A/N yeah, this was a little cathartic after all the pain I've gone through watching my Jets play today. (Yes, I know, I'm twisted. My sports teams lose and I write…this in response) Really, I've just been listening to a lot of Sarah McLachlin lately and a lot of Death Cab for Cutie, and this is another thing like Y'a Pas D'amour Sans Histoire that is a sorta kinda not really songfic...you don't have to know either What Sarah Said by DCFC or Hold On by McLachlin, but there's definitely more there if you do. (And if you know either of those songs, you know that this is not exactly going to be happy clappy fun time.)
It was funny, almost, how often they found themselves in these sorts of positions. It was funny, too, she mused, that despite how many times they had been in this sort of thing, either of them in the bed, the other in the chair next to it, enjoying the soft lullaby of constant beeping, held even an steady at once per second, good enough to set a watch by, this never got any easier. It never became any easier to sit there, having not slept, or showered, and having hardly eaten in almost forty eight hours, listening to the steady beeping as a lifeline.
It's the only thing she has to believe in at the moment, as she watches the pale skin beneath her barely flutter with every breath. This is what? The fifth? Sixth? Time they've found themselves in here? Usually, though, it was the other way around. Usually, she was the one in the bed, usually she was the one who clung to the strong fingers intertwined with her as she searched towards consciousness. It wasn't supposed to be this way. Usually, when she was the one in the chair, the woman across from her was at least conscious, at least talking, and describing everything that was happening, usually in entirely too graphic detail.
Usually, when she was the one in the chair, it was only for a few hours, some sort of superficial injury that needed to be looked at, bandaged, and then set free. The last time had been a broken collarbone that had happened entirely because of her. (To be fair, she wasn't the one that decided sliding headfirst into third was a great idea when sliding in general was a barely-learned skill, but Maura wouldn't have even been playing if it wasn't for her.) Set, slung, and set free in two hours.
But this, this was the third day she'd been there. And this – this wasn't like any of the other times. All the other times, they'd known the risks going into things. This wasn't like when she shot through herself, this wasn't like with Hoyt, when they'd known that they were dealing with dangerous people. This – this was out of the blue. Bullets, blades, those were things that she felt sure of that she knew she could handle. But bacteria? That was something she didn't know how to deal with. She knew how people recovered from gunshots, from bruising, from stabbing. She didn't know how people recovered from an infection that ravaged their body.
The only thing she could do was sit there, helpless, and she hated it. "C'mon, Maur, wake up." She wasn't sure how many times she'd said those same words, over the last three days. "C'mon. We had vacation plans, remember? A week off work, just you, me, and the beach. And bars you can swim to. And all the eye candy, running around in next to nothing, and –" Her voice broke, and she frowned. They'd had such great plans for the month ahead of them, too.
Then again, when they planned, they hadn't exactly counted on this. No one ever counts on these sorts of things, after all. No one ever considers the possibility of their best fucking friend winding up with a fucking life-threatening infection, caused by absolutely nothing at all. But doctors had always made the worst patients, and Maura had ignored all the symptoms. After all, the faint red tinge she'd picked up on the back of her neck was just sunburn, and the malaise she felt was just fatigue from the long week they'd had at work.
It wasn't until Jane had stopped by the morgue and found Maura vomiting profusely into the trash can that she knew something was very, very wrong. But she'd trusted Maura when the doctor had said that it was nothing more than the flu. It wasn't until Maura had passed out in her arms some two hours later when she had gone down to check on an autopsy that she'd called for an ambulance, and hadn't left Maura's side since. It'd been three fucking days, and she listened to the medical speak, trying to figure out as much as she could.
She recognized some words. Sepsis. That one she knew. Renal failure. That one she knew too. Hepatic insufficiency. The beeping held its metronomic rate, kept steady by the drugs and ventilator. She caught her lower lip between her teeth, wishing there was some way to just will this all away. "I'm gonna take you to Six Flags, when you get out of here. You, me, some roller coasters – I know you say you hate them, but I've seen you on them before. You couldn't look happier. That's the photo of you in my wallet, y'know? You and me on Bizzaro, and I'm screaming my head off, and you're just laughing. C'mon, wake up, I want some cotton candy now."
Somewhere, the television was forgotten about, set to VH1 Classic to simply be background noise. She catches a few familiar strains of something that she remembered listening to entirely too much of when she was in her sullen, angsty teenager phase, and held on tighter to the limp hand wrapped in hers. "Look at this shit. This is like, 90's music. Actually, wait, that's the live version, didn't Mirrorball come out in 2000?" She questioned, expecting a response as to when exactly the album came out. "This isn't classic, is it? I thought classic, was like, supposed to be the shit Ma grew up listening to. Like the Who and that kinda shit. This is, like, Christ, I grew up listening to this. Does that make me – us classic?"
She leaned her head back against the back of the chair, the last three days finally sinking into her as she closed her eyes and just listened. Listened to the steady metronomic beep of an EKG, listened to the steady in and out of a respirator, listened to the music slowly playing from the television. And this hurt like hell. Like someone had ripped her heart out and shoved it down her throat. All of those plans that they'd made, they were just little tiny prayers that the time would come to be able to share them together. And now that the idea of that was a questionable thing – it fucking hurt.
She couldn't help it. For the first time in three days she cried. Not just the odd tear hear or there that slipped free, but full on wracking sobs as she buried her head in a limp shoulder. "Please, God. I know we've been on real shit terms for the last few years, but y'know given the circumstances –" She trailed off for a second, before burying her face back against a limp neck. "Please, I can't, I need her, I-" She trailed off again, letting the sobs consume her, wondering how it was that a song could be the thing that could break her so. "Please, God, I know we haven't talked much since, well, since I graduated, but right now, I could really use something. I love her y'know? I know you know. That's why you're like, god and omnipotent and great and shit. But I – this – I'm supposed to be the one there. She's supposed to be strong for me, cause she's like that. Stronger."
And even as she sat there, head buried against a shoulder, thinking that this was all wrong. This wasn't how this was supposed to happen. This was supposed to happen sixty years from now, both of them old and gray. This was supposed to happen in an instant, a case gone bad, where there would be some comfort in knowing that that it ended with glory. This wasn't supposed to happen long and drawn out and over the course of days. This wasn't supposed be this miserable. She wasn't supposed to be here, unable to even catch the faintest hint of Maura underneath all the hospital smell.
She hated that smell. All hospitals smelt the same way. Piss and disinfectant and death. It smelt like the morgue, but wrong. The disinfectant used was wrong, designed to be used around living patients and not dead ones. The undertone of bodily fluids that had seeped into every crevice of every hallway that could not have been completely scrubbed out. She hated the fact that she could smell the hospital smell clinging to her. At least it wasn't quite so pervasive in here as it had been in the waiting room.
If there was one thing worse than being the one in the chair next to the bed, it was being the one in the waiting room. Stuck out there, in a mess of years-old magazines, perpetually empty vending machines without even a pack of gum left in the racks, people pacing through, waiting for something, anything, and whipping their heads around whenever a nurse would emerge, trying to read the look on the face. And they'd instantly look away if the expression on the nurse's face was sad, hoping that if they didn't look, they'd never get the bad news, and looking excited when the nurse walked out happy, hoping the nurse was coming for them.
She knew her family was out there, pacing the halls. But the ICU had a one visitor policy, and she wasn't going to give up her spot if it killed her. And she was fairly sure this was going to do it. She finally pulled away, looking down at the angelic looking face. It looked so calm, so peaceful, and she knew that the sleeping figure in front of her only looked that way because of the sedatives. She reached up, brushing away an errant lock of blonde hair, counting each one of the beeps and breaths on the monitors in front of her, realizing that she'd taken each one of her own for granted.
"C'mon Maur, wake up." She tightened her grip on the limp hand in hers, hoping that somehow, she could will life back into her best friend, her love, her everything. She knew that this had to be love, that this was what love was. Love was sitting here with her heart ripped out and shoved down her throat, counting her own breaths and hoping that maybe if she didn't hog all the air that it would help, somehow. Love was sitting here for three days, listening to each steady beat, her heart shattering a little more every time a doctor would walk in, scrawl some new issue on the chart, and walk back out. There was no other reason someone would ever subject themselves to this.
She could have walked away two days ago, spent them curled in her own bed, waiting for the news. She didn't have to be here, watching it happen. No, this was what love was, nothing more, nothing else. Love was sitting here, praying that all this would go away, and tomorrow they'd wake to everything being just fine. "C'mon Maur, hold on." She clung even more tightly to the hand in hers, trying her best to hold on for both of them, hurting like hell.