He jumped straight into the back of the ambulance with Tess, his excuse being that he needed to get back to the ED. In actual fact, he just wanted to stay by her. The thought of anything happening to Tess was more than Fletch could cope with, only now he was facing the reality. She's been doing her best to help a patient, only she was injured instead. You could call it karma, and in her head, that's exactly what she believed it was. After all she'd had an affair with a married man, and if that wasn't bad enough, she'd had an abortion when the affair had ended in an unplanned pregnancy.
The ambulance pulled away from where it had been stopped and speedily hit the road again. The sirens were the only sound that could be heard in the otherwise eerily silent ambulance. Tess was in and out of consciousness and not aware of the fact that Fletch's hand was tightly gripping hers. He watched her, unable to take his eyes off of her. She still looked beautiful despite the blood and nasty cuts covering her face, in fact her whole body.
Before he knew it they'd arrived at the ED, where at once Connie, Rita and Ethan joined her bedside as she was wheeled into resus. As soon as the call had come through to the ED, it had been decided that Zoe was too close and that it'd be Connie who took over Tess' care.
Fletch watched quietly from the foot of the bed, being careful not to get in the way of his colleagues. A couple of minutes later they all pulled away from Tess.
"What's going on?" Fletch asked nervously.
"She's stable, she is bleeding internally but theatre can't take her for another five minutes." Connie told him before walking off.
Slowly Fletch walked back over to Tess' hospital bed and took her hand again. Tess was just about awake.
"I'm going to do everything I can to get you well again, and then if you'll have me back then I'll make sure that this time I do it right. No more sneaking around. I'll leave Natalie, and be with you properly. I'm sure the kids will get used to it, they're still young, they can adapt. It's you I want to be with." Fletch told her as he wiped a tear away, that was already making the journey down his cheek.
"Kiss me?" Tess croaked slightly. Fletch lent in closer and did as she asked, being careful of the cuts and bruises on her face.
"You've got to go up to theatre now, I'll be right next to you when you wake up. I'm never going to let you down again." Fletch told her as Zoe coughed slightly to make her and Max's presence known. No more words were shared as Max and Zoe took her in her bed up to theatre.
"How about I sort that cut on your arm out while Tess is in surgery?" Rita kindly offered. All he could do was nod in reply.
The gash in his arm had now been stitched and Fletch had fallen asleep in one of the cubicles, after the stress of the day had caught up with him. He didn't know how long he'd been asleep but he wished he hadn't fallen asleep at all when Zoe walked in, tears falling from her eyes.
"Is she out?" Fletch asked hopefully, but somewhere in the back of his head he knew exactly what was coming.
"I'm sorry Fletch, they couldn't control the bleeding. She's gone." Zoe told him in the couple of minutes that she was holding it together before she broke down in tears all over again and left, looking for Max's comfort. For a moment he sat shocked, like at any second Tess would walk through the door and laugh at him for being so guillable. Minutes passed and the likelihood of his theory being correct was reduced until finally he realised that she wouldn't be coming back. He curled himself up into a ball and just cried. Tess was gone.
From somewhere in the ED he heard music playing, he listened carefully. Looking for any distractions from what he was feeling. 'Baby kiss me, before they turn the lights out.' He thought back to his last moments with Tess, it was then that he realised that Tess had known exactly what was happening. In some sense she was ready, she'd said goodbye to him, even if he didn't know that that was what it was.