Joe jogged to the nurse's station at the local emergency room, stopping rest his hands on his knees and breathe heavily when he finally reached it. He'd been running – and driving – like a bat out of hell to get to the hospital.
When Joe looked up, he realized that someone he recognized, Jason Figueroa, had run in from the other direction and joined him.
What the hell was he doing there?
"I'm looking for Natalie Figueroa." Joe announced to the first nurse he could get the attention of at the nurse's station before Jason could speak.
"I'm Jason Figueroa." Jason drew out his last name dramatically. Joe wasn't sure whether it was to point out that it was the same as Natalie's or to try to draw the nurse's attention to the fact that he was one of her state senators.
Either way, she didn't look impressed.
"I'm her husband." Jason was saying, at the same time that Joe said, "I'm her boyfriend."
The nurse nodded slowly, her brow arched. "Oh… Oookay then. Well, apparently, you are both listed as her emergency contacts. They called both of you."
"Is Natalie okay?" Joe asked, concerned.
"She passed out at work. We're still running some tests, but we believe that she has pneumonia and that she fainted from dehydration. We're giving her some fluids, and that should perk her up. Has she been sick lately?"
"I don't know." Jason said, while Joe said, "Yes." They exchanged a less-than-friendly look that didn't go unnoticed by the nurse.
"What kind of symptoms?"
"Cough for a while, a fever and chills sometimes the past couple of days… I told her not to go to work."
Jason snorted. "Like she was going to listen to that."
"That would be consistent with the pneumonia diagnosis. Any long-term health issues we should know about?"
Joe sighed. "She sort of… Goes back and forth between bulimia and anorexia." Jason nodded his agreement.
The nurse jotted it down in her notes. "And how long has she struggled with those?"
Joe shrugged and reluctantly looked at Jason, who supplied the answer. "Since she was 16."
"Any other health history I should know?"
Jason thought for a moment. "She takes antidepressants. She also has no tonsils or adenoids, she is sometimes anemic, and she's allergic to penicillin."
Jason took a clipboard of paperwork from the nurse and scribbled down some more information about Natalie for her. He knew it was irrational, given the number of years that Jason and Natalie had been married, but Joe hated that Jason knew more about her than he did.
"I'm guessing you would be the one with the insurance card?" The nurse asked Jason, who nodded and fumbled around in his wallet looking for it.
"She's my wife. Can I see her?"
"She's your 'wife' because at a courthouse somewhere, there's a piece of paper filed away that says that." Joe argued. "You haven't been her real husband in months, maybe years. She's just your armpiece, and I'm honestly surprised you could even leave your Gavin long enough to show up."
The nurse's eyebrows shot up. Jason clenched his hand into a fist while Joe almost laughed.
"Are you going to punch me?" Joe taunted him.
"I'd like to, but I'm not sure if your nose can take another hit."
"Do you really want battery on your record, Senator?"
"It might be worth it." Jason growled.
The nurse raised her voice. "Have you both forgotten that you are here because Ms. Figueroa is ill enough to be in the emergency room?"
Both men turned toward the nurse, looking somewhat apologetic. Joe spoke first. "Can I see her?"
The nurse rubbed her head tiredly. "They're in with her right now. After they finish a couple of other tests, how about I just tell her you're both here, and she can decide what to do with you? Because I'm done. Either go kill each other outside where I don't have to do the paperwork or go sit in the waiting room until I come and get you."
They chose the waiting room, where they sat across from each other in ten long minutes of silence before Jason finally spoke up.
"You don't just forget fifteen years of marriage. You get that I still care about her, right?"
"So much that you were fucking your assistant behind her back?"
"She was fucking you behind mine." Jason pointed out.
"After you neglected her and broke her heart while asking her to steal money for your campaign."
"You don't know the whole damn story."
"Does she?" Joe challenged.
Jason paused. "No."
"Figures."
Jason exhaled slowly. "How do you tell your wife that you've realized that you're bisexual, and that you've fallen more in love with another man than you are with her?"
Joe had no response to that, so he shrugged and waited to see if Jason would go on.
"I knew she'd figured it out." Jason continued. "I didn't want to have to look at her face and tell her. I didn't want to hurt her worse than I already had."
"So, you're a chicken shit." Joe scoffed. "She didn't just 'figure it out;' she caught you kissing him at some cocktail party."
"Fuck." Jason sighed. "I didn't know that."
"Would it have mattered?"
"Trust me… It would have been so much easier to have stayed in love with my highly intelligent, sophisticated, charming wife than it has been to fall in love with my adorably nerdy 24-year-old male assistant who met me because he was my intern."
"Why are you telling me any of this?" Joe threw up his hands. "You don't owe me an explanation. You owe that to Natalie. You made her put up all of these walls."
Jason held up one hand. "I won't deny that I've hurt her and caused some of her walls, but I didn't build all of them. It's not my fault that her mother died of cancer when she was twelve, or that her father lost his fucking mind after that. Or that she was raped in high school. She also had three miscarriages in a row before we gave up for years. Working in that damn prison hardened her, too. She's broken, but I'm not the only one who broke her."
Joe was quiet for a moment, not having known any of that about her history, other than the obvious work in the prison. "I'm feel like I'm constantly just trying to get to the real her."
Jason sighed. "The 'real her' is always going to be a little broken."
"I just wish she'd let me see the pieces."
"It takes a long time with her." Jason met Joe's eyes. "But it's worth it. She's so much more than what she lets people believe. She's not all ice-cold bitch."
"I know. I've seen it in small glimpses."
Jason absently twisted the golden band on his left ring finger. "When I was in law school, I went into a coffee shop before class one morning. Natalie was in front of me in line, and she wasn't nearly as graceful in high heels then. She turned around and stumbled, so I caught her. She spilled her entire latte down the front of my shirt. My chest was burning, and my skin was probably blistering. It was so fucking painful. I can still remember how much it hurt. But I fell for her right then, and all I could think about was how I had to get the tall, beautiful, clumsy girl's number."
Jason paused, pulling the ring up and down his finger.
"When I married her two years later, it was the happiest day of my life. And there were a lot of happy years after that. They weren't always easy, but they were pretty happy." Jason sat back in his seat and locked eyes with Joe. "So, you see… I was in love with her once, too."
Joe cleared his throat. "I never said I was in love with her."
"But you are." Jason raked a hand through his greying hair. "I think she's in love with you, too."
"What makes you say that?"
"I don't really see her much. She shacks up with you, and I stay at Gavin's place, and a brand new $600,000 house sits empty. But when I do see her, I noticed that she smiles a little more. Her eyes are a little happier. And…" Jason hesitated.
"And what?"
Jason turned his head to face Joe. "Nat asked me for a divorce a few weeks ago."
"She did?" Joe's eyebrows raised.
"Our attorneys are hashing out the details." Jason looked down at his phone as it buzzed and lit up in his hand. "I'll be right back."
Jason answered his phone only a few feet away, and Joe could hear enough of his conversation to figure out quickly that he was speaking to Gavin.
"Natalie has pneumonia, but she'll be okay… No, I haven't seen her yet. Hopefully in a few… Yeah, I think I'll be home for dinner... There are chicken breasts marinating in the fridge if you want to use those… Did that package from Amazon come today? Okay… I miss you… I love you too."
It struck Joe that it sounded like such a normal couple conversation, not like two men who had conspired to ruin Natalie's life. They'd each just fallen for a completely unexpected person.
And that was something Joe could fully relate to.
When Jason returned, the nurse they had been speaking to approached them. "They're finished with the tests."
"Can…" Jason glanced at Joe. "One of us see her?"
The nurse rolled her eyes skyward. "Lord help me; I don't know why. But she wants to see both of you. Together."
When they got inside Natalie's room, Jason approached her first while Joe hung back by the door. Natalie was slightly pale, with a nasal cannula providing her with oxygen and an IV running up to a clear bag of fluids they were using to re-hydrate her.
"Hey, Nat." Jason patted her lightly on the leg, then settled in a chair next to her bed. "How are you feeling?"
"I've been better, but I've been worse." Natalie's voice was raspy from the congestion in her lungs. "Hitting the floor at work is fucking embarrassing. My pride is probably worse off than anything else.
"I'm glad you're okay." Jason cleared his throat. "The nurse said you wanted to see both of us."
"First, I wanted to see if you were actually here, because it was so unlikely that I figured I was hallucinating when the nurse said that." Natalie directed her statement to Jason.
Joe felt a stab of something that felt like jealousy in his chest. He knew it was ridiculous; Jason had made his feelings clear, and Natalie had asked for a divorce, but there had been a bond between them that Joe felt like he couldn't match. He couldn't even get Natalie to lower many of the guards that she had up.
"I also wanted to make sure no one was bleeding. She said you were bickering and bordering on a fist fight." Natalie continued warily.
Jason looked back at Joe. "Well… I don't think it would have gone that far."
Natalie followed his gaze the door, where Joe was still awkwardly standing. "Are you coming in, or are you holding up that door?"
Joe walked to the opposite side of the bed as Jason, sitting in a chair there. He was surprised to see Natalie holding her hand out toward him, wiggling her fingers at him slightly. Jason watched as Joe laid his hand over Natalie's, curling it around her fingers.
"I should be going." With his eyes still on their hands, Jason slowly stood. "You've got this?"
There was weight to his quiet words. Natalie was oblivious to it, but Joe wasn't. Jason wasn't only talking about that day there in the hospital. He was asking if Joe was going to take care of the woman that Jason had promised (and failed) to love and to cherish, until death to them part. Jason was asking if Joe, despite her flaws and the past that had shaped her into a hard and no-nonsense woman, would continue to try to reach her.
If he wouldn't hurt her the way that Jason had.
"Yeah." Joe squeezed Natalie's hand. "I do."
This is meant to be a one-shot, but if people like it and have ideas about directions I could take with it, I'm open to continuing.
Also, someone else out there needs to be writing Fig/Caputo fic! Haha. I'm dying out here alone.