Return to Me
by Kadi
Rated T
Disclaimer: If only they were mine… Sadly, they are not. I'm only borrowing them for a time, I promise to return them!
Chapter 7 - Breathe Into Me
Sharon was sitting with Andy again when the nurse came in, pushing a computer console on a stand. There was a tray attached, on which a fresh IV and a syringe of medication lay. Sharon was curled in the chair beside his bed and leaned back as the Nurse moved around to his other side. The syringe and fresh IV bag were in hand. Sharon tilted her head speculatively. Her brows drew together. "What are you giving him?" She asked curiously, carefully.
"Morphine," she replied, checking the IV and hanging the new one. She made the switch easily. "Keeping his pain levels down help with his vitals. We don't want to overtax the heart."
Sharon sat up, quickly. "He can't have that." How much had they given him already? Her heart twisted painfully. Why hadn't she questioned it before now? "There should be a note in his file, no narcotics."
The Nurse, whose badge read Samantha, frowned at her. This was not the same nurse from earlier, the shift change had taken care of that. "I'm sorry, I was under the impression that the family was overseeing his care. Who are you?"
She felt as stricken as she knew she must look. No, she supposed, she wasn't family. "We're close," she stated instead. "Andy and I have been involved for several years, I can tell you that he wouldn't want narcotics put into his system." Her eyes narrowed with her rising ire. "Check the file," she snapped, as though dealing with an errant suspect or rookie.
Samantha sighed in exasperation. "Alright." She walked around and called up the patient's file and chart on the monitor. "There's nothing here. The family okayed his treatment plan."
"We'll see about that." Sharon reached for her phone. Nicole and Mark were back in the waiting room. "Nicole, honey, can you come back here?"
Nicole had been dozing quietly when her phone vibrated in her pocket. She sat up at seeing who the caller was. "Sharon? Is there a problem, is dad okay." Her stomach churned. "Did something happen?"
"No, there hasn't been a change. There's some confusion with the nurse." She glared at the woman as she spoke.
"Oh." Nicole breathed a sigh of relief. "I'm sorry. I guess there might be. I'll be right there." She had forgotten that the medical staff might question why Sharon was present, or why she would have questions about his condition. She slid her phone back in her pocket and looked up to find the others watching her. "The medical staff has questions… It's… " She glanced at the teenager who was watching her so closely. Nicole smiled gently. She didn't know him well, or at all, really. Their two families weren't exactly blended. Not yet, she supposed. "Everything is okay," she said for his benefit.
Back inside the ICU, Sharon disconnected her phone and leaned back in her seat a moment later. "Let's put it to his daughter."
When Nicole arrived, just a few minutes later, she had Mark with her. Andy's children stepped into the room and looked between the exasperated nurse and his glowering girlfriend. Nicole stepped forward, moving to the foot of her father's bed. "What's going on?"
Sharon sighed as she stood. "Morphine," she said simply. "Your father wouldn't want narcotics in his system, Nicole. I didn't think of it sooner, that's my fault."
"Okay," Mark spoke slowly. "I don't get it. We don't want him to be in pain?"
"Damn." Nicole sighed. She hadn't thought of it either. Now she realized what Sharon was saying, and glanced at her brother. "No, Mark, we don't. But dad… you know?"
Mark's realization was a little slower in coming. His eyes widened. "Crap. The whole recovery thing." He looked at the nurse, who wasn't following them. "Our dad is an alcoholic. He's been sober…"
"Sixteen years," Sharon supplied quietly. "It's been sixteen, almost seventeen years now. He takes his sobriety very seriously. Is there something else we can try?" She reached down and stroked his arm with the backs of her fingers. She glanced at his children, saw their guilt. "There should have been something in his file, he's been injured before." Although never this severely. She wondered if she was overstepping. Sharon shrugged at them. "It's up to you. I can't… I'm not…" Her jaw clenched. "I only know that he's refused it in the past."
Nicole turned to her brother. Why was this so hard? Neither of them had been prepared for making these kinds of decisions. Their father had been on the periphery of their lives for so long, it wasn't simple, even now that he was more involved. "Mark?"
"I don't know Nicky." He shrugged helplessly. "If he doesn't want it, then he doesn't want it. We can't exactly ask him," he added quietly.
With a sigh, Nicole turned back to study her father. She chewed on her lip while she considered their options. "Let's…" She hesitated. "Let's do something else," she decided at last. "At least until we can ask him."
"I'll have to call his treating physician," The nurse told them. "Get approval to change his medication." She checked his vitals, recorded the results. "We can delay his pain medication until we get a response."
Nicole nodded quietly. "Thank you." She folded her arms over her chest. "Also," She glanced at Sharon, whose gaze had not wavered from her father. "I want you to add my dad's girlfriend to the list of authorized decision makers, or whatever you call it. She gets information, she grants consent."
Sharon looked up, eyes wide with surprise. "Nicole, you really don't have to do—"
"Yes," she said. "I do. I owe you an apology for not already doing it. I'm sorry, Sharon. It just didn't occur to me that they wouldn't let you make decisions for dad. In a lot of ways, you know him better than we do." She glanced at the nurse again. "Okay?"
"I'll make note." The nurse finished entering the information in the chart, pausing to get the woman's full name, and then withdrew from the room.
After she was gone, Sharon sighed quietly. "Thank you." She shook her head. "I'm sorry if—"
"Don't be." Nicole's hand rested against the plastic of the footboard. "I guess it's important that we think about what dad would want, not just what he needs."
Since they were waiting for the doctor to approve a medication change, the intensive care nurses said nothing about the room being temporarily overcrowded. Twenty minutes after the change was requested, a Doctor stepped into the room, the nurse behind him.
He moved through the small room, to the opposite side of the bed where the wires and leads extended to the many machines monitoring and keeping him alive. His gaze swept first his patient, and then the family. "I'm doctor Mattheson," he explained, for the woman he hadn't spoken to before. It was the children he had conferred with following the surgery. "Since we're talking about changing the Lieutenant's medication, I think it's important that we also discuss next steps."
He had their attention now. Sharon's fingers slid inward along Andy's wrist, circling it loosely. She glanced at Nicole as she moved nearer to her, Mark replacing her at the foot of the bed. She drew a breath when neither of them spoke and turned her attention on the doctor. "What does that mean?" She asked.
The doctor gauged the room quickly. The children were deferring to the girlfriend. He made a mental note of that and focused his attention primarily on her. "It's been twelve hours," He stated. "We're halfway through the critical twenty-four hour period. There hasn't been any change, and that's good. Here's the problem, the longer he stays on the vent, the harder it is going to be to take him off of it." He indicated the officer's body, the dressings which covered his torso from midline toward his left side. "The first bullet entered here," he indicated the space between the fifth and sixth intercostals, "with its downward trajectory, it damaged the spleen which we removed, and nicked the descending aorta. That damage was repaired. The second bullet, that one was a little less serious. He was already falling at the time it hit him. That damage was muscular, and we repaired it too. Still, his body's had quite a shock. The strain on his heart during surgery was considerable. It's why we didn't take him off the vent afterward. He's had time to rest since then, and I think that it's important that we remove it before his body can become dependent upon it."
Sharon glanced at her lover's children and easily read the question in their eyes. "What are the risks," she voiced, letting her attention move back to the doctor. "If we remove the vent and his body isn't prepared to breathe on its own…"
Mattheson paused, he considered his words very carefully. "Then we put him back on it and we discuss the possibility of making some very hard decisions." He looked at each of them before letting his gaze move back to the woman nearest his patient. "His brain activity is good. That isn't in question, but if his body will not breathe on its own, then we'll need to talk about extended care options. We're not there yet," he assured them. "We'd try to ween him off it more slowly before we start those conversations."
She looked to Nicole and Mark again. "I won't make this decision alone," she said gently. "I think he'd want you both to weigh in as well."
"Maybe." Nicole smiled gently at her. "But dad loves you. I think he'd be okay with your choice." She chewed on the inside of her lip. "I know what I want, but I'm not sure that I know how to do what's best for him."
"Yeah." Mark agreed and let out a ragged sigh.
Her heart twisted painfully. Sharon nodded. "Okay." She turned her attention back to the doctor and considered him. Her gaze dropped to Andy. Her hand gently stroked his arm. "Remove it," She said. "He's strong. Stubborn even. He won't disappoint me."
The doctor nodded. "Alright then. We'll need you to step out. One of the nurses will come for you when we've finished."
Anxiety seized her heart at the thought of leaving him. Sharon leaned over the side of the bed and let her lips linger against his cheek. "I won't go far," she promised quietly. When she leaned back, she glanced a bit bashfully at his children before she gathered her purse and stepped out of the way so that they could have a moment with him before they returned to the waiting room.
When the three of them returned to the waiting room together, expectant faces turned toward them. Sharon sank into a chair on Rusty's other side, where he sat with Lieutenant Provenza. "They're taking him off the vent," she said.
"Then what happens?" Rusty looked at her, eyes filled with worry.
"We wait." Sharon shrugged. "It's all about the waiting."
"But that's good right," The teenager asked. He glanced between the two adults on either side of him. "Taking him off the vent, that's a good thing?"
"We don't know," Sharon smiled sadly. "They have to try it so that he doesn't become dependent on it. We're not going to know until it's done."
"He'll be alright." Provenza tapped the boy's arm. "Stubborn jackass. He doesn't know when to give up or stop. Case and point," He nodded toward the Captain.
Rusty nodded, he would agree with that. "Can I get you something," He asked quietly.
"No," she reached out and touched his arm, briefly. "Thank you, though." Sharon leaned back in her seat and let her head tip back against the wall behind her. Her eyes closed and she sighed quietly. Never had she felt more weary. It wasn't only fatigue, though, that had every muscle and joint in her body aching. She was adrift. She felt as though a part of her was missing, and she supposed that it was. She had known that she loved him, she never realized that she needed him so much.
She prided herself on always thinking that she was not a woman who needed a partner to feel complete. She lived alone for a long time, raised her children alone. When she felt the need for a partner, she had one, and she kept it casual. That was how Andy had come into her life to begin with. Then, somehow, he managed to sneak into her heart.
Sharon still didn't feel as though she needed a partner to survive. No, that was something she would do anyway. Her children needed her, and she was well accustomed with putting them at the center of her life, of turning her attention on family and career.
Without Andy she would simply feel empty. There would be a coldness in her that nothing else could touch. She exhaled quietly again and fought the moisture behind her eyes. It would be a loneliness that she hadn't realized she felt until Andy filled that part of her life, chased it away. The heart ached. The pain radiated dully through the rest of her body. Come back to me, she thought. Her eyes opened and she gazed toward his children. Come back to us.
On the wall in the mostly silent waiting room, a clock ticked slowly. The sound seemed to echo in the room. Seconds and minutes, passing by while they waited for news. It dragged by until frustration at the slowly moving moments began to build. Mark stood to pace, hands in his pockets. Sharon was struck by how much like his father he was, and wondered if he knew.
She was thinking about the similarities when the nurse, Samantha, stepped into the room. Her eyes circled the room. She spotted the family and started toward them. "You can come back," she told them. "We're done." She paused, then added with a small smile, "he's breathing on his own."
"See." Provenza grunted. "Stubborn."
Sharon smiled at him. "Well, he wouldn't dream of leaving you on your own."
From where he sat, Rusty was nodding slowly. "The bromance must live on."
Sharon snorted and chuckled quietly. "Yes, although I never quite thought of it like that."
Provenza grunted at them. "I'll remember this."
She was sure that he would. Sharon leaned forward in her seat. "Go ahead," she told Mark and Nicole. "I can wait. I think I should keep an eye on these two anyway. I've left them unattended long enough as it is."
"We won't be long." Nicole said, but smiled gratefully as she and Mark made to follow the nurse.
"Take your time," Sharon glanced at the teenager and Lieutenant. "They need supervision." She wanted the opportunity to coax Rusty into going back with her. After he'd seen Andy, she would send him home. She didn't want him spending another full day at the hospital, he'd already been there all night.
Rusty looked at the Lieutenant. "We need supervision, but she's been naughty. Explain that one?"
"Hypocrisy," he stated. "That is what we call hypocrisy, my boy." Provenza tilted his head. "It could also be said that we might have been a bad influence on her. She never broke any rules before."
"That you know of," Rusty said.
"True," he nodded. "But unlikely."
"The argument could be made that you've been a good influence on her," Rusty said.
"No doubt by many people, far and wide," Provenza snorted.
"Oh god," Sharon groaned quietly and closed her eyes again. She thought that Rusty and Andy could be a bit much, it was nothing compared to the teenager and older Lieutenant. Perhaps it was simply time to admit that she was outnumbered, by all the men in her life.
Rusty slanted a look at her. He supposed that annoying her was better than seeing her look so lost. He leaned back in his chair and nudged her shoulder. When she opened her eyes and looked at him, he flashed a small smile. "Are you sure you don't need anything?"
She nodded and hummed. "I'm sure, honey. But I think you've been here too long. When Mark and Nicole get back, I'd like you to go with me for a few minutes. Then I want you to go home," her brows lifted, she gave him a pointed look. "Shower, sleep, then if you want to come back you can, but I would really like for you to get away from here for a little while, Rusty."
He frowned at her. "Sharon, what about you? I don't want to leave you here by yourself, and you know, what if something happens?" He shifted in his seat, he didn't want to come out and say it, but what if something changed and he wasn't there. What if he missed it? Or she needed him. "I think I should stay—"
"No," Sharon smiled gently at him. "Rusty, please?" Her fingers slid across the arm of her chair to brush his arm. "I don't want to have to worry about you too," she said. "I'll be fine. I'm not ready to leave yet." Her head tilted and she tried a different tactic. "Maybe when you came back later this afternoon, you could bring food from the cafe near the apartment. That place we both like?"
He sighed, knowing when he was beaten. Rusty nodded. "Yeah, okay. I'll go." He paused. "After I see him?" He was nervous about that.
"After," she agreed, and touched his arm again before leaning back to close her eyes once more.
On his other side, the Lieutenant tapped his arm. Rusty glanced toward him and sighed when the man nodded. Yep, he was definitely beaten. If he didn't go, he'd have both of them to deal with. That was never of the good. Rusty decided it was just as well, he'd bring Sharon a change of clothes, and maybe run an errand or two for the Lieutenant while he was at it. Someone had to keep an eye on them. Buzz had gone home to shower but would be back soon, Rusty resolved to ask him what else he should do. For now, it was still all about the waiting.
