This is based off a prompt I received on tumblr. I'm not that good at writing in third person narratives so it might not be that good but I tried my best! There's a little bit of language in it and themes about rape, but I kept it T-rated. Enjoy!
Jo put down the red crayon she outlined the circular center of her flower with and picked up a pink one next. She neatly crayoned in the white spot that she left in the center with the pink crayon and swung her loosely tied ponytail out of her way and over her shoulder. There were a bunch of different ways she could've been spending her hour long lunch break but sitting in in a hospital bed, coloring pictures from a cheap coloring book and watching television with her and Alex's daughter seemed to be the most promising. The five year old had been admitted to the pediatric floor four days ago with pneumonia-like symptoms and since then, she began to use every waking moment of her spare time with her daughter. Since today had been a particularly busy day for an orthopedic surgeon like herself due to a multiple car pile-up on the freeway, she hadn't been able to sneak away and run up to the peds floor to see her daughter, so she just decided that she'd spend her entire lunch hour with her. "So what's the difference between the two? Aren't they basically the same thing?" She asked the five year old as she put down her pink crayon and picked up a purple one next.
The five year old shook her head and continued to give the Raggedy Ann doll in the picture she was coloring black hair to match the skin she colored brown, just like the skin of her favorite baby doll laying in the bed next to her. There were many reasons Jo despised taking her daughter grocery shopping with her but the main reason she hated it was because she could never leave the store without having to pick something up for her. No matter if it was a bag of chips, a candy bar or a new toy, Jo couldn't resist saying no to her sweet little girl every time she asked. Without a doubt, she and her husband had spoiled their daughter but neither she nor Alex saw a problem with it because no matter how spoiled their little girl was, she always maintained manners and politeness. Just last week when Jo had taken her to the store with her to pick up a gallon of milk, Lyla had pointed to the toy section and asked her mother if she could have "a baby doll with brown skin like Zola" and of course, Jo didn't say no.
"No? They're not the same?" After finishing coloring the petals of her flower purple, Jo set the purple crayon down amongst the other crayons littered on the bed tray that was supposed to be meant for dining purposes and picked up a white plastic spoon. "Here, more potato sweet pea." She scooped some of the mashed potatoes up on the spoon and held it to her daughter's mouth. For the entire four days she had been in the hospital, Lyla hadn't been eating as much as Jo would like for her to eat, so she took it upon herself to spoon-feed her. Occasionally, Alex would stop by to check on his daughter too but like Jo, he had other cases to work on and it wasn't possible for him to spend every waking moment in his daughter's room although he would like to. With her thumb, Jo wiped excess mashed potato off her daughter's lips and thoughtlessly wiped it on the knee of her scrub pants. "What's the difference then? Because I don't get it."
"Dwaculawa is a vampiyuh and Cleo is a mummy. Cleo is a feahleaduh and Dwaculawa's not." Lyla tried to explain to her mother who just didn't seem to get what she was trying to say. She never knew how hard it would be to explain the Monster High characters to her mother, but she considered herself somewhat of an expert on the subject so she didn't mind explaining it until her mother got it in her head.
"Ah, so Draculaura's a vampire and Cleo's a mummy. So Draculaura's daddy is Count Dracula and Cleo's daddy is King Ramses?" Jo continued the conversation with her daughter and began to cut the slice of Salisbury steak she bought down at the cafeteria up into bite sized pieces for her daughter. As much as Lyla watched the Monster High series on TV and played the games on Alex's iPad, Jo never once really paid attention to the characters and now that her five year old was finally taking the time out to explain them to her, Jo felt as if she was speaking in another language. "Does that mean Draculaura drinks blood?" Drawing black lines on the doll in her picture's eyes to give her eyelashes, Lyla shook her head again. "What? She's a vampire that doesn't drink blood?!" Jo exclaimed with mock enthusiasm to seem genuinely interested in actually learning about the silly dolls that occupied her daughter's bedroom, school supplies and every waking thought.
"She's a vegetawian, mommy." Lyla droned, emphasis on the "vegetarian" part again. She had told her mother that Draculaura was a vegetarian way at the beginning of their conversation and she didn't anticipate having to repeat herself. "Vegetawians don't dwink BLOOD!" She stated, matter-of-factly, as if the fact that vegetarians don't drink blood is a fact that should be commonly known worldwide. Before allowing her mother to feed her a piece of steak with gravy on it, Lyla tilted her head and shook it. "You weally bad at this, mommy."
Jo laughed, blowing on the fork with steak into her mouth to cool it down and totally ignoring her baby's speech impediment that prevented her from being able to pronounce her "R" sounds correctly. Most people couldn't understand some of the things that Lyla would say but deciphering her speech was second nature to both Jo and Alex because she had been speaking that way ever since she learned how to speak. "I am really bad at this, aren't I?" She fed her daughter the small amount of steak on the fork and combed her fingers through the loose, golden brown bangs that were too short for Alex to gather up into the braid that he put into her hair on rounds this morning. "Who's your favorite Monster High girl?" She sat back for a second, admiring just how beautiful her daughter truly was. Every mother would tell you how gorgeous their child is but when Jo looked at Lyla, she really thought that her daughter was the prettiest thing in the world; a perfect mixture of what she and Alex's child should be like both aesthetically and personally.
"Clawdeen." Without hesitating to even think about it, Lyla blurted out her answer with her mouth still full of chewed-up steak. She really was just the right amount of Jo and Alex with aspects that also made her into her very own person. Physically, the shape of her eyes, the contour of her nose, the curvature of her lips and the opacity of her eyebrows all mirrored the features on Jo's face while her hair color, eye color, cheekbones and the wideness of her forehead all came from Alex's genepool. Personality wise, the little girl was stubborn like her father, sassy like her mother, sarcastic like her father, smart like her mother, passive aggressive like her mother and at times, goofy like father tended to be; however the shyness, timidity and easy-going nature that she possessed was a mystery to both her parents because neither one of them had any of those qualities going for themselves. "Mommy, I like Clawdeen 'cause her got bwown skin like Zozo and like um…Beyonce."
Jo laughed again at the precociousness her child had at the tender age of five. Because Jo never had a mother of her own, she always strived to be the best mother she could be. Both she and Alex had their fair share of tumultuous childhoods and Jo wholeheartedly believed that the struggles she and her husband had gone through as children themselves are what made him and her such good parents. She didn't like to gloat, but she knew she was a pretty good mother. She spent lots of time with her daughter, she listened to her, she heard what she had to say, disciplined her as needed and never went a single day without kissing her good morning and goodnight. In fact, when Lyla was two weeks old, Jo spent an entire day sitting on the couch and holding her daughter in her arms. She blamed it on crazy post-partum hormones but deep down, she knew that the reason she was so adamant about spending time with her daughter on that day was because she couldn't stop thinking about how her daughter was the exact same age as she was when her own mother left her. Being that she was now a mother of her own, she couldn't understand how anyone could leave their child at all, let alone at two weeks of age. To make her feel better, Alex oftentimes tried to plant the idea in her head that there's a possibility that her mother loved her and couldn't take care of her but Jo didn't buy into that theory at all. She couldn't even stomach the thought of ever leaving Lyla and she thought her own mother was an atrocious human being for being able to leave her the way she did.
Jo wasn't surprised when she said that her favorite Monster High character was her favorite because she had brown skin like her "cousin" Zola and Beyonce. She spent so much time and invested so much energy into loving her daughter that she knew everything about her. She knew that her favorite cereal was Fruity Pebbles, her favorite color was Pink, that although she enjoyed having her nails painted, she'd also settle to watch a football game on TV with Alex while following his lead every time he yelled at the TV for something, that her favorite stuffed animal was "Lionel" the lion and ultimately, that her favorite people in this world aside from her parents were Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber and Beyonce. She also had a thing for Gene Simmons, but Jo speculated that the only reason she liked Gene Simmons was because Alex was a fan of "Kiss" and Lyla liked his silly makeup and his long tongue. Lyla and Alex had their own special thing that Alex called the "Simmons face" where he taught Lyla at a very young age how to stick her tongue out and play the air guitar. "Mommy's gotta go now, baby." Jo sighed, preparing to get up. "You finish eating and you sit in here and watch TV, okay? Daddy will probably swing past here in a little while."
"Wait mama." Lyla held her hand up to stop Jo from leaving so suddenly. Jo climbed off the bed and picked up her white lab coat, but she didn't make any further movements to leave the room just yet. Lyla held onto the bottom of her coloring book and grabbed the page she was coloring. "I maked this fuh you…you have it…kay?" She tore the page out of her coloring book and held it out to her mother, which almost drove Jo to tears. She knew she was a good mother, but leaving her daughter alone in a hospital room by herself made her feel like a bad one. She trusted all the nurses and staff up on the peds floor because she knew that they were all Alex's colleagues and they'd treat Alex's daughter with the utmost loving attention, but she still felt like she should be there instead of working downstairs. "Mommy…" Lyla tapped her mother on the arm after she took the colored picture out of her hands. "Mommy…"
"What, Lala?" Jo smiled at the picture in her hand as she looked down at it and began to fold it up so she could carry it in the pocket of her white coat.
"I have chocolate puddin' latuh?" The five year old asked, looking up at her mother with the most convincing green eyes that anyone had ever seen. Last night before bedtime rounds, Alex snuck her some chocolate pudding from the cafeteria and since then, Lyla had been craving more. "Fuh bedtime? Huh?"
"Yeah, I'll tell daddy to get you some chocolate pudding for bedtime later." Jo shrugged her shoulders into her white coat and adjusted the collar around her neck. "I'll see you later, okay?" She stepped toward her daughter's bed. "Hug and a kiss." She bent down and her daughter wrapped her arms around her neck while she wrapped hers around her torso. When the two of them pulled out of the hug they were sharing, Jo puckered her lips and naturally, her daughter quickly pressed her own lips to her mother's as if it was a chore and something she did every single day. "Bye bye, baby." She stroked her cheek one last time, smiled and turned to leave the room. As soon as she closed the door behind herself, her mind started wandering to the many cases that she might have to treat once she got back down on the main floor. She still had multiple crush injuries to go assist Dr. Torres with, a few broken arms to set and one break that required surgery. She trotted down the hallway and pressed the button to call the elevator.
When the elevator doors parted, she climbed on and stared at the silver and pink watch on her wrist to check the time. "Dammit." She mumbled to herself after realizing that she was more than ten minutes past the appointed hour she was supposed to be back from her lunch break by. She knew that Dr. Torres wouldn't mind that she was a little late, especially after knowing that she was up on the peds floor with her daughter, but Jo hated being late. She was always punctual and lateness wasn't her thing. The elevator doors opened up and spit her back out onto the main trauma level and immediately, she went over to a nurses' station to grab an electronic chart off the charging dock. She unlocked the chart and punched in her employee code to check the cases she had been assigned to. "Open femur fracture, open-book pelvis, hip misalignment…" She mumbled to herself, starting to feel excited about the actuality that she was going to have more than one awesome, gory, gruesome surgery on her hands. Jo didn't know why, but broken bones really turned her on. Most people got turned on by things such as ear nibbling, dirty talk and pretentious flirting but Jo? She sometimes got aroused just by thinking of bones sticking out of peoples' skin and she found it quite pleasurable to take her anger out on breaking someone's bone that she could fix later. It was one of her quirks that nobody but Alex knew about. "Can you page Dr. Torres for me?" Jo looked up from the chart and at the nurse sitting at the station. "Ask her…" Her voice trailed off as she felt a breeze blow past her, elicited by a random man that was walking towards the other side of the nurses' station; the triage side. She glanced at the random man and cleared her throat. "Tell her that Dr. Wilson was wondering if she had planned on scrubbing in for my open-book pelvis fracture. Thank you." The nurse nodded her head and picked up the device that all nurses use to do their pages.
Jo secured the electronic chart underneath her armpit and began walking towards the pit, where more than a dozen of the patients she needed to treat were waiting. As she walked past the triage side of the nurses' station, she couldn't help but overhear the man that made a breeze by walking past her having a conversation with the triage nurses. "John McKnight. I need you to tell me where Caroline Mc…" Jo tuned out of their conversation in that moment and stopped walking dead in her tracks. She felt a flutter in her stomach, she stopped swallowing her spit and her eyebrows intuitively wrinkled. She recognized that name and she thought she might've recognized that voice too. Slowly, trying to be discreet, Jo turned around to see if maybe she was mistaken because after all, "John McKnight" was somewhat of a common name. There's no way it's him. She thought to herself. He's back in New Jersey. Trying to make it seem as if she was looking around as though she was lost, Jo snuck a peek at the man. He stood about six foot, three inches tall. He had squared off, broad, muscular shoulders, smooth white skin, light blonde hair that was thinning towards the middle and eyes that were so ice blue that Jo could see them even though she was looking at his side countenance…features that were all too familiar to her.
The flutter she felt in her stomach earlier was beginning to turn into full-blown nausea and she felt a headache forming behind her left ear. He's back in New Jersey, right where you left him. Jo blinked, leaving her eyes closed for a couple seconds longer than an actual blink and took a deep breath, her unconscious mind pushing her deep and leaving her to become lost in a deep sea of her thoughts; thoughts that were so nightmarish that it took her almost ten years to forget. Flesh. On top of her body, heavy, foul-smelling and suffocating her. A hand clamped over her mouth so her screams were muffed and low, monotonous grunts directly in her ear, making her skin crawl. She closed her eyes and prayed for an escape, a way for her to pass out but instead, she was kept sane by the feeling of tears trickling out of her eyes and tickling her ears while she lay flat on the bed and felt the springs of the mattress digging into her back. When she opened her eyes, all she saw through the darkness was tousled blonde hair and the silhouette outline of a black, rose tattoo. Jo opened her eyes and pulled herself together long enough for her to notice that she had to use the bathroom all of a sudden and if she didn't get there soon enough, she would do it on herself. She had decided that she didn't want to know. She didn't want to know if this particular John McKnight was the same one she thought he was; the same Princeton University senior football player that had a little too much to drink after celebrating a big victory over Cornell at an off-campus party one weekend and decided that he wanted a taste of an unwilling and unconsented freshman biology major. She didn't want to know if it was him. So she didn't know why her eyes felt compelled to look up behind his right ear.
Her body went numb, her flesh cold and her eyes super glued to the conversant and slightly faded black tattoo that emulated the figure of a rose with three thorns and six petals. Jo felt cold. She felt like someone opened the roof and let all the snow rush in, stripped her bare and left her to deal with the chill. She felt every hair on her body stand up on end, her stomach tie itself into multiple knots and her throat close up, restricting her air intake. Suddenly, she felt warm. Only on the lower half of her body, only just below her waist and only between her legs. She felt a bead of sweat trickle down her temple, roll off her forehead and drip down to the navy blue fabric of her scrubs. Deprived of her senses, somehow she allowed her head to fall down limply forward and she noted the small and growing stain between her legs. The bottom half of her jaw trembled, her eyes stung and before anyone else could notice the urine running down her leg, she walked quickly in the direction of the attendings' lounge so she could change her pants and her underwear. "Dr. Wilson, did you still want me to…" The nurse she had spoken to moments ago called after her, but she continued to walk down the hallway, feeling as though she would collapse soon because she couldn't breathe. She felt like her legs weren't underneath of her body any longer and when she looked down to ensure that they still were, she naïvely bumped into another nurse that was holding a cup of coffee. "WATCH IT!" The nurse angrily yelled after her but Jo just kept walking.
Desperately, she jiggled with the knob on the door to the attendings' lounge and when it opened, she finally let herself collapse on the carpeted floors. She clasped her hand over her chest and tried to inhale through her mouth with no avail. With the exception of the sound of the air conditioning unit flowing air into the room; there was no other sound than that of Jo gasping for air as she hyperventilated. With the hand that was not clutching her chest, she pushed her thick brunette hair out of her face and attempted to breathe through the pain that she was feeling in her heart. She slammed her head hard against the wall, stared up at the ceiling while she struggled to breathe and closed her eyes. The smell of sweat and cheap beer filled her nostrils and although she greatly wanted to stop smelling, she couldn't. Had she stopped breathing through her nose, she'd stop breathing altogether considering the fact that his hand was clamped tightly over her mouth. His body moved rhythmically up and down, up and down and his grunts came with every rock. She thought she might die. She thought he was suffocating her, cutting off her air supply and eventually, she'd aspirate her own vomit because she needed to throw up but his hand over her mouth wasn't allowing that. The mattress was squeaking, that's how she knew he was still going because about ten minutes ago, she had gone numb below her waist. She inherently felt herself slipping away, losing consciousness and she hoped that eventually, she would pass out. His sweat dripped down on top of her body and his stocky, six foot, three inch, two-hundred and thirty pound frame crushed her petite one-hundred and twenty pound one. She felt like someone had deposited weights on her chest, held her down and forced a pole inside of her body; a pole that was steadily being rammed in and out. Initially, she asked him to please stop. He chortled at her pleas, snarled at her screams and eventually, snapped his hand over her mouth to shut her up. She opened her eyes again and felt herself dizzying as they followed the ceiling fan around and around and around.
Alex. She wanted to find Alex; needed to find Alex, desperately wanted to be near her husband. Nauseous and still feeling like she had been beaten senseless, Jo held onto the doorknob for support and helped herself up off the ground. The fabric of her pants stuck to her legs and she walked with them apart over to the supply closet. With her arms shaking, she sifted through the shelves for a medium-sized pair of scrub pants and she grabbed the first pair she came across. She disappeared into the bathroom, untied the drawstrings on her soiled pants and took them off. She peeled off her soaking wet underwear as well and stepped into her new pants, yanking them over her sneakers. Dizzy, she washed her hands at the sink and didn't bother to dry them before she spotted thin, black replacement bags for the trashcan and grabbed one. She deposited her soiled clothes into the bag, tied it up and swore to herself that she wouldn't tell anyone that she lost control of her bladder upon seeing that man. With still damp hands, she opened the bathroom door, sat her clothes inside the small locker that belonged to her and held onto the table so she could make her way back to the door.
As Dr. Bailey was coming in, Jo kept her head down and saw herself out. "What's with you, Wilson?" She asked. Jo blankly and unconvincingly shook her head before she brushed out of the lounge before she could be asked anymore questions. She found the first elevator she came across and slowly pushed the number "4." When the doors opened, she got on and stood near the back, resting her head against the wall. She stared blankly at the floor and lost herself in thought again. How is he here? How is he in Seattle? I thought I left him so far behind. He graduated the year he did that to me and I never saw him again and I thought…I thought I left all memories of him behind, in New Jersey where it all went down. I put it aside. I dealt with it. I swore to myself that nobody would ever touch me like that ever again in my entire life… I thought I'd never have to see him again…and he's here? The elevator doors opened up, startling Jo out of her thoughts and she snapped back into her mindless, zombielike state and walked off on the peds floor in search of Alex. She made her way past nurses, Dr. Robbins, overzealous parents…still no Alex.
She rounded the corner to the PICU because sometimes Alex was in the Intensive Care Unit trolling for cases. If you had reported it, he wouldn't even be here. For the first time since she saw the man downstairs almost twenty minutes ago, Jo felt herself getting ready to cry. She didn't report it. She never reported it. When he was done raping her, he got off of her, mumbled "Thanks" and walked away. She never saw him again after that night and she never reported it. She just didn't think that she had a chance of anyone ever believing her. She was going to. After she got dressed and had a fit of crying, she was going to go down to the campus police station and report a rape. She had saw one of her friends along the way and when her friend stopped her to ask her what was wrong, she told her friend. Her friend called her a liar and told her that she was just upset that John didn't want a relationship with her afterwards and now she was crying rape. After all, John was one of the most popular seniors in all of Princeton. He was in the top three of his class, he played football, water polo and he rowed for the team that beat Harvard's rowing team. He was popular…nobody would believe Jo if she said that he raped her when he could have any willing girl in the entire university. So she never reported it.
Aside from the friend that called her a liar, Alex was the only person she told. It wasn't something that she was proud of and it most certainly wasn't something that she went around advertising. Jo saw herself as a strong individual and the fact that she let something like that happen to her wasn't something that she took lightly. But when she thought about it, sometimes she realized that the reason she was so strong is because that happened to her. Still, she didn't tell many people about it and she surely didn't expect to ever see him again; especially in Seattle. She slung her hands down into the pockets of her white coat when her fingertips grazed something papery that made a crinkling noise when she touched it. She dragged her fingertips back and forth along the papery thing in her pocket before it dawned on her what it was. She wanted to see Alex…but she had a better idea. Instead of going left, down the hallway that leads to the NICU, she turned and made a right. She eyed room 412 and put her forehead to the glass so she could see inside.
Lyla lay in her hospital bed, fast asleep. Jo could see that like a good girl, she finished off every last bit of the food she had brought to her and she fell asleep clutching her brown baby doll to her chest. She felt a smile tug at her lips that diminished the urge to cry as she thought about her daughter in that room. She didn't know why, but her mind immediately went towards protecting Lyla. Jo knew about all the great evils and dangers in this world and she wanted so badly to make sure her baby girl never had to endure the things she did. "Hey." A voice sounded behind her, which made her jump back and gasp so loud that it nearly could've been a scream. When she turned around, she was met with Alex, who was boasting a slight grin and a thermos of coffee. "Someone's a little jumpy today." He crooned. Seeing her husband standing in front of her, Jo couldn't hold it in anymore. She put her head down and her cheeks suddenly became ravaged with tears, much to Alex's surprise. Shocked, he put his hand on his wife's shoulder and tilted his head. "Jo? What's up with you?"
"He's here, Alex…" Jo hated the fact that she needed him for support so badly because she was a fan of handling things on her own, but she took two steps towards Alex and wrapped her arms around his waist. She nestled her face in his chest and allowed herself to be overtaken by sobs. Shock and confusion still running through his body, Alex draped his arms around Jo's body and offered as much support as he could. He didn't know how "he" was, but Jo was clearly upset and Alex knew that when Jo got upset, it wasn't over something light because she wasn't much of a crier and she wasn't much of a person that needed help with anything emotional. "I-I was getting my cases and…he's here. He's in the hospital…" She sobbed.
"…Who?" Alex finally asked. He kept his arms around his wife and held her close but at the same time, he wanted answers. "Who's here, Jo? What happened? You saw who?" Trembling, Jo took her arms from around his waist and pulled back. Bewildered, Alex took his arms from around her as well and looked at her face. She refused to look him in his eye as she wiped away her tears on the sleeve of her white coat and that's when Alex finally understood who she was talking about. He knew because there had only been one instance in the entire time that he and Jo had been together that Jo looked like this and that one time was when she had told him about the time she had been sexually assaulted back in college. Minding a dilemma between going and finding the man who had traumatized his wife all those years ago or staying here for support, Alex let his heart win. He embraced Jo again and held her. "Are you sure it's him?"
"Positive. I don't know what he's doing here…" Jo laid her head in the middle of her husband's chest and listened to his heartbeat, which calmed her down. "…Will you walk me down to the trauma floor? I wanted to go in and see her, but I don't want to wake her…can you just please walk me to the pit?"
"Of course." Alex mumbled and began walking with his arm around his wife's waist. "Do you know what he's here for?" Jo shook her head. "…Well he's not gonna hurt you. I won't let him…" Secretly, Alex wished he knew what the man looked like. He knew his name was John McKnight, but he was relatively uncertain of who he should be looking for. If he knew what the man looked like, he would without a doubt hunt down every man that fit the description. He didn't like the thought of anybody messing with Jo, yet alone the thought of the man that raped her walking around the hospital. He walked down the hallway in silence with Jo, which is how he knew that his wife was pretty shaken up. Jo was never quiet around Alex. The two of them walked past the PICU's nurses' station when suddenly, Alex felt like he was dragging Jo. Her legs stopped moving all of a sudden and she wasn't walking. "Jo?" A man wearing a baggy red t-shirt, a pair of dark blue jeans and black sneakers that was standing at the nurses' station politely waved at him and Jo as they walked by and Alex was used to people being friendly up here because after all, it's the pediatric floor. "Jo, what's going on?" He turned to face her and he saw that her face was reddened and she was shaking. Before he could say another word, Jo was gone—just like that.
She stormed to the man that just waved to them—the man with the rose tattoo behind his ear and the blonde hair and the piercing blue eyes—and she placed her hands on his back and gave him the hardest shove she could muster up. "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE?!" She screamed so loud that everyone in the hallway looked up. The man turned around to face the woman that just shoved him, confused and taken aback. Jo bawled her hand up into a fist, all signs of her previous traumatization being wiped clean and replaced with white-hot anger for the man that took advantage of her when she was just eighteen years old. She cocked back and swung with all her might, connecting with the man's mouth and sending him barreling to the floor with a newly broken jaw. "YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO BE HERE! YOU NEED TO LEAVE!" The man cowered on the floor in pain, staring up at the woman that he did not even recognize—the woman that just broke his jaw. "THIS MAN NEEDS TO GET OFF THIS FLOOR RIGHT NOW!"
From the corner of his eye, Alex saw Dr. Hunt rushing. He had no idea how the nurses had paged him so quickly or how he got on the floor so quickly, but he knew that he needed to get Jo before her job was on the line. "Come on!" He shouted, wrapping his arms around Jo's waist and pulling her away to prevent her from further beating the man to a bloody pulp.
Jo scratched at Alex's hands in an attempt to get him to release her but it was no use. Alex was clearly stronger. "GET OFF ME! THIS MAN'S A RAPIST! HE DOESN'T NEED TO BE AROUND LITTLE CHILDREN!"
"I'm just…visiting my…son…" The man cried out in pain.
"JOHN!" A redheaded woman came running down the hallway to the man's side.
"Sir, sir…" Dr. Hunt helped the man up. "SOMEBODY GET ME A GURNEY!" He shouted, placing his hand on the man's bloody cheek. "…Do you want to press charges?" The chief asked the inevitable question.
As soon as Alex heard the words "press charges" he knew it had potential to be bad because Jo has had prior offenses and he might not be able to protect her from this. "Go! Get out of here!" Alex took his arms from around Jo's waist and pointed toward the elevators. "GO NOW! JO, LEAVE!"
As soon as Alex said his wife's name, the man finally realized who the woman that just broke his jaw with one single punch was. And he shook his head. "…No charges are necessary." As he spoke, blood gushed out of his mouth. The man glanced at his wife, at Alex and finally, at Jo who was still standing behind Alex, breathing heavily. Alex could see the guilt and fear in his eyes. "It was a misunderstanding." He sounded panicked, and Alex knew that the reason why he had suddenly declined the opportunity to press charges is because he finally realized who his wife was and he knew that he was guilty exactly of what she accused him of…and he wanted to save face in front of his own wife. "No charges are necessary."