This is set amid & after Jack's conversation with Chloe.
Chapter 1
Chloe suddenly became quiet on her end as well, somehow sensing that something must be going on at Jack's side. His mid blue eyes with hint of green resolutely focused upon the large white door of the occupied surgery room. He quietly watched one of the nurses leave, before walking away without paying any attention to him, carrying… something relinquished, maybe.
Jack's heartbeat pounded hard into his head. This couldn't be happening… not now. Renee couldn't have given up, he immediately made up his mind… so had this team of doctors, to whose medical responsibility Jack had given Renee's existence, given up on her then?
Jack suddenly heard Chloe's voice repeat his name on the far other end. "I'm gonna get back to you," he whispered, eyes now focusing even more onto the pale colored swing door, that deliberately released a couple more doctors and nurses, each carrying the very same look on their faces as the first that had left. Jack's breath caught into his throat, bumping against an invisible yet existing lump that couldn't be swallowed.
A tall, African American male neared him, and he immediately feared for the very worst. Something within his abdomen knitted together, and even though his mind had told him more than just once while having sat there waiting for news, that that shot had been quite near perfect to kill, he wasn't ready for what was about to come. It couldn't be any good.
"I'm sorry," the voice belonging to the doctor whom he assumed to be the one in charge sounded. "There was just too much arterial damage and blood loss."
Jack's eyes shifted to bewildered, just looking at the doctor in light blue opposite him, but he didn't listen in the least to what had followed after that short apology and elucidation. Jack's greenish eyes quietly moved over to the bed leaving the now unoccupied surgery room and being pushed into the long, white corridor by two nurses.
A very pale looking Renee, attached to several see-through tubes differing in size and having needles into her arteries at the height of her inner elbows, that lead to two packs of blood and something else held high by another, third nurse, was lying into the bed.
Jack's eyes wandered back to the younger doctor's face, as the bed came to a halt next to them both. He seemed to have noticed Jack's lack of attention earlier and thus repeated the same in other words. "She has gone into a deep comatose condition due to hypovolemia. Her heart has ceased twice while the surgery lasted, and twice were we barely able to revive her. It is going to be entirely up to her now," he added, upon seeing Jack's mouth open to ask what he easily assumed – because it had happened before that the emergency doctor found himself in such situation – would be something like, "Is she going to make it?"
Jack's eyes wandered back to Renee's pale face: the shut light blue eyes and soft lips he had kissed maybe an hour before. From the corners of his eyes, Jack vaguely saw the tall, African American doctor nodding to the nurses pushing Renee's hospital bed, which slowly continued its way along the untarnished, white corridor of the hospital, into the direction of ICU, he supposed.
The nurses' white footwear made barely audible sounds upon the shiny grayish floor. Jack intuitively turned around to look after her. He barely felt the hand on his shoulder and failed to hear the "I'm very sorry" before being left alone in the middle of the corridor while everything and everyone around him continued as if nothing had or could have happened.
There were already too many cases of comatose subjects who never woke again, or eventually died or advanced into a vegetative condition, and again there were already enough – if maybe not most – who didn't make it through without serious physical, intellectual or psychological damage.
He absentmindedly reached up with his hand, holding it over his mouth, sighing deeply as Renee disappeared behind the gray, metallic doors of the elevator at the end of the corridor.
He quietly looked down at his shirt, colored red with the woman's blood. Should he have pushed the wound to minimize the blood flow and have waited for an ambulance with that sniper still shooting after them? He wondered. Would she have had a better chance if he had done things differently?
He feverishly blocked the many recurring images, of Renee lying there somewhere between the bedroom and other room, her eyes wide open in shock and panic and most likely pain. The fast oozing of blood had scared him to hell, even though him having seen enough blood before would be an understatement. Her blood so easily soiling the sheet wrapped around her body replayed into his head in slow motion.
The fear that had been readable in her eyes was hard to push past into his mind. He most likely never would forget that vision. Why did he suddenly have to leave the room and let her take the bullet? Had it been meant for him, or had someone really wanted Renee dead? And had it been because of him only or other reasons?
His mind began working at top speed that instant, as he quietly lowered his hand, and his mouth turned into a thin, furious line. He began walking into another direction of the corridor as Renee had been rolled. Long strides of anger and boiling revenge created more distance between them.
The already scary look in his furious, greenish eyes became colder with every step, and he unconsciously clenched his hands into fists. Whomever had caused this to happen, had it been directly or not, was going to suffer the consequences, no matter how long it would take to track that son-of-a-bitch down, or whom or how many he would have to torture, or maybe kill along the way to revenge. Justice.