Thank you as always to all the lovely people who have taken the time to review this fic. Here's a nice speedy update for you to say thanks.
Jack's family? I'm inventing wildly. We know he has to have parents, but the rest is pure imagination.
1929. No blood transfusions. No IV fluids. No penicillin. At least, not according to Wikipedia, which indicates that all these medical wonders were still very much in the developmental stages. They could pump you full of morphine (or heroin) but other than that once they stopped the bleeding, you were pretty much on your own.
She had seen men shot before. Her hands had been stained with blood before. She had watch lives ebb away, knowing that there was nothing she could do to stop it. But she had never felt anything like this. The thought of losing Jack, of losing him now, after all they had been through, was, to borrow his words, unbearable. She trailed unheeded after the stretcher bearers until she was left standing alone and bereft on the docks, staring after the departing ambulance. She felt a tentative touch on her arm, and jumped slightly.
"Miss?" Dear Hugh, his own face white with shock, had come up alongside her. "I'll take you to him, if you want. I don't reckon they'll need us here now."
"Yes. Thank you, Hugh." A small corner of her mind was ashamed of the weakness in her voice, but it barely registered, drowned out by the single anguished cry of her heart and soul: "Jack!"
The journey in the car seemed to pass in a dream, and their arrival at the hospital was no different. Anxious attendants flocked around them until Hugh managed to explain that the blood wasn't hers. It was only at this point that she noticed the state she was in, and came as close to fainting as she had since her first days in France. With bloody hands she fumbled desperately to undo bloody clothes, fighting panic and nausea until a kindly nurse led her away to wash and change and await the clean clothing that Hugh had telephoned Dot to request, but finally she was clean again. After that, there was nothing left to do but wait.
After what seemed like an endless age of anxiety and confusion she was escorted into the room where Jack lay, still and quiet, in a hospital bed. His wound had been cleaned, stitched and bandaged. His own clothing had been removed, and he had been dressed in a white hospital gown. The bleeding had been stopped, but it might not be enough. If he had lost too much blood, the resulting shock might still kill him. If the wound became infected, it might still kill him. If, when he regained consciousness, an injudicious movement on his part caused the wound to reopen and haemorrhage, it might still kill him. She pulled a chair over to his bed and took his hand in hers. If he died while she was not at his side, it might just kill her.
She was shaken from her introspection by the arrival in the room of an older couple, escorted by a nurse. She'd never met them before, but she didn't need to see the couple's faces, or their expressions, to know who they were. She stumbled to her feet, and stepped away from the bed slightly.
"Mr. and Mrs. Robinson."
"You must be Miss Fisher." The woman's voice was choked, breathy with emotion, and she barely shifted her gaze from her son, but she held out her hand nonetheless. "Jack's told us so much about you."
Somehow, it had never occurred to her that Jack might have bothered mention her to his parents at all, let alone that he might have spoken of her at length, and she was momentarily taken aback. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you," she said eventually, and the woman nodded acknowledgement before letting go of her hand and going to sit by the bed. Her husband nodded to Phryne and went to stand at his wife's side, one hand on her shoulder. As Phryne had done, Mrs. Robinson took Jack's hand in hers.
"I'm here, son," she said softly. "Mama's here. Your dad too." She glanced over at Phryne. "And your Miss Fisher. You need to wake up so you can introduce us properly." She sobbed then, briefly, and raised his hand to her lips. "Wake up, son. Please wake up." Phryne moved over to the wall by the window, not wanting to intrude but not willing to leave either, and for a long time they remained like that, a silent tableau of sorrow.
"We lost his brother in the War." She hadn't even noticed Mr. Robinson coming over to stand next to her, his eyes still on his son. "I can still remember the day we got the letter. I can't tell you how grateful we were when Jack came home, but... he was different. Has been, ever since."
She nodded. "The War changed all of us."
"Yes, he mentioned once that you were there."
She nodded absently. "I joined a women's ambulance brigade in 1917. The things I saw were bad enough. The men..." she trailed off, shaking her head.
"He was wounded, several times," Mr. Robinson commented. "He wrote to us about the nurses. Your compassion, your courage. Thank you, for what you did."
"I never nursed Jack." She managed a slight smile, recalling one of the many nights they had sat talking together, the painful passage of their words eased by a few glasses of good, smooth whiskey. "We talked about it once, as much as people do. We were never posted anywhere near one another."
"But still, he talked to you. That's more than he's been willing to do with any of us." He paused for a moment. "You've been good for him, Miss Fisher, in a way that wife of his never was."
Phryne was still trying to frame a response to this when they were interrupted by the arrival of a nurse. "Visiting hours are over," she informed them. "You're welcome to come back tomorrow."
Mr. and Mrs. Robinson nodded, and Mr. Robinson stepped back over to his wife and son. Mrs. Robinson stood, and brushed Jack's hair back tenderly from his face before laying a kiss on his forehead. "Sleep well, son. Sleep's the best thing for you. I'll come back tomorrow, I promise."
"You'll get through this, son." Mr. Robinson laid a hand on Jack's shoulder. "You made it through the War; you can make it through this. You're a fighter, boy; always have been. So don't you stop fighting now."
The Robinsons left, and the nurse turned her attention to Phryne, who had been trying to escape notice by standing very still near the wall. "You too."
Phryne folded her arms and jutted her jaw. "I'm not leaving," she informed the woman simply.
"I'm sorry, Miss, but you can't stay."
Phryne said nothing, just stalked back over to the chair by the bed and sat in it, daring the nurse with her eyes to do something about it.
"Do I need to call a porter to escort you out?"
"Go right ahead. But I'm not going anywhere." Outwardly she wore a mask of icy imperiousness. Inwardly, her heart was pounding in fear and desperation. She knew she was, as Jack might put it, 'making a fuss', but she couldn't bear the thought of leaving him alone right now, and so she had no intention of doing so. The nurse pursed her lips and left, presumably in search of a porter, and Phryne gave a small gasp of relief at the moment of respite and leaned towards Jack, taking his hand once again. "I won't leave you alone, Jack, I swear. They'll have to drag me out kicking and screaming before I'll leave you. And even then I'll climb back in through the window."
Voices in the corridor, and the nurse returned with a large male attendant.
"Now then, Miss, visiting hours are over, and Nurse says you'll have to leave." She folded her arms and glared at him, and the man sighed and stepped towards her. "Please, Miss, I don't want to hurt you."
She raised an eyebrow at that and raked him with a disdainful gaze. "If I were you, young man, I'd be more worried about whether or not I might hurt you."
The porter scowled at the threat and reached down for her arm. She allowed herself to be dragged to her feet and turned towards the door, making sure she was a few steps away from the bed, and any danger of harming Jack, before she made her next move. Clasping her hands, she drove her elbow back into the porter's stomach with all the force she could muster, then, as he doubled over, brought the heel of her shoe down on his instep. Ignoring his cry of pain, and the shocked look on the nurse's face, she resumed her place by Jack's bed.
"I've a good mind to call the police!" the nurse snapped angrily.
That could be a problem, Phryne thought, but still she folded her arms. Jack would likely not approve of any of this, but she would happily listen to every word he had to say on the subject if he would only wake up and utter them. "Go ahead."
"That won't be necessary, Nurse," a familiar voice drawled from the doorway. "The Honourable Miss Phryne Fisher here was a nurse herself, during the War, and I'm happy for her to remain here as Inspector Robinson's personal attendant until such time as he regains consciousness."
The nurse had straightened to attention at the arrival of Doctor Macmillan, whilst the porter, still doubled over in pain, had tried to. "Yes, Doctor." She and the porter hurried from the room while Phryne gave her old friend a wan smile.
"Thank you."
"Rank hath its privileges. And I'm firmly of the opinion that the unconscious retain at least some awareness of what's going on around them. I doubt hearing you being escorted away in handcuffs would do the Inspector's heart rate any good at all."
That was something she hadn't thought of, and she swallowed, filled with remorse. "Do you think hearing all that will have upset him?"
In spite of herself, Mac smiled slightly. God, these two had it bad! And if what she had seen at the party the other night was anything to go by, they had finally realised it, as well. "I think you were a damn good nurse, and your instincts are spot on. He needs you, Phryne."
That drew the first of the sobs that had been building in the back of her throat since the moment she had seen Morgan emerge unexpectedly with his gun trained on Jack's back. "I can't bear to lose him, Mac. I love him so much..."
"Shush." Mac pulled her to her feet and into a warm and comforting embrace. "You won't lose him, sweetie. He's a fighter, or my name's not Elizabeth Macmillan."
...
Jack remained unconscious until the following evening, but at last awareness began to return. Pain, an insistent ache in his side that warned him to stay still unless he wanted more. Distant voices, indistinct. And then something that made him smile: a whiff of French perfume. He opened his eyes and turned his head.
"Phryne?"
It was barely a whisper, but it was enough to rouse her from her fitful doze, wrapped in a blanket Dot had found for her on her latest visit with food and clothing. Phryne had attended to the necessary and bathed, after a fashion, in the hospital's facilities but, true to her word, she had not otherwise left Jack's side.
"Jack?" She took his hand in both of hers, her eyes searching his face, meeting his puzzled, blurry gaze as she reassured herself that he really was awake and aware. After a moment she heaved an enormous sigh of relief. "Oh, Jack."
The sight of her face brought the memories back. "I was shot," he stated, and she nodded, laying a kiss on the back of his hand.
"You're in hospital. You're going to be just fine."
He smiled. "I know." His words were breathy, his dry throat and the rapidly worsening pain in his side making it hard to speak, but he had to get this out. "And then I'm going to make up for all the time we've lost."
