"I've always loved you."
The glass from the window is still embedded in his skin. The bandages on his side are a tribute to the windowpanes revenge, ironic. Funny how words are like that. Windowpane, window pain. Don's got both of those right now.
"When you broke my heart, I loved you."
His hand is burning, his whole body is. The fever is ravishing his brain, the brain that got her a life, that got her started. Occasionally, the brain that bought her a life sends these criss-crossed messages to his body and he spasms. His entire body lifts from the bed and, although he is not conscious to verbalize the pain, she sees it all over his clenched face.
"When you defended my honor and got into a drunken brawl with Duck… I loved you."
She brushes his hair away from his face. She knows that he hates it when his bangs fall like that. He'd hate this too. It's his own fault, maybe it's revenge or karma.
"When you gave me a chance, I thought I wanted to marry you. I thought I wanted Draper as my last name but I could not have been more wrong."
She watched her own father die. She knows what death looks, feels, and smells like. Right now, Death is hovering over Don Draper and she knows that if she lets go if she pauses for even a moment he will let it overcome him.
It already has. The moment that Pete looked at her, clueless and pissed because she was bothering him, it had already taken Don. She wasn't there when he took his pack of cigarettes, after knocking back half a bottle of rum, and went to the roof. At least, he tried to.
Drunk and blinded by life, Don broke the glass windows connecting the door scaring the hell out of their office secretary and managed to fall down two flights of stairs. His mission was the roof. Luck, as usual, would have it that he never even got there. She's not sure if she should cuss or thank God.
"I've already lost my father, Don." She's been close to him before. Close enough to smell past the cigarette smoke and the spare shampoo from the spare bathroom. She knows that he smells like Rum and that his body runs hotter than most people's. He gets flushed easily because he has bad blood pressure but his crutch is his cigarettes so he'll never get better.
When she found him, the second on the scene aside from the screaming secretary, he was only hardly awake. His blood was already staining the floor and if she knew anything about medicine at all, he wouldn't be like he is now. But she doesn't, so she just put a hand over his bleeding thigh. It was a lot of blood, probably too much.
He looked up and he whispered, in a tone, she'd never heard him use, that he wanted her to let him go. He told her about the roof, that he wanted to jump off of the damn roof because he hates this place. Just, God, he hates this place.
"Always so afraid to hurt your children," she runs a finger over his jaw," that all you did was leave scars."
The IV in his hand reminds her of her own time in the hospital. The advice that still runs in her head. "It'll shock you how much this didn't happen."
She rises from his side, still glancing at the monitor because of some naive mentality that he'll give up his fight if someone doesn't cheerlead him along. Bends down, gently bringing her hand to cup his jaw, and presses a soft kiss to his temple. "I just need you… I need you to know that there is nothing you can do to make those kids stop loving you. So don't you give up on them."
She leaves him. He's bare and dangerous and so un-Don like laying on a bed pale from blood loss and a flu he can't fight off. But, he'll live. He has too.
"How bad is it?" Sally stands in front of her, a woman with the anxiety of a teenager. She's hardly eighteen, no child is supposed to take care of their parent, not that young.
Peggy smiles, it's comforting and the first human thing that's happened since she got the phone call. It makes Sally stand a little taller, a little calmer. "Sally, he's gonna be alright. Go seat with him, he's gonna need someone when he wakes up."
Sally looks doubtful but nods anyway.
"Go on, he'll appreciate it." She puts a hand on the small of Sally's back and smiles again. "Come on."
She can't predict what will happen. She couldn't possibly know but she does know that Don Draper with be back at work within in the month and taping his fingers against his the back of his couch with a cigarette burning between his forefinger and middle finger. His voice will be gruff and borderline mean but he'll look at her and bounce some idea off of her. This accident will have never even happened.
"It'll surprise you how much it never happened."
But she'll still have to look back on this day. She'll still think of the night on the couch when she sat with him.
Don Draper, The Falling Man. Maybe it really will surprise her how much it all never happened.