This is literally like a drabble. TheFridgeLovesFood you are fudging welcome. Also learn how to prompt yo this took me five minutes to write. (i'm kidding I love your reviews please don't stop they give me life)
I love aalllllllll your reviews. Everybody's. This collection wouldn't be a thing without them.
Even though this sucks ass. Like. Fuck. I don't even think it makes sense, but I have about four hundred pages of eighteenth century literature that I'm supposed to be reading.
My English grade is digging a very deep grave right now. You are welcome.
Prompt: The Fridge Loves Food:This idea stuck in my head…(insert self deprecation...seriously stop your writing is great) I got it after last night's episode (4x01) after Jay smacked wix in the window of the car. That looked great but I can't think of anything other than how his arm busted through glass and he isn't injured after that.
Yeah, lol, me neither. Like come on people...just a little bit of blood?
A scratch? A nick? A severed artery? ;D
Picks up right after Jay smashes the window.
"How's everything going?"
Jays P.O.V.
"Nice job Jay."
I don't bother responding, choosing rather to let my lungs catch up to themselves. The rest of the team converges around us, Connor being shoved into the back of an arriving squad car.
It starts as I turn towards the cars. A slight tingling in my hand, aggressively spreading from the tips of my fingers to my wrist and eventually shooting up my arm. The sensation quickly turns to numbness and suddenly it's like I don't have a left arm. My shoulder aches but for some weird reason I don't find this alarming. I did hit that car pretty hard.
I could blame it on the adrenaline. My whole body feels heavy, like suddenly my tac vest and boots have been soaked in water. The sounds of the guys conversations fade out to a nice low hum. A bit of confusion sets in, clouding my mind.
The last time I came off adrenaline and felt like this I had been shot. But no shots were fired. I certainly didn't hear any shots fired. Did I?
My heavy feet pause in their shuffled step.
"Adam." Somebody calls. Or slurs rather. I think it was me. I honestly can't tell anymore. My heart feels all fluttery in my chest and the sun keeps blinking out. In between the random losses of vision I notice Ruzek turn. His face becomes shocked. Then concerned. More like panicked. I open my mouth with the intention of saying something- a plea for help I think.
The breath rushes from my lungs and the ground suddenly tilts sideways. The fluttery feeling in my chest increased tenfold and I have the vague notion that I might be dying before all thoughts of reality leave my head and the sun extinguishes itself once more.
Adams P.O.V.
"Ad'm." Head turning towards the soft voice, my eyes locate Jay. Instantly alarm flows through me, my hand instinctively twitching for my gun although no threat is currently placing us in imminent danger. I take a step closer though.
Because if the swaying and playing complexion aren't an indication of duress, then the blood steadily flowing down his arm is. And it's not just a little blood either. It's literally streaming of his fingertips.
I want to rush forward, to grab him by the shoulders and sit him down before he passes out like he's guaranteed to do. His eyes droop, head nodding every time he blinks for too long and his skin has become stark white. I remember to be careful though. Last time I touched Jay when he was out of it I almost got a broken face.
"Hey Halstead you alright?" The words are said louder than needed, but it's a redundant question for anyone looking. The real purpose of speaking was simply to get people looking. Atwater, Olinski and Dawson all stop their conversation and in an almost comical movement turn around to stare.
Jay stumbles off the sidewalk and we all tense.
"Feel funny." He mumbles, voice breathy. He manages another step before listing sideways a little too far. Everyone lunges forward in a collective surge of worry, but I reach him first, just barely catching him under the shoulders before he hits the ground. Good thing too, because his head would've smacked the curb pretty good.
"What the hell happened?!" Alvins next to me, getting to his knees without sliding like I did. Together we lay the shivering body on the ground.
"His arm." I point out, ignoring the uselessness of the question. Kevin's calling for an ambulance from where he's situated at Jays head.
"From when he broke the window?" My partners struggling with his arm trying to wipe away enough blood so that he can see the wound.
"Must've been right? That guy didn't have anything else on him." Finally the wound is visible. Well. More like the problem is visible. Jay's pulse is quickly pushing more blood to cover the jagged glass.
"Shit kid." Al glances at me. "See if you can get him talking."
"Got it." I move, now crouching over his body to see his face. His eyes are rolled back but his pupils are still visible, as blown as they are.
"Ambo will be here in five." I nod, forced to shift again so my knees hold my weight, freeing my hands to allow me to hold Jays head still as he weakly tosses side to side.
"Uh Al...he's...um...well you wanted him talking right?" I look over at the older man who's busy tying his belt around Jays upper arm.
"What's he saying?" Olinski's fingers don't stop moving while he talk, the worn leather cinching tight.
"It's not English." Al shoots me an incredulous look before leaning forward to listen. After a moment he lifts his head.
"What is it?"
"It was Italian. But then he switched to German and then to something like Arabic." I glance at his blood covered arm.
"What about-"
"Best I could do was try and slow the blood flow to his arm. Piece of glance hit his brachial. It didn't sever it completely but if we put any pressure on it we could push the glass through his arm." There's sirens in the distance.
"He shouldn't have dropped that fast though." Al just shrugs.
"Rapid blood loss would push the body into severe shock a lot quicker than usual. Accompanied with the adrenaline dump...it's certainly possible."
'So why does it sound like you're convincing yourself.' I wonder. Suddenly there's a screeching of tires.
"The paramedics are here."
…
The gurney bursts through the E.R. doors. My feet struggle to match the paramedics pace and still not step on them. Brett's holding two fingers to a piece of soaked gauze while Gabby starts calling out gibberish words and phrases. I'm only allowed to be with gurney because I'm pushing and Sylvie needs to a stable grip on the piece of glass she's holding.
Jay for his part, is still conscious and muttering, head tossing back and forth while his labored breathing fogs the oxygen mask over his mouth.
Rhodes and Choi are receiving, both moving my friends prone body to the trauma bed. In the ambulance ride over Jay's skin had gotten increasingly paler. The more blood he lost the more delusional he became, voice fluctuating in volume and passion. That's about all I know because he switched languages every five words or so.
Choi is inspecting his elbow while Rhodes flicks a penlight across each eye.
"Pupils blown and unresponsive." He calls, spouting some more orders afterwards that send the nurses scurrying for supplies. Two hands are placed on the side of Halstead's neck, stilling the fidgeting man.
"Detective? It's Doctor Rhodes, do you remember me?" After no response is given he glances at Gabriela Dawson.
"Do we know what he's saying?" She shrugs, looking worried.
"At least five different languages, and when he does speak English all we can make out is his brother's name." Connor nods again.
"Maggie find Will, somebody call the O.R., tell them we're coming up. Hang two of O neg, another of plasma and make sure bypass is ready. Open full lines, we need to get his blood pressure back up or we're gonna lose him."
"Lose him?" I echo, nobody listening to me. Gabby grabs my arm and drags me to the side, both of us just avoiding getting run over by a cloud of medical professionals on their way out of the room. I just barely snag a glimpse of Jay before the gurneys pushes into the elevator. It looks as if he finally lost consciousness.
I choose to believe that thought, ignoring the voice in my head that whispers 'he'll never wake up.'
Jay's P.O.V.
Drugs suck. Not as much as waking up in a hospital bed, but they're close.
"Halstead?"
I groan as awareness fully makes its way through my body. I can't feel much, so I don't know what's hurt and what's not. Also my mouth tastes like dirty sandpaper and somebody stuffed my head full of cotton.
"Hey man, welcome back." I crack open my eyes lids to see Ruzek sitting in a chair by my bed. He's been whispering, which I think is a nice gesture until I try and move my right arm and find a very heavy weight preventing the action.
Slowly (because whatever they have me on just slows down everything, thought process included) I turn my head to see a mass of unruly red hair piled near my shoulder.
"He's been there since they brought you up to recovery. Guess he had about ten minutes left of a twenty hour shift when we called you. Was out like a light about five minutes in." He swallows. "He was the only thing that would calm you down.
Well that makes sense. Last time I was in Chicago with that amount of blood on my arms it was his, and I was seven, and my mom came home to find me screaming in a pool of his blood because the idiot was making me lunch and slipped and fell and stabbed himself with a chef's knife. All the other times I've dealt with blood loss, it was overseas.
Still, I actually manage a nod before my eyes start closing again. I want to let them but something's keeping in my semi aware state. Something's missing.
Someone.
I grunt, drawing Ruzek's attention once more.
"What?"
"'S Er'n?"
…
"I'm sorry."
"I know."
"I just-"
"I get it."
"I don't want you to think-"
"Erin. I said I get it. I'm not patronizing you. I do understand. It was save your adoptive father or sit next to your unconscious boyfriend who was going to be fine and was too doped up on drugs to do anything but drool and sleep."
She carefully pulls the jacket sleeve up my bad arm, wary of the bandages covering my skin. She flicks her eyes up to me, gratitude filling them. She takes a deep breath, and I brace myself for another onslaught of her beating herself up.
"Thank you, Jay. I mean that. You have no idea how important-"
"Erin." I duck to catch her eyes. "I like to think I have at least an inkling of an idea of how important he is to you." She smiles, nodding in acceptance. Her hands guide the soft black material around my bare skin, my good arm shoving its way inside a sleeve for some much needed warmth.
That's the problem with losing over six pints of blood. Even with four pints pumped back into you, you're cold. All. The damn. Time.
"This was close Jay."
"I didn't ask for the window to severe my artery." She glares at me as she drops to her knees, fixing my boots before lacing them up.
"I talked to Adam about what happened. What you were saying when they brought you in." Trepidation floods through me, closely followed by dread.
"I...I was talking? I thought…" She moves to the other boot.
"Apparently you were delusional, kept switching dialects. Italian, German, English, Russian. And that's just what they could identify. Al said there was something that sounded like Arabic?"
"Probably was." I murmur, trying to remember what I was thinking about. German is easy, just like the arabic and other persian/middle eastern languages that were most likely mixed in there. Afghanistan wasn't easy, and on one particular account where a bullet tore its way through my shoulder, the hospital they took me too was in Berlin. Italian though? And the Russian? I can't even think of a single day overseas I used the first dialect, and I was never hurt bad during that black op in Volograd…
There's a hand on my cheek, brushing the stubble that's grown in my two days of hospitalization.
"Hey, don't freak about it. It's not a big deal, you just surprised us is all." She raises an eyebrow. "That said I didn't know you were bilingual." I nod.
"I took German in high school, Italian I learned on my own through online courses because I really want to go to Venice and because Will told me I couldn't do it, so naturally I refused to give up until I was fluent just to prove him wrong. Everything else was part of...let's just say I needed it for the Rangers."
"Everything else..?" She questions.
"Slavic, Arabic, Farsi, Persian and a little Hebrew." Lindsay's eyes widen a little with each language named.
"Oh." She manages. I nod.
"Yeah it took a while." She smirks.
"What? No way. You probably did it over night. Learning languages is easy. Don't flatter yourself." I smile at her sarcasm, glad to see her slipping back to her normal smartass self. Standing, I ignore her suddenly watchful gaze. My body's stiff and sore, but my strength has returned tenfold from when I first woke up.
"I'm okay." She glares.
"I'll believe that when you have more color than the white sheets on my bed."
"High standard, isn't it?" She laughs, hooking one arm around my waist to guide me through the busy hospital.
"For the guy who learned seven languages overnight? Please. You'll be beet red before we even get to the car."
"How's that?" The nights chill hits me as we exit, making me shiver. She grins, all teeth and no mercy.
"Because Ruzek got a picture of you and Will cuddling together while asleep. And yes, I do have a copy."
Her laughter echoes across the dusty parking lot as the blood reddens my checks in an unavoidable blush of pure embarrassment.
"Good."
Literally the shortest thing with the cheesiest ending in the history of endings. In my defense I wrote this on a plane, so any mistakes regarding the accuracy of the information are mine.
Review! And as always, if you have a prompt, PM me or throw it in that review box as well!