Counting Heartbeats
Summary: One moment can change everything. Hearts are such fragile things. OneShot- Alex, Joel, Charlie, Meggie. Post-ep to season two's finale.
Warning: Spoiler. Drabble-esque.
Set: Post-ep to 02x18 – Broken Hearts.
Disclaimer: Standards apply.
A/N: Oh wow. Look what I've found. I completely forgot about this! :) So does anyone know when the third season is supposed to air?
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Hearts were such fragile things.
Beep.
Dr. Bell's hand was shaking. Meggie was pretty sure this had never happened before. The cool, collected, often spiteful woman hadn't shown a nervous streak like that in all the years Meggie had known her. She didn't realize it till later, her heart so filled with worry she felt like she couldn't breathe as they raced down the hospital corridor.
People died every day. She knew that, if she knew nothing else. Her baby had died. People died without cause, without reason or excuse. It was simple as that. She could go on and on about how it wasn't her fault and how the time hadn't been right, blah blah and so on. But the fact remained that she had begun to love the tiny speck of life inside her, had begun to love the prospect of it growing into a living and breathing human being. She had been terrified, yes. Of the task she would have to face, of caring for a tiny, fragile human being. Terrified of feeding it, loving it and raising it, of combining a baby with her job, the thing she loved, and with Gavin, the man she loved. She had been afraid she wouldn't be able to take care for it because she was so busy with other things. She had been afraid she wouldn't feel like a mother. But Meggie had loved her baby, fiercely and unconditionally, from the moment she had firs heard his heartbeat: her baby. This mixture of her and Gavin, this idea-come-true, a thought of the future that suddenly had become reality. Meggie loved Gavin. He had been her best friend and then had become her lover. It had been sudden and unexpected, but who was she to doubt fate? Applaud your second love, for it teaches you that love still exists. Gavin loved her, and thus had loved their baby, so Maggie had loved it as well. Now it was dead. It was nobody's fault and nobody's mistake. Just one of the things that happened.
The lines on the smartphone screen blurred in front of her eyes.
Code Blue. Code Blue.
The phone was shaking in Dr. Bell's hands, and Meggie thought of her dead baby and ran.
Beep.
Hearts could be shaken so easily.
Beep.
Reality always was so much harder than nightmares were.
Charlie had had nightmares. As a child, of course, and later as an adult, albeit fewer. Then, during the time he had spent in the coma, he had come to know them again intimately: nightmares, terrifying and torturing, made worse a hundredfold by the fact that he couldn't wake up. Most of the time, they had been about the accident. Re-living it, feeling it: the force of the brakes, the impact he had heard but not felt. The sudden dizziness, loss of orientation, and then – nothing. He had re-lived the moment again and again, always trying, sometimes screaming, always fighting, to wake up. He didn't want to fall into a coma. Charlie wanted to stay with Alex, wanted to be able to touch her, kiss her and hold her. He wanted his job back, his life and his happiness. Instead, he was unconscious, watching the life he could have had pass by in front of his eyes like he stood on the other side of an impenetrable glass wall. There had been other dreams, too. Sometimes it was Alex in the other car, her blood red and warm on his hands. Sometimes it was Alex being rolled down the corridor on a stretcher, her life bleeding from her uncontrollably. Sometimes it was Alex leaving him, unable to remain by his side, Alex giving up the hope that he would ever wake up again. Sometimes, even worse, she remained by his side but stopped loving him. A myriad of scenes in front of his mind's eye, a myriad of possibilities, and each one was horrible and unthinkable and unthinkably painful.
But in the end he had always known those had been nightmares, nothing else.
Whatever he had felt at that time could not be compared to the bone-chilling, raw fear that gripped his heart when he saw her on the stretcher. Vivid colors, the dark stains on her scrubs growing with every second. His pulse blotted out every other sound, the world fell into a mute rush of people and colors and Alex, unconscious in front of him, paler than he had ever seen her before. Pale as the dead people he worked with so often. And blood. So much blood – blood, everywhere, and the scissors protruding from her chest like a bizarre piece of jewelry. One hand dangled limply over the edge of the gurney. People were shouting, working furiously, moving all around him. He didn't hear anything. And Charlie knew – with the earth-crushing, terrifying clarity that came with moments of realization – that no nightmare could ever compete with reality.
"No. No, Alex, look at me, don't leave me-"
He would have told her anything to make her stay. As it was, she was bleeding out right under his hands and he was unable to do anything.
"Alex. I love you. Stay with me."
This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening, just wasn't. This wasn't real, it couldn't be. He didn't just realize that he wasn't angry with Joel but rather devastated that his own actions might have cost him the love of his life. He hadn't survived a car accident and a coma and had picked himself up, he hadn't made it through rehabilitation and the visions and self-doubts and separation – Charlie hadn't survived only due to Alex Reid to lose her now. This couldn't be happening right now, had to be a nightmare-
Code Blue. Code Blue.
He could still remember the sound of the same faceless, artificial voice while they raced his inanimate body down the corridors. Remembered the way Alex had followed, hard on their heels, fear and love and terror bright on her face. Standing next to her, watching her and hearing her but unable to touch her, Charlie had observed how they had done everything possible to save him. Now it was the other way round, and Alex was bleeding out under his hands. And Charlie was not allowing this, was not letting go of her, he wouldn't let her die-
He tore out the scissors, started the heart massage, and then Dawn shouted at him and Meggie shoved him aside and he was left to watch from the sidelines, helpless, shaking-
Charlie?
Worse than any nightmare: to turn around and see the ghost of your love stand behind you. Alex looked at him, her warm eyes huge and full of wonder, and Charlie wanted to rip out his heart and never feel again.
Beep.
We are all just fragile human beings counting each other's heartbeats.
Beep.
The feeling he got when he saw his sleep-walking patient was one of utter dread. Joel even skipped the puzzlement and shock. It felt unreal, like something had happened and he knew exactly that it had happened, but he couldn't find out what it had been.
Blood.
On the cast on his foot – damn well that he'd taken the bigger screw, if they were lucky there would be a way to salvage what was left of the man's ankle. And on his night gown, droplets like a spray of a small fountain.
Oh God.
Joel hadn't prayed for a long, long time. Now he found himself uttering a mantra, absolutely quiet. Please don't let anything have happened. Please. The man was still sound asleep. It couldn't be helped: he would have to be restrained the next time. Watching him had proven – no. It was because he had fallen asleep. Fuck, he hadn't meant to, he'd fully intended – but he'd already been exhausted when he had plucked the man out of the stream of flowing traffic, and then again when he had found him in the break room. Whatever had happened now, Joel would forever be responsible for it. And something had happened, he knew it as surely as he knew his own name.
Oh God.
Something was wrong. Utterly, terribly wrong, he could feel his heart contract in a way that had nothing to do with simple worry. The sight of the blood on the man's shirt was taking him to the brink of terror without even explaining why.
Code Blue. Code Blue.
Somewhere in this building, someone was dying. He could just hopebegpray that this person would be saved somehow. He had to take care of this patient first, find a way to put him under without the guy walking around in his sleep. Restraining him seemed like the only way now. It would hurt him to watch but there was no other way.
They had laughed about sleepwalking, long ago, Joel and his fellow students. Had laughed about a man who woke up in his neighbor's bed one morning, and a woman who went into the kitchen to prepare breakfast and in the morning couldn't explain why the table had been set already. Alex hadn't laughed, had been the only one who didn't joke around. He hadn't realized then but did, later. When he asked her what was wrong she had told him it had to be horrible, not being completely in control of oneself, and he had suddenly understood: for Alex, who always and ever had controlled every aspect of her life, the prospect of losing control was terrifying. Alex had always, always- Alex. The droplets looked dark-brown. Maybe it was only ketchup, maybe the man had wandered into the cafeteria or the kitchen. But deep inside, Joel knew the explanation was nothing as simple as that. Fear closed his throat and made him choke. He rushed to the next break room, yelled at a young nurse-in-training to keep watch and immediately contact him when the man started to move again, and raced off.
A crushing sense of foreboding pounded in his ears like blood. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault.
Beep.
Hearts could break so easily.
Beep.
She didn't even feel pain.
It was the strangest part, really. All she felt was an impact, a sudden sense of something being wrong. She looked down to see the scissors jutting out just below her collar bone. And then, an instinct that had been ingrained into the flesh of her body, into her muscles and the very core of her being, set in. Alex's medical training screamed: Stab wound. Her rationality supplied the rest. This is bad. Then, her legs gave way.
There was no pain. Just a sense of discomfort and an increasing feeling of dizziness taking over. The strength in her legs was the first to go, then it vanished from her entire body. Lifting her arms took an unbelievably enormous effort. She couldn't sit up, too weak, too exhausted. If she hadn't known that adrenaline was dulling the pain, allowing her for a few precious moments to continue on, she'd never even tried to move. But she knew she needed help, even if the form of the help she needed exactly was not completely clear to her. Her brain was fogging up, leaving her panting and unable to think. Every movement was so tiring she felt she might die. You will die.
Each thought felt like she was wading through ankle-deep mud. Even though-
Code Blue. Code Blue.
Suddenly she was in the OR and couldn't remember having entered. The din was familiar in her ears, the light, the numbers on the machine displays. This was her second home, here, she knew what she had to do. Dawn, Meggie and Charlie were already at the operating table, hiding the person on it from her view. She caught the glimpse of dark hair, a limp hand. This clearly was an emergency, every hand would be needed. The monitors were blinking frantically. Stab wound, somebody said. Close to the heart. Don't pull it out- Alex was a doctor, she knew the odds. They would have to work quickly, and they would have to start now. She lifted her hands to check for her mask – she couldn't feel the material on her face – and watched her hands pass right through her body, as if she was nothing but a reflection in water. She didn't even feel a chill. Shocked into stillness, she glanced around and saw the way her colleagues had started to work, asking and reaching behind them for tools, their faces masks of concentration. None of them even seemed to take notice of her. Stumbling backwards in utter astonishment Alex tried to catch herself on the door and passed right through it: suddenly she was staring at grey, dull material. Hesitantly she stretched out her hand. It passed through the door. Alex pushed aside all questions and entered the OR again, opened her mouth, determined to ask what the hell was going on-
And she caught a glimpse at the person on the table.
Strangely, she wasn't even surprised. Maybe she was unable to feel it because she was actually a ghost, Alex thought, close to having a hysterical laughing fit. Maybe it was just that suddenly so many things made sense. Like, everything. Like Charlie's weird story, or his behavior, his actions. So many things. So here she was, suddenly understanding him and wanting to hit him for having not told her earlier while, at the same time, she knew she hadn't believed him when he had finally told her, she hadn't believed him and how her blood pressure had fallen to a critical value and her blood was oozing red from under Meggie's fingers-
Well fuck.
Her eyes fixed on the still figure on the operating table, Alex realized she was dying. Dawn was giving orders, Meggie was working really fast but it wouldn't be fast enough. She would die without having resolved the issue with Joel, without ever having talked to Charlie-
Charlie.
He stood there, motionless, his lips moving as in prayer. Had she said his name? He wouldn't be able to see her, anyway-
Beep.
Beeeeep-
Beeeeeep-
Charlie turned around.
The irregular, hasty beeping turned into a single sound and the line on the monitor flattened.
Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep-