This was prompted by my friend cannedcoelacanth on tumblr. She asked for "Jill, Rebecca, and a hospital waiting room." What was supposed to be a 3 sentence fic turned into this. I hope you enjoy!
Jill is anxiously threading light blonde hair through her fingers, an activity solely to occupy her hands. A very tiny voice in the back of her mind wonders if her hair will ever be brown again but she squashes such selfish thoughts as nurses and doctors bustle throughout the waiting room, calling back patients.
Sitting across from Jill is Rebecca , still round faced and wide eyed and short haired as ever even though its been fifteen years since Arklay. The dark shadows beneath her eyes are such a deep purple that they almost cross into black and her hair is dirty and mussed but there is friendliness and a sense of accommodation in Rebecca's round eyes even if it looked like she hadn't slept in a week.
Jill's mind focuses on the crumpled, haggard, bloodied figure in critical condition in the hospitals' Intensive Care Unit; the shared reason for their stay.
Connect the dots and draw a line, Jill thinks, and absolutely loathes that she is so often bound up in casework that she rarely has the time to see her friends. Traumatic catalysts, frenzied phone calls, and bloodied, dying colleagues were the impetus behind their interactions.
She resolved that tomorrow she was going to treat Rebecca to breakfast and coffee.
"Rebecca, I'm so sorry for calling you on one of your off days. You're here often enough, I can hardly imagine wanting to be here in your spare time-" Jill starts to babble at the woman across from her as an apology.
"There's nothing to be sorry about, Jill. I'd do it for either of you, you know that." Rebecca's voice is gentle and soothing- bedside manner, Jill thinks- but the BSAA agent cannot help but fret.
Perhaps unsurprisingly the common factor in their shared, agonizing wait in a hospital room was one Chris Redfield. Hospital visits were certainly not a rarity for either of the three- for Rebecca, well, she worked at one, and for Chris and Jill, it came part and parcel with the job package. Bullet wounds, stab wounds, burns and bruises and broken limbs were practically badges of honor and most BSAA members joked it wasn't a successful mission unless you got at least one good nick.
But Chris- stupid, willful, stubborn Chris- had gotten himself speared through the chest by a licker tongue. The whiplike appendage of the BOW had somehow miraculously missed puncturing any of Chris' vital organs but he had lost quite a lot of blood. The dusky pallor of Chris' skin and the mental image of her partner lying still in a pool of red red blood made Jill herself pale. She half remembers shouting Chris' name and drawing her knife but the rest is lost in a haze of rage and memory. She frowns as she recalls one of the evac squad members asking her if she was alright.
She had waved them off, No, no, I'm fine, I'm alright. It's not my blood, just licker blood, please help Chris.
Field reports would later come back saying the licker's heart had been completely shredded, ventilated by 20 stab wounds around the chest area. Its head was a destroyed, unrecognizable, pulpy red and gray mass of brain matter and skull fragments.
"What if this is the last hospital visit?" Jill's voice is suddenly trembling and she can't stop it. There have been worse battles, worse injuries they've both survived through but 15 years of anxiety and constant fighting and exhaustion and the fact that her best friend is laying in a hospital bed with a hole in his chest are threatening to suffocate her.
"Jill, don't." Rebecca says, her tone somehow wavering between a terse reprimand and a plea. "Please."
"It's just we've been doing this for so long, Rebecca. Every damn day we're risking our lives for something most people aren't even aware of and what if it just ends here? After destroying Umbrella, killing Wesker, after stopping Plant 142 and Haos what if it all is finished and Chris is lying, dying and broken, in some hospital bed?" Not with a bang, but with a whisper?
Rebecca falters a bit and Jill can tell that she is searching for the right words. She opens and closes her mouth several times before starting and Rebecca hates herself for sounding so callous and indifferent. "Jill, we all know the risks of what we signed on for. People die every day." The empty coffins, blood stained dog tags, and countless memorial services the two women have attended over the years were testament to that simple immutable fact. In the BSAA it just happened more.
"No." Jill shakes her head. "People die, but not Chris. Anyone but Chris." Not Chris Redfield, her best friend and working partner for almost half of her life. Not barrel chested, bull headed, dedicated, unstoppable Chris. Tears are suddenly stinging the corner of Jill Valentine's eyes and Rebecca comes forward unbidden and wraps her tiny frame around the older woman.
"If he dies, I'll kill him," Jill manages through gritted teeth and despite the gravity of the situation Rebecca manages a smile.
"Well with that threat hanging over his head he has no choice but to survive!"
Jill and Rebecca both start laughing. Exhausted, traumatized, worn out and worn down in a hospital waiting room, trying to keep each other together when their world threatened to fall apart for the sake of their friend lying bloodied and damaged in a hospital bed.
The trauma ward nurse had allowed them to see Chris, gaunt and ashen faced, bandages wrapped around his bare chest and IV drip attached to his arm.
"What are you two so happy about?" He manages to ask them, voice weak with fatigue.
They can only smile, exhaustedly and earnestly as the both lean forward and draw Chris into their arms- and they only let go when he starts to complain that it's hard for him to breathe.