Happy Wednesday! Two weeks away from the S9 premier. I'm trying to stay away from big spoilers, but it's been hard. How about you guys? Big chapter head, so happy reading!

Jay

Blood is beating in my ears, my hands are shaking, my heart turning over like a motorcycle in the wrong gear. Booth is holding Hailey over the edge of an overhang. Down Below? The still waters of Lake Michigan. She looks limp, bruised, nearly lapsing into unconsciousness. Her eyes flutter open, but seemingly not focusing on anything. What has he done to her?

"If you shoot me, I shoot her," Booth yells.

He takes a step closer to the edge. Fear grows large, too large for my body to accommodate, filling my chest and making it difficult to breathe. I fight to think past it, but my thoughts are clouded. My personal and work life have intertwined, and the complex emotions are interfering with my judgment.

"Tell me what you want, Booth," I say, taking a step closer. "We can work out a deal. Just let Detective Upton go and I guarantee you'll walk out of here."

Booth presses a gun to Hailey's ribs, to which her body jolts as if pained.

"It's too late." Booth shakes his head. "You're all too late."

Then his fingers curls around the trigger and time slip into slow motion.

"No, Booth. Wait—"

The gunshot rings in my ears and my world goes still. I watch Hailey's body absorb the impact of the bullet before falling over the edge. I squeeze my trigger and sprint ahead. The few feet from where I stand to the ledge feel like it's miles away. I step over Booth's body and pitch myself into the water. I dive under and try to find her, but the water is murky and I can't see a thing. Panic sets in and threatens to overtake me. I come back up for air, swim a few feet farther, then dive again.

Nothing.

When I come back up for air, Ruzek and Atwater are in the water with me. A flash of red swirls to the surface then vanishes as the water stirs. Blood. I take another lungful of air and plunge under the surface again. Then I see an arm, a shoulder, and blond hair.

Grabbing her around the middle, I pull her up to the surface. She is limp, cold, and unresponsive.

"I got you," I say, kicking back to the shore. "I got her!"

I carry her out of the water and lay her on her back. Despite the deep bruising on her cheeks, her skin is drained of color and her lips hold an unnatural blue streak. I look down at her chest, seeing no movement. My own heart beats wildly under my vest, sounding like a senseless drum roll. I reach two fingers to her throat feeling down her neck for a pulse and find none.

"She breathing?" Ruzek asks, coming up behind me.

"No," I say, ripping open her shirt and finding even more bruising on her torso. I clasp my hands over the other and immediately start doing chest compressions. I pump her chest and then breathe in her mouth, trying desperately to push air into her lungs.

"Come on, Hailey. Breathe! Get the paramedics here now!" I call out, swallowing the tightness in my throat.

Somewhere behind me Ruzek yells into his radio and disappears up the hill. Meanwhile, I keep pumping her chest, my hands driving fiercely against her ribcage, forcing blood to gush from the gunshot wound and pool around her middle.

"Kevin, put pressure on the wound," I say.

Adrenaline is coursing through my body. My heart is racing so fast it feels like it will burst out of my chest. Then a trickle of water surges from her mouth. Another pump, another jet of murky liquid spurts out. Her breath has to be coming. I put my ear to her mouth, but I don't feel anything. I look down at her chest and it's still not rising and falling. I take a deep breath and exhale into her lips and continue pumping.

"Hailey, come on. Breathe!"

I pump harder, faster, hoping not to crack her ribs, but willing to do whatever it takes to get her breathing again. This can't be happening. It can't end like this. I can't lose her. Our life together, everything we have flashes before my eyes. Tears threaten to fall, and I let out an angry cry as I continue to do another round of CPR.

I listen.

Nothing.

"Fuck," I sob.

Another round.

Then she's coughing, spluttering. Her chest heaves as if she's trying to snatch the air.

"That's it," I say, turning her on her side and massaging her back as water spurts from her mouth. From this angle, I can see all the angry bruises, red and black radiating in irregular circles on her side. The extent of every contusion is horrific. I become overwhelmed by a wave of anger so powerful I could explode, or erupt into the kind of tears that never stop coming.

"Breathe, Hailey. Breathe," I tell her, though I know I need to also do the same.

"She breathing?" Kevin asks.

I lean over her mouth and feel her breath finally coming in, though it's erratic; long and slow intakes of air followed by short shudders.

"Yeah." I push my fingers against my neck, feeling a faint thump-thump, thump-thump there too. "She has a pulse. It's weak, but I can feel it." I lean down and kiss her head. I feel an odd sensation, like relief mixed with dread. "Stay with me, okay? I'm right here."

"She's losing a lot of blood," Kevin pipes up. "One entry wound, no exit," he adds somberly.

I remove my Kevlar and pull my soaking sweatshirt over my head. I wring it out then ball it, pushing it against the wound to provide extra pressure. Hailey is still out cold, and pale as a white sheet of paper.

Four paramedics arrive, surrounding her like hawks, examining her, checking her vital signs, starting an IV. I feel helpless– reduced to a mere spectator with a hopeless feeling heavy in my chest. Hailey is still drawing in wheezing breaths of air as if someone is capping and uncapping a boiling kettle.

"We have to intubate her," a paramedic announces, and quickly flattens himself on the ground, getting face to face with Hailey. Slowly, he inserts the tube down her throat and says, "I'm in." Another paramedic tapes the tube around her mouth, squeezing an airbag, and forcing air into her lungs.

They stabilize her body and strap her to the backboard. A helicopter flies over, I look up and it's a Med Flight. As we climb up the hill, I can hear the sounds of the propellers coming quick.

Ruzek meets us halfway up and says, slightly out of breath, "Hailey is being airlifted to Med."

I glance past Ruzek and see the helicopter landing. As we get closer, wind whips all around us and I stand over Hailey, protecting her from the goddamn air because I wasn't able to protect her from Booth. Alarms go off and the paramedics pause and rush around her again, a musical of beeping machines and panic. Then they are shoving a tube inside her chest. Hailey coughs around the tube in her mouth, and then her chest fills with air as if she's inhaling deeply.

"The bullet must've perforated her lung," one paramedic explains. "Air is building up in her chest."

"Just keep her alive," I say, uncaring if I'm making an impossible request.

They load her inside the helicopter and I'm barred from going with her. The helicopter takes flight and I stand there, in shock. My head is spinning. Grief chocking me, cutting off my air. Failure. My knees buckle and the ground comes up to meet me, hard. I should've reacted faster. I should've shot Booth the moment he pulled the gun. I shouldn't have hesitated.

I only snap out of my momentary daze when a pair of hands touches my shoulder. "C'mon, bro," Kevin says, pulling me up. "We'll meet her at Med."

x

Minutes have turned into hours as we sit in the waiting room, panicking with anticipation. My eyes are trained on the door, my ears focused for even the tiniest of sounds from the hospital corridors and beyond it. Since we've arrived, we haven't gotten a single update, and the feeling of the unknown is making me sick to my stomach, while my head is mindless pinballing between all emotions – rage and grief being the main ones.

I keep going over the events in my head because I can hardly believe them. I should have just shot Booth. But I hesitated. I hang my head, take a deep breath, and push the rage down.

I'm a nervous wreck. I sit down, stand up, and then sit down again. I'm anxious and downright scared, and the movement is keeping me calm. The very thought of losing Hailey freezes the core of my being. I chase it away before it lodges itself in my mind. I stare at the white-tiled corridor walls, at the big clock, its face covered by a convex glass, the minute hand quivering before skipping forward. Dark flecks float on the inside of my eyelids.

It's getting difficult to concentrate, and focusing becomes a challenge. The past 24 hours are finally catching up to me. The adrenaline has waned and the tiredness turned into extreme fatigue and exhaustion. My eyelids close for small intervals here and there, but I start at the slightest sound of people coming and going out of the waiting area.

This, I learn, is the true definition of hell.

"Does Hailey have anyone we should notify?" Ruzek asks, snapping me back.

"Yeah, her parents live nearby."

"Should we send uniforms to tell them—"

"No, I can actually give them a call."

Just as I'm fishing my phone from my pocket, a doctor opens the door to the waiting room we're occupying. We all stand as if waiting to be sentenced in a courtroom.

"How is she?" I ask.

I haven't met this doctor before, he looks fresh out of residency, but I already appreciate his bedside manner, seeing a reassuring smile on his face.

"Hailey is out of surgery and is critical but stable."

I take a deep breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. "What does that mean?"

"Her condition is still delicate, and it's touch-and-go. But we've managed to successfully stop the bleeding and repair her lung."

He explains how the bullet had punctured her left lung and nicked a vein. He also goes over her other non-life-threatening injuries, which include fractured ribs, cuts, and severe contusions. He also adds that her tox screen showed high levels of benzodiazepine, which explains her semiconscious state.

"We have her in a medically induced coma for the moment," he adds. "The next twenty-four hours are going to be the most critical."

"When can we see her?" I ask.

"She is being moved to the intensive care unit. I will have a nurse come and get you once she's settled, but let's keep the traffic to a minimum."

I nod. "Thank you," I whisper.

An hour later, a nurse comes to get me from the waiting room. Will tries to warn me, but nothing really prepares you. The sight of Hailey lying motionless on a hospital bed in the fathomless murk of a coma wrecks my heart. Her face is pale, which is completely at odds with the bruises discoloring her cheeks. I try to count the tubes running from her body and stop at four. An IV pole looms just behind her head and five different clear bags hang from it – some small, some large. And she is still.

She is so still.

I walk up to the bed and gently take her hand in mine, careful to avoid the IV lines. I notice her nails are broken into jagged layers, and her fingertips are bloody and raw. Hailey had definitely put up a fight. I feel so undone, I can't find the right words, can't think. There is a weight pressing down on every part of my chest and the pain is unbearable. The very fabric of my existence has been torn apart.

Tears spring to my eyes, her name trembling soundlessly on my lips. Leaning slightly, I kiss her forehead and with a lump in my throat I softly whisper, "I'm sorry, Hailey." I repeat over and over again. "I'm so sorry."

I pull up a chair and sit by her bed. "I'm here, okay? And I'm not going anywhere."

Sometime later, the door to the room opens and Will walks in. He comes to stand next to me and pats my shoulder. We stare at Hailey for a few moments, as though trying to process everything.

"How are you holding up?" he asks.

"Still in shock. I cannot even put into words what I'm feeling right now."

"Yeah, I was stunned when the call came in."

The room falls silent, except for the beeping machines and the rhythmic whooshing coming from the ventilator.

"When she wakes up, she's going to panic with that thing down her throat."

"It's only temporary," Will replies. "It's to make sure her oxygen levels don't drop."

"Is she going to be okay?" I ask.

Will sighs. "These next 24 hours will—."

"The other doctor already said that. Yes or no?"

"I don't know, Jay. She's responding to treatment, but the blood loss, combined with the pneumothorax, and the fact that—"

I cut him off. "Plain English, Will. Tell me the truth?" I ask, not wanting an answer, but needing to know.

"The paramedics said she went without oxygen for more than five minutes."

I know what that means and the possibility slams into me like a freight train. Tears begin to flow and I don't care.

"I couldn't find her. But as soon as I pulled her out of the water I started doing CPR, probably why she has so many broken ribs."

Will shakes his head. "Her ribs fractures are not consistent with chest compression. Hailey was possibly kicked or struck…" He sighs, placing a hand over Hailey's leg, his eyes turning glassy. "What the hell happened, Jay?"

"She was undercover and they figured out she was a cop," I begin, then explain in more detail what happened that led me to pull her out of Lake Michigan. "Do you know if she was…" I stop, my throat clenching shut. Not sure I'll be able to handle another truth.

"No," he shakes his head, knowing what I was about to ask. "None of her injuries are consistent with a sexual assault."

A bit of relief courses through me. "When will we know if she's all here?" I ask.

"This is a time thing, Jay. I want to be as honest as I can with you so you can prepare yourself. There is always the possibility of some brain damage. But Hailey is strong. She'll pull through," he says, maybe needing to convince himself more than me.

I force a smile, though my tears are out of control. "What can we do? There must be something we can do?"

"All we can do is wait."

x

These are the longest days of my life, it's like I'm living in a nightmare. It's been a long couple of nights, hellish to sleep, hellish to wake. For two whole days, Hailey doesn't stir, doesn't move, doesn't open her eyes. I feel the opposite – restless and twitchy. I can't sleep. I alternate between sitting and pacing. I'm on edge. I barely leave her ICU room. I can't. I keep checking on her, despite the monitors showing a steady heart rhythm and good oxygen saturation.

Every time I close my eyes images of Hailey invade my mind. Her scent, the taste of her mouth, the million simple feelings of the moments we've shared. My mind is often hijacked by the memories of us, which inexplicably rip my heart apart. My entire world is made up of Hailey's vivid blue eyes looking up into mine, the softness of her body against mine, and her beautiful smile that drives me half insane.

At the end of the second day, sleep takes me, but it brings me no peace. I dream of a different hospital room, at a different time. I see my mother fading away, her skin pallid and her thin, lifeless dark hair—streaked with gray—pulled back (what was left of it). She is nothing but skin and bones, and a tired sadness pinches her face. I hear my name being called, but when I answer no one hears me.

I jolt awake, disoriented, wondering where I am and why my neck hurts so much.

"Hey, Jay, wake up!"

I look to my right and see Will standing over me. Reality rushes back and I realize I'm slumped on a chair in Hailey's hospital room.

"Hey," I say and immediately look to Hailey. "Everything okay?"

"Nothing's changed," Will says. "I'm just making sure you're okay?"

I run my hand over my face, maybe trying to wipe away the tired expression that I know is stamped there.

"I'm good."

"Really?" he asks, a bit of skepticism seeping through his voice. "When was the last time you left this room? Ate a meal? Why don't you take a break? Take a walk or something, have some cafeteria food."

I take a long deep breath and say, "Thanks, Will, but I really don't want to."

"C'mon, let me at least buy you a snack from the vending machine."

"Maybe later."

"Okay, listen. You need to eat. I don't care if it's a bag of chips, but you must get some kind of food into you. We don't know when Hailey's going to wake up, and you need to walk out of here when it happens. So, come on."

I look to Hailey; eyes closed, unmoving. If it wasn't for the breathing tube in her mouth, I might think she is merely asleep. I know she's currently under heavy medication, but something in me thinks if she wakes up, I want to be here. I know she'll panic. She hates hospitals.

As if reading my mind, Will adds, "If you're thinking she'll wake up, she won't. But I have my pager and I can ask her nurse to page me if anything changes."

I relent, and Will and I walk to the end of the hallway, where there's a jungle of vending machines. I chose a Nature Valley granola bar and a bag of Sun Chips. We linger, Will watching as I bite into and swallow pieces of the granola bar.

"I heard Hailey's doctor talk about bringing her out of the coma."

"That's good, right?"

"Yeah, it's good. All her vitals are finally staying stable. Her MRI and CT scans came back clean, her pupils are reactive, she's responding to painful stimuli… the probability she suffered a brain injury is low. So, they want to start waking her up."

"How would it work?"

"They will ease her off the meds slowly until she begins showing signs she's waking up."

"Will she be in any pain?"

"She would still get pain medication, just something that isn't so strong. The next step would be removing her chest tube." Will pats my shoulder. "We're taking it one step at a time," he adds and looks down at his beeping pager.

"Is it Hailey?"

"No, I gotta go back to the ED but take care of yourself, little brother. Hailey's got a long road ahead and she'll need you there."

"Thanks, bro."

Will starts down the hall, then calls back, "We're going to the cafeteria when I finish my shift for a proper meal."

I nod and wave.

I walk back down the hallway and push through the heavy doors of the ICU. The hospital air still feels cold and dense. But at this moment, I feel a warmth radiate through my body. I can feel hope ballooning inside me—spreading from my chest to every cell in my body.

I return to the room and find Hailey the same way I left her. I lean forward, place my lips beside her ear, and whisper, "Keep fighting."

I whisper it as though she'll hear me.

Keep fighting.

x

They begin the slow process of weaning Hailey off the meds, but after a couple of days, it appears she isn't getting anywhere. Each time they lower the dose her breathing quickens and deepens and she sweats right through the sheets. These episodes of distress become increasingly frequent, causing her pulse to race and her limbs to stiffen. But the doctors are optimistic. Despite everything, Hailey is responding well to all kinds of stimuli.

I go home to shower one night, and when I check my phone, there is a message from Hailey's nurse asking me to come and find her. I hurry back and sprint through the ICU corridor as my mind imagines a million different things that could be wrong. But when I finally get to her room, Hailey is laying there, still, but the ventilator is gone, replaced by a nasal cannula. I release a breath I'd been holding.

"Everything okay?" I ask the nurse, who is fussing with the monitors.

"Yeah. She's looking much better now, don't you think?"

I approach the bed and Hailey's eyes flutter sluggishly. I catch a glimpse of the blue in her irises.

"S-She waking up?" I ask, and when the nurse nods, my heart begins beating so fast it's about to jump out of my chest.

"That's why I messaged you. Thought you'd want to be here for her when she came to."

"Hailey?" I whisper and she takes a shuddering breath. Alarms buzz over her head, and I jerk back.

"Is she in distress again?"

The nurse smiles and presses a button. "Nothing to worry about unless her heart rate keeps climbing. Then I'll have to ask you to leave so we can readjust her meds." She peers at me over her glasses and adds, "I'll be outside if you need me."

Hailey mumbles something, her finger crawling, searching, pulling the sheets. I grab her hand and hold it between both of mine. "Hey hey…" I squeeze her fingers between mine. "I'm here, Babe."

Hailey moans, lids fluttering again. Then blue eyes blink open, unfocused.

"Hey," I say, watching her heart monitor. "You need to slow your heart rate down because I very much want to stay here with you, okay?"

She responds with another weak moan, then she pulls in a deep breath. Immediately, her face contorts in pain. She tries to speak but flinches. The only sound that escapes her lips is a low whimper.

"Hailey, don't try to talk right now. They just removed a tube from your throat."

A machine beeps and her grimace is replaced by a look of confusion, which is heavy in her eyes. Her head moves slightly around, probably taking in the room. Then her breathing picks up and her heart rate quickens.

I lean forward and touch my lips to her forehead, cupping her cheek in my hand. "Hailey, you need to slow your breathing down, okay? Can you do it for me, huh?"

After a moment, she manages to release a breathy, "Y-sh."

She closes her eyes, and I can see her trying to control her breathing. Gradually her vitals return to normal and I release a sigh of relief. I cup the side of her face and rub my thumb over her cheeks. "You're safe. Everything is okay. I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."

Her eyes open again, register me as if for the first time, and her fingers lightly squeeze mine. Tears roll down my cheeks and I wipe them away with my shirt sleeve, letting out another big sigh of relief.

"I've missed you. Really, really, missed you."

She squeezes my fingers again.

After a moment she seems to settle, though she is struggling against the sluggishness of her eyelids. I can see her straining to keep them open. So, in the next few minutes, Hailey slips back into a deep sleep.

When her nurse returns, I tell her, "She woke up, squeezed my fingers and everything. But she's back asleep."

"It'll probably be like that off and on for a few days. I think she's being moved out of the ICU tomorrow."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Her lung has re-inflated, and it may not look like it now, but she's on the mend. She has a long road to recovery ahead of her, but the worse is over."

Relief flows through my veins, practically sedating me. Hailey is going to be okay. I keep her hand in mine and bring it up to my lips, palm up, and gently kiss it. For a few days, I feared I'd lose everything. But I haven't. I just love her so much. Everything I have is hers – my life, my heart, my soul. This scares me and thrills me at the same time because this is real.

Our life, our future is real.

Thank you for reading! Traffic on this fic is low now, and I know this happens, but it sort of guides me in deciding when to end. So, I'm thinking a couple more chapters to wrap things up. Next week we'll see Hailey's POV in her recovery. Cheers, D.