WITH OR WITHOUT YOU
synopsisJack and you have always been ying-and-yang and until a few months ago, the love of each others life. but when thing start shifting and you start drifting from Jack for the worse he doesn't know how to stop it, until he can stop it in the most brutal way possible (request) (7.9k words)
warnings this is heavy, heavy angst, it deals with mental health, not necessary suicide but also a not caring to live. reader has a dnr. so heavy angst with a HAPPY ending. language. typical hospital stuff. not accurate medical things. blood. stabbing mention, death. younger reader, age not specified.
authornote this is heavy angst but with a happy ending. i really liked the request and wanted to explore the idea of dnr's and stuff but if your sensitive to death please don't read (but nobody dies!)
the pitt masterlist! another jack fic!
It was a good day if you were working, Jack had decided that a long time ago.
It was the sort of rule he lived by. Like reading at least one hundred pages of a book a day kept him intelligent, his yoga in the morning kept him calm and limber. A shift working with you, was a good shift.
Most of the day shifters had gone home, but you were still at the nurses station, talking with Lena.
“Hey,” said Jack. It was the first word he'd said to you, un-able to do hand offs with you when Shen decided it was his turn to be at your side, throwing a testing grin in Jack’s direction. “Aren't you going? Here- take this for the road, you might need it.” He was all but forcing a granola bar in your hand. The special ones he reserved for you.
You took it. “Sorry to disappoint, Ellis had a concert she really wanted to go to, I said I'd cover. Beyonce.”
Jack leant over the counter at you, peering through squinted eyes. “Disappointment? I think you've just made my night.”
There was a blush on your cheeks as you looked away, studying the Pitt to find something to distract yourself with.
“You might regret that. We've got a lorry car collision, ETA ten minutes out,” you explained, dropping the granola bar into your scrub pocket. “I might just be your bad luck charm.”
Jack loved working with you. He loved getting your opinion on cases that didn't need a second opinion. He liked the quiet moments in the night shifts you covered where it was just the two of you and the night sky. He liked being able to make you blush, to make you laugh in the middle of the darkness.
Because there was a darkness lingering in you. The sort only the Pitt could latch onto a person.
He'd seen it in Robby.
He despised seeing it in you.
There were some nights you covered- because you were always the first to volunteer to do a double- you started with a sparkle in your eyes and ending the night in despair, dragging yourself home. You'd return hours later, not at all long enough to have had a good sleep.
Jack worried, but he liked having you around to keep an eye on you.
Jack shook his head. “Nah. The bad luck is this place. You're the good.”
You laughed, hesitantly.
Lena patted your arm, kindly, the way a mother did. “I'll go get the guy from trauma two moved.”
“You want some help?” you offered.
“No, sweetie, I got it.”
You looked around like you needed to make myself busy. Like you couldn't be alone with Jack. He'd seen it in the ED many times, even in the military, the need for people to stay busy instead of succumbing to a sort of numbness.
It had been him some years back before he managed to deal with his demons.
“Any interesting cases in the ED today?” Jack asked, following you around with his hands behind his back, restraining himself from guiding you through with a hand on your back.
“Well, we had a woman who didn't realise she was eight months pregnant who gave birth today. A priapism-”
Jack seethed. “Ouch.”
“- and a man with a toothbrush stuck up where the sun don't shine.”
“Double ouch,” he said, checking the side of you. “So you had quite an interesting day, huh?”
“You could say that,” you mumbled. “There's also a girl in five with Fancomi anemia. She came in four hours again and we're still waiting to hear from her parents. She has a half sister half way across the country that might be a bone marrow candidate that they've never tried.”
Jack nodded, listening and catching the far away look in your eyes. “You're doing everything for her,” said Jack. He didn't even have to ask to know you would be doing everything possible for the girl. Even if it meant exhausting yourself.
Jack nodded to himself, debating with himself if he wanted to know the answer to his next question. The devil and angel arguing on his shoulders. “A little birdie told me you had a date,” he said, the both of you knowing the little birdie was, in fact, Robby. “How'd it go?”
You sighed and stopped in the middle of the corridor.
He cut you off before you could start. “I'm just asking to check you're okay. That... that he was nice.”
You nodded slowly, not meeting his gaze as your hands rested at your hips. “He was- he was fine.”
Jack ignored the wince of pain as he crouched to get a look at you. “Just fine?”
If Jack couldn't have you, he loved you enough to just want you happy.
It was only four months ago you'd broken up with him, after seven months of beautiful moments. Of coming home to you in his sheets, making a coffee and waking you up to it. He wanted to steal every moment with you, choosing sleep when you went to work, spending the morning just watching you get ready. The lunch dates where he'd turn up to the ED, the place he could never escape, with a delicious home made lunch for you and sometimes extra for Robby who kicked up a fuss that he got nothing and had known Jack longer.
Jack missed the kisses in the night and the morning. He missed holding you when he had a night off. He missed when you'd think he was asleep and map his freckles, tracing I love you into his skin.
Because the tender moments were always there, yet gradually they began to hide themselves in the cover of night, when you thought he was sleeping.
Jack knew things weren't perfect. With both your schedules it was hard to balance but you tried to make it work. Then the light in your eyes started to fade and when you told him it isn’t working anymore, I love you, I'm sorry, he hadn't thought to keep your relationship alive. He'd just been fighting to keep you.
He was terrified he'd lose you.
Then what would he do?
He wouldn't survive it.
“Just fine?” he asked again.
“Don’t sound too pleased.”
“I’m not,” he denied but bit back a smile.
You looked up to him, shuddering a deep breath. “He was just... whatever.”
“Just a whatever kind of guy?”
“Why are you asking so much?” you asked, mildly annoyed.
Because he still loved you? Wasn't it painfully obvious? Weren't you just trying to act like you didn't know he was helpless for you to spare him embarrassment.
“Just, checking in on you.”
You looked down at your shoes, scuffing them on the floor. “It- he was nice but... I dunno, not what I wanted.”
Jack hummed. “No?” did you still want him? He'll be honest, he didn't think he'd hear about you going on a date. Least of all with some guy from Pedes. When you'd broke up with him he expected it had something to do with you wanting to focus on you. Rest up. The sort of stuff like that. Then he had to hear from Robby that you were going out for dinner.
There was only a small bite of anger before Jack felt sorry for himself.
“No,” you sighed.
There were deeper circles under your eyes than usual, sharp half moons dark in colour lingering there. Your eyes were dark and lifeless, scrubs hanging off you.
“Is there anything else going on?” he asked, tugging at your arm slightly to hide yourselves at a corner.
You looked up to him, lips pulled down in a frown as you shook your head. “Nope.”
His brows rose, eyes looking at you, pleading. “You can talk to me if there is, h-” the pet name he had no right to almost slipped from his lips. He gulped it down and felt it sting down his throat. “You can tell me.”
“We're...” you hesitated. “We're not together anymore, Jack. You don't have to do all this chivalry thing.”
“Can't help it,” Jack shrugged. “Not when it's you.”
Your hands wrung together and Jack looked down. There was flakes of dry skin on along your fingers. He knew the sanitiser in the ED could be harsh on your skin, but he also knew he'd replaced your hand moisturiser in your locker just two weeks ago and that you should have plenty. It was a nervous habit you had, to rub your hands together like so.
Jack remembered it from your first date. He’s used it as an excuse to reach over and take your hands.
“I'm just tired,” you mumbled.
Jack nodded, slow and listening. “That it?” he prodded gently.
He'd heard countless doctors slip those words out in answer to the everything okay type questions. He'd seen Robby break as the words chocked in his throat. You said them without emotion. Without even trying to prove your lie.
“Why don't you go home? Get some rest-”
“Ellis is-”
“- we'll manage,” he insisted. His hand had un-consciously started to move up and down your forearm in comfort.
You winced as you turned your head aside, thinking about it.
Jack didn't know how much he really wanted you to go home. He wanted you to rest, yes, but preferably in the family room with a blanket thrown over you where he could drop by and check in on you. Check you were okay.
Check you weren't doing something stupid.
He knew that not everyone felt like a ticking time bomb. That not everyone's mind would wonder as dark as his did sometimes.
But he feared you weren't far off.
“Go rest-”
At the same moment Jack spoke the ambulance doors were pushed open and two bodies were pushed through on gurneys, bloody and broken. Stats were yelled out and Jack was called for.
At the same time, Matteo popped out of five, calling for you.
“She's crashing!”
You rushed over, falling into the room with the young girl and Matteo.
With a heavy sigh, Jack followed the other path of emergency responders and doctors.
He and the team worked on them. A father and son involved in a lorry crash that ploughed right into the side. The kid was only seventeen with a broken leg and collapsed lung. The father was much better off. The boy would need surgery and Walsh was already down and wheeling him up.
It was all done in a quick blur of thirty minutes. He took care of it all clinically like ticking through a to do list, not looking to close at the kid to remember shades of hair or lines of the face.
By the time Jack was stepping out the trauma room, Crus at his side, you still had not returned to the floor of the ED.
“How does she seem to you?” Jack asked Crus, the two of them pulling off their gloves and gowns. He said your name in clarification.
“Hot!” said Crus with a shit-eating grin.
Jack glared at him. He should have known not to expect a serious answer from Henderson. Or at least he hoped that wasn't the serious answer.
“I don't know man, how do you want her to seem?” asked Crus.
“She seems tired. For a while now,” Jack noted.
“Aren't we all chasing sleep?” he asked him, leaving his side with a pat on his back.
Jack found himself at the nurses station, leaning over.
Lena's glasses slid down her nose, a chart in hand and her red hair messily pulled back. She ditched all efforts to seem busy however when he beckoned her over. “She's been in there the last thirty-five minutes,” she told him. “The little girl she'd been looking after crashed.”
“Nothing back?”
Lena shook her head.
Jack shook his head. “Shit.”
With a heavy heart he dragged himself to room five, already hearing the stillness of the monitor, the hard breathing and orders.
“Push another round of epi and charge to two hundred.”
The room smelt of septic cleaning products and the faint aroma of sweat. There was a faint burn smell from the defibrillators that had apparently already been charged and used.
Jack lingered in the doorway.
Your body was curved over the small girl, knees denting into the crappy hospital bed that hadn't been updated in years. Your hands were cupped over her chest, pumping down as Matteo pushed another round of epi. Catching Jack's eyes, he shook his head.
Jack tutted, quietly to himself. “Hold compressions, check for a rhythm.”
It took you a second but you stopped, looking to the monitor in hope.
There was nothing but a flat line.
Jack didn't tell you to resume compressions but you did anyway.
“Charge to three hundred,” you said to Matteo.
He was caught in the middle, looking toward Jack for confirmation.
Jack nodded and Matteo got the paddles, warming them and handing them to you.
Your grasped them in an all too familiar hold. “Clear!”
The small girls body lurched before flopping back on the bed. Everyone in the small room waited for a rhythm. There was nothing in answer.
Jack had no time to tell you not to carry on before you were. He took a slow step in, patting Matteo on the shoulder, in a silent gesture to have him leave.
The nurse gave a sad look before leaving, closing the door gently behind him.
There was Jack and you over the girls body.
He said your name, slowly.
You didn't react.
“Honey, come on,” said Jack. “She's gone.” He could see the tremble in your arms from the compressions you hadn't given up on.
One. Two. Three. Four.
“Her parents aren't even here,” you said. “They didn't even pick up their phone when Dana called. We-we left a message. They deserve to see their daughter one last time.”
Jack nodded. “They will.”
You glanced up at him. “Alive.”
He clocked his head to the side. “That's not gonna happen. It's been forty-five minutes. She's gone.”
Losing kids were the hardest. Losing anyone was hard but kids weren't supposed to be found in hospital beds, tubes poking out of them. If they had to be found in a hospital, they deserved loved ones around them. Not strangers in black and blue.
Jack knew you were trying to do the right thing. Sometimes there was no right thing to do.
“Come on.” Jack was slow in moving around the bed to your side. He gave you time to slow down, to feel the exhaustion in your arms. His own hovered over you. “Come on.”
You shuddered when his arms fell over you, holding you softly as you slumped back into him, falling from the bed on feet that weren't ready to catch you. His arms were; strong where you were weak.
“It's okay, it's okay,” he mumbled into your hair, peppering kisses there. “You did everything you could.”
Neither of you knew how long you stood there in his embrace. Somewhere between the consoling you and you slowly leaving his arms- like it was paining you physically to do so- Jack called the time of death so you wouldn't have to, pulling the plug on the monitor to kill the sound of dying.
When he turned back you were stuck at the door, eyes downcast as if you couldn't bring yourself to look at the small body he pulled the cover over.
He returned to your side, hand gentle on your arm. “Go take some time in the family room.”
You shook your head, a tear betraying your words. “I'm fine.”
Jack reached up and cupped your cheek in the palm of his hand. He looked at you like you were still his whole world. You were. To him. His thumb delicately wiped the tear away as your gaze reached his. “Ten minutes, please. For me.”
It took some time, some great mental calculations sparring inside of you but you nodded and Jack led you from the room, closing the door behind him.
His hand was a gentle breeze against the small of your back as he led you out, giving a gesture of a nod to Lena about the room. It was enough for her charge nurse bells to go off as she nodded and sent someone over.
“Take all the time you need, okay?” Jack whispered to you.
You nodded, stepping out his hold and slowly walking to the family room.
Jack waited and watched closely, marking every step you took to the room. He only let out a sigh when he saw you close the door behind you.
“Everything okay?” asked Lena as he slouched over the counter.
His face scrunched up as he fought his own pain. Pain for the little girl but a greater pain chocked at him as he closed his eyes and pictured the heartbreak marring your face, taking over your entire body. He sniffed back his own grief. “No. No, not really.”
Slowly he explained the situation to Lena. He re-encountered the break up that had took the night crew by shock. They were all so sure it was happy ever after for the two of you. When Jack had to slowly explain the break up (he lied and said it was mutual, it was very much not) there were distraught faces as if the night-crawlers were all going through a parental divorce. He told Lena he knew something was going on with you. He told her about the girl that had just died.
“And I just-” said Jack, chocking on a cry that threatened to escape the lodge in his throat. “Sometimes when I see her, it feels like I'm gonna be seeing her for the last time.”
“Hey,” Lena whispered and reached for his hand, squeezing it. “None of that. She'll be okay.”
Jack nodded, repeating the words to himself. “Yeah, she'll be okay. Keep an eye on here?”
“Already on it.”
By the time Jack next had the spare moment to check his watch he found thirty minutes had flickered by since he last saw you. When he passed by the family room you weren't there. Instead Caleb was, talking to a family.
Jack went in search of you, checking the board for your initials. He didn't see anything up on there, nothing that jolted his heart with the usual sparks.
“Shen!” he called in passing. “Have you seen her?”
“Er, no, sorry.”
Jack cursed. He was turning around the ED, spinning on his heel and looking around every corner for you. You weren't by the lockers, weren't out in the ambulance bay. Trauma one was empty and trauma two had a large team in there already, devoid of you.
His heart beat like a drum in his chest, growing louder and louder, the thud of the bass growing the more time went on and he couldn't find you. Had you gone home without a word? Were you hiding away somewhere else?
Jack was losing hope, running on anxiety when he pushed back the curtain to fourteen hard enough to almost tear the thing.
You looked up at him from your place on the stool next to your patient, a middle aged woman with an ankle not as it should be.
“You're here,” he said, breathless.
“Er, yeah?” you said with a small chuckle. “I'm just telling Mrs Greene here about the surgery to reset the bone in her foot.”
Jack nodded, looking from you to your patient.
He wasn't an idiot. Your eyes were scratched and red, cheeks flushed. Yet you'd tried to put yourself back together. You'd scraped back your hair in a neater pin up, had clearly splashed cold water on your face, maybe even dunked your face in a bowl of it. You sat with your hands in your lap, a leg kicked over the other, caving in on yourself.
As soon as you left the room, chart in hand, Jack was hot on your heels.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
You startled, looking at him. “Yeah. Why wouldn't it be?”
“You lost a patient,” Jack reminded you, a small frown pulling at his lips. “It's tough on all of us.”
You glanced down to the chart, lifting your shoulders. “We lose people all the time. It's the job.”
He surveyed you as you slid into a seat, logging into the computer in front of you. No eye contact, distractions pulling at you. Jack knew your tactics; they were everyone else's. Ignore the pain till it went away before mounting up and crashing down at the worst time possible. Heck, he was chair of the club.
“Sure,” he mused. “Doesn't make it any easier.”
You sighed, pulling your lips up into a strained smile. “Jack, seriously, I'm fine. You don't have to worry about me.”
Jack leant over the counter. “Well, you want to know a secret?”
“What?”
“I'm always worried about you.”
“I don't think it's much of a secret,” you said, moving your fingers quick over the keypad.
He wondered if your hands were steady. Or even if you were writing anything with meaning, or just trying to occupy yourself. “If you need to go home-”
“- I don't-”
“- take some time-”
“- I don't want to take time,” you huffed.
“You’re starting to sound like Robby.”
“Now that’s insulting,” you huffed. There was a moment were you fell silent, your body slumping under the weight of the argument. You dragged your hands down your face. “Jack, please.”
When you're a kid they teach you that manners are an important basis in the human condition. A show of respect. A nicety. They don't tell you the effects the simple words hold when used on the tongue of a loved one. When someone you love is begging you to leave them alone, even against your better judgement.
Jack never liked to hear you beg as it was.
He hung his head in surrender. “I'm staying close.”
“You'll be loitering.”
“Observing,” he corrected.
He loitered around you the rest of the night. He checked your name on the board every time he passed. When the parents of the young girl arrived five hours later Jack spoke to them, he didn't even tell you they had arrived but somehow you knew. A silent nod of thanks was passed. The sun started to rise and Jack had counted three coffee's, two over your usual. The granola bar he'd handed you was left abandoned at your station and before Jack could find you to make sure you eat the rest, Crus had taken it in one bite.
Six am was a blessing. The night hadn't been full of patients, no more than usual at least but it had been more stressful to Jack.
Every time you moved and he couldn't find you he was worried. Even if it only lasted a minute or two. It was the same blind panic he'd felt the day Robby left for his sabbatical, yet the relief when he saw you didn't last.
Jack had left to go to the bathroom in the morning. When he came back Robby was there, fleece pulled up and talking to you. He couldn't tell what was going on, only that Robby's hands were clasped together in a prayer like motion.
Then he saw you nod and Robby sigh before giving you a high five and leaving.
“What was that?” Jack asked, falling at your side.
“What?”
“What were you and Robby talking about?”
“Er,” you hesitated. “Langdon can't make it, there's something at home, I don't know his kids are sick or something, Abbey's away visiting family.”
Jack was waiting for the other shoe to drop. “So?”
“He's asked me to stick around for a bit, help him out-”
“You've just pulled a double,” Jack snapped.
“It's only a few hours,” you shrugged, as if you weren't the walking definition of sleep. “Beats going home.”
“I'll cover.”
“Then you'll be pulling a triple,” you pointed out. “I'm younger, more spry.”
His jaw pulled tight, hands falling on his hips. “I'll talk to Robby.”
“I've told him I'll do it,” you said, firmly. “I don't want to go home and sit with this, I'd rather be here.”
“For how long?” he asked. “You gonna stay here forever now? You can't run away from this.”
“I can't sit with it either,” you snapped back, heat rising up your neck. “I'm not like you, Jack. I can't leave the shift at the door and go home and just sleep it off. I need to... I need to do something.”
Jack stood and listened. He knew you all processed things differently. He knew that you were never good at staying still, always rising early in the mornings even if you weren't working, cooking before he'd even said he was hungry. Siting still and thinking didn't work for you.
You took a deep breath and squeezed your eyes shut. It took you a couple moments to drag your eyelids open. “I'm gonna go sleep through hand over. I'll see you soon, okay?”
Jack didn't bother saying anything as he watched you go.
Your place was taken up by Robby. He looked down the way you'd walked.
“You had no right to ask her to stay,” Jack argued.
Robby chuckled low in his throat. “You have no right to be mad that she said yes. She's not yours anymore, Jack.”
“She's exhausted!” he grit.
“Then she wouldn't have said yes.”
“She wouldn't have said no, either!”
Robby grit his teeth and backed up a step. “Brother, I know you care about her. I'm only asking a couple hours to figure things out. She's a grown up. She knows what she's doing. I don't think you do.”
Robby walked off then, leaving Jack to it.
The worst part was, Jack knew he was right. He had no idea what he was doing.
It was two days later and Jack wasn't even supposed to be in.
It was only three in the afternoon, he had at least three more hours of snooze time, lying back in his bed, counting the flecks of paint in his ceiling- if he hadn't been out on the SWAT team.
A bunch of boys- punks really- were holding hostages for a total of six thousand dollars and a PS5. Considering the wars and losing his leg and the shoot outs it was a relative easy thing to deal with. Still, when the larger one of the trio took a run at him and landed his shoulder square in the chest, pushing Jack to the floor, it still hurt.
He'd pulled up his shirt, caught a glimpse at the bruising and thought it better safe than sorry. Best to get it checked out by your hands.
Any excuse really to feel your hands touch him.
“Hey,” he greeted, walking through the ambulance doors.
It was like walking into a morgue.
Dana and Javadi were at the nurses station, both turned to look at him in shock. “Jack, honey, what are you doing here?” she asked without her usual smile.
Jack clocked his head aside. “I took a tumble, thought I could get a look at, you know.” He was hoping she'd catch just who he wanted examining him without saying your name.
Javadi gasped at her side, hands flying over her mouth. “Oh my god.”
Jack looked to her. “What?”
He glanced around the Pitt.
Princess and Perlah were in the corner, talking in Tagalog quietly while glancing at him. Others were looking at him but Robby wasn't. He wasn't around. He counted: neither Samira, Whitaker, Santos or McKay were there.
Nor were you.
Dana slowed around the counter, lifting an arm to him. “Why don't we get some coffee? I can take a look at you-”
But Jack had already found trauma two, where all the doctors he was looking for were.
Robby stilled, gloved hands and gown covered in blood. At his side Samira was much the same, behind him Whitaker too. “Jack! Get out!”
It took him a minute to realise why everyone was looking at him, why the ED had felt colder than usual. Why you'd been missing from the floor.
The blood surrounding everything was yours.
“Jack!” Robby yelled.
You were on the gurney too still, so un-natural for you. Had he not been complaining you wouldn't take a break just forty-eight hours ago?
Jack looked to each face that was frozen, wondering what to do. Whether they should work on saving you or work on getting rid of him.
Jack made their choice for them, throwing off his jacket and pulling on latex gloves over the sweat of his palms. “Talk to me!” he yelled to anyone in the room.
Robby gave one un-impressed shake of his head and a groan. “We found her in the bathrooms. Stab wounds to the left chest, two to the belly, right and left upper quadrants.”
Jack was over you know, looking down.
You were pale, eyes dark and closed and not opening as he pressed a hand to the top of your head, feeling around just to be able to touch and know you were there. It was a relief to know as much as it was a nightmare to see you. He inhaled but it was shaky.
“She- she was stabbed?” he asked.
“We think it was a patient,” said Santos from behind him. “Or-or a relative of a patient, we don't know.”
Jack shook his head, brows creasing. “Oh god.”
“Pule ox eighty-two!” called out Donnie.
Jack snatched the central line tray away from Robby, lying it out and doing it all himself. He looked at you and saw a patient. For the sake of your life he was looking at you and cutting you open like he didn't love you. “Call- call someone,” he said.
“What?” asked Whitaker.
“Robby,” said Jack. “Call- call her emergency contact. A friend. A family, I don't know just get her someone! She-she doesn't like patients being alone so for gods sake, call someone!”
Robby was adamant to argue. It was evident in the lines in his face and the frown on his lips but Jack heard the sharp tug of elastic and the sound of him giving up.
He remembered how distraught you'd been when the little girl had no family with her. You weren't going to die- you weren't. But Jack wanted someone you trusted to be with you.
“BP's ninety over fifty!”
“Okay, c'mon, c'mon, honey,” said Jack as he carefully and skilfully intubated you, the bag going on. “Don't do this to me.”
Robby had pulled over the computer, logging in and typing away.
“Pulse ox is dropping!”
“Belly is distended,” said Whitaker. “Probably an intra-abdominal bleed!”
“Get four more units of O-neg in here!” ordered Jack.
“Pressure's down to sixty!” yelled Samira.
“Oh... god,” Robby uttered, staring intently at the computer screen.
There was a harsh beeping screaming through the room and everyone looked.
“We've lost her pulse!”
By the time Mohan had finished announcing it Jack had already climbed up, compressing down on your chest.
“No. No,” he said, harshly. “You are not doing this to me. You're not! Push a round of epi!”
There was another beeping that would haunt Jack for the rest of his life.
“She's in V-fib!”
Jack grunted. “Charge to one hundred!”
“Stop!” Robby called out. His head was hung low between his shoulders, one hand held up. “Stop.”
Jack did not stop pushing down to your chest. Over you, Donnie did not stop pressing down on the bag. Nobody was stopping. “Robby, What the fuck do you think you're doing?” he snapped.
Robby was pale, his eyes down cast as he turned his body to the room but didn't have the strength to look at anyone. He rested a hand on his hip, the other stretched out to the cart with the computer to steady himself. “Her chart. She's DNR.”
Jack didn't hear him, not right away. Or he did but didn't want to. He knew the letters DNR. Sometimes a mercy for the elderly that had lived a long, good life and wanted to go out on their terms. For the terminally ill who didn't want to live the rest of their life in pain.
You were young. You were healthy. You were not dying.
“What?” said McKay.
“You're kidding,” said Denis.
Robby shook his head, spinning the computer to them.
“Doctor Mohan!” Jack called, a silent plea for her to take his place. With steady hands, she did and Jack stumbled down next to Robby.
He stared at your name, your birthday. Your file sat there staring at him, the DNR mocking all the love he held for you.
“She's DNR, Jack, I'm sorry,” said Robby, a hand on his shoulder. “We have to respect that.”
His fingers moved around the keyboard till he highlighted the DNR.
You'd signed a DNR. You'd never said anything. Why had you signed a DNR?
Jack moved around on the keypad and did the only reasonable thing. Everyone behind him waited with bated breath.
Jack dragged his finger to the bin icon and deleted your file.
Robby stared at him in shock.
Jack looked away from the now empty computer screen and didn't so much as glance at Robby as he returned to your side. “Charge to one hundred.”
A wave of shock rippled through the doctors and nurses as Jack marched back to your side. There was disbelief that you, someone so young, would ever be a DNR. That Jack- who they'd all argue was a little bit more responsible than their own Doctor Robby- would erase a file!
Jack looked around at them all. “Charge to one hundred, now!”
Santos and Whitaker were the first to jump to attention, charging and handing over the panels.
“Clear!”
The waiting room was colder, quieter and whiter than Jack was accustom to. He was used to working down in the Pitt, with its white walls and ghosts but there was always noise. Always monitors going off and names being called, usually there were wails or cries of relief.
In the waiting room there was nothing.
Only lines and lines of chairs, a fish tank that last time he'd counter had a dozen or so goldfish and a clock that ticked by every second you lay under the knife.
Every second ticked away and nobody came to fetch him, to update him.
Every second Jack was left alone to guess why you'd have a DNR order.
The door creaked open and the only other waiting woman and child in the room looked up. As did Jack.
Robby walked in, boots shuffling, lips tilting up into an apologetic smile as he raised a hand to the mother and daughter. He found Jack. “Anything?”
He shook his head. He learnt almost two hours ago not to trust his voice from shaking anymore.
Robby settled in the chair next to Jack, stretching out his legs. Not to impose but just to press his boot next to Jack's and assure him he was there. It was a small move but none the less appreciated. “The guy was only came in for a headache,” he explained quietly in the silence. “We were waiting on a psych consult from some erratic behaviour-”
“- he should've been restrained,” said Jack, through eyes that were heavy in tears. He knew that most patients came in erratic, that they didn't always have to be tied down but he still he remembered your blood all over the trauma room, your blood on everyone's gloves.
Jack had to get a change of scrubs from the lockers just to get out of his clothes stained in your blood but as he looked down at his boots he found a spec of your blood.
“The guy had no infection, we've no idea how he got the knife. He ran after the attack. Word is he's at Westbridge being treated for schizophrenia.”
“How long?” Jack asked, a shake in his voice as he angled his head down to Robby. He gulped. “How long do you think she was lying there, alone, bleeding to death before anyone found her?”
Robby's own inhale was shaky, his body wracked with it. “I don't know.”
Jack's breath shuddered. He hunched over himself, resting his elbows on his knees.
Had you been conscious? Aware of the fact litres of your blood were leaving without being able to call for help. Were you trying to call for help but un-able to find your voice? The thought had Jack's stomach churning.
“What if-”
“Don't-” warned Robby.
“What if she doesn't make it?”
“She will.”
Jack tried to imagine a world without you but he couldn't. He tried to picture walking into work and not finding your face, smiling or on the verge of collapse. He imagined not being able to text you just to say he was thinking about you and for you to just reply, don't. He couldn't imagine the last photo he'd have of you on his phone was the morning you broke up with him, when you were sleeping and he thought you looked so beautiful and at peace that he had to capture the moment.
He wanted to tell you there'd be no peace on the other side. Not if you left him.
“Two stab wounds to the belly,” Jack sniffed. “Could've been the spleen.”
Robby didn't try to sugar coat it. He only nodded and listened. “It could.”
“It could've got the heart, she was stabbed in the chest.”
“Maybe.”
They sat in silence.
Jack saw Robby watch the clock for an entire minute.
“Do you know why?” asked Robby. “Why she had a DNR?”
Jack winced at the memory. The stamp standing out to him. It was offensive to him, that you'd do such a thing. He rested back in his chair. “No. She.... she never said anything about it, not to me.”
Robby nodded.
“She's healthy,” said Jack.
“Maybe... maybe it's something else,” Robby uttered.
Jack didn't need to ask what he might have meant. They knew it better than most.
Maybe it wasn't a want to die, but an indifference to live.
Yet, a DNR wasn't an indifference. It was a choice that if anything happened to you you'd never want to come back from it.
“I can't do it,” said Jack, looking down to his boots. He struggled to put the rest of it into words. “I can't... without her- I can't. And I want nothing more than for her to wake up. But... I'm so angry she's done this.”
There was grief, despair also behind that anger but the fury masked it.
“So am I,” said Robby. He was the closest thing to a mentor you had, someone to look out for you when Jack wasn't around. “When she wakes up-”
Jack shook his head. “We don't know that.”
Robby's body hunched over, focused on Jack. “When she gets out of that OR you get to argue with her first.”
Jack dared to hope in the silence that paraded between them. “You think she knows?” he asked. “That we brought her back?”
It seemed Robby didn't even have to think about it.
“She knows.”
There was another tick of the clock before the door opened again.
“Doctor Abbot.”
He shot up at the call of his name, pushing through the door with Robby following behind. Out in the hallway the lights radiated a ghostly white and Jack felt haunted already.
Garcia stood there, a mask lose around her neck.
“How-how is she?” he asked.
Garcia looked between them. “Recovering. There's a long road ahead of her, but she's stubborn. Far more stubborn than the two of you combined. She's going to make it.”
Jack let out a shudder of a breath of relief, his entire body curling. He felt the need to throw up all the words he'd wanted to say to you and hadn't. That coil in his stomach released and his last good leg trembled.
He felt Robby's hand on his shoulder and dully heard him and Garcia talk about what had gone on in the operating room but it was as if Jack was under water.
A score of surgeons started to wheel you out, pushing you into recovery.
Jack saw you in a new gown without blood, bandages around you. You were still asleep but that's all it was, a sleep. Your skin was still pale but there was the smallest bit of life in your cheeks. You moved so slow, or maybe that's how he was seeing you, trying to slow it down to memorise you.
When you disappeared Jack came back to with enough time to thank Garcia and rush off after you.
By the time you woke up Jack had gone through his mind a thousand times, trying to think of a way to approach the topic of you seemly wanting to die without coming off as angry and afraid as he felt.
You woke slowly with flutters of your eyes and your hand coming up to rub at the sleep only to be held down by the IV in your hand.
Jack jerked at the movement, claiming your hand and holding it in his, squeezing. “Hey. Hey, you're okay, it's okay,” he said, coaxing some comfort into you.
You turned to find him, eyes groggy as you blinked at him. Your lips parted, dry and chapped, just barely mumbling his name.
“Yeah, yeah, it's me,” he said with a watery smile as tears sprung to his eyes. “It's me, you're okay, you're safe.”
You glanced around the room in post-op. The blank walls with cards about various health hacks, at the monitors all around you, then down to yourself in a gown, the blanket that Jack had asked Robby to bring from his place gently tucked close to you. Selfishly, he'd wanted to keep just one thing when you left. You gulped. “What-what happened?”
Jack steadied himself. “You were- you were stabbed, one to the chest. Tw-two to the belly.”
You blinked, taking in the information. Slowly, your free hand rose and rubbed over your heart. “My-my chest-”
“Does it hurt?” asked Jack, ready to begrudgingly let go of your hand and rush to get someone.
You shook your head, closing your eyes and resting your head back in the cushions. “It... aches, a little.”
Jack knew the pain from other people winces. From the jutting of chests when they were shocked to the burn marks left there after. He'd seen your wince on hundreds of other patients, often described as a pain like being kicked in the chest.
He wondered if his heart breaking was a similar pain.
“Your- your heart stopped. We lost your pulse. We had to bring you back,” he said slowly, studying your face for any sign of grief. “We had to shock you.”
He waited.
You only slowly closed your eyes and opened them again. “Oh.” Your hand gave his a little squeeze.
Jack gulped down his troubles, shuffling closer and resting his arms on the bed, caressing your hand close to his chest. “We had to go against the DNR. Your DNR.”
You looked at him, a small knot of confusion between your brows before it quickly smoothed over. He watched you slowly avert your gaze, turning away to stare at the ceiling instead. You didn't cry- in rage or relief- you didn't say anything for a while leaving Jack to guess if you wanted him to bring you back.
“Why?” he asked, a crack in his voice. “Honey- why was there a DNR order on your file?” deep down he knew he should have been letting you rest, taking care of you and whispering soothing words but he couldn't see past the order on your file. He couldn't forget the way he watched your body lie still and bloody without breath and the dread that filled his chest when he found out you didn't want to be brought back.
You blinked a tear. “I don't know.”
Jack shuffled closer still, his knees digging into the bed. “Baby... honey, please. You-you can tell me,” he begged, holding the back of your hand to the stubble growing in stress. “Please, honey. I... I thought I was gonna lose you forever.”
His salty tears rolled onto the back of your hand and like it was acid, you cried, the sort that had your bottom lip jittering.
“I-I really don't know,” you uttered. “I guess I was young and-and stupid. I didn't want to die... didn't care much about living either. I just put there as a.... as....”
Jacks thumb slowly soothed your hand, resting it on his cheek as he listened. “As a what, honey?”
You glanced his way before your expression turned pain and you stared down at the blanket instead. “A failsafe. I didn't think anything would happen to me... but if I did I guessed it was life's way of telling me to be done.”
Jack took a deep breath that didn't reach deep in his lungs, it sat and burned. He knew it wasn't about him and he wasn't trying to make it so but he'd had a long time to think about life without you while waiting for you to come out of surgery.
Who else was he supposed to talk to if he didn't have you?
Who else was he supposed to laugh with if you weren't there?
Who else would take up all the love he had if you didn't have it?
“I did it ages ago, Jack, I swear, I forgot about it. Things were different, when-when I was with you. I just... I...”
He nodded, trying to hide his tears. He turned his head to wipe his cheek against his shoulder.
You squeezed his hand again.
“You didn't- you never said anything,” he mumbled.
You lips parted and hung open lamely. “I'm sorry.”
Jack shook his head again and looked at you with his best, un-stable, smile. “I just don't know what I would've done without you.”
Your finger tapped his hand, almost pityingly. “You'd have been okay.”
He scoffed. “Like fuck I would have,” he said, looking at you. “Do you realise how scared I was when I saw you in trauma? Do you realise what my life means without you? Nothing. Nothing, it means nothing.”
You frowned. “But I... I broke up with you?”
Jack shrugged. “So? You think I was gonna stay away long?”
You looked down at the blanket again, the one you'd picked up at a store- Jack couldn't even remember what store- he just remembered you'd seen it and said it would look good at home. At his. It was the first time you'd said his place as home and the first time he realised it could have been just that. “I dunno, I'm kind of a mess.”
Jack looked at you like you were the stars in the sky. “So am I, baby. That doesn't change anything.”
He thought to how sad you'd looked breaking up with him, like you didn't want to. All the extra shifts you'd been carrying, the silent pain. “You can't carry on like this. Being distracted, running from the pain. You have to... talk about it, face it.”
You swallowed, bitterly, as if even thinking about doing just that was the last thing you wanted to think about.
“If I hadn't been there today, I... I don't even want to think about what could've happened,” he admitted, quietly.
“How- how did you do it?” you asked. “Go about the DNR?”
Jack looked up sheepishly. “I deleted your file from the records.”
There was the smallest hint of a smirk on your lips.
“Gloria's not gonna like that,” you warned, pulling at his hand.
Jack chuckled to himself. “Gloria can kiss my ass.”
You laughed. It was small and pained but it was the first laugh from you Jack had heard in months.
He smiled at the sound.
“Jack?”
You pulled on his hand, beckoning him closer.
Jack hovered over you, checking where he could rest as to not hurt you. He rested his arm over yours, gently stroking back your hair while keeping your hand in his, resting it over your chest where the firm and promising beating of your heart lay.
“Thank you,” you said. “I don't... I don't think I'd want to have died. I know I act like it some times with... with all the work and the distance-”
Jack nodded along. It was a good start, a fresh one that he could build with you.
“But I want to be alive. With you.”
“Well that's good,” he said, tasting the own salt of his tears on his lips that were bitten down on in anxiety. “Because I want you to be alive. With or without me.”
You smiled up at him.
Jack stroked back your hair again. “But I'd prefer with.”
“So would I.”
Jack kissed you gently and slow, letting you set a pace of push him off. You did neither. Your lips puckered and were light against his but he grew solid then, an un-moving block at your side.
And you'd start again with each other, gentle and slow.
if you need help or related to the dark ideas in this fic, please talk to someone!
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