Women of Interest 7: Bed Rest

by Lacadiva

Yet another take on the aftermath of The Crossing. Joss isn't dead, but in very serious condition. John is there to hold her hand through it.

Woman of Interest 7: Bed Rest

By

Lacadiva

Disclaimer: All belongs to J.J. Abrams, Jonathan Nolan and Kilter Films. This is their playground. I just like to play on the monkey bars from time to time.

Synopsis: Yet another take on the aftermath of The Crossing. Joss isn't dead, but in very serious condition. John is there to hold her hand through it.

~POI~

"Mr. Reese! Mr. Reese, what are you doing out of bed? You really shouldn't be…"

"Take it easy, Finch," Reese snapped, his voice quivering and lacking strength.

The same could be said for his body. With little or no regard for his barely healed wounds, still aching and oozing from bullets that had only days ago torn and ruptured his strong frame, John defied the admonition of his employer and wrestled from under the thin covers. With a wavering sense of accomplishment, he made his way to his feet and held onto the metal safety rails until his fickle equilibrium returned, before attempting to make his way to the other side of the semi-dark library.

"I need to check on her."

"You could just ask me," Finch reprimanded as he made his way to John's side. "I'd be more than happy to tell you."

"I need to see for myself, Finch."

"I understand, John," Harold said as he caught John by the arm, careful not to further aggravate his injuries, and attempted to gently steer him back to his own bed. "But you are hardly in any shape to be moving around yet. I must insist…"

John faltered, his knees taking on the consistency of tapioca for a split second. He was glad Finch was standing there to catch him, but also felt sorrow that the shorter man had to suffer the brunt of his considerable dead weight, even if it was for just a brief moment.

"I must insist, John," Harold repeated.

John nodded at the wisdom of his employer's insistence and allowed Finch to guide him into a shaky but gentle U-turn.

"How is she?" John asked when he found the small strength to speak once again.

Finch was quiet, withholding, until he'd help John sit back upon the hospital style bed.

"You pulled out your I.V.!" Finch said.

John speculated: was this the best diversionary tactic the man could come up with at the moment? He looked him in the eye.

"Finch…"

"You can't do that, John. It's what's helping to keep you alive."

"You didn't answer my question."

"I know."

The hurt he read on Finch's face gave John pause to wonder at its meaning. Panic crept in to his already clenching gut and threatened to further torture his body. John's own face gave away his own bitter agonies. He waited patiently for Finch's explanation. He would not lie down, he would not give up, until he received an answer.

"Detective Carter is holding on," Finch said quietly. "Her wounds were…quite severe...as you know."

John's eyes dropped to stare at cold marble floors. This should not be happening, he wanted to say, but the futility of it kept his jaws locked tight. There was nothing he could do to change the situation. He'd done all he could do. It was out of his hands. And he couldn't live with that.

How must Finch feel, he wondered, having watched as Joss Carter was gunned down right before their eyes? There was little he could do to save her, but give her the best medical care his seemingly never-ending expense account could provide.

John needed and wanted to do something, like comb the streets for the last insidious remnants of HR and exact revenge, but he was in no condition to follow his dark desire. Patrick Simmons was thankfully dead, thanks to Elias (according to Finch), and that was more than he had been able to accomplish himself.

All there was left to do was wait, hope, pray…

Detective Carter remained in a medically induced coma, unresponsive to stimuli by design, and with, according to Dr. Madan, a very slim chance of surviving.

A slim chance beat no chance at all, John had kept telling himself. But his track record with hope was crippled at best.

He thought of Jessica, lost to him forever.

He thought of Snow, a man of flexible loyalties who in the end knew he was a dead man, and so took down Kara Stanton as his final act of redemption.

And Kara… John actually believed at one point that he could save her, restore her humanity and give her a reason to care. He failed miserably.

And how he had failed again…with Carter.

She had to make it.

Now that he had revealed everything to her, now that she knew…

John allowed Finch to do most of the work, helping him lie back upon the bed and it's soft pillows, and letting the bespectacled man pull the covers back over his shivering body.

Harold picked up the I.V. needle with the intent of re-inserting it in the back of John's hand. John could have sworn he saw his benefactor's hands shake, and noticed that Finch had turned quite pale as he stared at the tip of the needle.

"I hate these things," said Finch, explaining his reluctance.

"It's a good thing I'm the one who needs it," said John, and held out a slightly steadier hand for the I.V. needle.

Finch quickly acquiesced and subtly averted his eyes as John casually slipped the needle back into a standing vein on the back of his opposite hand. Exhausted from that brief activity, John closed his eyes and allowed himself to relax back into the cool pillow.

"She's going to be all right, Finch," John said. A statement. A hope. Not a question.

"Dr. Madan and I are doing everything we can for her. He'll be back to check on you both in an hour or so. You can ask him about Detective Carter then."

John reached out and grabbed Finch by the wrist. Despite his wrecked condition, his grip was still quite powerful, as evidenced by the look of surprise gracing Finch's face.

"She has to be," he said. "You hear me? I don't care what it takes or how much it costs. You do everything you can."

Harold nodded. "I assure you, that is exactly what I am doing."

John let Finch go and relaxed a bit. After a ragged deep breath he asked, "What did you tell Taylor?"

"Nothing. As far as he knows, his mother died that awful night. And so did you. He'll be attending the funeral with his father this afternoon. Closed casket, of course. Military honors. Twenty-one gun salute. They'll give him a flag.

"Our good friend at the Medical Examiner's office," Finch continued, "was still quite grateful for our taking care of that little loan shark incident for him last year. With his help, along with an equally appreciative high-profile hospital administrator, we were able to make sure the Detective was declared dead and there was a body to bury. I understand the woman taking Joss's place would not ordinarily have been able to afford any kind of a send off. She would have been pleased."

"Are you going to the funeral?" asked John.

"I hadn't planned on it."

"Why not?"

"Someone has to stay here and keep an eye on you and the Detective."

"She would want you to go. I'd go, but…I seem to be a few quarts low, blood-wise."

"I can't go, John, even if you had the strength. As far as the NYPD is concerned, you're both dead. It's best you stay off their radar for the time being. From now on, we live in the shadows."

"Then go for me, Finch. I'll stay here, keep an eye on Joss."

He said this even as his heavy eyes were closing and consciousness was slipping away.

~POI~

John awoke an hour later. There was a note resting by his pillow, a handwritten note from Finch:

Attending the funeral, per your request. Please don't get up.

John smiled; he was never much for following orders to the letter. He hated the reason, the internal affliction that kept him from being all he could be: Sometimes, his heart got in the way.

"Joss?"

He'd hoped she would be awake. He had dreamed several times that she was. In these dreams she was standing by his bed, gently brushing his sweat-matted hair back from his forehead, running a soft hand across the burgeoning whiskers in his face, whispering to him.

"Ssshhhh…" his dream version of Carter said, comforting him. Tears dropped from her face onto his.

"Don't you die on me, John Reese," she said, "or I will put a serious hurtin' on you."

Shouldn't he be comforting her?

John tossed the covers from his legs, threw one limb over the edge, breathed deeply to replenish his wavering energy, and threw the other leg over. That was the easy part.

He pushed off from his elbows and sat up, feeling the room spinning like an amusement park ride. He hated amusement park rides.

He pulled the I.V. needle from the back of his hand again, barely feeling the pressure of it. Next, he pushed himself from the bed, cursing the hospital gown Finch and Madan had put on him once he felt cool air assaulting him. Such hospital wear may be practical, but why must dignity always be sacrificed?

The floor was cold under his feet as he made his way to Carter's bed. He felt the blood rush from his head, and a pinprick sensation like fire ants running up the back of his skull.

He made it to her bed before he passed out, and held tightly to the safety bars attached to her bed and breathed. When his head finally cleared, he took in the visage of Detective Carter, prone before him.

She was on a respirator.

There were tubes and needles everywhere.

She looked small, diminished. Her rich, deep skin had a slight gray undertone.

John turned his face away as he felt the unusual occurrence of tears spring involuntarily from his eyes and running warmly down his already fevered cheek.

This was not the Carter of his dream. In the dream she was vibrant, alive. Her thick back hair was cascading down her shoulders. Her eyes were quick and bright.

That sassy tone of hers that he madly adored was madly absent now. She was as still as the dead. She wasn't dead, but she was not far from it.

"Joss…"

John sat heavily in amply upholstered chair next to the bed.

"Joss?"

All he could hear was the unerring rhythm of the respirator.

He reached out with a tremulous hand and found one of hers, and gave it a gentle squeeze.

"Come back," he said, and waited. And waited.

John scooted the chair closer to the bed, and regretted it when he felt the painful pull against his wounds. He hoped he would not begin to bleed again. Finch would read him the riot act, and he was in no mood to sit quietly through it.

He reached out, regretting the new pain this activity caused. It was forgotten when he took hold of the Detective's hand. He never realized how soft or dainty they were.

"Time to wake up, Carter," he said. She remained still.

"You probably heard…Simmons is dead. Fusco gave him a helluva beat-down, nearly put him in the ground. But he didn't. He brought him in. It was by the book. Clean. You were a good influence. "

John studied her hand and noticed there were still bits of dried blood crusted under her tapered fingernails from that horrible night. He closed his eyes and shook his head to stop the rush of memories, the night he had held her and watched her life ebb away.

Her heart had stopped beating. She had stopped breathing.

Harold was paralyzed at first, for a time that seemed like an eternity. But he did recover his faculties, his ability to problem-solve, and flew into action.

"Mr. Reese!" he had yelled limping as fast as his legs would allow, whipping out his cell phone and hitting a single number. "Please…you must let her go. Please! We must get off the streets before someone comes!"

John would not let her go. Not yet. Not yet. He hadn't cried like this, not this hard since Jessica. But this was different. He wasn't there for Jessica. He didn't watch it happen; he had not seen it with his own eyes. This was a fresher hell, one he would be fighting his way out of for a very long time.

"John, John, I beg you!"

A larger part of him did not care. But the corner of his mind that was allotted for Finch remembered that his employer was too important to be apprehended by the authorities or discovered by those who would manipulate and use him and the Machine to do their dark work.

So, with his very last ounce of strength, and with every part of him vehemently protesting what he was about to do, John placed Joss's dying body gingerly upon the blood-slicked pavement. He remained for a beat, unable to tear his eyes away from her, or fathom that he was about to leave her and walk away. He allowed Harold to help him stand and maneuver him toward his car. John kept turning to look over his shoulder, willing Joss to rally, to stand, to make it. But, to his bitter despair, she had not.

Blood fell in fat drops from his wounded body as they made their way to the waiting car. John noticed for the first time that a pay phone was ringing incessantly. He cursed the machine for being too late to warn them.

Once safely inside the car, John peered from the back window as Police Officers flooded the street, surrounding Carter. Two uniforms began performing CPR, one applying compressions while the other rescue-breathed into her mouth.

"Finch…!" John cried out. "We can't leave her…we can't leave her like this."

"Don't worry!" said Finch, with a very worried tone, "I have a plan. But first we must get you off the street!"

John heard sirens, and knew it was for Joss. The police were still working away at her. They had not yet given up. John decided at that moment that he, too, would continue to hold on to hope.

Finch drove them around the corner and pulled into a darkened alley. John fought to listen as Finch quickly made yet another call. He fought to keep conscious and focus on the conversation, despite the pain overwhelming him. The pain of leaving Joss on the cold concrete, her wounds seeping blood – this was the pain that threatened to end him in this moment. His wounds seemed superfluous, of no consequence. There was also the agony of knowing that Simmons was still out there, arrogantly thinking he'd won, congratulating himself for a good kill, enrapt by his own sense of grandeur and illusiveness…He believed that he was going to get away with it.

Not as long as there was breath still in Reese's lungs. No, John was not going to allow that to happen.

Wounded in Ordos, he ran, ran practically all the way back to the U.S. in the most figurative terms. It was not the first time, and this, by his determined albeit cloudy way of thinking was not going to be the last. These holes in his body would not end him. Not yet. There was one more mission. He would avenge Joss Carter.

Reese summoned every ounce of strength within him, focused his mind on the unholy yet marginally righteous goal – where to start, what to do, and how he would finish the man – and reached for the door latch with a blood-smeared hand.

Finch was busy, anxiously talking, planning, strategizing; he was demanding, yelling, fully involved in the moment. John knew he would not have to Harold's protestations until the deed had been done if he were able to slip out now.

So John slid along the plush leather seats, leaving a trail of blood behind him, and slipped out the back of the vehicle. Awkwardly but stealthily and made his way around the corner, gun in hand, with murder in mind, and with no thought to the searing agony of his gunshot wounds, or his own rapidly diminishing life. Indeed, he would be perfectly satisfied to let it all go once he had successfully ended Simmons' miserable life.

Only then could he be at some semblance of rest.

What remained of that night was a nightmarish blur fueled by the heat of fever, raw anger, horror and despair. He followed a strategic path to hunt down everyone from petty forgers to attorneys to the mightily fallen Quinn himself, to find his way to Simmons. But before he could fulfill his task and serve justice, Finch and the others had found him.

He gave in to the tragic hand that fate had dealt him, and let them carry him away.

For days there was naught but blackness, stark quiet, interrupted by occasional fleeting images of Joss bleeding out in his arms…

And then he woke up to find that the library, their base of operations, had been re-tasked as a mini-surgical unit and recovery bay. There were two beds, the one he occupied, and another one across the room.

He sat by that bed now, holding her hand, praying inside to a God he often ignored for a miracle. Thanking Him for the miracle that she was alive at all.

"Where was I?" he asked casually, as if she would answer. "Oh, yes. Simmons. Strangled in his hospital bed. By whom, nobody knows, or, nobody's talking. Finch seems to think it was Elias who took care of him. Works for me. Elias is bad code, but he did us all a favor. He did what I couldn't…

His voice trailed off as he remembered pulling the trigger of his unloaded gun. The futility, the frustration, was overwhelming.

He quickly changed the topic as his thumb traced the long lifeline of her palm.

"I was thinking…what your new name might be." He laughed, but winced and grinded his teeth when he felt pain.

"I'm sure Finch has given it his normal obsessive consideration. He'll come up with something poetic, maybe. Name you after a literary figure, or some weird sprite, or a flower. And your profession…well, you can't exactly claim to be a cop anymore. Maybe a private detective. How's that sound? If you don't take that, I may take it myself.

"It's hard to start a new life when you've grown so accustomed to the real one. Or in my case, the current one. Nothing ever truly fits. Not at first. Not even this one, until I became what you called the Man in the Suit. Kind of liked that. Sounded mysterious.

"The hardest part will be giving up Taylor. I don't know if you're ready for that. I can't do much to help you with that. He'll be happy with his Dad. And he'll be safe. So long as he remains in New York, you'll always worry about him. And worrying can get you…well, you know. Nobody, not even what's left of HR can't get to him if he's out of sight. He'll forget all of this soon enough. But not you. He'll never forget you."

John gave her hand a minute squeeze, hoping for some subtle reaction, willing her to open her eyes, turn to him, and smile.

"I can teach you how to be invisible, how to be a ghost. Move in and around familiar places without being seen or noticed. Live in the shadows. It won't be easy at first. It'll feel like you're in prison. I know you didn't sign up for this, Joss, but it's necessary now. You're dead. No more going to familiar places. There's no going home. Every now and then you'll have to change your identity again. It's a pain, but a necessary one. Adapt and overcome, just like the military taught us. No matter what happens, I'm here for you, Joss. No matter what you think about me, you are not alone. Never alone. I hope you know that."

Exhaustion threatened to overtake John. He brought the safety bars down so that he could lay his head gently upon her covered, concaved waist. He felt the rise and fall of her, in perfect harmony with the respirator. He kissed the top of her hand, letting his lips linger upon her fingers for a moment, and felt his breath hitch, but easily fought back the urge to give in to emotion. He needed to be strong for her. That was his last thought before he fell asleep, with Joss' hand resting warmly upon his cheek.

That was how Finch found him when returned from Detective Carter's funeral. John's body had also become quite cold and frighteningly unresponsive.

~POI~

John awoke abruptly. He was back in his hospital bed. There were two additional I.V.'s invading his flesh now, and an extra monitor.

"No more wandering around, Mr. Reese."

Finch was sitting in a chair next to John's bed. His hair was askew, his forehead damp with sweat, his shirt and vest slightly rumpled. Five o'clock shadow speckled his cheeks and chin with fine black and silver hairs. Reese noticed that he had never seen his employer so unkempt before.

"How long was I out?" he managed in a raspy, desert-dry voice.

"Two very long, very precarious days. We almost lost you."

"You didn't."

"Apparently. Thankfully. "

Finch stretched a bit, then reached for a cup of water with a bendy-straw, which he held to John's dry lips and waited until he'd had a sip or two.

When he finished, John cleared his throat and spoke again.

"How is she?"

"See for yourself."

John turned his head, intending to look across the room, hoping to see Joss sitting up, conscious, healing, and alive. She was not. However, John did still find good reason to smile.

"I took the liberty," said Finch, "of rearranging things a bit. You won't have to leave your bed again to check on her. Although it does conflict somewhat against certain matters of propriety, I'm sure, given the circumstances, the good Detective would not mind."

Joss' bed had been pushed flush with John's. While she was still unconscious, she was no longer on the respirator. Progress.

"Dr. Madan says she's breathing well on her own now, but she's not out of the woods yet. We should continue to monitor her closely. I thought you'd like that particular duty."

John simply stared at the woman next to him. Some of the richness had been restored to her complexion. Every time her chest rose and fell on it's own gave him a renewed sense of hope.

"It's interesting to note," Finch continued, "that her condition began to improve shortly after moving her. The good doctor seems to think that she may come around in a day or so. If not, then…"

"I'm not worried, Finch," said John with a bleary-eyed smile. He reached under the safety rail of his own bed and took Joss' hand. "She'll come around. She's a fighter."

"As are you, Mr. Reese. As are you. If, or when she does come around, if she should fully recover from this dreadful ordeal," Finch ventured, "she's going to have a difficult time readjusting to her new life. She may resist it, or reject it altogether."

"We've already discussed that," said John.

Finch raised curious eyebrows. "Oh?"

"We've got it under control."

"Well, that's…good." Finch rose and readjusted his tie. "Because the numbers can't wait. I need you both, if we are to continue our work together."

Something occurred to Finch, having heard his own words.

"I don't mean to sound quite so mercenary."

The rawness of Finch's hurt made John smile again.

"I understand."

"You're both very important. To me."

"Why don't you take a rest, Finch? Have a shower. Eat something. I've got this."

"Indeed."

Without another word, Finch disappeared, making his way to some other part of the Library.

John rested quite easy that night.

THE END

If you were at all moved by this story, I hope you will be kind and review it. Working on a Woman of Interest 8, which will be called "Down Time." Stay tuned.

Joss Carter lives.

End of story.