On Jensen's second day in the hospital she decided to give some people a call. She started with Gemma, knowing that she would be the easiest to convince of her need to stay there. Jax got the second call, he seemed more than a little angry that she wasn't going to be home for a while but she managed to convince him to have Gemma take care of Abel and not worry about her safety as much. She convinced him to call off the dogs and send Kip home. He didn't sound happy with the idea but he agreed to give him a call. Her last call went to Liam and she bit her lip waiting for him to answer the phone.

"Jen?" Came his harsh voice that sounded clouded with sleep.

"Sorry I didn't mean to wake you up." She apologised. "How are you guys? Did they let you out of the hospital yet?"

"S' Okay." He yawned. "Russell got to go home yesterday but they wanted to keep me for observation apparently his head broke one of my ribs at a funny angle and they want to make sure it's not going to poke a hole through my stomach. How are the babies?"

"Liam, it's not good." Jensen mumbled.

"What are their names?"

"Liam, you aren't listening to me, they are really, really, sick. The doctors are saying that they are going to have life long central nervous damage. I don't even know what that means!"

"Jensen, just tell me their names." He demanded.

"Michael and Patrick, and Liam they are so small. Patrick is the smaller of the two. Last night he was having some problems breathing. They said its epilepsy. He's fine now but all the doctors would tell me was that he wasn't out of the woods."

"He's an O'Halloran, he won't be out of the woods until he's resting in a pine box."

"Don't say that Liam, don't even joke about it! I'm not kidding I still don't know if I'm coming home with one baby or two. You can't tell anyone about this. It will kill them."

"I know." He paused. "How long do they need to stay in the hospital?"

"I don't know, they say a week maybe longer. I'm going to stay up here with them. I can't leave them alone, not when their mother abandoned them already."

"What about Norma?"

"She's not doing so well either. I haven't been in to see her yet but there is a policeman outside her door at all times, he told me she's handcuffed to the bed. They're calling it reckless endangerment of a child. I guess she was beat up pretty bad, had to have emergency surgery when she came in. There won't be anymore babies."

"Well I guess that's one good thing, at least she wont be bothering us anymore."

"Yeah, I sorted it with CPS, they won't come looking at us for a while at least. I'll give Norma some money to stay away. Is it wrong that I'm upset she isn't dead? After all of that she managed to survive and I'm just mad that she chose to wake up after the anaesthesia wore off." Jensen lowered her voice as a group of nurses walked by her.

"Don't be mad that she lived, funerals are damn expensive." Liam joked.

"Stop Liam, it's not funny." Death jokes seemed incredibly poor taste while they were both in a hospital.

"All right, you need a week." She could hear him working out how everything was going to run without her there.

"Yeah, a couple of days to get the babies stronger and I'll be back. I don't want to be gone this long from Abel and Leo."

"Kay sis, you make sure those babies make it through."

"I'll try. I love you." She whispered.

"I know." Jensen rolled her eyes at the comment.

"Later, Han Solo." She laughed.

"Anytime Princess." She heard him chortle before she snapped the phone shut and looked over at a sleeping Half-Sack.

"So I'm getting the brush off because you're seeing Harrison Ford? Or this lump?" A familiar voice asked behind her. She turned to look at Leslie with a grin. "Because I'll be honest, I wouldn't be that mad if it's Harrison Ford, but this guy? Come on, we both know I'm better than him."

"Doctor Lawes," Jensen smiled as she put her hands on her hips. "Are you following me?"

"This is my place of work, I think it must be you following me, Ms O'Halloran."

"Oh I see," Jensen took a small step forward. "So tell me, is this a game you play with all the girls that walk through those doors?"

"Not all of them, just the pretty ones."

"Wow, another bad pickup line." She laughed.

"I know, what can I say, I'm a sucker for a sappy line it goes well with my boyish charm."

"Boyish charm you do have, I'll give you that."

"Look I have a break in about an hour, do you want to go grab a coffee, maybe a bite to eat? I've never tried it but I've heard that diner we went to last night does food too, not just coffee."

"Coffee and food? Watch out, that's starting to sound like a date."

"No, it is most certainly not a date, remember you have a boyfriend." He threw a look at Half-sack and grimaced. "Please just let me rest easy knowing it's not him." He pretended to beg.

"No, it's not him and Han Solo's my brother." Jensen raised her eyebrow, taunting him.

"Just another mystery to add to the pot."

"Hey, what can I say, it's part of my feminine mystique."

Leslie turned down a hall and left Jensen standing there with Half-Sack drooling on the plastic seat cushion. She sighed and roughly shook his shoulder.

"Kip!" She muttered. "Kip! Come on wake up!" She called slightly louder than before. It didn't work; he just kept bobbing his head with drool lolling out of his mouth. Jensen leaned forward and whispered in his ear. "Kip, he's got a gun, save me!" She giggled as his head popped up and he looked around his hand moving to the holster under his leather kutte.

"What the hell, Jensen, I could have killed you!" He complained as he wiped the sleep out if his eyes.

"Kip, you were sleeping, you couldn't have hurt a fly." Jensen laughed. "I called Jax, someone should be giving you a call to head back. I'm sure the guys need you back in Charming. I've heard they've got some sort of run this weekend."

"No don't do that! I can stay here; look I won't fall asleep again. Jax will kill me if he thinks I wasn't protecting you." Kip stood up.

"Stop! Kip, that is crazy, you can't just not fall asleep. Kip please, if I can get Jax to let you go back I need you to do it. I can't have you sitting here, watching my brother die."

"Don't say that."

"It's what's happening. Kip, Patrick probably won't make it and if he dies I can't keep up the charade I've been playing. When that happens, I'd rather do it alone. Please, I already made the call."

"Okay Jensen, but only if they tell me to leave."

"He probably already called and you were asleep." Jensen squared her jaw. "You weren't protecting a damn thing." She walked away with a huff.

Jensen felt like slime. She had just played on her dying brother, a boy she already felt would be more of a son to her than a brother. She had done it all because she liked having the attentions of some doctor and she was going to burn in a very special place in hell but she couldn't stop herself. Once the words had started it was as if they poured out of her mouth. And she should have felt awful but she couldn't make herself stop, she wanted to see Leslie Lawes again and the sole reason was because she could. She didn't even really like him.

When she finally walked back to Kip he was standing around, clearly waiting for her.

"So Clay called, yelled at me for why I hadn't already gotten my ass on the road." Kip ruffled his hands through the back of his hair.

"Then you should go." Jensen bit her lips together.

"Yeah, I guess." He shrugged before walking towards the elevator. He looked hurt; Jensen had yelled at him and ratted him out, got him in trouble. They were supposed to be friends, she was always nicer to him than the others and she had gone and bitched him out.

Jensen took her seat and sat there; trying to convince herself she didn't look as pathetic as she felt.

Jensen and Leslie danced around each other for the week that she was there. He would find her during his brakes and they would go to the diner. What they had was flirtatious and fun and she could be someone else, she could be someone else, she could forget about the birds, and the guns, and the gangs, she could be a normal person.

She didn't bother getting a hotel room. Jensen changed in her car and slept on the plastic chairs. She knew she must look like crap, she certainly felt like it. That was what made Leslie so interesting, he didn't focus on her haggard appearance. He cared about what she did, about her family, about her little boys. She wished she could be content to be with a man like Leslie, she had almost convinced herself she could be happy. By the end of the week she would wander the halls trying to bump into him.

They didn't go any farther than brief flirtation, passing glances and suggestive comments. Every time at the end of their dinner she would lean in closer, each time slightly closer than before but she would pull away right at the last second. This Jensen, the Jensen she made up, the one that roamed the halls of St. Vincent's Memorial Hospital, did not sleep with someone she just met, she didn't kiss players like Leslie, she was a good girl. The game was refreshing. And that was all she allowed herself to think of it as, a game.

They were talking over coffee the night before they were going to allow her to take the twins home. Jensen was giggling and felt as if there were no weight in her shoes. They were going to be fine; she was going to bring home two baby boys and the rest would all be okay.

She leaned her head ever so slightly closer to Leslie's, this time her eyes were trained on his lips and she had no intention of backing down.

"Leslie," She whispered.

"Yes."

"I think you've done it." She laughed softly.

"What have I done now?"

"Your cheesy lines and bad coffee, I think they have finally worked for you." Tilting her head forward even more so she watched as he moved to meet her.

Slowly their lips moved around each other in a dance they both knew too well. Her hands worked their way around his neck and she pulled him in tighter to her. It wasn't like kissing Jax, not like she had expected it to be, there was something soft and yielding in his manner that Jensen wasn't fond of. Jax was insistent, he was in charge and his kisses left her breathless, lips swollen from the ferocity of it all.

When they broke away Jensen smiled because she wasn't sure what else to do. At that exact moment several things happened all at once. She realised she wasn't the type for normal, normal didn't excite her, it didn't make her love, it made her content, she needed unusual, she needed danger, she needed passion fuelled by the uncertainty that was breathing. Birthdays had to mean more than a date on a calendar, they had to be a triumph worked for and earned. Each rotation of the earth was a treasure and every revolution around the sun was a victory. Leslie didn't understand that, he had been raised in a good home; he always had enough and never wanted for anything. She opened her mouth to voice her thoughts when her cell phone went off.

Jensen answered with a guilty look for taking the call just after she had kissed him. She listened to the voice on the other end before shakily closing the phone and rushing to her feet.

"I need to go." She muttered.

"Jensen what's wrong?" Leslie asked as he put a hand on her shoulder to stop her.

"Let me go!" Jensen yelled. "Patrick stopped breathing! I need to go!" She screamed as she ran out the door and across the street.

She flew across the hall and up the stairs. By the time she got to the NICU she was red faced and out of breath. She ran to the glass window and saw the doctors and nurses huddled around his incubator.

"Jensen!" Leslie called five minutes later as he entered the floor. "Are you okay?" Jensen couldn't take her eyes off her little baby boy. "Please, let me take care of you." He comforted as he put an arm around her waste.

Jensen snapped. Her hand flew out and she slapped him hard across the face.

"Don't touch me!" She yelled. "Don't, you dare come near me again!" Tears streamed down her face as she pushed him away. "I hate you! Don't ever even look at me again!" Spittle flew ever where as she yelled at him her fists beating against his chest as she fell into him slightly. "This is because of what we did! It's my fault!"

She pushed herself off him and ran away. She was acting childish and it was all because the guilt she had been repressing had hit her full force, as she looked at her helpless little brother, lying blue and unresponsive. He was innocent to the world and while he was counting on her protecting him she was off flirting with some stranger. She hated herself.

It took her five minutes of self-pity to realise that she had done it again. She had left her boy alone because she would rather avoid some man. She stood and wiped the tears off her face before making her way back onto the floor. Slowly she walked over to her brothers and watched as Patrick was placed back in his incubator with a tube running out of his mouth attached to a machine. She didn't know a lot about medicine or how things worked but she knew enough, had caught enough of her mother's soap operas to understand that it was keeping him alive.

"My baby." She muttered with her hand pressed against the glass. "My sweet baby boy, keep fighting, we are all fighting for you."

Jensen looked over at the doctor behind the glass and saw him talking to a nurse and point over to her. The nurse came around and led her into the same room she had first visited her babies. She waited silently, partially in shock, mostly defeated, every ounce of fight had drained out of her and she was left with a shell of a person. She stared bleakly at a spot on the floor.

"Ms O'Halloran?" A man in a white coat asked her with a soft voice.

Jensen looked up at the older man; his soft white hair wisped on top of his head and framed the wrinkles on his face. He looked friendly, he looked happy, but mostly he looked youthful despite his age spots. He reminded her of her grandfather, a young man trapped inside an old man's body. Such the opposite from herself at the moment, she felt older than dirt.

"Yes." she whispered still looking at the spot, afraid if she looked up it would become real.

"Ms O'Halloran. I am so terribly sorry -"

That was all Jensen needed to hear to start crying again. She leaned back in the chair and openly sobbed. She didn't care anymore who saw, she couldn't bring herself to stop even if she did. Jensen realised as much as she was crying over her baby she was crying over everything else in her life. Everything she had ever felt sad about, any injustice she had lived through, every awful name her father threw at her, every time she had to plead with the electric company for just one more day, and the days after that when she sat in the dark with her brother passing a can of cold baked beans. Everything she had ever experienced came out in the tears she had kept hidden since she was six years old. Decades of bad situations released through one exhaustingly selfish act.

The old man just stood there, patiently handing her tissue after tissue. He didn't try and stop her and she was grateful that he just let her cry. Finally she managed to control her tears and looked up at him, waiting for the news he carried.

"Ms O'Halloran, your nephew is very sick. His organs are seriously damaged due to all of the toxins he absorbed."

"I," she paused and took a steadying breath before starting again. "I thought he was getting better? The nurses told me his development rate was good. I was going to take them home tomorrow." She sniffled a little before running the tissue under her eyes again.

"Sometimes, this can happen. We did believe that his growth rate was promising however the quality of some of his organs is still a concern. Right now we are looking at his liver."

"Are you telling me his liver is failing and that's why this happened?" Jensen tried to ask with a brave face but it didn't really come out that way.

"Essentially yes." He nodded softly.

"Well can you do some sort of transplant? Aren't there drugs that can help this? I mean there has to be something we can do." Jensen panicked slightly.

"There are hospitals that perform infant liver transplants, unfortunately we don't."

"Well find one that does and get my child over to them!" Jensen's frustration was palpable.

"The problem we run into with that is the donor. The liver needs to be the appropriate size for the transplant to be successful."

Jensen looked out the window at her babies.

"Please, Doc, you need to tell me what to do here. I need to save this baby." It might have been the panic in her voice, or possibly the defeat but she could feel him shift and looked at him again.

"It is possible that someone in your family could donate a lobe of their liver to your brother." The doctor looked at her with a question in his eye.

"I can't, I already gave part of my liver to my mother." Jensen shook her head as she pulled her shirt up to show the scars. "I can, I can call my family." She whispered.

"I would suggest you do that and I will see about transporting him to another hospital. Patrick is type A negative, you would need a match to perform the transplant." The man stood up and left the room, giving her time to pluck her phone out of her bag.

The phone rang until Jensen was about to give up and call someone else when she heard him.

"Liam? We have a problem." She muttered.

Jensen stood at the foot of her mother's bed, watching her sleep. If Jensen didn't know better she would say her mom looked innocent. But she did know better and every time she let that woman into her life she only disappointed her. She harshly shook the end of her mother's bed to wake her up. Norma started and looked over at her daughter.

"Baby girl!" her mother cooed at her and Jensen just blinked at her. She didn't feel anything when she looked at Norma's bruised and splotchy face. She used to hate when her mother called her 'baby girl', she used to think that it was her mother's way of controlling her but now she just saw it as another addicts attempt to gain sympathy. This wasn't her mother, this was a stranger, and one she would be glad to be rid of.

"Don't" she shook her head. "Don't call me that. Don't call me anything, don't even talk. Are you happy now? You've never been this bad, you've never killed a child before. I want to know if you're happy."

"You know I can't control it, it's a sickness baby, I try but I get so lonely and sad thinking about you living some grand life in -"

"I said I didn't want to hear it. I don't want to hear your excuses. This is on you, you have condemned your son to death and I want to make sure you are happy. Patrick is dying; his liver is failing because you were drunk. They said you had drugs in your system when you came in. How dare you? How dare you kill your son? Because that is what you did the minute the needle hit your arm, you killed him and you used my money to do it. You're a murderer and I hope you are happy." Jensen shook her head slowly. "Liam can't save him, he's not a match." She fought the tears that came to her eyes. "Russell, Cate, Leo, none of them is a match. But do you know what kills me? Do you know why I really hope you are happy? Because I could save them, our blood type is a perfect match, but I already gave my liver to you. I wasted it on you and you go out and try to kill yourself and the lives you created. I never want to see you again." Jensen held up her hand as she saw her mother open her mouth to speak. "You will never call me again, you will not have any contact with your children, you will not see anymore money from me, you will die alone and I will not claim your body. You are dead to me. You have broken my heart again. You will watch your son die and then you will disappear. I used to spend my energy hating you, hating what you did to yourself, but I don't anymore, I am indifferent to your suffering. You will kill yourself one day, and I will be happy."

She heard her mother screaming at her as she walked away. Jensen couldn't be bothered to care anymore; she couldn't drum up even an iota of sympathy for the woman.