Hello, everyone! So this is an entry for the first ever round of the Night Shift Write Me's! If you don't know what that is, you should definitely check out The Night Shift Fanfiction Community on tumblr. Basically, everyone gets the same prompt and you guys vote on your favorites by favoriting and following. This prompt was TC coming home from Afghanistan up until the point that he and Jordan broke up. This is going to be a multi-chapter story, and I'll try to update as quickly as I can. Warning - this story is going to be fairly angsty, and it's not going to have a happy ending. Jordan and TC did break up, and that will still happen here, so don't expect happiness and fluff (If you want some of that, you should check out my other two Night Shift stories, "Team Alexander and Callahan" or "I Like You"). Anyway, enjoy the first chapter!


Gone

October 7, 2010

Jordan is dead asleep when her phone rings, the shrillness cutting straight through the quiet of her bedroom. She groans and rolls over, disoriented. She blindly throws a hand out and reaches around for the phone on her bedside table. Blinking blearily a few times, she squints at the clock and sees it's 4:06 in the morning. She answers without checking the caller ID.

"Hello?" she grumbles into the phone, figuring it's the hospital, calling her in a few hours early. But it's not Jamie, her head nurse, who speaks.

"Jor?" he whispers, so quiet she can barely hear him.

She sits up quickly, suddenly wide-awake. "TC?" she questions, surprised. She never gets unscheduled calls from TC. Honestly, she barely even gets scheduled calls from him, and since he's due to come home in a few weeks, she wasn't expecting to hear from him until then. Since he shipped out, they've relied mostly on letters, sparse phone calls, and the incredibly rare and precious Skype session.

As soon as she says his name, she can hear his breath catch and suddenly he's sobbing into the phone, brokenly whispering, "I'm sorry," over and over until she can barely understand him.

"T?" she asks again, this time panicked. "What's wrong?"

He doesn't answer, just continues to whisper that he's sorry in between sobs, and she can feel her pulse quicken. She has never seen TC cry, and she's terrified to find out what has him this distraught. She quickly does the math in her head, and figures it is 12:36 pm in Kandahar. This tells her that what ever happened is clearly as bad as it seems, because an unscheduled phone call in the middle of his day is completely unheard of.

"T, I need you to breathe, okay?" she says softly. He gives no indication that he hears her. "Just breathe with me, okay?" She inhales deeply and then exhales slowly. She doesn't say anything else to him. She just continues to breathe slowly into the phone, figuring he'll calm himself down. Eventually, his sobs begin to die down, and he matches his breathing with hers until he too is breathing steadily along with her, albeit a bit more raggedly. "What happened?" she finally asks, once his breathing has returned to mostly normal.

It's silent for a long time before TC finally whispers, "It's Thad." His voice breaks when he says his brother's name, and Jordan's heart plummets. For TC to be this upset, it must mean – "He's gone," he whispers so quietly she almost misses it.

"Oh, God," she whispers to herself, feeling tears gather in her own eyes. Since she started dating TC, Thad had become her older brother, too. When her father died, she cut ties with her mother and didn't have any other family. She was alone until she met TC her first year of residency, and then suddenly she had found a family in the Callahan boys.

Thad adopted her as the younger sister he never had, usually teasing her mercilessly, but occasionally becoming even more fiercely protective of her than TC. He became the big brother she never knew she wanted, and for the first time in years she had felt like part of a family. And now, she can't quite believe that he's gone. She feels a sob catch in her throat.

It's silent for what seems like forever before TC manages to speak again. "We," he pauses and takes a shaky breath, "I'm coming home tomorrow," he finally says softly. "They're letting me end my tour early."

"When are you getting here?"" she manages to ask.

"Not Baltimore. I'm going home, home. To Texas. We're flying into San Antonio tomorrow morning." He pauses, and adds in a shaky voice, "Texas is our home, so that's where the," he stops and the silence is deafening when Jordan realizes he was about to say funeral. "Where everyone needs to be," he finally says.

"I'll be there," she says immediately, climbing out of bed and heading towards the closet for her suitcase.

"I know it's last minute. So I'll understand if you can't –"

"T," she interrupts. "I'll be there."

He takes a shaky breath. "Thank you, Jor," he whispers brokenly, and it takes everything in her not to start sobbing at the sound of his voice.

"You don't need to thank me," she whispers through the lump settled in her throat. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Tomorrow," he repeats hesitantly. It's silent then, and she knows he's going to have to go soon. "I've got to go," he says on cue. "Bye."

"Bye," she repeats, and moves to hang the phone up. "And T?" she says suddenly, bringing the phone back to her ear and hoping she's not too late.

"Yeah?"

"I love you," she whispers.

She hears him take a deep breath and his voice is shaky when he replies, "I love you, too." All that follows is the dial tone, and then she finally allows herself to cry.


"You don't understand, I need to be in San Antonio today," Jordan snaps at the woman behind the ticket counter. It's the sixth airline counter she's been to since she got to the airport, and each of them have told her the same thing: she's not getting to Texas any earlier than tomorrow night.

"If you needed to get there, you should have planned your trip and bought the tickets in advance like everyone else," the woman drones in a monotone voice, completely unsympathetic to Jordan's pleading.

"How many times do I have to say the word emergency before you understand what I mean?" By this point, she is nearing tears due to absolute frustration.

"You're not getting on a flight whether it's an emergency or not."

"I don't care how much it costs," she pleads. "I'll fly first class or in the seat by the bathroom that nobody wants. It doesn't matter as long as I'm in Texas by tomorrow morning."

"Look, I understand that it's urgent, but I'm telling you – there are no seats on any planes flying to San Antonio, or anywhere else in Texas, until tomorrow night," the teller says, studying her nails.

"Just get me on a goddamn flight!" Jordan explodes, drawing the gazes of a few passengers at the nearest gate.

The teller finally looks up. "Don't make me call security," she threatens.

Jordan turns on her heel and storms away from the desk, sinking into the first chair at the gate she comes to. As soon as she sits down, she can't contain her tears anymore, and she starts sobbing into her hands.

"Excuse me?" a voice says, and she prays she's not about to get berated for causing a scene in the airport. She sniffs loudly and looks up, wiping her eyes as she does so.

"Yeah?" she manages to croak out once she catches sight of the man looking down at her with what might be concern, or maybe disgust, she can't tell or bring herself to care.

"I couldn't help but overhear you," he starts with an awkward smile, and god she hopes he's not hitting on her. "You need to get to San Antonio?" he asks.

"Yeah," she says bitterly. "And if you overheard, you know that it's not happening."

"What's in Texas?" he asks, and for some reason, she decides to tell him. Maybe it's because it's been eating away inside of her since she got that phone call from TC, maybe she needs to talk to someone and a stranger is the easiest, maybe it's because that was concern on his face earlier, but suddenly everything is spilling out of her.

"My boyfriend," she starts, and his face doesn't change, so she figures he wasn't hitting on her, thankfully. "He's coming home a few weeks early from Afghanistan." The man starts to smile at this, but she continues. "Because his brother was killed in action."

"I'm so sorry," he offers, and surprisingly, it sounds genuine.

"Anyway, he'll be back tomorrow morning, and I really wanted to be there when he flew in. I'd need to leave tonight, but there are no flights, as I'm sure you heard." She swallows and tries not to picture TC's face when he steps off the plane and she's not there like she promised. A few more tears trickle down her cheeks.

"Take my ticket," the man says once she's finished her story.

"What?"

"I have a ticket for a 10:50 flight straight to San Antonio International," he says, pulling the ticket from his inner jacket pocket. He sticks his hand out. "Take it."

"I can't," she stutters. "It's your ticket, you need to get there."

"You love this boyfriend of yours?" he asks.

She pauses. "I do," she finally says softly. "I'm going to marry him," she adds, smiling for the first time since TC's phone call woke her up that morning. Of course, he hasn't actually asked her, but whenever she pictures her future, TC's in it.

"Then take it. He's a lucky guy, and he's going to need you."

"I don't know what to say," she says.

He smiles at her. "Maybe try thank you," he prompts.

"Of course! Thank you! Honestly, I don't know what I was going to do."

"It's no problem," he tells her, smiling. "I was looking for a reason to skip this meeting anyway," he adds conspiratorially.

The two of them make there way to the desk, where the teller acts as though they are personally attacking her by asking her to switch the ticket from his name to Jordan's. Eventually she does it, but with an obnoxious amount of complaint.

"At least let me pay for it," Jordan tells him, but he refuses.

"Don't worry about it. It's a gift." When she opens her mouth to argue again, he adds "Thank that boyfriend of yours for his service. And pass on my condolences." With that, he disappears into a crowd of tourists, and she realizes she doesn't even know his name. She ends up giving her credit card to the teller and paying to upgrade what should have been her flight to first class for the stranger. The woman complains some more, but Jordan insists. With that taken care of, she settles into her gate to wait to board, trying not to think about Thad or what state she's going to find TC in tomorrow.


So there's chapter one. Follow and favorite to vote. Let me know what you guys think, and I'll be updating soon!