Restraint 2/2
Title: "Restraint 2/2"
Author: Leigh57
Characters: Jack, Renee, Dr. Macer, Janis
Warnings: Language, spoilers for 7x16 and possibly the preview for 7x17. AU, I guess, or will be by Monday at 9.
Summary: “Oh who the hell was she kidding? After everything Jack had gone through today, she’d eat glass if he asked her to before she’d let him slip slowly away from reality in this horrible antiseptic room.”
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters. If I did they’d stop doing this to me.
A/N: So this was going to end on a super angsty note, but it turns out that I’m . . . me! Who knew? Extra cheese, anyone? Plus I couldn’t do it to a certain person on my flist, who, whether she’s reading or not, needs a happy ending at least in ficland right now.
Thanks to dealan311 and marinw for help with the background info I sorely lack. Thanks to Adrienne for betaing at midnight:)
Renee lay still in Jack’s arms, careful not to break eye contact. She could feel the tremors in his hands against her cheek and her ribs. His eyes were shiny, but he was looking at her with an expression she had never before witnessed from Jack.
Now she knew why.
She wanted it to stop. All of it. How was it possible that less than a day ago she had been calmly strolling into the congressional hearing, flashing her badge at Senator Mayer, all cool confidence and unshakable faith in her ability to handle this situation like any other case?
Jack moved his hand in her hair again, pushing it away from her face. The callouses on the tips of his fingers brushed over her forehead; she realized that if she lived through this, at least she had the answer to the question she’d yelled in the hospital.
Do you feel anything?
There was nothing poetic or just in discovering the answer like this.
“Do you remember that duck Kim had when she was a baby?” Jack’s voice was stronger now, and Renee felt the competing forces inside her head move into mortal combat.
I can’t do this.
Yes. Yes you can. You will do this because he’s fucking dying and he never asks for anything and he deserves this much.
“Yes.”
His eyes moved off hers, shifting vaguely in the direction of the door, although she knew he wasn’t really looking at it. “She’d never go to sleep without that damn thing.” He paused, quiet for a few seconds. “I remember you used to get so mad, because it would fall through the crib slats and she’d wake up crying for it all the time. You always thought you heard her before I did, but one night I must have gone in there five times and you never woke up.” He took a breath. “I was glad. You were so tired.”
Renee began to shake; she could feel the tears sliding down her temples into her hair.
Jack’s eyes landed on hers again. “Hey. Why are you crying?”
“It’s nothing. I’m fine.” She cleared her throat. “Tell me what else you and Kim used to sneak past me.”
Jack smiled, his face inches from hers, and Renee wondered if she’d ever recover from the next few days. Jack would be dead, but she’d still be here. Remembering what it was like to see him really smile, all the way to his eyes, for the first time. Knowing he was only doing so because his mind had pulled him back to a time when smiling was possible.
When there was a reason to smile.
“Okay.” He pulled her up and turned her a little, so that she was between his legs, her back to his chest. She silently thanked deities she didn’t believe in that she didn’t have to keep looking at him right now. His chin landed on her shoulder and without even thinking, she wrapped her arms around his legs so that she could help control the tremors and he wouldn’t have to.
“Thanks. I can’t get them to stop doing that.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she answered, feeling the muscles beneath his jeans, the way they quivered even though he wasn’t voluntarily moving them at all. She held her breath and counted to ten, trying to think of her favorite 80s pop songs and really good bruschetta and Sunday afternoons at the beach when she was a teenager, sitting under a huge umbrella, reading a book and listening to the ocean while everyone else dove into the surf.
Anything to take her out of here. So maybe there would be something left when this was over.
When he died.
Apparently her instinct for self-preservation had left the building, because she was still here.
All of her.
Jack wrapped his arms around her from behind, his face next to her throat so that the rumble of his voice vibrated her skin when he spoke. “I used to take her to Dunkin’ Donuts sometimes on the days when I picked her up from school.” He laughed; she had to bite into her lip to silence the sob that welled up. She must have been successful, because he continued. “You know those nights when Kim would sit there, stirring her food all over the plate, then take two bites and ask to be excused?”
“Yeah.” She was trying so hard to let him do the talking. Even if she could put aside how much all of this felt as though she’d entered some horrific alternate universe, she had no idea how Teri spoke or gestured.
“It was the donuts. She loved those long bar ones with the maple frosting. Once I even let her have two. I think that was a bad idea.”
“Probably.” Renee squeezed his legs tighter, but she noticed that they didn’t seem to be trembling quite as violently. Must have been the sedative.
“I wanted to be able to do all that again,” Jack said. He lifted her shirt a touch and slipped both hands over her lower abdomen. She was a split second away from moving, because really there was only so far she could take this without feeling as if she’d violated his trust even if he didn’t know what was going on. But he stopped there, his hands warm on her skin. “I almost got to.”
It took her a few seconds to connect the dots.
She had thought it couldn’t get any worse. Nothing about Teri being pregnant at the time of her death had been in the file.
“Teri?”
Oh god. She pushed her hands over her face and they came away covered with tears. “Yeah?”
“I need to know that you forgive me. I mean-” Again he gave that chuffing laugh that was uniquely his; Renee felt it against her neck. “I know there’s a ninety percent chance I’m imagining you. I still need to hear you say it.”
“Jack. There’s nothing to forgive.”
“Say it anyway. For me.”
Renee closed her eyes and breathed in, fighting the suffocating sensation that crushed her chest and throat. “I forgive you.”
He pulled her closer and pressed his face into her neck. She could feel the tears from his cheek mixing with hers. A few drops fell from her chin onto her shirt; she stared at the tiny dark stains as they spread out in circles on the blue fabric.
At least five minutes must have ticked by before Jack mumbled, “I’m so tired.”
It suddenly occurred to Renee that maybe at least she could be useful, persuade him to do something no one else had managed. “Jack, come on. You’ll be a lot more comfortable in bed.” She stood up, reaching for his hands, because she knew he couldn’t make it on his own. For a few seconds she wasn’t sure if he was going to cooperate, but then he closed his fingers over hers. She didn’t know how she had any strength left in her body, but she hauled him up from the floor, holding one of his arms draped over her shoulder and wrapping her other arm firmly around his waist.
In a few steps they were at the bed and she helped him sit down, pushing gently at his shoulders to get him to lie back. She was withdrawing her hand when he caught it. “I’m afraid to go to sleep,” he said, so quietly she could barely hear him, especially through the strange shaving off of the consonants the disease was beginning to create.
“Why?”
“Because you’re not here, and you won’t be here when I wake up.” His mouth turned up at the corners, but there was nothing happy in his smile. “If I wake up.”
Renee cleared her throat as quietly as she could. “Jack. I’ll be here.”
His eyes slipped closed, even though his body was still shaking. “Promise?”
“Yes. I promise.”
He forced himself over, directly against the wall. “Get in then. There’s enough room.”
Just get him to sleep. You can do this.
She crawled in with her back to his chest, and despite the mutiny in his muscles, he managed to drag an arm over her waist.
“Thank you,” he said, the words barely a murmur.
“You’re welcome,” she whispered, because she’d finally run out of sound.
_________________________
Half an hour later, when Renee heard voices in the hallway and the snap of a card in the reader, she hadn’t moved an inch. She assumed Jack was asleep behind her, because he had said nothing. On her stomach, his hand still twitched and jerked, perhaps even more violently than it had when they were on the floor.
Dr. Macer walked in. As if she didn’t notice that Renee was lying in bed with Jack’s arm over her stomach, she said in an undertone, “I need to talk to you. Immediately.”
Renee nodded, carefully sliding out from underneath Jack’s arm. Standing up made the room spin for a moment, but after a second the dizziness passed and everything settled down. “What’s going on?” She searched Dr. Macer’s face, and her heart made a twisting motion in her chest when she saw a flash of something there she had never expected.
Hope.
Or maybe the emotional strain had merely made her as delusional as Jack. “What’s happened?” she asked again, trying to squelch her desperation and keep her voice low.
True to form, Dr. Macer skipped directly to the bottom line. Renee didn’t think she’d ever been so grateful to another human being for lacking the ability to bullshit. “Agent Moss believes there is an antidote. I’m a doctor, not a field agent, so I don’t know all the details. But this hypothetical antidote is on its way over by chopper. It should be here in less than ten minutes.”
Renee wrapped her hand around the metal railing at the end of Jack’s bed. The cold hardness pressed back against her palm. “You can cure him?”
Dr. Macer was already shaking her head vigorously. “I didn’t say that. We haven’t tested it. There’s no way to guarantee it’s the real thing, although Agent Moss seems certain it is.” She paused. “I’m sorry. I wish I had a better answer, but I have to be honest. I don’t know what giving him this medicine will do to him. If it is an antidote developed by Starkwood for their own employees, the sooner Mr. Bauer gets it, the more likely he is to survive.”
“What are you saying?” Renee’s head felt as if it were on the inside of a coffee grinder.
“It would take days to analyze whatever substance Agent Moss is choppering over here. By that time, Mr. Bauer will be dead. Agent Moss asked, and he was very specific about this, for me to tell you everything I know and let you make the call.”
“Me?”
“Mr. Bauer has no available next of kin. Agent Moss is the SAC, but he was adamant about deferring to you on this matter.”
Renee turned to look at Jack, his body twitching and jerking at unpredictable intervals.
“Give it to him.”
“You’re sure?” Dr. Macer held Renee’s gaze. “I need to know you understand the risks. I’ve never done something like this in my entire career.”
Renee pressed her lips together. “I understand. Give it to him. The second it gets here.”
Dr. Macer paused, scrutinizing Renee’s face for a few seconds. Then she said evenly, “I’ll prep the equipment.”
Renee made sure that the door had latched behind her before she walked over to the wall and sank down yet again, head on her knees.
This time she wasn’t crying.
There was nothing left.
_________________________
“Renee?”
Her head snapped up. Disoriented, she struggled to focus, trying to screen out the throbbing pain that wrapped itself in a band around her temples and slid down the back of her neck into her shoulders. She rubbed her eyes, and her vision finally cleared enough that she could process her surroundings.
She was in a chair beside Jack’s bed, leaning forward on his mattress, where she must have fallen asleep face first. She swung her eyes up to the head of the bed and they landed on Jack’s, which were open and lucid.
Had he said her name?
She sat up, pushing her hair away where it was sticking to her face. “How do you feel?”
“Like shit.” His mouth turned up at the corners, and something almost like mischief flashed behind his eyes. She ran her eyes down his body. His hands were moving slightly, but the rest of his muscles were still.
It hit her.
He was okay. He was going to be okay.
“So you’re-”
“I’m fine. Dr. Macer was in here a few minutes ago, but I think she was trying not to wake you up. I wouldn’t have-” He glanced away from her, first at the opposite wall and then down at his sheets, which she noticed weren’t much whiter than his skin. “I didn’t want to wake you up either, but you looked uncomfortable.”
She twisted her head a little and rubbed the knot at the base of her neck. “What did Dr. Macer say?”
Jack pushed himself up in the bed a little, but she could tell that even the small movement took a lot of effort. “The antidote’s working. Obviously. They don’t know about long-term side effects.” He looked at his left hand. “Apparently I’ll be sore as hell for a few days because of the muscle spasms.”
The relief that coursed through her reminded her of waiting for snow day announcements on the radio as a child, the feeling of ecstatic relief when the announcer named her school in his boring baritone and she could bury her head back under the haven of warm covers. Only this was ten thousand times better. She swallowed, her throat dry and sticky from crying and borderline dehydration. “But aside from that?”
“She thinks I’m going to be okay.”
The tears were close, so close, but she sucked in a breath and held it to try and keep them at bay.
Jack was silent for a few moments. Renee heard footsteps and disembodied voices in the hallway outside. “Renee?”
“Yeah?” She found it suddenly hard to look at him, because the clarity in his eyes was such a contrast to before and she still wasn’t sure that relief alone wouldn’t make her fall apart right there.
“Dr. Macer told me. What you did. That you’re the one who made the decision.”
“Jack, I-”
“You know it’s what I would have done if I’d been capable of making the choice.” He paused, still holding her eyes so intently that she pushed her palms into her bruised kneecaps to distract herself. “Thank you.”
“I didn’t know what to do,” she blurted out. “And I couldn’t ask you because-”
He cut her off. “I know. I remember what happened.”
“You do?”
He sighed, scratching the edge of his hand where surgical tape now held down an IV. They must have done that while she was sleeping. “Not all of it.” His voice was rough, catching on the edges of an occasional word. “Enough to know what you did. I’m sorry.”
She could barely talk now, but she choked out, “I hope you know I wasn’t trying to-”
He shook his head, stopping her words. “I know what you were trying to do. And it must have been-” He cleared his throat. “Thank you.” After a beat he grinned, his face transformed even beneath the exhaustion and pallor. “I don’t say that to a lot of people.”
“I didn’t know what else to do,” she whispered, looking down at the dark denim of her jeans. When he didn’t respond, she cleared her throat in hopes of producing actual sound and said, “I’ll let you rest.” She got up, hoping Jack wouldn’t notice that she was holding onto the back of the chair. It only took a second for the vertigo she’d known was coming to pass.
She was reaching for the doorknob when he said, “Renee?”
“Yeah?”
“When you’ve checked in and you’re up to speed, will you-” He pulled his still shaky hands into fists. “Come back and give me the update?”
“I can call you. They gave you your cell back.” She nodded her head in the direction of the table beside his bed.
“Sorry. I didn’t see it. That’s fine.” He had a funny look.
“What?” She leaned with her back against the door, thinking that if she ever made it into a bed, she didn’t plan to get out until the new millennium.
“Nothing. Just-” He avoided her eyes again, just as he’d done when she’d come to debrief him about the canisters. “The company would be nice, too.”
In that exact instant, it was suddenly so much easier for her to remember that gelati and stomach-dropping rollercoasters and freezing cold nights where you could see all the stars - all the things that had seemed so important before yesterday - still existed.
“Okay. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”
She shut the door behind her and leaned against the wall, taking thirty seconds to let all of it engulf her.
She rubbed her eyes one more time and looked at the window to Jack's room before she walked down the long hallway, back to ops.
Author: Leigh57
Characters: Jack, Renee, Dr. Macer, Janis
Warnings: Language, spoilers for 7x16 and possibly the preview for 7x17. AU, I guess, or will be by Monday at 9.
Summary: “Oh who the hell was she kidding? After everything Jack had gone through today, she’d eat glass if he asked her to before she’d let him slip slowly away from reality in this horrible antiseptic room.”
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters. If I did they’d stop doing this to me.
A/N: So this was going to end on a super angsty note, but it turns out that I’m . . . me! Who knew? Extra cheese, anyone? Plus I couldn’t do it to a certain person on my flist, who, whether she’s reading or not, needs a happy ending at least in ficland right now.
Thanks to dealan311 and marinw for help with the background info I sorely lack. Thanks to Adrienne for betaing at midnight:)
Renee lay still in Jack’s arms, careful not to break eye contact. She could feel the tremors in his hands against her cheek and her ribs. His eyes were shiny, but he was looking at her with an expression she had never before witnessed from Jack.
Now she knew why.
She wanted it to stop. All of it. How was it possible that less than a day ago she had been calmly strolling into the congressional hearing, flashing her badge at Senator Mayer, all cool confidence and unshakable faith in her ability to handle this situation like any other case?
Jack moved his hand in her hair again, pushing it away from her face. The callouses on the tips of his fingers brushed over her forehead; she realized that if she lived through this, at least she had the answer to the question she’d yelled in the hospital.
Do you feel anything?
There was nothing poetic or just in discovering the answer like this.
“Do you remember that duck Kim had when she was a baby?” Jack’s voice was stronger now, and Renee felt the competing forces inside her head move into mortal combat.
I can’t do this.
Yes. Yes you can. You will do this because he’s fucking dying and he never asks for anything and he deserves this much.
“Yes.”
His eyes moved off hers, shifting vaguely in the direction of the door, although she knew he wasn’t really looking at it. “She’d never go to sleep without that damn thing.” He paused, quiet for a few seconds. “I remember you used to get so mad, because it would fall through the crib slats and she’d wake up crying for it all the time. You always thought you heard her before I did, but one night I must have gone in there five times and you never woke up.” He took a breath. “I was glad. You were so tired.”
Renee began to shake; she could feel the tears sliding down her temples into her hair.
Jack’s eyes landed on hers again. “Hey. Why are you crying?”
“It’s nothing. I’m fine.” She cleared her throat. “Tell me what else you and Kim used to sneak past me.”
Jack smiled, his face inches from hers, and Renee wondered if she’d ever recover from the next few days. Jack would be dead, but she’d still be here. Remembering what it was like to see him really smile, all the way to his eyes, for the first time. Knowing he was only doing so because his mind had pulled him back to a time when smiling was possible.
When there was a reason to smile.
“Okay.” He pulled her up and turned her a little, so that she was between his legs, her back to his chest. She silently thanked deities she didn’t believe in that she didn’t have to keep looking at him right now. His chin landed on her shoulder and without even thinking, she wrapped her arms around his legs so that she could help control the tremors and he wouldn’t have to.
“Thanks. I can’t get them to stop doing that.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she answered, feeling the muscles beneath his jeans, the way they quivered even though he wasn’t voluntarily moving them at all. She held her breath and counted to ten, trying to think of her favorite 80s pop songs and really good bruschetta and Sunday afternoons at the beach when she was a teenager, sitting under a huge umbrella, reading a book and listening to the ocean while everyone else dove into the surf.
Anything to take her out of here. So maybe there would be something left when this was over.
When he died.
Apparently her instinct for self-preservation had left the building, because she was still here.
All of her.
Jack wrapped his arms around her from behind, his face next to her throat so that the rumble of his voice vibrated her skin when he spoke. “I used to take her to Dunkin’ Donuts sometimes on the days when I picked her up from school.” He laughed; she had to bite into her lip to silence the sob that welled up. She must have been successful, because he continued. “You know those nights when Kim would sit there, stirring her food all over the plate, then take two bites and ask to be excused?”
“Yeah.” She was trying so hard to let him do the talking. Even if she could put aside how much all of this felt as though she’d entered some horrific alternate universe, she had no idea how Teri spoke or gestured.
“It was the donuts. She loved those long bar ones with the maple frosting. Once I even let her have two. I think that was a bad idea.”
“Probably.” Renee squeezed his legs tighter, but she noticed that they didn’t seem to be trembling quite as violently. Must have been the sedative.
“I wanted to be able to do all that again,” Jack said. He lifted her shirt a touch and slipped both hands over her lower abdomen. She was a split second away from moving, because really there was only so far she could take this without feeling as if she’d violated his trust even if he didn’t know what was going on. But he stopped there, his hands warm on her skin. “I almost got to.”
It took her a few seconds to connect the dots.
She had thought it couldn’t get any worse. Nothing about Teri being pregnant at the time of her death had been in the file.
“Teri?”
Oh god. She pushed her hands over her face and they came away covered with tears. “Yeah?”
“I need to know that you forgive me. I mean-” Again he gave that chuffing laugh that was uniquely his; Renee felt it against her neck. “I know there’s a ninety percent chance I’m imagining you. I still need to hear you say it.”
“Jack. There’s nothing to forgive.”
“Say it anyway. For me.”
Renee closed her eyes and breathed in, fighting the suffocating sensation that crushed her chest and throat. “I forgive you.”
He pulled her closer and pressed his face into her neck. She could feel the tears from his cheek mixing with hers. A few drops fell from her chin onto her shirt; she stared at the tiny dark stains as they spread out in circles on the blue fabric.
At least five minutes must have ticked by before Jack mumbled, “I’m so tired.”
It suddenly occurred to Renee that maybe at least she could be useful, persuade him to do something no one else had managed. “Jack, come on. You’ll be a lot more comfortable in bed.” She stood up, reaching for his hands, because she knew he couldn’t make it on his own. For a few seconds she wasn’t sure if he was going to cooperate, but then he closed his fingers over hers. She didn’t know how she had any strength left in her body, but she hauled him up from the floor, holding one of his arms draped over her shoulder and wrapping her other arm firmly around his waist.
In a few steps they were at the bed and she helped him sit down, pushing gently at his shoulders to get him to lie back. She was withdrawing her hand when he caught it. “I’m afraid to go to sleep,” he said, so quietly she could barely hear him, especially through the strange shaving off of the consonants the disease was beginning to create.
“Why?”
“Because you’re not here, and you won’t be here when I wake up.” His mouth turned up at the corners, but there was nothing happy in his smile. “If I wake up.”
Renee cleared her throat as quietly as she could. “Jack. I’ll be here.”
His eyes slipped closed, even though his body was still shaking. “Promise?”
“Yes. I promise.”
He forced himself over, directly against the wall. “Get in then. There’s enough room.”
Just get him to sleep. You can do this.
She crawled in with her back to his chest, and despite the mutiny in his muscles, he managed to drag an arm over her waist.
“Thank you,” he said, the words barely a murmur.
“You’re welcome,” she whispered, because she’d finally run out of sound.
_________________________
Half an hour later, when Renee heard voices in the hallway and the snap of a card in the reader, she hadn’t moved an inch. She assumed Jack was asleep behind her, because he had said nothing. On her stomach, his hand still twitched and jerked, perhaps even more violently than it had when they were on the floor.
Dr. Macer walked in. As if she didn’t notice that Renee was lying in bed with Jack’s arm over her stomach, she said in an undertone, “I need to talk to you. Immediately.”
Renee nodded, carefully sliding out from underneath Jack’s arm. Standing up made the room spin for a moment, but after a second the dizziness passed and everything settled down. “What’s going on?” She searched Dr. Macer’s face, and her heart made a twisting motion in her chest when she saw a flash of something there she had never expected.
Hope.
Or maybe the emotional strain had merely made her as delusional as Jack. “What’s happened?” she asked again, trying to squelch her desperation and keep her voice low.
True to form, Dr. Macer skipped directly to the bottom line. Renee didn’t think she’d ever been so grateful to another human being for lacking the ability to bullshit. “Agent Moss believes there is an antidote. I’m a doctor, not a field agent, so I don’t know all the details. But this hypothetical antidote is on its way over by chopper. It should be here in less than ten minutes.”
Renee wrapped her hand around the metal railing at the end of Jack’s bed. The cold hardness pressed back against her palm. “You can cure him?”
Dr. Macer was already shaking her head vigorously. “I didn’t say that. We haven’t tested it. There’s no way to guarantee it’s the real thing, although Agent Moss seems certain it is.” She paused. “I’m sorry. I wish I had a better answer, but I have to be honest. I don’t know what giving him this medicine will do to him. If it is an antidote developed by Starkwood for their own employees, the sooner Mr. Bauer gets it, the more likely he is to survive.”
“What are you saying?” Renee’s head felt as if it were on the inside of a coffee grinder.
“It would take days to analyze whatever substance Agent Moss is choppering over here. By that time, Mr. Bauer will be dead. Agent Moss asked, and he was very specific about this, for me to tell you everything I know and let you make the call.”
“Me?”
“Mr. Bauer has no available next of kin. Agent Moss is the SAC, but he was adamant about deferring to you on this matter.”
Renee turned to look at Jack, his body twitching and jerking at unpredictable intervals.
“Give it to him.”
“You’re sure?” Dr. Macer held Renee’s gaze. “I need to know you understand the risks. I’ve never done something like this in my entire career.”
Renee pressed her lips together. “I understand. Give it to him. The second it gets here.”
Dr. Macer paused, scrutinizing Renee’s face for a few seconds. Then she said evenly, “I’ll prep the equipment.”
Renee made sure that the door had latched behind her before she walked over to the wall and sank down yet again, head on her knees.
This time she wasn’t crying.
There was nothing left.
_________________________
“Renee?”
Her head snapped up. Disoriented, she struggled to focus, trying to screen out the throbbing pain that wrapped itself in a band around her temples and slid down the back of her neck into her shoulders. She rubbed her eyes, and her vision finally cleared enough that she could process her surroundings.
She was in a chair beside Jack’s bed, leaning forward on his mattress, where she must have fallen asleep face first. She swung her eyes up to the head of the bed and they landed on Jack’s, which were open and lucid.
Had he said her name?
She sat up, pushing her hair away where it was sticking to her face. “How do you feel?”
“Like shit.” His mouth turned up at the corners, and something almost like mischief flashed behind his eyes. She ran her eyes down his body. His hands were moving slightly, but the rest of his muscles were still.
It hit her.
He was okay. He was going to be okay.
“So you’re-”
“I’m fine. Dr. Macer was in here a few minutes ago, but I think she was trying not to wake you up. I wouldn’t have-” He glanced away from her, first at the opposite wall and then down at his sheets, which she noticed weren’t much whiter than his skin. “I didn’t want to wake you up either, but you looked uncomfortable.”
She twisted her head a little and rubbed the knot at the base of her neck. “What did Dr. Macer say?”
Jack pushed himself up in the bed a little, but she could tell that even the small movement took a lot of effort. “The antidote’s working. Obviously. They don’t know about long-term side effects.” He looked at his left hand. “Apparently I’ll be sore as hell for a few days because of the muscle spasms.”
The relief that coursed through her reminded her of waiting for snow day announcements on the radio as a child, the feeling of ecstatic relief when the announcer named her school in his boring baritone and she could bury her head back under the haven of warm covers. Only this was ten thousand times better. She swallowed, her throat dry and sticky from crying and borderline dehydration. “But aside from that?”
“She thinks I’m going to be okay.”
The tears were close, so close, but she sucked in a breath and held it to try and keep them at bay.
Jack was silent for a few moments. Renee heard footsteps and disembodied voices in the hallway outside. “Renee?”
“Yeah?” She found it suddenly hard to look at him, because the clarity in his eyes was such a contrast to before and she still wasn’t sure that relief alone wouldn’t make her fall apart right there.
“Dr. Macer told me. What you did. That you’re the one who made the decision.”
“Jack, I-”
“You know it’s what I would have done if I’d been capable of making the choice.” He paused, still holding her eyes so intently that she pushed her palms into her bruised kneecaps to distract herself. “Thank you.”
“I didn’t know what to do,” she blurted out. “And I couldn’t ask you because-”
He cut her off. “I know. I remember what happened.”
“You do?”
He sighed, scratching the edge of his hand where surgical tape now held down an IV. They must have done that while she was sleeping. “Not all of it.” His voice was rough, catching on the edges of an occasional word. “Enough to know what you did. I’m sorry.”
She could barely talk now, but she choked out, “I hope you know I wasn’t trying to-”
He shook his head, stopping her words. “I know what you were trying to do. And it must have been-” He cleared his throat. “Thank you.” After a beat he grinned, his face transformed even beneath the exhaustion and pallor. “I don’t say that to a lot of people.”
“I didn’t know what else to do,” she whispered, looking down at the dark denim of her jeans. When he didn’t respond, she cleared her throat in hopes of producing actual sound and said, “I’ll let you rest.” She got up, hoping Jack wouldn’t notice that she was holding onto the back of the chair. It only took a second for the vertigo she’d known was coming to pass.
She was reaching for the doorknob when he said, “Renee?”
“Yeah?”
“When you’ve checked in and you’re up to speed, will you-” He pulled his still shaky hands into fists. “Come back and give me the update?”
“I can call you. They gave you your cell back.” She nodded her head in the direction of the table beside his bed.
“Sorry. I didn’t see it. That’s fine.” He had a funny look.
“What?” She leaned with her back against the door, thinking that if she ever made it into a bed, she didn’t plan to get out until the new millennium.
“Nothing. Just-” He avoided her eyes again, just as he’d done when she’d come to debrief him about the canisters. “The company would be nice, too.”
In that exact instant, it was suddenly so much easier for her to remember that gelati and stomach-dropping rollercoasters and freezing cold nights where you could see all the stars - all the things that had seemed so important before yesterday - still existed.
“Okay. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”
She shut the door behind her and leaned against the wall, taking thirty seconds to let all of it engulf her.
She rubbed her eyes one more time and looked at the window to Jack's room before she walked down the long hallway, back to ops.