A/N: I would just like to say that I know major elements of this fic are not medically correct, and most probably could not happen. I have seen pictures of the crashed car and have also had to adapt that slightly in order to write what I wanted to write.
I really hope you enjoy this, please let me know what you think!
Also, thank you to the fabulous Bethy1416 for reading this and always being so kind and lovely.
Disclaimer: I do not own Casualty, any of its characters or plots.
Connie.
He was metres away, running. He heard Iain shouting behind him, but he wasn't listening. Not anymore. All he had done on the way here was listen to other people, people who told him what he could and couldn't do, and that she couldn't be moved until another helicopter arrived. He had been told to stay, to stay and wait for them to arrive at the ED, but the look on Charlie's face confirmed his own thoughts, to follow through with his intentions. She needed him to be there.
He felt a clutch low in his stomach, the noise and chaos around him subsiding into deathly silence as he focused solely on the scene that was now in front of him. He knew facts, but until now, they had just been words. Words he'd heard hundreds of times before, but what they described was never actually presented before him. The car had, since the accident, been turned sidewards, the roof completely crushed into the mess of rocks and branches that littered the bottom of the cliff. Every glass panel had long since shattered, remnants were scattered for metres around the site, and he could barely bring himself to imagine the state of the wrecked interior.
Or where else the glass was embedded.
Grace had been pulled out minutes before he arrived, the prioritisation of her removal had been initiated by the now controlled blaze, and no doubt Connie's own demands.
Which may or may not have been granted simply because of the severity of her own injuries.
His running slowed, but still he was barely aware of his surroundings; to his right he saw perhaps two or three bodies move away from the car as he approached, casting aside several branches as he knelt before the mangled metal structure.
Connie.
"I'm here, Con, I'm here. Alright, look who's got you..."
He heard her relieved sob first, before he laid down to be on her level. At the sound of his voice, the voice she had been blindly searching for amongst the chaos of the past half hour, she had begun to cry again.
"Jacob..."
She stretched her hand out of the gap, framed by the darkened, twisted metal, which was once her window. It shuddered and shook, reaching in desperation for his own as his fingers gripped hers immediately.
"Hey, hey, hey. Ssh, ssh..."
He inched closer to the car, so that his head was now level with the ground, and with hers. Her eyes were wild and fraught, and he could see a fearsome red blooming across the cotton of her shirt, around her ribs. Her body was partially blocked from his view in places, so that he couldn't determine exactly how she was positioned, whether her legs were flat or curled, he couldn't ascertain anything save for the fact that she was alive, and terrified. With his free hand, he touched her face, brushing the tears from her skin, despite recognising the futility of the gesture. But she needed him to touch her, she needed to see him, and the more she thought about how much she needed him, the more forcefully her tears fell.
"Hey, ssh... Con, I am not going to lose you."
He looked at her, and he let out a shuddering breath. He could feel his own tears coming, but he needed to see her. Blurred vision couldn't take a moment away. Not now.
"I'm just, going to..." He moved back onto his knees, tugging the partially open door fully open, and with one more forceful pull it swung back to hang beside the body of the car. Now he could see her properly, not just through the empty space where the window had once been. He cleared his throat, adjusting himself slightly on the ground and his grip on her hand. "When they turned the car, did they-"
"It was the only way for... To get her out, quickly. I just wanted her out, Jacob..."
"I know, I know... Connie, you got her out, she's on the way to the ED now."
"They only do that... they've tried to clear me but they don't know. Head and neck were all they could assess; they seem fine... I don't know how, and my legs, I can't... Jacob, they only do that, only when it's bad..."
Both of them were thinking the same, they had been for the last few minutes since the decision to get Grace out had been made. But neither of them could quite bring themselves to say the exact words, words they knew the other knew.
They only do that if they have to make a choice. A choice based on chance.
"She was always going to be prioritised, it doesn't mean... It doesn't mean that they think they can't get to you in time."
"You don't know that."
She spoke so quietly, her voice just cracking as her tears started to fall once more.
"Connie, look at me. I am not going to lose you."
"She'll be, she's so scared, Jacob-" She was cut off, and using what movement she had allowed to her, her body buckled. She gasped, her eyes shut tightly, before the pain subsided and they opened again, slowly.
"Connie, where-"
"Stomach." She spoke so quietly, her lips barely moving. A moment passed, before the same crippling pain overcame her, except this time the gasp was a cry.
"Con, can you tell me-"
"Go."
She raised her head to look at him, her fingers holding his so tightly that he could see the tension from her efforts in her arms.
"Grace, Jacob you have to... Go, go with Grace. Go back, please..." She shut her eyes again, her jaw set her face, if possible, whiter than it had been minutes earlier.
"No, no Connie, listen to me! You hold on, you keep fighting." She was scaring him. Every forty seconds or so, she was overcome with a pain that forced her eyes shut and her body to convulse, a new pain that in between struggling breaths she said was new, new since his arrival. He looked around him, breaking his gaze from her only momentarily, but still there was no sign of further aid. He needed to calm and reassure her; she was doing damage to her existing, unidentified injuries.
He couldn't lose her.
"We're going to get you through here once the next helicopter arrives. We can't move you until another doctor arrives and checks that we can do this, they need to assess the extent of the crush injuries to your legs."
And find out which pressures are currently keeping you alive.
"Can't... can't you..."
"I can't." He whispered, shaking his head. The desperation in her voice was breaking him, all he wanted to do was get her out of there. "You need a proper doctor, sweet cheeks. Not the incompetent nurse." He tried to crack a smile, but it didn't happen. It couldn't happen.
"I'm bleeding..." She whispered, her hand slackening in his. She then cried out again, before falling mute as the agony in her abdomen rendered her incapable of coherent thought, her hand now lowering to press against it, an instinctive reaction or an attempt to self diagnose; he couldn't tell.
"Connie, do you think-"
"Jacob, I'm... I'm bleeding." She raised her head, fixing her wide, frightened eyes on his own.
It came to him now, the re-emergence of a thought that had perplexed him again that morning. It all fit. She'd been eating grapes, every morning for the past couple of weeks. But she hated them. He knew that she hated them, and when he had asked her about it, she had given him a lecture on how taste buds changed with age. And he had laughed, kissing her as he affectionately berated her, before settling the argument by saying that Connie Beauchamp's taste buds wouldn't dare to change and that really she was just fussy.
But she had hated them.
"Iain..." He whispered, before he then twisted to shout over his shoulder.
"IAIN!"
"I'm... I'm so sorry..."
He turned back around as he heard her speak, her voice so quiet, tears running freely down her cheeks.
"Don't you dare." He could barely muster a whisper as he reached a hand to her, taking her fingers within his. He didn't turn around when he heard Iain kneel down just behind him, but squeezed her hand tightly as she gasped again, prompting Iain to place a hand on Jacob's shoulder, alerting him that he was in fact there.
"She's miscarrying, Iain, please..."
Jacob turned his head just slightly, just enough to watch the expression on the paramedic's face alter; before turning back to focus on Connie. He heard Iain stand up, running to shout for an ETA on the air ambulance, followed by a crackle of a radio as staff were updated.
Unwittingly, he had held both his unborn child and it's mother in his arms as they slept, even if only for a few weeks.
"I, Jacob I didn't... I didn't know..."
"I love you. I love you so much, I..." His words caught on a raw sob, and he reached his other hand to her face, stroking her fringe from her eyes, before easing her hand from his and cupping both of his own to her chin.
"Look at me. Alright, because we are not done, we are not done yet. I'm going to get you out of here."
Her eyes shut again, and when she opened them she tried to pull back, to lower her head. But he wouldn't let her, he wouldn't let her go.
"You are not done yet." He spoke slowly, clearly, his hands firm but gentle on her skin. She gave the smallest of nods, and he let has fingers trail from here jaw to her nose, her eyelids, gently caressing every feature before taking both of her hands once more.
"Okay, okay look at me. Think about you, me and Grace. Empty beaches in winter, the days where the breeze is enough to blow your hair back behind you but not into your face, because you hate that."
"Jacob, what are you-"
"Expensive black boxes with large red ribbons, Viogner, toast and marmalade... oh! And my vegetable korma, the one I'm meant to be teaching you to cook, remember?"
"Jacob... I can't cook anything."
He felt a tear roll down his cheek as he smiled, and this time she eased his fingers from her right ones, to reach out from the car to brush the droplet from his skin.
"God, I love you." He whispered, taking her hand from his face to kiss her skin, her knuckles, before folding her fingers back through his.
"Jacob if, if can't... If I don't get...out-"
"Don't, don't you say-"
"You have... you have to promise me, you'll take Grace, you make...Make sure..." She swallowed, still looking at Jacob but now, her focus was somewhere past him. She was back on the cliff road, she could hear Grace, the radio, the car horn.
The barrier.
"I should have stopped, she tried to stop me... We, we could've had..." Her vision blurred, and the pain in her stomach forced her to curl, which in turn sent a shot of feeling through her legs, which until now she had been relatively unaware of. He saw her look away and down, down inside the car to her legs. She could feel them.
"Connie, I'm coming back. Thirty seconds, I promise."
She nodded, letting his hand go as he stood up, running into the crowd of red, yellow and green.
"We can move her, we need to get her out, Iain..." He searched around him, raising his arm as the paramedic came to stand by him. "Iain, we can take her out of the door, she can feel her legs, we haven't got another twenty minutes-"
He was talking fast, and it took Iain a few more seconds to take in what Jacob was saying.
"Jacob, we don't know-"
"I'm willing to take the risk, it's the best chance she's got." After a moment, he swallowed before adding, "It has to be worse if we wait."
Eventually, he saw Iain nod and turn away. He ran back to the car, seeing her eyes open again when she heard his footfalls. He crouched down, touching her cheek before slipping his hand back through hers.
"Okay, listen to me, sweet cheeks. You can close your eyes. Keep your eyes closed, don't open them until I say." He whispered softly, so unbelievably calmly. As if it were all so simple, so easy. He watched as her eyes widened in fright, the realisation of what he wanted to do now pinning itself onto her. This added weight, albeit imaginary but to her just as real and horrifying, triggered a guttural sob, and she began to struggle. He grasped hold of both her hands, holding her fingers tightly within his, and he could feel how she shook with terror, with agony and cold, as well as with the spent force of her tears and emotions which her body could barely express physically anymore.
"I, I thought..."
"We don't have time, Con." He whispered, bending to touch his forehead to hers, pressing a kiss to her lips before looking at her, how words formed on her lips but were never quite uttered, not until she saw Iain come to stand behind him.
"Don't, don't do this... please..."
"I have to." He whispered, forcing himself to hold her gaze. He was a fraction of a moment away from telling Iain to listen to her.
"Jacob, if we're going to... I'll have to pull the back seat back, and go through the side here. If we get this door completely off..." He signalled for a member of other fire crew, looking quickly to Jacob before nodding and motioning for him to begin work on the door. It didn't take long, two minutes at most, before they had the necessary room.
"Okay, Connie..."
She heard Iain, but she didn't respond, her eyes squeezing shut as her stomach cramped again, violently. As she cried out, she felt something push against her knees, and she gasped as her right leg slumped sidewalls, the seat that had been supporting it pulled away. She opened her eyes, panicking as she saw only the road, wheels, and a tangle of branches that poked just into the interior by her hands.
"Jacob..." Her voice cracked, and she swallowed back the metallic taste in her mouth that made her want to vomit. She tried to stretch out a hand, but the pain was too much, and she let out a soft whimper as her eyes drifted shut this time. The noise around her was blinding; the scraping, the muffled banging, the shouting. It was too much.
"Jacob..." She whispered the tiniest, faintest whisper, her head rolling as she felt a weight being lifted from her left leg. Seconds later, she could feel arms about her, holding her where she was. With an immense effort, she opened her eyes to meet his.
"It's cold..."
As she spoke, she could feel something wrapping about her legs. He gently placed his fingers over her eyelids, before pressing a kiss to her mouth. He looked over to Iain, who stood crouched just across from him.
"We get her into the ambulance. Do vitals. Then drive."
Jacob only nodded, shifting so that her head laid flat. He positioned himself so that he could reach around her, before diverting his gaze back to Iain.
"On three?"
"On three."
Moments later he was lifting her, Iain helping until Jacob was standing, taking her weight easily in his arms. He could feel the blood from the wound to her ribs already seeping through onto his shirt, he didn't dare to look down to her where he supported her legs. Her skin was peppered with small cuts, a larger, deeper one running from the right side of her shoulder and across her collarbone. He could see glass glinting as he ran to the ambulance vehicle, parts that were still embedded in the cut, and parts that had caught up in her blouse. He tried not to think about the fact that all this time, she had been lying on glass from the windscreen and not once, not once had she even mentioned that pain.
Because really, it had been so insignificant.
"We're not done yet, do you hear me?" He whispered fiercely, hearing Iain shouting a short way behind him. But as before, he wasn't listening. He was talking to her. What he could and couldn't do didn't matter, because he had to tell her that he loved her. He had to tell her that he was so desperately proud of her;
He wasn't going to lose her, not now.
He had to make sure that she knew, even if she couldn't hear him.
She had to know that he wasn't ever going to let her go.