Emily could hear her heart beating hard in her ears as the paramedics did their best to stop her bleeding, speeding toward the nearest hospital. Her dark eyes were staring straight up, her pupils dilated as she tried to process everything going on around her.
Her fiancé was crying beside her, unable to hold her hand.
She had lost her arm.
The firefighters had seen the limb stuck in a wreck of metal, the men immediately helping the two injured agents up the hill and away from the accident before the car exploded.
She had lost her arm.
Her head slightly lolled to one side as they trapped an oxygen mask over her face, looking to the man she had fallen in love with.
Hotch fought the EMT who tried to check his head wound, wanting to keep his eyes on his fiancé the entire time. "Get off of me!" he bellowed, fighting off her hands. "I'm fine!"
"You may have serious head trauma, agent." The scared woman had learned in the beginning of their trip to address each patient as 'agent'.
"Really? You don't think it's best to concentrate on the woman missing an arm?" His tone was harsh, he knew, and he watched the medic flinch. "She's losing blood! Help her!"
Emily took a deep breath of the oxygen she was being given as she felt the ambulance screech to a halt.
She had lost her arm.
...
Hotch paced angrily up and down the hospital's hallway for a good forty minutes before sitting himself down in an empty chair. It was plastic and it was cold, and he finally broke down.
The love of his life had lost her arm; she lost her fucking arm. He had never experienced a crash so bad that someone lost a god damn limb.
He angrily raked his fingers through his hair and caught a few chunks of glass, snatching them between the pads of his fingers and throwing them against the wall.
If she made it through her surgery - Hotch gulped at the morbid thought - how was he going to help her? How could he help her learn everything she needed to learn, tying her shoe, putting on her clothes, holding her soon-to-be stepson with one hand?
It was her right arm that had been torn off - ripped right off underneath her elbow - and Hotch shuddered.
She'd have to learn how to write again with her left hand, how to hold a pen and how to type.
And she wouldn't be allowed back on the job.
Hotch huffed before pulling out his phone, sending a quick mass text to his team telling them what happened.
He needed to call his son.
It was as if he were watching himself type in the number and press the phone against his ear, his coarse fingers running over his temples.
"Aaron?"
Hotch firmly nodded his head. "Haley," he said strongly, his eyes chancing a look up at the door that led to his finance's surgery room. "Hey."
The blond frowned at the tone of the older man. "Aaron, what's wrong?"
His breath caught in his throat, his eyes still glued to the door beginning to water. "Haley..."
She sat up, leaving her laughing son to play with her new husband so she could walk into the kitchen. "Aaron what is it?" Haley's heart broke when she heard him start to cry, something he had done only four times in their entire marriage. "Please tell me. What's wrong?"
Hotch's head bowed as he cried. "There was an accident."
Haley's jaw dropped.
"We were in the car and a truck came barreling at us out of nowhere," he breathed, sending a short prayer up to God as he thought about the woman in surgery. "I have a concussion, it's nothing. But Emily..."
The blond mother of one held her breath, her eyes stinging with tears at the cries from her ex she heard on the other end of the phone.
Hotch put his head in his free hand and let a sob rip from his chest. "The fucking car blew up," he cried, shaking his head. "She lost her arm, Haley. We rolled and it got stuck and she just lost it."
She could feel the tears in her eyes start to fall down her cheeks, her chin trembling at the thought of the friendly woman having such a tragedy happen.
She had lost her arm.
"Aaron," she whispered, turning in her kitchen and looking out to her son smiling to the new father figure in his life. "Aaron, I'm so sorry. Is she ok?" Haley shook her head, swallowing past the lump in her throat. "Is she alive?"
Hotch sucked in a breath. "She's been in surgery for a while. She made it through the ambulance ride on the way here, but she lost a lot of blood." So much blood.
Haley slowly nodded her head. "Well do you want us to come to the hospital? Jack's really missed you both and maybe it'll be good for Emily."
The Unit Chief listened to his ex with pained ears. "I don't know if she'll make it through surgery," he husked. "Please don't come." He couldn't have his son see him this way.
"Can we do anything?"
He looked up at the sound of a door swinging open, his heart dropping when the agent saw it was just a nurse making her rounds through the hall. "I don't know. I'll call you with an update."
Haley nodded against the phone, her hand over her heart as she watched her son wave to her from the next room. "Tell her we love her," the blond whispered. "She'll be ok."
...
Six hours and twenty-nine minutes later, the chocolate eyed agent lay awake in her hospital bed, eyes glassy from the medication and mouth dry.
Her left hand clenched before traveling across her body, inching up the bed she lay on as she tried to find where her arm would begin. Every inch her fingers would travel, her eyes would tear up, and she took in a shuddering breath when she finally reached her shoulder.
She had lost her arm.
