"I don't understand, Gil, you said he was dead," Jessica said again, looking at him from the passenger seat.
Gil sighed. "I know that. I was wrong. I thought – I didn't feel a heartbeat. But does it matter?" He might still die.
"Just – drive faster."
He edged the accelerator down another quarter inch, streaking through a light just as it turned red. Someone blared their horn at him but the sound was lost to his siren. They sped through the streets, anticipation simultaneously lengthening each second and compressing the minutes so they arrived at Metro General before any of them were ready for what awaited them inside.
Gil led them to the reception. A terse conversation led them to the fourth floor nurses' station.
"I'm looking for Malcolm Bright, he was admitted with –"
"Gil!"
He turned to see Dani rising from a chair. Ignoring the nurse, he turned to her, but Jessica spoke first.
"How is he?"
Dani opened her mouth to speak but Gil caught the flicker of – was it fear? – that contorted her brows. She put her hands together.
"It's, em ... complicated. Edrisa has a private waiting room. We'll tell you everything in there."
"Oh God," Jessica muttered. Gil wrapped his arm around her shoulders and she leant into him. She was shaking again.
Edrisa was pale. She leapt to her feet as they entered, wringing her hands.
"JT with Quinley?" Gil asked, needing to fill the suddenly awkward silence as the Whitlys nervously sat.
"Yeah. He's processing him."
"I'm really glad you got him," Edrisa babbled. "And we got Katie – well, JT and Dani got Katie, I was kinda just there –"
Jessica raised a hand. "Excuse me, but can someone tell me how my son is?" She looked to Dani. "Is he in surgery?"
Dani and Edrisa exchanged a loaded glance.
"No, he's not."
Gil's stomach plummeted to the basement.
"Why not?"
Dani turned sombre eyes on him. "You should sit."
"Dani, just tell me. Is – did he –" he took a breath, – "did he die while we were on the way?"
Jessica made a strangled sound and covered her mouth with her hand.
"No, no he's still alive," Dani said quickly. She glanced to her clasped hands. "He ... he never shot himself. There was no bullet wound."
There was a beat of silence. Then Gil huffed a humourless laugh.
"What are you talking about? I saw it, he – his brains were –"
"That was me," Edrisa cut in, eyes tearful behind her glasses. "I did that. I made it look like he'd shot himself."
"I don't understand," Jessica said slowly.
"Are you saying," Ainsley managed, "that he, what, faked his death?"
Gil looked up at Dani and Edrisa, waiting for them to crack, to smile and laugh at the insanity of that idea and explain what the hell was going on.
They didn't.
"Yes," Edrisa said, not looking at them. "And I helped."
"He ... faked ..." Gil couldn't finish the sentence. The world tilted sharply. Dani had his arm in seconds, easing him down onto a chair. All that blood. The brain matter. Bits of bone. Splattered on the walls.
His stillness. The lack of heartbeat.
Fake?
The cop in him kept listening as they explained. Heard the name of the poison Malcolm had willingly injected himself with, heard the measures Edrisa had taken, first to complete the fiction, then to bring Bright back from the brink. He listened to the prognosis, that Bright was in the ICU under close watch, not able to breathe on his own yet. Dimly registered they could see him in a few hours if they got him stable. How it was still an if. If his breathing returned, if there was no lasting brain damage, if he survived the next twenty-four hours, if, if, if.
The rest of him, however, was floating. Lost in an internal silence that expanded for miles like a pristinely still ocean. Nothing could touch him here. It's where he went the day Jackie got her diagnosis. He simply existed. Emotionless. Utterly separate.
It was Jessica that broke the spell. She shattered the quiet following Edrisa's words with a laugh that belonged to the insane. A deranged cackle that threw her head back before it fell forward into her hands.
"He faked his death," she chuckled, voice low and gravelly. "And didn't tell us. Of course he did. That fucking – I can't believe –" She cut herself off with another alien giggle.
Ainsley's laughter joined hers. "Right? It's so – so Malcolm! Why would he tell us? God forbid we needed to know!"
Jessica nodded, fresh tears stealing mascara. "All those risks he took in that stupid job – what was one more? Why wouldn't he think he could survive the world's deadliest poison without side effects? Ha! Why didn't I think of this before? Why didn't – why –"
Her mirth choked on tears. She covered her face in her hands and didn't seem to breathe for a long moment. She just shook. Ainsley put a hand on her back, her own composure cracking as her mother fell apart. She turned into Ainsley, sobs heaving once more.
"I wish –" she gasped, clinging to her daughter like she was the very air she could barely breathe – "I wish I could still ground him!"
Ainsley laughed, the sound morphing into a sob in mid-air and Gil was on his feet before he meant to be. He ran a hand over his goatee, hesitating. They all looked at him. Waiting. Expecting.
He was out the door before anyone could speak. Down the hall, around the corner, into the stairwell. Down to the landing. Where the air vanished. His lungs heaved, searching for relief, but nothing came, nothing – there was nothing –
He was slumped in the corner before it returned. He gulped it in in drowning swallows, afraid it would desert him again. His vision slowly returned, fuzzy black spots dissipating. He closed his eyes. Forced himself to breathe in through his nose. Hold it. Out through the mouth.
Again.
He was shaking with tears before he could take another breath. Relief came in suffocating waves, trying vainly to soothe the wounds of the day. He hadn't lost him. Malcolm was alive. He was being treated. He could be okay. He could still be okay.
Gil blinked, not understanding the pain in his knuckles. He stared at the smear of blood on the wall beside him. The matching graze on his skin. Blinked again. Then he was punching for all he was worth, ramming both fists into the wall, twisting to his knees, denting the plaster, filling the white cracks with his own blood.
A firm hand on his shoulder stopped him. He jerked, looking up at Dani through blurry eyes. She sank down beside him, pulling his back against her chest, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. He let his hands flop to his lap. Let the tension in his back ease.
Dani didn't say anything. Just let him breathe. It wasn't supposed to be this way around. He was her boss. Her mentor. He was supposed to take care of her, make sure she was alright, that she felt safe ... but it just wasn't in him. Not then. He let her hold him, wishing for Jackie. Wishing for Malcolm. Wishing today had never happened.
"He faked it," he mumbled eventually.
"I know."
"I ... I held him."
"I know."
"I thought ..."
"I know, Gil."
"How could he?" Rage shook the syllables, and his fists.
Dani sighed against him. "I don't know, Gil. I've been thinking about it a lot. I think ... he doesn't know."
"Know what?" he almost spat.
"That we need him. That we'd miss him."
That brought him up short. His fury sputtered. Halted. Memories came in their wake, of landmines and hanging swords and EST machines. Of ribs cracked by a turnstile gate. Of a broken hand and dead eyes.
Suddenly the pattern didn't belong to the manic, stubborn side of the kid he almost lost. It wasn't an inability to wait for backup. It wasn't about saving victims.
At least, not all about that.
The other side of Malcolm, the side Gil always feared would resurface, reared behind his eyes. The side that had led him to hurt himself. The side that didn't eat, even when the medicines left him free to.
The side that had led Gil to a hospital room at three in the morning, where a weak, fragile Malcolm had lain, only hours after he had almost stopped his own heart.
Quantico hadn't trained it out of him. He hadn't outgrown it. It was still there, hiding in between smiles and sleepless nights. It had just changed its tactics. Convinced the kid it was noble as long as it served some wider purpose. Catch the killer. Save the next victim. No matter the costs.
"He should know," he said through gritted teeth. Another tear skipped over his lashes. "He should know."
"I know, Gil. I know. I just ... I get why he doesn't."
Gil slumped. He understood too. He just wished it wasn't true, wished it was something else, something a pill could fix, something he could fix. Something his anger could blame because he was too damn relieved, too deeply hurt and sorry to put any of this on Malcolm himself. The last words he'd said to him rang in his ears.
It's just math, Gil. Just math. One life, to save four. I know you'll never be able to forgive me for this. And I'm sorry.
He had no doubt Malcolm believed that. And that was the problem.
Gil slowly unfisted his hands. His knuckles stung, burning dimly at the movement. He raised one hand and patted Dani's arm.
"Thanks, Dani. I'm sorry."
She shook her head against him. "Nothing to apologise for, Gil. You good?"
He nodded, squeezing her wrist.
"Let's go see our boy."
