Thirteen

1:47 am

The time had hit an early time on the clock Jay had been admitted well over an hour or two ago, sometime around half past eleven and midnight, Erin had been admitted at 23:36, but Jay closed remember what time he had been admitted, he had only known the time she had because Will had told him. Erin had just been rushed into the OR, over half an hour ago, she had been on the operating table for some time, and Jay still laid on his gurney, he had given up waiting behind a fabric curtain. He had remembered who had told him to keep the wait on his leg an hour earlier, he had been seen and told him not, completely not to try and get up, but would that stop him, no it hadn't because he pulled himself up with the bars on the left side of the bed, to guide him to sitting before, he placed all of his weight on his non-injured leg and dragged his hurt leg against the floor. Without feeling the pain in his leg, he placed his weight on his injured leg before he screamed out in pain and collapsed to the ground in the middle of the ER corridor in front of the nurses' station.

"Arghhh!" Jay yelled as he put all his weight on his leg to pull the sheet away from the door, so he could see the entirety of the emergency room.

"Jay, I told you not to bear weight on your leg." Ethan ran over as he tried to treat his patient.

"Well no one would tell me about Erin, it's been hours," Jay told him.

Ethan had rushed over to Jay would have been lying on the floor with his leg collapsed in an uncomfortable position, the doctor had obtained a wheelchair nearby and proceeded to help him get into the chair, he had left in the corridor outside the trauma bay he had been in for a couple of hours, Jay had known that he was being transferred upstairs to a ward soon but he hadn't of known when.

"Jay?" Hank questioned from behind the ER doctor before Ethan had walked away from the reckless patient how could have caused himself to break his leg, not just have a hairline fracture.

"Hank, Hank, how's Erin, no one will tell me anything," Jay begged for information on the severely injured woman.

"No news, I ended up getting turfed out of the room that Erin was in back to the waiting room, I was coming to see Maggie, see if any news had come around, and then I heard you scream like a girl," Hank seriously talked, as he tried to make some happiness with a joke after, but neither of the pair left like laughing while they knew Erin was in grave danger.

"Oh okay," Jay spoke as he wished that he would have had more information about the young woman they both deeply cared about.

The attending doctor grabbed the handles to the wheelchair Jay was sitting in, instead of walking to the room that Jay was originally located in he started to walk with him away from his trauma room, and towards the lift.

"Where are we going?" Jay questioned as they moved further and further away from the trauma bay, with Hank trailing behind wanting to know how the younger detective he had worked with was.

"To get some answers before you break that leg of yours, Hank, you might as well come with us, I will see if I can leave you in the surgery waiting room area," Ethan mocked with concern knowing that it was the only way to stop him from doing something crazy.

5:23 am

Night had fallen and morning had risen. The sun began to echo its way into every room in the hospital, a honeydew of morning orange light. Erin was on an OR table, her heart was beating, and her body was failing to compete with the trauma, her high blood pressure was constant until her ruptured spleen had been lucky saved, with expert hands by Dr Crockett Marcel. After Hank had been behind Ethan when they found Jay crying out in pain because he tried to put all of his weight on his leg which he had known that he had fractured, they had been waiting hours to try to find out what was going on with Erin.

An hour before around half 4 in the morning had to moved from the theatre waiting area, because he needed to have it's his repeat obs taken, and more tests to check that he hadn't broken his leg or had any residual injuries that weren't noticed before, a nurse had told Jay that he had to be transferred to a ward, he had left Hank alone in the OR waiting for the area, as he was moved to a ward, he had resisted at first but Hank had told him that he should get some sleep, he does what the doctors and the nurses were asking. Jay had sent his brother home, he had told him he felt fine and that he wanted to just wait with Hank for an update on Erin, having just finished an 18-hour shift and then waiting around for an extra 4 hours because of his brother's car crash, he had gone home.

Hank was trying to be alone with his thoughts, he had always sort of loved Jay as Erin's boyfriend, friend, or whatever the hell they were to one another, he had been the first guy she had dated that he had truly approved of, not that he had ever told either of them that, he loved Erin so much, he had lost his entire family nearly, she was his only family that wasn't Olive or Daniel who was still here. Barely here. Hank hadn't moved in hours he hadn't heard any news since she had been rushed into the OR, he wanted to be the first to see her come out of the OR, he wanted to make sure she was okay, or as okay she could be, for someone who had almost been to hell and back in the space of 6 hours.

9:12 am

Erin had been in surgery for six hours when she had come back out of the OR, Hank had spent some time with her before he had gone to see Jay, but he had been asleep so he had returned to Erin's room in ICU, he had left a note with the nurse telling him that she had gotten out of surgery, she seemed to be okay, and that she was in a room in the ICU. Will had returned, opening his brother's hospital door coming back, later on, he had already gone to his brother's apartment and grabbed him some slack clothing.

"Hey bro, you look better this morning"

"What are you doing here? Will you need to go back home and get some sleep, you're working later on," Jay suggested to his mother.

"I got someone to take my shift, I needed to be with you, I could have lost you last night, you're the only family I have left Jay, I can't lose you as well, and I couldn't sleep, I needed to know you were okay too," Will mentioned.

"I'm okay Will, I got away lucky, it's Erin who is the one who is not doing good, can she possibly still be in surgery. I want to go back down and wait with Hank, I need to see if she had gotten out of surgery yet,"

"I know that she isn't doing the greatest, but I did get a text before I arrived here from a nurse text me saying Hank had left a note for you, that when you woke that there might be a certain person you might want to go see, " Will acknowledged.

"She's awake?" Jay questioned.

"No, she is under sedation, for now, her brain pressure is still unsteady so the trauma surgeon who was treating her is keeping her sedated until the pressure decreases, she is not out of the woods yet but she is stable for now," Will explained.

Will had driven the wheelchair that Jay had his leg propped up in, down to the ICU, where Hank slept sitting up on a chair while he held his daughter's hand. Jay sat beside Erin with his hand cupping hers.

"You have to wake Erin… I love you, I have always loved you, please wake up, come back to us," Jay begged.

The two days after her emergency surgery in her abdomen, she had lacerated her liver, it was minor but it had been bleeding into her chest cavity, while her spleen had ruptured which was what caused the masses of internal bleeding, the OR team managed to repair the ruptured. Her vitals had been stable for the past two days, she had been sedated because of her head injury. Erin had been rushed back into surgery from her ICU room because the pressure in her brain had been increasing rapidly.

Whole days had slowly crept by with Jay never leaving her side after he had been allowed to visit her after the emergency surgery to reduce the swelling on her brain from her brain bleed. He had refused to leave the first night that he was there and the staff eventually after a couple of days, stopped trying to get him to leave her hospital bed, never mind even getting him to leave to go home. The last week had been like hell for him, he had been discharged at the beginning of the week, two days after the accident because he had been cleared for major injuries but he knew that Erin had gotten the majority of the injuries, and he had come straight to see her, but no change had happened she had been in surgery earlier in the week. She had originally had had emergency surgery for a ruptured spleen and a lacerated liver which had made her code, but she had then that brain surgery two days later because the pressure was building upon her brain.

Jay had eventually slept in her room every night waiting and watching until she would wake up until his brother and Natalie had come to see him, and Erin to check on her progress, they had explained to him that she was in a coma, her body, her brain had done it to survive. Natalie and Will had both agreed that it was now the time to try to reduce the oxygen in her tube so they could try to wake her up and so she could breathe by herself from her coma, it was the best chance to see if she could breathe on her own again. They had tried to wake her, 2 days after the surgery but both her body and brain weren't strong enough to fight to breathe stably, so she had been sedated in an induced coma for a couple of days, to give her body and brain a chance to heal before she could be taken off the oxygen again.

"So today we are going to remove her tube and see if after being in a coma for 5 days has allowed her brain enough time to heal. If she can breathe on her own then the tube stays out but if we can't see any sign of her breathing on her own then the tube will have to go back in." Natalie directed.

"Yeah, I remember you said all that three days ago," Jay

"Okay, so it just wait and see then," Hank asked

"Yes, that's all we can do at the moment, wait and see if she is ready and strong enough to fight yet," She answered.

"Okay…" Hank spoke.

They began to take the tube out from her throat, she had disconnected the tube from the ventilator and turned the machine on standby. Will and Natalie had been in the room, he had removed the ties or tape that had held it perfectly in place so that she could breathe through the use of the ventilator. Natalie had begun to deflate the balloon that kept the tube in place inside her throat so that the ventilator could do its job of keeping her breathing and alive, once she had deflated the balloon Natalie gently started to pull the tube from her mouth, exiting completely out of her mouth. Jay stood with one crutch holding him up on his right side, as he held her right hand, rubbing the back of the palm of her hand, wishing that she would start to breathe on her own. Five days had passed since she had been in an induced coma from her brain bleed after the surgery to reduce the pressure building in her skull and on her brain.

"Come on Erin, you can do this, I need you to wake up" Hank begged.

"I won't forgive you if you never wake up, I should have been driving, so you better wake up," Jay had begun to get annoyed at her lack of progress as the guilt had hit him.

"Jay, it wasn't your fault, or Erin's or the driver of that Semi either, you couldn't have changed it," Hank told the younger detective as he knew from his face that the younger adult was feeling guilty over the accident.

"I can't help it, she needs to be okay, she only just came back, we were friends again…" Jay admitted.

They had taken the breathing tube out of her throat, the two doctors stayed with a watchful eye on the oxygen and stats of their patients, as her oxygen stats dropped from 99% to 93%, they were beginning to wonder that they would need to out the tube back into her throat, when they started to see the stats returning to normal, leaving out at 98%. Erin fluttered her eyes and coughed horrendously for a couple of minutes, she felt a hand holding hers, she had assumed that it had been Hank, but when her eyes fully opened she noticed that Jay was standing with a crutch and he had been the one holding her hand.

Will checked with a stethoscope her breathing, as Natalie checked her dressing on her abdomen, they had managed to keep scarring to a minimum, when they had started the surgery they had pinpointed the bleeds nearly immediately and she had one small scar that was sewn with stitches, which were ready to be removed, Natalie had removed those stitches and Will admitted that her breathing was perfect. Hank and Jay had stayed in the room while Will and Natalie informed them on the good news that she was okay, she was breathing perfectly on her own, and when they had removed her stitches from her stomach. Jay stayed holding and stroking her hand as she coughed and asked for some water for her extremely dry throat.

"How do you feel?" Hank asked as he sat with her alone after Jay had to get the full leg brace off his leg because it had shifted, so he was having a cast put on her lower leg instead.

"I feel alive at least, but I hurt everywhere, it hurts so much… Dad," Erin said as she exposed her whole heart to him, he had and always would be her Dad, she didn't care who was her biological dad, because the dad that loved her was Hank.

"I know Er, you don't have to do this without pain relief, you had three surgeries, Erin, your my daughter and I will do anything to make sure you are happy, and okay," Hank accepted her words that felt like the revelation of a lifetime, that she was his daughter, not from blood, but love, trust, and caring.

"I don't want to relapse again, I've been sober for years, I don't, I can't do it again," She broke down.

"It's different this time, the doctors could help you, I could, and know that Jay would help you too," Hank declared.

"Maybe," Erin spoke, as she gently hugged Hank after he stood and leant over her so they could hug without hurting her.

After a few hours, she had been in extreme pain but she still refused to take again, Hank and Jay had both explained to her that it was okay for her to take the pain relief and that no one would see her any differently. She refused drugs, trying to be strong, but with all the pain in her body she had let go of her emotions, tears rolled constantly own her face until Dr Marcel and Natalie had discussed with her to keep her on controlled amounts of pain relief, instead of taking all the pain away they had managed to get her something to dull the pain with, it had taken hours for her to admit that she couldn't do it without, she had been injuries almost everywhere, and it was either her screaming out in pain, or a dangerous plan of sedated which she might not wake up from, so she had accepted the help, but she was to be restricted to pain relief if she cope with the pain.