Chapter 8

The waiting room party had packed up and moved, from the surgical waiting room, to the Neurological Intensive Care waiting room. In spite of the fact that they had been eating all day long, there was still a substantial amount of food to pack up and take with them. The wives had really out done themselves but John had only eaten a fraction of his usual amount.

Two by two, Elise's extended family entered the room. Each group only stayed for a few moments, and then returned to the waiting room for the next two to go.

"That bad," Brandon's words, stumbled out of his mouth, as he pointed to himself, then gesturing toward Elise's room.

Joanie looked at her husband as tears started to trail down her face. "Actually you looked a lot worse than she does." She said, then started to moisten her lips with her tongue.

"Yeah dad, a lot worse," Jacob spoke up, a distant look on his face, "both of your eyes were black, and I don't mean bruised, black eyes. I mean both eyes and the area around them were black. And they didn't have time to shave your whole head, before the first operation they only shaved one side."

"Yeah and they didn't bandage it. You could see the dent in your head and they had these tubes, poked under the skin, sucking blood out into some test tubes," Johnny added.

"We were so horrible Brandon," Joanie sobbed. "We didn't know if you were going to make it through the night, and all we could do was laugh, because you looked so weird, with half of your head shaved on one side and half of your mustache, on the other side shaved off. Add the black eyes and it was worse, than any of those Halloween costume you've ever put together."

"Half?" Brandon questioned with a rather comical look on his face.

"Yeah," Joanie chuckled, "They shaved the other half of your mustache off a couple of days later, when they put the feeding tube in through your nose. They never did shave the other side of your head; they just evened it out after the hair started to grow back, where they shaved it.

Brandon let out one of his strangled laughs. "Good for laugh," he said, and then pulled his family to him, one at a time, using his one good hand.

"Dad, since Aunt Elise looks so much better that you did, does that mean things are going to be better for her, than it was for you?"

"Hope," Brandon answered. And the others seemed slightly relieved and encouraged by their story.

Roy sat close to the rest of his crewmates, while they waited to their take turn to see Elise, but their concerns were focused on John. There was little they could do for Elise, that was the Doctors job. They had all promised Elise, they would watch out for John, and they intended to do so.

Cap that went in with Roy, once the family had had their turn. Both were quick to see just how unmovable John was, as he sat at the bed side, holding Elise's hand and telling her he needed her to come back to him.

"You rest now, let the antibiotics do their thing and give all those brain vessels time to heal," John told her. "Then we're going to get you up and walking around. I already know all the places, where we can hide and make out, once you're up and around." John's chatter brought a smile to Roy, but Cap's thoughts were drawn to the envelope Elise slipped him secretively while John was showing his new nephews around the Squad.

Hank had expected something more from her before the surgery. The day after they were married, she had shown up at the station with three envelops to be placed in John's personal file. One was filled with all the legal documents surrounding their marriage and power of attorneys. She had told Hank then that her brother-in-law was famous for making claims, at times when the courts were not open to verify such documents, and she wanted John to have them available to him at any time. It was less than an hour later that Hank used them to keep said brother-in-law, from stopping John from sighing permission for the heart pacemaker Elise needed to save her life.

The second envelope was a letter to John, in case she didn't make it through the surgeries. She had said at the time that there was so much more she wanted to say, but what was in the envelope, was the best she was able to do at the time. Yeah, Hank knew, a new and longer letter would be coming his way, before her head surgery. And the envelope she handed him at the station was quite thick, he guessed at least ten to twelve pages were enclosed.

As Hank looked at the lifeless and totally unresponsive Elise, his mind reflected on the third Envelope. Elise had explained that it was a letter to herself, just in case she didn't remember after the surgery, that she had promised to set John free, if she made him unhappy. She had listed several possible and devastating outcomes from the surgery, including major personality change, loss of memory and more that Hank couldn't remember right now.

His job in accepting that letter was if he noticed she was making John unhappy, he was to make her read it. Hank was sure accepting the responsibility of that letter also meant accepting the responsibility of a divorce. Not something he wanted to have on his shoulders.

While Hank rubbed John's shoulders and talked to him of taking care of himself so that he would be able to take care of Elise, Roy filled a picture with water, and then a glass, and placed it on the bed side table, positioned within easy reach of his partner and friend.

As they left the room to join the others in the waiting room, Hank was sure his advice to take care of himself, had fallen on deaf ears. Elise was the most important thing in his life, and nothing else mattered at the moment, including his health and well being.

When Hank and Roy stepped into the waiting room, they found more eyes on them, than they had expected or felt comfortable with.

"Is he really planning to stay at her bedside until they stop the medications that are keeping her in the coma?" Patricia questioned, as spokesperson for Elise's family.

"Unless we can manage to convince him otherwise," Roy answered. He was planning to set up, some kind of a rotation for people to sit with Elise, but as he looked over the concerned expressions, on the faces in the room, Roy already knew, or at least thought he did, who John would and wouldn't allow to sit with Elise in his stead.

Chet, Marco, and Mike moved over to their Captain and Senior Paramedic.

"So how long do we wait before we go in there with a straight jacket and haul him out of there?" Chet was the first to ask.

"Thanks to all my nieces and nephews, I'm very practiced in the art of rocking someone to sleep, using real rocks when needed," Marco offered and only received a slight smile in return.

Everyone looked to Roy for his suggestion on how to solve the problem at hand. "Let's just keep talking to him and trying to persuade him for the time being. Once she gets through the worst of it, I'm sure he'll want to get some sleep, so he can be more attentive when she's allowed to wake up.

There was a steady rotation through Elise's room; Rachel was the first to offer to stay with Elise, so that John could get some rest. She knew better than to say the word, "sleep," to him.

"NO, I'm fine," John had insisted. "You have your children to look after, and they need you more than you need to be here."

Brandon managed to hobble over to Roy in the waiting room, "Help, me, in." He gestured toward the doors to the ICU unit. Roy was willing to do as he was asked and helped Brandon manipulate the doors, walking quietly at his side, as Brandon moved with great difficulty, worked his way to Elise's room. Once there he placed his good but shaky hand on John's shoulder.

"ME stay, you go."

John looked up at Brandon and then at Roy, before looking back at Brandon, "NO, this is my place. It's my right and my privilege to be here with my wife."

"Need rest."

"I'm a firefighter, I'm conditioned for activities much more strenuous than this. I'll be fine."

They worked their way back to the waiting room where anxious eyes were watching for them. Brandon simply shook his head negatively, as he was aided through the door.

The sisters turned their moist eyes to Roy, "He doesn't trust us does he," Vanessa asked with a voice broken by emotion. "Because of what we did, the decisions we made before she came here. He's not going to let us be alone with her is he?"

Roy knew she was right, but chose not to say anything, his silence spoke volumes.

"What does he think we'd do to her? She's our sister for heaven's sake, and we love her?" Vanessa questioned Roy as Patricia and Joanie just looked more and more devastated.

"So does he," Roy chose his words carefully. "More that life it's self. He loves your sister with every fiber of his being, and he's going to do everything in his power, to be there for her and help her through this."

Roy knew the rules and routine of the ICU, he'd spent more than his share of time in one or another at John's side. John would be required to leave the room for one hour during each shift change, to give the staff unencumbered access to their patient. The first thing John did after leaving Elsie room was to head for the bathroom. When he came out, Roy was waiting for him with something to eat, and then he sat next to him and encouraged him to actually eat it.

"Why don't you let me sit with her for a while," Roy offered. "Brackett offered you the couch in his office, to get some rest."

John broke from his normal mannerism and swallowed, all that was in his mouth, before he responded to his partner. "If it was JoAnne in there what would your answer be?"

Roy only looked at the floor, there were no words needed, both men already knew the answer to that question. "But," Roy recovered, "if it were JoAnne in there you would be at my side, reminding me, that if I didn't take care of myself I wouldn't be able to help her."

The evening was long, at Roy's suggestion, Cap sent the rest of the crew home to get some sleep, even he and Roy left for a few hours.

-0-

When they returned the next morning just before John would be asked to leave for the shift change routine, they found that Rachael had left, but then Roy knew she had picked up her children, but the rest of the family was still there.

Some of them were stretched out on the floor, with jackets folded under their heads for pillows. Brandon was sitting in a corner, resting his head back against the wall. Uncle Milton was sitting on the floor in another corner with his legs crossed in some form of meditation, Roy was sure it was a form of prayer. His wife sat silently and respectfully at his side. The sisters were pacing.

"How did it go after we left?" Hank was the diplomatic one who approached the sisters and spoke in a quiet voice to keep from waking those on the floor.

"There's been no change," Joanie answered, "they've just rolled her several times to keep her from getting bed sores, they can't sift her much though because of all the tubes and stuff. John actually moved to the other side of the bed, early this morning, I noticed that he actually rested his head on the side of the bed and closed his eyes for a while, but I don't think he slept.

"No, probably not," Roy had followed his captain's lead and was standing there in the conversation, a container of John's favorite Oatmeal in his hands.

"You know, when Elise was in that accident, the doctors told us that there was nothing they could do for her, and that they didn't think she'd make it through the night," Joanie began to try and explain their actions to John's friends. "When Brandon was injured, there was another doctor working at the hospital, they said he was a resident, just out of medical school. He and Elise were both determined to do something to help my husband, even if it was wrong. It was Elise who knew a doctor, who would come to us. And this, Dr. Miller, called and got him to fly out to our little hospital. Dr. Miller was killed by a drunk driver a few months after my husband returned home, and with Elise being the one injured . . . . I didn't realize it at the time, but I do now, we didn't have anyone, to give us hope and a possibility that she could be helped. They didn't even operate to take the debris out of her chest until two days after the accident. As I look back on things now they were so sure she was going to die. I'm surprised they even did that shock thing the three times her heart stopped."

Roy was beginning to understand where the sisters had been emotionally; at the time they made their choice, not to put Elise through more surgeries.

"When she stabilized after her chest surgery, my husband, He's the nurse that tried to drug her so we could take her back home, after her surgery."

"Anyway, Greg was telling us that she just needed time for her body to heal its self." Patricia added.

"They kept Brandon in a drugged sleep for a long time after his accident, to give his brain a chance to heal, and then his seizures stopped after a while." Joanie spoke again, "It made sense to do the same for Elise. We were just doing what we thought was best for her."

Roy could see all kinds of errors to their thinking, but he also realized that, without his training, and with the information they were being given by Greg, whom Roy now knew had ulterior motives, Roy could understand the choices they made, no matter how wrong they were.

When John stumbled through the waiting room and straight to the bathroom, Roy was encouraged by his calm appearance. Just like the day before, when John opened the door to come out of the bathroom, Roy was standing there quick to place the food in John's hand.

Roy and Hank each took one of John's arms and led him to a bench, where they all sat down and encouraged him to eat. When he was finished with the fruit laced oatmeal, it was Uncle Milton who had the magic words to say. He stepped up and handed John a rolled up towel, and Roy could see the hint of clean clothes inside. "I'm sure with your connections you can find a shower somewhere." The man spoke, with an added innuendo that one was needed. "My wife and I would love to stay at her side while you take care of your needs; Elise is the closest thing we have to a child of our own. We will look after her."

Roy didn't miss a beat and suggested his place for a shower, giving Uncle Milton a smile as they left, pulling John along with them before he changed his mind.

-0-

Once he'd showered at Roy's house, he was led to the guest bedroom to dress in his clean clothes. A few minutes later, Roy tapped on the door to check on him, when he didn't get a response; he opened up to find John was leaning against the back of a chair, fighting to keep his eyes open. Roy simply entered the room and helped his friend over to the bed and laid him down. All the while telling him, Elise was alright and they knew where to call if anything changed.

John slept well for several hours, and would have slept longer, if he hadn't been woke up but two young siblings fighting. They had forgotten that Uncle Johnny was still there.

Roy drove his friend back to the hospital, feeling grateful that he had gotten five hours of sleep. When they arrived Roy followed him to Elsie room, his goal to make sure his best friend had a glass of water at his side, for his long vigil. When they entered the room they found Elise on a cooling blanket, with another on top of her, her temperature was 103.8 and rising.

"Why wasn't I called," John spoke softly, so he wouldn't upset his wife, but his anger was well displayed.

"There was no reason to call you, her temperature going up was expected, that's why she is on antibiotics," Was the nurse's answer.

Roy watched as John growled at the nurse before he walked over to the bedside and repositioned a chair next to the bed then sat down. Then he watched in confusion as John removed a handkerchief that was tied around Elise's hand before taking her hand in his.

"Do you know why he ties the handkerchief around her hand whenever he leaves her side?" The nurse questioned Roy. "We took it off once and he got really angry with us."

"I have no idea," Roy explained. "This is the first I've noticed it, I'm usually outside, waiting with something for him to eat when he comes out."