Chapter 33
"Jay!"
I threw the tarp back and dropped to my knees next to his body. His face was ashen, void of any healthy colour, and I couldn't tell if he was breathing. I took his face into my hands. He was cold, but when I lightly slapped his cheeks and called his name again, his eyes fluttered open and a soft breath escaped his lips.
"Kim, over here!" I bellowed and saw her come running. "Call an ambulance!"
She already had her radio in her hand. "This is 5021 Eddie, 10-1 officer down, I repeat, officer down. We need an ambo to 3130 South Racine, now!"
The reply, "Copy that 5021 Eddie, ambulance is en route," came through the radio as I simultaneously tried to keep Jay awake and pinpoint where all of the blood was coming from.
His phone lay on the ground by his hip in a pool of blood, completely shattered with a round hole in it. I saw a small piece of metal glint in the puddle. Jay had been shot. But the vast majority of the blood originated from the second bullet wound in the right side of his rib cage.
Kim kneeled next to me.
"From what I can see, it's a through and through in the thigh, and I can't tell if this one has an exit wound." I got Kim up to speed and ripped open Jay's shirt to get a better look, buttons flying everywhere.
Hastily, she took off her cardigan and folded it a few times. She handed it to me, and I pressed it over the wound.
"Jay! Jay, look at me," I pleaded. "Stay with me. Help is almost here."
"Talk to him, I'll do this," Kim told me calmly and laid her hand on top of mine to take over applying pressure to the wound.
I pulled my hand out from underneath hers and moved it up to cup Jay's head with both of my hands. "Jay, open your eyes," I insisted with urgency in my voice.
He heard me and opened them but struggled to focus his gaze. I could see his eyes searching and bent down closer to his head so he could see my face.
"H..., Hail..." His voice had no strength behind it and came out barely a whisper.
"I'm here, Jay. It'll be alright. Just hang on," I begged, and my voice broke on the last word as my throat closed up, and I blinked away the tears from my eyes.
Blue light bounced off the wall above us, and a wave of relief washed over me but evaporated again when I saw two patrol officers run through the yard with their guns drawn.
"Clear the house!" Kim yelled out to them and they nodded and complied.
Jay's eyes fell shut, and I patted his cheek a few times until they snapped open again. "Stay awake, Jay."
I heard more sirens and finally saw two paramedics carrying their gear race towards us. They were the same paramedics that had taken care of me on the first day I'd met Jay. I didn't remember their names.
Kim ran them through what we knew and moved out of the way to let the two women get to work. I glanced over at the blonde paramedic and our eyes connected. We looked at each other for just a second, but within that short moment, she saw the fear and urgency in my eyes that begged her to help Jay, and the determination in her wide blue eyes gave me a glimmer of hope and trust that maybe everything would be alright.
"We need to get him into the ambo right away. We'll have a look at him in there," the brunette paramedic concluded the second she'd come to a halt next to Jay.
Kim and I helped them roll him onto the stretcher. His face scrunched up in pain as he was being moved. Together, we carried him through the yard to the ambulance while I kept talking to him continuously.
Jay was loaded into the truck, and I jumped in with him without asking if it was okay because nothing and no one would have been able to keep me from staying with him at that moment. Just before the brunette paramedic slammed the doors shut, I caught a last glimpse of Kim standing outside. Her face mirrored the panic and worry in mine.
"What can I do?" I asked and read the paramedic's name tag, then grabbed a pair of rubber gloves and put them on as the vehicle sped off.
Brett swapped out Kim's cardigan for a piece of gauze before answering.
"Here, put this on him," she instructed me and handed me an oxygen mask, "and then put pressure here."
I held the mask onto Jay's nose and mouth and slid the elastic strap behind his head, then took over applying pressure to the wound while Brett placed an IV. She held up the bag to let the fluid run through the tube, then hung it on a hook on the wall.
Jay's eyes were still open, and his breathing was shallow and weak but regular. I stroked the thumb of my free hand over his cheek and lowered my head down to rest my forehead against his.
"Stay with me," I whispered, "stay with me."
A few silent seconds passed where nobody in the back of the ambulance moved or said anything. Only the continuous ring of the sirens, the humming of the vehicle's motor, and the rattling of objects around us were heard.
I moved my head a few inches away from Jay's face. He was pale as a sheet, his lips were completely void of colour, and his gaze was unfocused, but I could still see the fight in him, his will to survive.
He sucked in a ragged breath and then, without warning, his head slumped off to the side and his entire body went limp.
Brett's fingers shot to Jay's neck. "No pulse."
The words echoed back and forth in my head. The world around me seemed to slow down, and my brain couldn't process the onslaught of thoughts that were racing through it.
Brett started doing chest compressions on Jay's motionless body, and I began shaking my head. This wasn't real. This couldn't be real and wasn't happening.
I was wrenched out of my thoughts when the ambulance came to an abrupt stop and the doors flew open.
Half a dozen people in medical scrubs were gathered outside. Brett took a second to check for a pulse, then climbed on top of Jay and continued the chest compressions. Both of them were pulled out of the ambulance and rolled through the automatic doors into the hospital's ED while I followed closely behind. Brett and the second paramedic took turns giving the doctors all the information they needed.
I heard a female voice call out the word 'Baghdad', and Jay was rolled into a treatment room. The sliding doors were pulled shut in front of me, and I stood outside of the room watching the commotion inside.
A monitor was turned on, and I saw a horizontal, flat green line appear. A doctor with tan skin and black hair had taken over the resuscitation from Brett and was calling out orders to the nurses around him. My heart pounded in my chest, and my vision blurred up as tears shot to my eyes. I wiped them away hastily to not miss a single movement inside of the room.
"Jay, come back," I whispered nearly inaudibly. "Don't you dare leave like this. Come back."
Out of nowhere, a spike appeared on the monitor, then another and another. I pushed a sigh of relief out of my lungs and dropped my head. Only when I looked down at them, did I see how rapidly my hands were shaking. My hands and arms were covered in Jay's blood, and there were two huge stains on my jeans from when I had knelt in the puddle of blood.
"Hailey!" I heard someone yell my name in a panicked voice behind me and looked up. "What happened?" Will blurted out as he ran up to me.
"Will!" I gasped and took a step towards him. "Jay was shot. He flatlined on the ride here, but they just got him back," I managed to say in a trembling voice.
Will's eyes were wide with fear as he took in the scene in the treatment room. He slid the door open and wanted to walk into the room, but a nurse pushed him back.
"No, Will. Let them work," she told him gently but sternly. "Wait outside. He's in good hands."
She shut the door in his face. I could see in his expression how hard it was for him to have to watch and trust his colleagues with his brother's life instead of helping him himself. When he'd accepted that he couldn't help Jay, he looked down at me standing next to him and wrapped his arm around my shoulders. I responded by locking my arms around his waist. Will's frame and touch were so similar to Jay's that I felt a sharp ache pierce through my heart because it wasn't him.
Feeling helpless and terrified, Will and I stood in the hallway of the ED and silently supported each other as Jay hung on to his life by a thread right in front of us.
The glass doors were pulled open, and the hospital bed was pushed out. Brett and her partner came to stand next to us and explained what was happening.
I only heard fragments of what they were saying as I watched Jay get wheeled away.
"Got him back … bullet still inside … need to stop the bleeding … bringing him to the OR."
When his bed was pushed around a corner and I caught the last glimpse of Jay, it felt like an invisible hand reached into my chest and seized my heart, grasping it tightly, suffocating it, restricting it from beating properly. What if this was the last time I'd see him alive? I couldn't bear the thought of never seeing him again.
"Come on," Will murmured softly. "All we can do now is wait. Let's get you cleaned up in the meantime."
The two paramedics gave us comforting pats on the shoulders, and Will led me to a room with a seating area, a kitchenette and some lockers. He walked me through the room to a door in the very back that opened up to a bathroom. Inside, he positioned me in front of the sink, pulled my gloves off, and disposed of them in the bin, then turned the faucet on and began rinsing the blood off my hands. Silently, I watched the water turn red and the stains on my hands wash away.
"He'll make it," Will whispered.
I nodded stiffly. "He has to, he's strong." My voice came out weak.
I had reached a point of shock where I felt numb. My mind was blank, and my face was void of any emotion. And yet, one tear after another rolled down my cheeks. I had given up trying to wipe them away.
When my hands were clean, Will held a paper towel under the stream of water, wrung it out, and wiped it across a spot on my forehead.
"There," he concluded quietly and disposed of the now pink paper towel in the bin. "Wait here for a second."
He left the bathroom and returned a few moments later holding some scrubs and a large sweater, I assumed was his. He handed them to me and exited the bathroom to give me some privacy and time to change.
I pulled my jeans off and threw them in the bin. There was no hope of getting the stains out of them. I used more paper towels to clean some blood off my knees that had seeped through the jeans, then put on the pants Will had given me, and exchanged my jacket for his sweater. My top under the jacket had stayed clean.
"Thank you," I breathed when I walked up to Will waiting outside.
Considering that his brother had just been brought into the hospital without a heartbeat and the doctors had only just managed to get him back, Will was handling the situation rather calmly. I guessed that his job had trained him for these kinds of events, but I was sure that on the inside he was just as terrified of losing his brother as me.
"No problem," he replied and held the door open for me.
"Will!" a woman behind the main desk, wearing blue scrubs, called him over to her. "Jay is a fighter, he'll make it through this," she said when Will was standing in front of her. "I told his unit to wait in the private waiting room upstairs. Take as much time as you need or end your shift, whatever you want."
"Thank you, Maggie," Will acknowledged her words and moved towards the elevator.
Maggie studied my face with a caring expression on her features until I turned to follow Will.
Through its glass walls, I spotted Kim and Voight pacing around in the waiting room when we left the elevator and walked down the hallway. The steady stream of tears falling from my eyes had finally dried up, and I wiped away the last of them with the sleeve of the sweater before entering the room.
The two of them rushed towards us when we walked in.
"How is he?" Voight asked, concerned, and Kim pulled me into a hug.
"He's in surgery right now. They have to retrieve the bullet from his chest and stop the bleeding," Will informed them calmly. "I'll go and see how the surgery is going."
He rubbed his hand over my back, and I grabbed it to give it a small, comforting squeeze before he left the room.
Kim and I sat down while Voight slowly walked around the room.
His phone rang in his hand. "It's Adam," he noted and left the room to take the call.
"Adam and Vanessa are at the house, trying to figure out what happened. Patrol discovered a body in the kitchen when they cleared the house," Kim explained.
I nodded dolefully and a cold shiver ran down my spine, but I didn't need to know what had happened. The circumstances which had led to Jay being shot would be revealed soon enough. At this moment, my only focus and priority lay on Jay surviving.
In the far end of the hallway the doors to the elevator slid open, and Kevin and Zoe hurried out. When I saw them, I got up from my chair and waited for Zoe to rush towards me and throw her arms around me. Behind us, Kim quietly filled in Kevin.
Zoe's embrace and presence shattered my composure, and tears started flooding across my cheeks again as I sobbed onto her shoulder.
"He needs to make it through this!" I cried and sank back onto the chair, pulling Zoe with me who was still hugging me tightly. "I need more time with him, he has to make it. We need more time. We need more time." I repeated that sentence over and over again, becoming quieter each time until I heard it only in my head.
"He will," Zoe whispered and rocked us back and forth slowly. "And you will get more time with him."
She rocked me for a long time until my sobs eventually subsided, and my breathing became steady again.
Voight had returned and was talking to Kim and Kevin in a hushed voice in the far corner of the room.
I pulled my feet up onto the chair and slipped the large sweater over my knees, cocooning myself in its warmth. Zoe was gently rubbing her hand over my back.
Kim split off from the group and came to sit next to me, and after exchanging a few more words with Voigt, Kevin sat next to Zoe. The Sergeant stayed a few feet away from us and leaned his arm against the glass wall, staring in the direction of the ORs.
An underlying feeling of embarrassment for breaking down in front of everyone started creeping in as we sat in the room silently waiting. I rarely ever let myself cry in front of other people.
"Sorry for freaking out like that," I whispered to Zoe, looking at the smudges of my mascara on the shoulder of her white shirt.
She took my hand and held it in hers. "Don't apologise for that," she objected and her gaze softened. "It shows how much you love him."
Her last sentence sank in deep. Jay and I hadn't said those words to each other yet, but she was right. I did love him.
The minutes and hours ticked by, and I felt stuck in time. This nightmare needed to end. I longed to be able to fast forward time, escape the uncertainty, the suspense, the fear, but I was at its mercy and had no choice but to endure the wait.
When I saw the doctor who had worked on Jay upon his arrival round the corner, my insides constricted. His words would cement the path I would have to walk on. One path led to seeing Jay again, any thoughts of the other path were too hard to bear.
Frantically, I studied his face and tried to find just a small inkling of emotion in his expression as he walked up to the door but could detect neither relief nor sadness.
He opened the door and came to a stop in front of us.