The prompt: "...a quote from the Alexi Murdoch song Orange Sky: 'My salvation lies in your love.'"
A/N: Warning: Potential character death (implied).
So this was a bit darker than my usual because I wanted to try writing angst. I listened to the Alexei Murdoch song in question repeatedly as I wrote it. You can find it on YouTube, if you want the ambiance.
He stands there, unable to look away, eyes locked on her unmoving form. His ability to function is severely impaired by exhaustion, and fear, and anger, and this overwhelming sense of pain. He feels like he's been drowning slowly for hours. Every time he breaks the surface, he's pushed beneath the crashing tides, another tidal wave of grief forcing him under. As long as she's not responding, there's no salvation coming down the line.
He was at work, in the middle of reading the latest casefile to hit his desk, when he got the call. He answered his phone distractedly. The conversation is pretty one-sided and lasts all of six minutes but the next few? They're a blur of action and Jeff doesn't remember a single second of it.
All he knows is that he made his way to the hospital in record time, parked haphazardly, and made it to the ER in one piece, barely. At some point, he called Shirley who informed Troy who informed Abed who informed Britta. He only knows this happened because two hours later, he looks around the waiting room, and realizes that they're all there and he has no idea when that happened.
It occurs to him later, in a rare moment of clarity, that he should call Pierce so he does. He's mostly glad he catches his voicemail.
It's been three days and he's on compassion leave from work. There are benefits, he discovers, to being a public servant. Decent pension and fighting on the side of angels aside, they offer things like compassionate leave instead of saying, 'sorry you're going through shit, but if you want to make partner, deal with it on your own fucking time' which he knows was the policy at his old firm because he heard Alan actually say that to Thompson.
He would give those benefits up in a millisecond if it meant that Annie would wake up.
It's been four months and he's back at work but there's something in him that's thisclose to being irrevocably broken. Annie's not responding to treatment and his world has continued to spin but his heart has mostly withered. It makes him think of winter and how everything looks pretty but dead. The glimmer of fresh snow adds a cold beauty to an otherwise barren landscape in those frozen months. Until Jeff has Annie back, until he can bask in the sunshine of her love, he's checked out, waiting for time to pass and the seasons to change.
The rest of the group doesn't seem to get it, not really, except maybe Abed. At least, not until he ends up yelling at Britta. It's an ugly scene in which Jeff manages to make telling them he loves them into something sick. Because he loves Annie more and differently and better than he loves them, than they love her and their love can't save him.
It's ugly and there's no picturesque snow coat to cover the desolation and lifelessness left afterward.