formative. Their time as lovers had been the natural extension of everything they’d built together. It had taken them years to say it, but it had always felt right when they did.
She reached out, gentle now. Her fingers took his. “You sure?”
He squeezed her fingers back, finding solidarity there that he lacked elsewhere. He swallowed hard, wishing that this would be enough. “I’m sure.”
Pulling her hand free, Hailey smiled. It was a small gesture, but the depth of the emotion behind it mattered. He wasn’t alone. As bleak as it all seemed, he wasn’t facing this by himself. She would be here for him, so he could be there, no matter what, for Will.
“I’ll go,” she conceded. “But only if you promise you’ll rest. No investigating.”
She knew him. She knew him and for some reason, she loved him anyway. “Best behavior,” he said, because it felt good to make a promise he could actually keep today. “I’m not going anywhere.”
-o-
When Hailey left, Jay tried to settle in. It felt awkward and uncomfortable -- every part of it -- and while he fussed pointlessly about Will’s ICU room, he found himself wishing he’d asked her to stay. There was nothing for her to do any more than there was something for him to do, but it might have helped eased some of his anxiety.
That was the point, though. That was why he’d asked her to go.
She didn’t need to see Will like this.
More than that, she didn’t need to see him like this.
Helplessness made him restless, and it was all he could do not to convert that restlessness into something destructive. He’d use it productive if he could, but there was nothing to be done for it.
So he tidied Will’s room, even though there was nothing to organize, shifting the bag of Will’s belongings around about five times before arranging the tissues, water cup and phone on the table another ten times for the lack of something better to do. It didn’t make him feel better, but it kept him preoccupied for about ten minutes. All things considered, he counted it as a win.
The alternative, after all, was to sit there and stare at Will. That was awkward under any circumstances, and watching Will while he was in this state was just hard. A presence was supposed to be reassuring, but all the interventions only drove home just how dire things were. And he couldn’t get it out of his head. When he saw the bandages, he thought of the hole in Will’s skull, and the whole process of tidying had to start up again.
The nurses tried to make him more comfortable. Someone suggested a rollaway cot, but they weren’t standardly used in the ICU and Jay refused to let them go through the trouble. Eventually, he agreed to a pillow and some blankets, and when one of them mustered up a footrest to help him stretch out on the chair, he didn’t object.
It wasn’t comfortable, but it was as good as it was going to get. Jay settled in, kicked his feet up and made every pretense of sleep. It was all for show, though. There was no way in hell he was going to sleep. He couldn’t. Not with Will like that.
Will was no kind of company in this state, that much was true. But Jay was terrified to close his eyes. If he fell asleep and Will slipped away, he would never forgive himself.
Hell, he was having a hard enough time forgiving himself as it was.
He was tired, that much was true. But it was the kind of tired that wasn’t going to be fixed by a night’s sleep, good, bad or otherwise.
So he laid in the chair, curled up under the blanket. He turned off the lights, listening to the distant sounds of the ward as the night settled in. And he watched his brother, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. The slow hypnotic movement that almost allowed him to think things might be okay.
The night was long and dark and quiet, and Jay sat suspended, half hopeful, half terrified, that the morning would prove to him otherwise.
-o-
Morning did come, but the light did not offer a better take on things. If anything, the daylight just made the situation seem more bleak. Will’s condition had not changed.
Jay had stayed true to his promise -- the one he’d made explicitly to Hailey and the one he’d made in every other way to Will. He’d stayed; he hadn’t wavered.
He wasn’t sure what good it really did, but he took some comfort in keeping it. He’d done his part, and Will had done his.
Hailey, who showed up early with fresh food and a bag of things, did her part, too. She was true to her word; she was true to Jay.
They’d all done what they could, then.
And Jay had to hold out some hope that that would count for something.
-o-
Hailey had come back early while Jay was still dozing on and off. In addition to being very punctual, she also brought enough food to feed five people. Jay was certain that the large selection -- varying from donuts to hot pancakes -- was designed to make sure he ate something, but it made for an awkward setup in Will’s private ICU room.
All the same, he was hungry. He hadn’t even realized it, but when he started eating, he found he didn’t want to stop. He ate all the pancakes, a serving of hash browns, and downed it all with a donut and coffee.
Lots of coffee.
Hailey picked her way through a bagel on her own, and she asked him how Will had fared throughout the night.
There was nothing to tell, of course. Will was alive. That was the good news.
It was also the only news. Will’s condition had remained unchanged. He was still deeply unconscious, and his intracranial pressure was high. In short, things were still bad, but they could be worse. It wasn’t a great measuring stick, but Jay didn’t dare consider the alternative.
When they were finished eating, Hailey provided him with clean clothes and a few basic supplies. He excused himself to the bathroom, changing and washing up. By the time he got back to Will’s room, Hailey had tidied up there, and she appeared to have settled in for the day.
The idea of it gave him mixed feelings. Any day with Hailey was a good day -- and maybe that was part of the problem. This wasn’t some restful retreat. This wasn’t a carefree day off work. Jay was literally watching his brother on life support, spending every second wondering if he’d remember his own name when he woke up -- if he woke up at all.
There was a part of him that needed Hailey’s support or he was going to fall apart.
There was another part of him that was only going to keep it together without her support. She made it ten times easier to fall apart, and he had no business falling apart. Not now, not while Will was--
Not while Will was so out of it.
And maybe it was pride.
Maybe he didn’t want her to see him like this. Maybe he didn’t want to show her just how terrified he was, how overwhelming the idea of losing his brother was. It wasn’t macho nonsense; it was all about being a cop. They liked control; they liked working all the angles.
Jay had none of that here. He had no advantage, no utility, no control.
He just had a lonely ICU room and his brother’s vitals flashing on the screen above him.
“You don’t have to stay,” Jay blurted finally. They’d made small talk, quiet and subdued, throughout breakfast, but the shift in his tone and disposition made Hailey stop.
She hesitated as she looked at him. “I know,” she said.
She said it like it was obvious, but she made no move to get up. Feeling anxious, Jay wet his lips and swallowed hard. “I mean, you’ve got to get to work, right?”
This time, she blinked. The question seemed to surprise her, even though she was trying hard not to show it. “I, uh, took the day off,” she told him. “I told Voight I might be a few days. Both of us.”
She said it just like that, plain and matter of fact, and Jay tried to reckon what it might mean. That she loved him, sure. That she cared about him, yes.
That Will might be his last blood relative, yes.
But he wasn’t his last family.
He watched his brother for a moment, unchanged on the bed. It almost felt like Will was slipping away, edging further from him even while he sat stubbornly by his side. He’d always been scared of being alone.
He glanced back at Hailey.
He wasn’t alone, though.
He might not be able to hold onto Will this time -- God help him, he’d try, though -- but Hailey was the one holding onto him this time. He just had to let her.
“You sure?” he asked, the question couched tentatively on his tongue.
She smiled a little, giving him a nod back. “I’m sure.”
With his own lack of certainty at the moment, he could use all the surety she could offer.
-o-
Even with Hailey’s presence, there was little to be done to make the situation easier or more pleasant. She rambled on from time to time, talking about lines of thought he could never quite follow. He made vague replies that seemed to satisfy her, and he suspected that she was just using the sound of her voice to keep him from thinking too hard.
Because there was a lot to think about. During rounds, Dr. Abrams had found Will’s condition unchanged -- save for his rising ICP.
Intracranial pressure, that was. Jay was picking up on the medical jargon already, much to his chagrin. Like he wanted a better way to accurately describe just how messed up his brother was at the moment.
Besides that, his vitals were relatively stable. When Jay asked about brain activity, Dr. Abrams had told him not to expect anything yet. As if somehow the idea that his brother’s brain wasn’t working was supposed to be something he just accepted as a temporarily acceptable fact.
It wasn’t, of course, but there wasn’t anything Jay could do about it. Instead, he watched as Will was poked and prodded. He watched as new IVs were hung, and the nurse checked all the settings of the machines. He was producing urine, which everyone thought was super good, and Jay watched as a fresh foley bag was hung.
Yeah, he knew what a foley bag was.
He spent some of the morning mentally debating which intervention Will would object to most. He figured Will would actually be annoyingly okay with the foley. He’d dislike the feeding tube, and really, he’d probably resent having to be on a ventilator for any length of time, much less a full day. Will was a doctor, through and through. They all had stupid God complexes that made them impossible.
Of course, thinking about all that didn’t make any of it better. Ultimately, it didn’t matter what Will would object to because he couldn’t object. Will’s brain was swelling, and the medication might not be working, and they might never get to reattach his skull before his entire brain was turned to mush while Jay sat there and listened to Hailey tell him about the cost of apples at the grocery store.
It was jarring, but everything about this was inevitably jarring. It had been an alternative universe as far as Jay was concerned, the entire trajectory of his life redirected after Maggie’s phone call to him yesterday. Would he get his brother back? Would they make it through this, scrapping through by the skin of their teeth like always?
Or was this it? Was this the irrevocably turning point, the point of no return?
He asked himself that again and again, and there was no answer.
There was just Will in an ICU bed.
And hours and hours to waste while Jay surrendered what little control he had left.
In the mid morning, Haiely convinced him to clean up for a few minutes. He refused to leave the hospital, but Hailey had packed a small bag for him with enough essentials to make himself more presentable in the bathroom. A fresh change of clothes, some deodorant and a toothbrush and toothpaste. She packed a razor, too, but he didn’t trust himself to have a steady hand at the moment.
He’d tried to stay matter of fact about it. He was doing what had to be done. People didn’t survive tragedy because they were exceptionally strong or emotionally adjusted. They survived it because there was never any real choice. When facing the impossible, there was really nothing you could do about it. You just had to keep going forward.
Back in Will’s room, Jay fielded a few visitors. By now, he was certain that Maggie was limiting visitors, although both she and April stopped by. He thought he caught sight of Dr. Archer lingering in the hallway from time to time, but he refused to dwell on that any more than necessary. Getting his ass kicked out of the hospital was the last thing he wanted at the moment -- and he was pretty sure that any face to face with the bastard who did this would end up like that.
If it would help -- if it would change anything -- Jay might do it anyway.
But it wouldn’t bring Will back to him.
It would just piss Will off, if he knew.
He had to count on the idea that Will would know. That someday, Will would wake up, and they’d tell this story, and Will would know.
That was the only thought that kept him from committing a felony.
It was also the only thought that kept him relatively sane.
Relatively, of course.
He was parked out in his brother’s ICU room. Sanity was going to be a hard one to hold onto at this point. Will would be a mess if the situations were reversed. He’d be handling this so much worse than he was, pacing and wringing his hands and all that crap. The thought of it almost made him smile.
Almost, though.
Because the situations weren’t reversed.
And this was just how it was.
There was nothing relative about it.
-o-
Around the midday, Hailey suggested they go get some food. When Jay dithered, she offered to stay with Will while Jay went. When he rejected that proposal, she said she’d go get the food and bring it back. In the face of her concessions, it felt ridiculous to say no, so he let her kiss him gently, squeeze Will’s arm and head off.
Jay had amassed a collection of magazines from the well intended nurses, and for the lack of something better to do, he started flipping through the latest copy of Midwest Living, skimming recipes he’d never make and considering home interior styles he would never remember. It was after the lunch hour by a little bit, and Jay was hungrier than he’d realized.
“Look,” Jay said, pointing at one of the pages. He held it up toward Will, as if his comatose brother might see it. “People still make meatloaf. Do you remember when Mom used to make it? Dad loved that crap, but I thought it tasted like rotten eggs. Worcester sauce.”
He made a face, letting the page drop to his lap again. He sighed, flipping once more.
“You used to like peach pie, right?” he said, scanning another recipe. “I mean, apple’s better, but whatever. We both like cherry, though. Cherry’s pretty good.”
Hailey had found pointless small talk to be effective with him, so Jay figured there could be worse things to try. Besides, he was always talking about how he and Will needed to spend more time together, just to do the little things.
Of course, that time would be more effective were they both conscious and, you know, not possibly braindead.
But Jay wasn’t going to think about that right now.
“Although, I’ve never understood pie without ice cream,” Jay continued, even though the next page had a recipe for twice-baked potatoes. “But you can’t make ice cream, can you? Not without some ice cream maker or something?”
He thought this was amiable chitchat, at least, and he was quite pleased with his own effort when suddenly something pinged.
Looking up, Jay tried to get his bearings. There were a lot of machines, and they all did different things, and no matter how many times the nurses explained it all, it was still more than he could keep track of. Will didn’t look any different -- still as though he might be sleeping -- and Jay almost let himself believe it was nothing.
Then, the alarm pinged again. Another followed, and suddenly it seemed like the whole mess of them came alive. Eyes wide, Jay’s heart all but stopped in his chest. He went stiff, ready to act, but with nothing to act on. The alarms aside, Will showed no signs of distress.
Of course, he showed no signs of life, either.
With the wailing increasing, Jay was about to press the call button, but the racket had already attracted attention. Before he had the wherewithal to get out of his chair, the door opened and the nurse on call bustled back in.
She was frowning.
“It all just went off,” Jay explained, somewhat helplessly. “I didn’t touch anything, I swear.”
She didn’t seem to doubt his story, but she also didn’t seem to care about it much. She went straight to Will, checking a few of the leads before looking over the monitors. She adjusted the tubes, her frown deepening.
Something was wrong.
“What is it?” Jay demanded, and he had gone from heart stopping to nausea now. “Is he okay?”
She’d been friendly all morning, all smiles and reassurances. But this time, she couldn’t look Jay in the eye. “I’m going to go get the doctor,” she said hastily, moving quickly on her way out. “Just stay here.”
As if he was going to go somewhere.
Looking at his brother, he still couldn’t tell what was wrong. Of course, he’d look more dead than alive before, so it was hard to tell. But the tenuous level of comfort he’d built up over the last day had suddenly evaporated. It was possible for the human psyche to adapt to a lot of stressful situations, but it didn’t take much to throw that tentative balance out of whack.
To destroy it altogether.
He’d been through too much already -- Will had been through too much already. A massive brain bleed, brain surgery -- all of it. Jay had kept it together this long, but he couldn’t--
If Will died, he just couldn’t.
On the verge of completely panicking, Jay was still perched anxiously at Will’s side. The door opened again -- mere minutes later -- and he was surprised when Dr. Abrams himself strode in.
An attending? Responding to a call within three minutes?
This was bad, then.
This was really, really bad.
This time, Dr. Abrams spared no time for pleasantries. He didn’t even acknowledge Jay at all, making a straight line for Will. His exam was fast and focused, and when he stepped back to examine the monitors, his expression was nothing short of grim.
Just like that, Jay’s assumption of bad? Went to worse.
Picking up his tablet, Dr. Abrams pursed his lips and shook his head. He turned toward Jay without looking up. “Look, I’m not going to sugarcoat this for you,” Dr. Abrams said, finalizing a few more taps on the tablet before closing it. “We’re seeing Will’s vitals destabilize rapidly while his ICP soars. At this point, if we don’t intervene, there’s going to be nothing left to salvage.”
It was blunt, as was to be expected. Jay had gotten used to that, and frankly, he’d gotten used to hearing hard news.
April had been right about this much: no news was good news.
This news…
Jay swallowed, trying to wrap his mind around it. He’d run the gamut here -- shock and anger -- and fear. God help him, he was terrified. His voice shook, small and uncertain when he spoke. “He’s dying?”
Dr. Abrams nodded. “As we speak,” he said, looking at him fully now while he handed his tablet off to the nurse. “I can’t promise you we’re not too late, but further surgical intervention -- removing more of the skull and evacuating the fluid -- it really is our only option.”
Jay felt like his guts had been hollowed out. The sense of disconnection was surreal, standing there, debating course of treatment while Will--
While Will died.
He blinked hard; he had to get a grip on himself.
“And his odds?” he asked, voice barely audible.
Dr. Abrams sighed, lips flattening. “Getting worse,” he said. “But if I thought he was already gone, I wouldn’t be recommending the surgery. I promise you, there’s still enough of a chance to fight.”
The bar for good news was getting exceedingly low then.
Not that it mattered. He looked at his brother, still unconscious and oblivious to the mortal peril he was facing at the moment. He’d shared a lifetime with his brother, and he couldn’t give that up.
He looked back at the doctor. He nodded one more time. “Do it,” he said. “Do the surgery.”
The neurosurgeon gave him a brief look of understanding, and then he turned to the nursing staff. “Get him moved and prepped -- now,” he said, already on his way out. “I’ll be scrubbed in 10 minutes, and I expect him ready to go.”
With that, Dr. Abrams gave him one last night and he exited. The nurse was busily adjusting the monitors again before a team of two more support staff came in. The process of moving Will had been streamlined -- all ICU patients were considered high risk and primed for critical care directives -- but it was still disconcerting how quickly it happened.
Five minutes ago, Jay had been talking to Will about pie preferences and meatloaf.
Now, his gurney wheels were unlocked and all his monitors were mobilized. He was wheeled out the door, gone just like that, and Jay was left with nothing but a stack of consent forms and directions to the surgical waiting room.
There were no goodbyes. There were no well wishes. There were no promises.
Will was just gone.
And all Jay could hope was that he might still get his brother back.
