A/N: I know and I'm so sorry but things have been extremely crazy!
I just recently pulled a Parker which I followed up by an Eliot (if you read Working in The Market you know what I'm talking about) If not the simple version goes, I quit my job in a load of rage and quickly followed it up in a ball of anger which funnily enough led me to a new job. That has had me having to rearrange and reschedule pretty much everything and somehow ff time got nearly squeezed out, BUT I'm pushing hard and I've seemed to have found a pocket of time in the madness to fit it in. This might be a little short but I promise I'm trying hard and I appreciate everyone's support.
Chapter Fifty-Two
"Sir if you could wait in the WAITING room that would be wonderful." Bethany, a head nurse there, suggested.
Nate's pacing was driving her insane.
"Wha'?" He lifted his head to see what had been said.
"Come on Nate." Sarah spoke tiredly. "You can come sit with me."
She had been sleeping but it was kind of hard to miss the arrival of an ambulance outside your house.
"Alright" Nate relented as he gave the nurses station a distasteful glare.
"So…" No sooner than they sat was Nate bouncing a knee and she knew she'd have to
distract him if she wanted to stay sane herself. "Why don't you tell me a bit about yourself?"
Those words had Nate suspicious; she was acting as if it was tea time. "What do you want to know?"
"I don't know. How about your family? You got any family?" That topic seemed safe enough. Who didn't have family?
"My dad's running around out there somewhere." It was kind of pathetic that he didn't have an exact location.
"You never had a family of your own? No kids or…?" She shrugged figuring why not take the time to learn something about him.
"No… not anymore." He didn't care what she thought.
Besides Aaron already knew he was divorced.
After that Sarah fell silent as she tried to decide what to say.
An apology seemed like it would insult him. "You know Eliot says you're no good for each other."
"Does he now?" It didn't surprise him in the least that Eliot would say something like that.
"But he also said you aren't good for anyone else." She'd say it was a compliment coming from him.
"There aren't many people that can put up with me all day every day." Surely she knew that.
"And he does?" That was shocking.
"Heck no! He's usually first to chew me out." A slight smirk accompanied those words.
"So ya'll do fight a lot?" She didn't remember quite what Eliot had said but she knew it had come up.
"I wouldn't say fight but…" He sighed deeply as he tried to figure out what it was that he wanted to say. "It's hard ya know… It's just… it's hard."
"Anything worth having is worth fighting for." Sarah reminded.
She didn't like how emotionally exhausted he seemed.
"It's been a battle so far and most days I'm pretty sure he'd be better off without me." It was the truth.
"It worries him when you talk like that." It was something else she had seen in her brother that she never thought she would.
"With all of this and how many times we've been just on the edge of splitting he worries me."
If she wanted to talk worry they might as well talk about where they were sitting right now.
"But you said it yourself… you're on the edge. Obviously something's keeping you from going over." Sarah reasoned as she let out a slight yawn.
"Well yeah… I love the fool."
That made her smile as she thought back to Eliot's exact same declaration. Well almost exact, there was a slight difference between an idiot and a fool. "You should do what I do. When you get mad at him just think of the first time you told him you loved him and let the good overtake the bad."
"That was a day I'd rather not think about." Hostage situations didn't tend to make good memories.
"Then think about the first time he told you." The main point was finding good memories.
"He left me for four months that night." He didn't think her theory would work.
Her face was clearly quizzical. "Or you could just write a book of love don'ts and make a million."
"Are we that bad?" If he was a little meaner he'd laugh in her face for the suggestion.
"I don't think so but you both act it." In that way they were perfect for each other.
"Past experiences" The explanation was simple enough and truthful enough.
"Past is the operative word Nate… as in you're supposed to leave it there." If they couldn't let go of what was and had it was no wonder they were always fighting.
"We try but the odds never seem to be in our favor." The remark had him thinking of the plans they had just made that obviously weren't going to be followed through. "I just took the week actually and you see what that got me."
"What was it that happened?" All she did know was that Eliot was in a bad way.
"I don't know. We were talking about a place he wanted to go and the next thing I do know is he's on the ground and he's not answering me." The thought brought back ill feelings from Easter night; this night held too many similarities.
"How long do you think they'll be?" She wasn't a very patient person.
"It could be hours." It already felt like a dozen had passed. "The paramedics were talking about possible shock and respiratory distress."
"He couldn't breathe?!"
"By the time we got here he was on oxygen."
"I got news for Aaron… it is like Papa." Her voice went hollow and he was soon questioning it.
"What's like him?"
"Our granddaddy was as healthy as a horse and seeing as he was deployed three times he was damn proud of it. Just like Eliot his sick days were nearly nonexistent and you had to all but force him to call the day done, that was until one morning he was out for the count. He spent weeks suffering and struggling before they came up with cancer and by then there really wasn't much they could do about it."
Cancer was a bitch, or in the very least that was his opinion. "Was he the Bonanza lover or the one you spent the summers with?"
"Both, my mom's parents were the only grandma and grandpa we knew. My dad was raised by a single mother and she died before he even got married." She was pretty sure that could partly explain his cold nature.
"Do you have any Aunts or Uncles?" Eliot didn't talk much about family leaving him to believe there wasn't much of it.
"My dad's brother William and his wife Sheela. I've only seen Uncle Bill twice though
and I've yet to meet my cousins." It was safe to say they didn't keep in contact.
"So it really is just you three pretty much." He figured Eliot may have exaggerated the bit about it being just him and his siblings but Sarah's words were kind of supporting it.
"Hopefully it can stay that way." Another glance at the empty doorway had her patience fraying.
"Now don't you start giving up on him just yet." That was one thing he'd refuse to let her do.
"No… of course not, he's gonna make it through this. He's already proved that he can." Her faith was false.
Right now she was trying to decide if he'd go from starvation or one of these many falls.
"He has proved it and you should believe it. He's gonna come out the other end of this just in time to yell at you for even thinking you'd get rid of him." Maybe she was being reasonable for the situation but all he heard was negative.
"I'm not scared of him." Sarah did her best to lighten the mood and rid themselves of such a dark topic.
"Are you suggesting that I am?" There was a tease in her gaze but she didn't speak a word and that's how he left it.
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"How did they miss something like that?" asked an appalled nurse as she dabbed the sweat away from a focused brow.
"Better question is can we find it?" He didn't like the amount of blood he was staring down into. "Suction"
"You want to see those scans again?" came a voice from standby.
"I want to see that shrapnel." For how good they were doing him he was pretty much going in blind. "Clamp"
"Clamp" She repeated, passing it over as she shared a look with the woman across the way.
"Do we have origin?"
"Four months ago, entry point was mid right thigh." The memory of their 'machine' spoke. "It was labeled as a complete extraction."
"Or so they thought."
"You know what that means?" An acknowledging look met each member of his team before he spoke factually.
"We're going to get this man closed up just in time to open him again."
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The better half of twelve hours had passed and though Sarah had fallen asleep many ago he was still as alert and awake as ever.
He was a man of action and it was killing him to simply stand by and do nothing.
Parker had already advised him that she and Hardison were taking a trip back to Boston and he hadn't said anything against it.
He had given them all the week and he wasn't going to take it back so they could all wait by miserably in the hospital together.
He was already doing it for them.
Still minutes ticked by and he wished there was a window to focus some of his tension and energy out of.
Instead he picked up a pattern of taps on the handle of his chair thinking about what they'd do once Eliot was discharged because despite such a great amount of time passing by he knew they'd be leaving today. They had to, or at least that's what he was telling himself.
It was all he could do to keep a semblance of calm.
Any other conclusion would surely have him melting down or freaking out.
He really didn't do hospitals.
Anxiety took over as he heard the way the name was said. "That's me."
"Would you like to talk somewhere a little more private?"
His breathing picked up just as quickly as his heart stopped.
This wasn't happening again. It couldn't be happening again. Not to him. "Where is he?"
An exhausted sigh passed the surgeons lips as he said, "I've got some bad news for you."
