Ignoring the pain that continued to plague him every time he so much as moved a fraction of an inch, Chris Larabee ran a hand through already tousled hair to get the sweat-dampened strands away from his face while simultaneously following after the men wheeling JD's stretcher towards the emergency room doors with one thought echoing through his mind.

It was not supposed to have gone down like this.

The job had seemed, at least at the outset, to be a simple one. Infiltrate Marco's gang. Persuade the man into a rash deal with a rival buyer that was, in reality, another group that had already been compromised by a fellow team. Catch the buy as it went down, and arrest those involved. It was never meant to become what it had-to turn into a situation that was unsalvageable. The inherent ease of the thing had been what had ultimately convinced him to include JD on the venture in the first place.

He should have known the kid wasn't ready.

Knowing there was very little he could do about that fact at the present moment had Chris' jaw tightening as he stepped back for just long enough to allow the stretcher to move through the doors first, before following behind. On the ambulance ride in, he had already taken care of contacting the rest of the team, and he had every reason to believe they would be arriving to check on JD themselves in mere moments flat. And no matter how much he may have wished to avoid the inevitable flurry of questions over exactly what had happened, Chris knew he owed it to the men he worked with to try, whether he truly wanted to or not.

He knew Ezra, in particular, would require a far more delicate touch than he had in him, given the man's initial reaction to being forced to sit on the bench while JD took the job that should have been his.

Determined to do the best he could to be there for his team, Chris forced any and all thoughts of his own comfort to the side, his attention turning towards JD once more as one of the men wheeling him in broke away from the stretcher to meet the two doctors headed to greet them. For a moment or two, he very nearly missed the familiarity of one of them in particular, the renewed burning pain that tore across his stomach every time he moved temporarily diverting his attention, and prompting him to shift the edge of his jacket to conceal the source of that discomfort to avoid diverting any medical attention from where it was needed most. He would have been blind to ignore the ringing in his ears, no doubt brought about by however much blood he had already lost on the ride in. But no matter what, he was resolved to remain as aware of his surroundings as he could, his attention turning back towards the doctors as the woman spoke, whatever it was that she said falling to the wayside as she met his gaze for the briefest of moments, and Chris felt his heart nearly stop inside his chest.

He knew her. And by all accounts of how the blood had drained from her face, it had not taken her all that much time to identify him, as well.

They had traveled down this road together, before.

…

This was a nightmare. She was dreaming. At any moment, Emma would wake from what was clearly an impromptu nap in an unoccupied on-call room, and find that everything that had caused her heart to stammer wildly against the cage of her ribs had never even occurred. JD was not being wheeled into the emergency room on a stretcher, blood staining his shirt-his jacket-his hands. It simply could not be happening, because if Emma knew one thing at all, she knew she could not survive something like this, again.

She could not stand to the side, helpless, as another man she loved bled to death before her very eyes.

Squeezing her eyes shut in the hopes that it would only prove what she wanted so fiercely to believe, Emma felt herself stumbling backwards, the sudden pressure of Nathan's hand against the small of her back likely the only thing that kept her standing as she opened her eyes, and forced herself to face reality once again as though she truly thought it might have changed.

It hadn't.

JD was still on the stretcher, unconscious behind the oxygen mask. Her heart was still strangling itself in her chest. And the man that stood behind her brother was still the very same person she had hoped never to see again.

"What-what happened?" She stammered, somehow registering that she needed to step to the side to allow the paramedics to wheel the stretcher towards the nearest open treatment bay, her entire body going taut as the act forced her to fall into step beside the man who had single handedly given her the worst day of her life just a few months ago.

She could ignore him, at least for the time being. She had to, because JD's life was on the line.

There simply were no other options.

"We're lookin' at multiple shots to the abdomen, and one to the left thigh. Pulse is thready, an' I kept losin' a BP in the field."

"He needs surgery."

"Needs to be stabilized first," Nathan countered, moving to take the position just vacated by the paramedic on JD's left, and drawing exam gloves onto each hand in the exact same motion, "Any meds given in the field?"

While the paramedic filled Nathan in on everything that had been done for JD thus far, Emma fought with everything she had to keep herself firmly rooted in the present, the knowledge that she would never be permitted to assist in her brother's treatment keeping her rooted in place, her fingers curling into a fist until she was forced to hold back a wince as her nails dug deeply into the skin of her palms. Panic was beginning to mingle with an almost overwhelming sense of frustration that she had been placed in this position once again. She was faced with losing her family. The very last person in her corner that stood a chance at keeping her accountable when all that she had wanted to do since Paul's death was disappear off the face of the Earth. And whether it was rational or not, Emma could not shake the feeling that the man standing in silence beside her, every bit as riveted upon JD's current prognosis as she was herself, was almost entirely to blame.

"Emma?"

"I-yeah?" Emma replied, shaking herself from her internal musings, and allowing her attention to shift towards Nathan as he and the paramedics shifted JD to the empty bed, and secured the position of the railing on either side. It suddenly became clear to her that they were getting ready to move him, and that he had paled still further, if that were even possible, since he had arrived. But before she could find some means of speaking past the fear that had started to claw its way around her throat like a vice, Emma found Nathan was standing right in front of her, his hand warm on her shoulder as he held her gaze and tried to reassure her as best he could.

"We're takin' him to the OR now. I think you know you can't come with."

"I-I know. I do. But-Nathan, I can't-I can't just leave him-"

"And you're not. I have him," Nathan assured, squeezing Emma's shoulder, and forcing himself to ignore how her eyes had started to shine with tears on the brink of spilling over. He couldn't even begin to understand what she was going through, and he would have been a liar to pretend he did not wish more than anything else that he could stay at her side to help her through whatever was to come. But if it was his family on the line, Nathan was also well aware that there was no one else he would rather have taking care of them than Emma Dunne.

He owed it to her to provide the same semblance of surety to her, whether she wanted to accept it or not.

"I have him, Emma. Nothing's gonna touch him on my watch."

Doing her best to manage a nod, Emma moved to the edge of the treatment bay along with her as yet silent companion, allowing Nathan to move past her with the stretcher, and ignoring every instinct she possessed that all but demanded she follow along after him. He had always been there for her, through every injury growing up, and every heartache. JD had scraped her up off the floor after Paul died, and brought her back to the world bit by bit when no one else could. And now that he was being wheeled away to a room that she did not dare allow herself to believe he would return from, Emma steeled herself to do the only thing she could do in the wake of the utter emptiness that being left behind when her brother's life was at stake had created.

She turned to the man standing at her side, ignoring how the twitch in his jaw only seemed to intensify as soon as she spoke, her attention only lingering on him for a second before she was turning on a heel and heading towards the nearest empty room.

"We need to talk."

…

Following after Emma as she stepped into the open treatment bay, Chris ignored the occasional black spots that swam at the edges of his vision, instead choosing to focus on the straight set of the young woman's shoulders as she stood for only a moment beside the door, before shutting it with a snap, and facing him head-on. He would have been a fool to pretend he had not seen this coming. That he could not have predicted the unfavorable reaction to his presence given what had transpired the last time the two of them were in the same room. But what caught him off guard even in spite of all of his expectations was the fact that she was around to start with, his gaze nothing less than wary as he watched her in preparation for whatever she might have brought him here to say.

It still didn't quite connect why Emma Clark would have any reason to be connected to JD Dunne…

"What the hell happened?"

"Exactly what it looks like," Chris answered, sincerely having every intention of elaborating further, though it seemed his initial remark had angered Emma enough to have her removing the opportunity from his hands altogether.

"That's all you have to say about it?"

"Wasn't really given a chance to finish-"

"Well, seems like you could've picked a better starting point," Emma quipped, the utter lack of any sort of emotion in the man's expression only fueling her sudden anger, even in spite of the lingering stab of conscience in the back of her mind that seemed inclined to believe what had happened could not have possibly been the fault of the one she accused, "He idolizes you, you know. I picked that up in one conversation."

"How did-"

"Do you even care?"

Momentarily floored at the idea of the question even becoming a topic for conversation, Chris did not reply, his silence only seeming to aggravate the young woman stood before him even further. A trembling hand had lifted to drag through auburn hair, while the other fiddled at the fabric of her scrubs, hovering almost protectively against her stomach without conscious awareness. But before he could make any attempt at phrasing a suitable response to the question she had almost thrown at him, given the force behind her words, Chris was forced into silence once more, his jaw working convulsively as she dropped her hand to her side, and shook her head in apparent disbelief.

"Of course not. That would just be too much to ask, now wouldn't it?"

"Mind tellin' me why JD was talkin' to you about a job in the first place?"

"Because he's my brother."

There it was. The connection Chris should have seen coming the minute he overheard Buck talking about the pretty little redhead doctor he met the other day at Zino's that JD had introduced as his sister…

Buck had missed her name, but JD had told him she worked at the hospital, and had lost her husband only a few months past.

He should have known.

"Yeah. You keep on not talking, and it's telling me all I need to know," Emma sighed, aware of the wince that passed across Chris' features, and yet choosing to ignore it in favor of stepping just a bit closer towards him before going on, "You had no business lettin' him go undercover."

"Last I checked, you weren't in the position to be doin' my job."

"Oh I know that. But I also know neither one of us are supposed to send people into situations they aren't ready for. JD wasn't ready."

"You ever seen him work before?"

"What?"

"I said have you ever seen him work before?" Chris repeated, some of his own anger and exhaustion prompting the sudden shift from his habitual silence, whether he knew the woman standing before him was not the real target, or not. She didn't deserve it. Not when she already had enough on her plate given her relationship with JD, and the obvious distress his injury had caused. But somehow, her own decision to jump at him had momentarily disabled his ability to give a damn about that at the present moment…

Or maybe, it was just the burgeoning pain in his abdomen that had him throwing caution to the wind, Emma's turn at silence only stoking the fires as he drove a hand through his hair, and failed entirely to resist the impulse to use her own tactic of coming to the wrong conclusion against her.

"Yeah. Didn't think so."

"You really are unbelievable, do you know that? I mean, do you just-"

"Do I just what?"

"Enjoy comin' in, and turnin' people's lives upside down."

Once again caught with nothing to say, Chris simply met Emma's gaze head-on, her frustration almost tangible beneath the weight of his impassivity. He had given in to the momentary slip of emotion by mistake, just moments ago. And although he knew a failure to show any sort of reaction at all would only provoke Emma further, Chris found that it was not entirely difficult to do precisely that, the exasperation that became clear in Emma's features fading for a moment as his vision nearly darkened, and he was forced to grab onto the back of a nearby chair to remain standing.

"Okay. Okay, fine. Don't answer. I don't care," Emma snapped, ignoring the small blip of concern that surfaced as the man standing before her faltered, his hand seizing the back of a chair in a white-knuckled grip. A part of her was honestly ashamed of her reaction, though she was nowhere near prepared to admit to such a thing out loud. And so, in a last-ditch effort at saving face, though she highly suspected she was far beyond any hope of that, Emma took a step back from the man she had been so ready to face, a tired sigh escaping before she swallowed thickly, and spoke once more.

"I need to go be with my brother."

"Emma-Emma, wait-"

"No. No, I really do need to go," The young woman pressed, turning to head towards the door, her hand falling on the handle and preparing to twist, only to find that she was frozen in the act as soon as a thud echoed through the room, coming from the precise spot where Chris Larabee stood behind her. For a moment, another flare of anger overtook her as she turned with her hand still on the door, expecting to see the sound as evidence of yet another attempt for the man to get under her skin. But as soon as she realized he had, in fact, fallen to the floor, a small pool of red ebbing across the tiling of the floor near his abdomen, all thought of grudges and old wounds long forgotten as she spared only a split second before wrenching the door open and flagging down the nearest nurse she could find.

"I need a little help in here!"

It seemed JD had not been the only one to land an injury after all…

…

I know, I know. I am the literal WORST writer on the face of the planet, rolling in with another chapter, and leaving it on cliffhanger number two. But I have to confess, I'm not 150% sold on the whole interaction with Emma and Chris, and what happens next kind of depends, on some level, on how that entire scene played out. So I chose to end it here, in hopes that if I did mess up, and had to rewrite the chapter, it would be slightly simpler to do so, without having to change all of the events that happen after?

As always, my heartfelt thanks go out to each and every one of you that has taken the time to read, follow, favorite and review this story thus far! Special thanks to Guest, and ChiTown4ever (literally, the thanks are endless...I could write a separate book of thanks and it would never be enough) for leaving such lovely reviews the last time around! And I sincerely hope I didn't botch this installment up too badly? I would love to hear what you think, either way.

Until next time, my loves…

MOMM