AN: This song just fit so perfectly with this scene and I do not own any of Taylor Swift's music or the lyrics to Mine.
Jo sat alone in the loft. Her hands wrapped around the glass of wine she hadn't taken a sip of yet. She stared at the kitchen sink, but not really as her mind drifted off. She thought of the snow as she drove home. The heavy flakes lingered on her windshield like puffs of cotton falling from the sky. Jo loved the snow. Growing up in Boston, her memories of playing in the winter snow were some of the better memories from her childhood. She smiled when she walked out of the hospital to see the cold frosty night and the quiet that came with a blanket of white across the city.
Alex loved the snow too. She remembered the conversation they had on their honeymoon. The one that she half listened to as she thought over her cancer research idea. Alex had talked about building forts in the snow with their two kids and how they would have a snowball fight with one of each on their team. The idea of Alex and their two children playing in the snow slipped through her fingers like the sand on the beach. In contrast, the snow stuck to her gloves as she wiped it off her car that night.
When she got home, she had poured herself a glass of wine to try and relax, but Jo just kept thinking of her and Alex and their children playing in the snow. They were in a good place, she was doing better since her depressive episode. Alex had settled into his role as chief and they were home more as they had a set schedule. They decided that now would be a good time to start trying for a baby. They had thrown out her birth control and the condoms and placed a box of pregnancy tests next to the box of tampons under the sink. As the smell of the wine turned her stomach and her period approached, she wondered which box she should grab.
She remembered the conversation she had with Helen. They had kept in touch a little bit since she had come to visit, a few texts and photos, but mostly just phone calls here and there. They had a good mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationship. Jo loved their little talks and how Helen treated her like her own daughter. Ever since she married Alex and took his name, Jo felt like she was one of the Karev's. She finally had a family, a name that meant something to her.
Jo heard someone on the stairs. Heavy footsteps shook the snow off their boots in the entryway to the Loft. She got up and rushed over to the door, eager to open it before he could turn his key in the lock. He was back. Alex was home. A little smile appeared on her face. However, it disappeared when she saw that it was not Alex, but Link on her doorstep.
"Misery loves company," Link said as he came in and shut the door behind him and she just stared at him. "So I brought donuts and despair."
Link brushed past her and went over to the kitchen, setting the donuts on the island table and unzipping his jacket as Jo just stared at him. It took him a while to realize that she hadn't followed him. "Jo?"
"I, I thought you were him," Jo said, looking around the empty Loft.
Link didn't say anything at first, he of all people, knew how much she missed Alex. He just looked down at the donuts and shrugged off his jacket. "I'm sorry."
"He left me."
Looking around, the absence of her husband was abundant. His shoes weren't in the entryway, his clothes weren't on their shelves, she had looked for his favorite Iowa State Hawkeye t-shirt only to find that it was missing. His pillow was gone, and so was his toothbrush, his shampoo, and his body wash. Every little thing that was his and not theirs was missing. At first, she didn't think too much of it, just him taking the things he would need for a visit to his mom's that didn't have a set return date. Yet as the days grew into weeks, Jo realized that he had taken all of his things and left.
"No, he didn't," Link said, he was quick to assure her, just like everybody else had done over the past week. No one seriously thought that Alex would leave her, Jo certainly didn't, but she couldn't shake this feeling.
"I think he did." Jo's words came out in a breath and she just nodded and looked back at Link. "I think he woke up one day and felt the need to escape his life and me."
Jo closed her eyes as she took a step forward. "I called his mom. He wasn't there. He'd never been there."
She tried to keep her voice from breaking as she held back the tears. When she asked Helen about Alex, she tried to seem light, asking to talk to him and saying that she couldn't reach him on his phone. Helen was confused, she said she didn't even know Alex was planning to visit. Jo just smiled behind the phone and brushed it off. She just said that she was tired from a long day at work and must have forgotten that Alex was at a conference in Iowa instead. Helen was smart, and Jo knew she saw through her lies, but she let Jo pacify her with an easy excuse.
Helen promised to call Alex herself to tell him to call his wife, and Jo had laughed. They ended things on a happy note. Jo mentioned the snow and how cold it was and Helen said she was knitting some mittens for Amber's family. She said she would start making ones for Jo and Alex and throw in an extra little pair for their future baby. Jo had loved the idea of a little pair of yellow mittens that her mother-in-law was knitting, but the worry about Alex leaving her overtook her joy. Jo had ended the phone call quickly after that as she felt the lump rise in her throat and it became harder to talk without her voice breaking.
Even now, she couldn't seem to take a deep breath and ease the tension that filled her. All she could feel was the weight on her chest as her heart ached for Alex. Jo shook her head as she looked around in disbelief. Never did she think he would do this to her.
"He left me. And now I can't, I can't, I can't breathe."
Each word came out as a whisper, and after she broke down into sobs. Jo tried to breathe through the shaking sobs that wrecked her ribs, but she was so heartbroken. It was like she was holding her breath as she waited for him to come back, but she was beginning to drown. Link rushed over and wrapped his arms around her as Jo finally let herself fall apart in his arms. He gently swayed from side to side, rocking her like a child. She sobbed into Link's shoulder as her knees gave out, and he took her weight. His big strong arms were usually a comfort to her, but the only person she wanted to hold her right now was Alex. Yet, he was the reason for her tears and the reason she couldn't breathe.
Her loud sobs filled the room as she cried out. Jo was in hysterics at this point, wailing into Link's shoulder. She had kept it all in for so long, trying to keep it together. She had been desperate just to make it one more night, holding out hope that he would come home. That he would come back to her, but after everything that had happened today, she knew deep down that he had left her.
Getting left by your husband was never simple or easy. The way he did it, she could tell he wanted it to be a clean break, but she needed him to be there with her. To save her from this pain, pain that he caused.
Because she couldn't breathe without him.
They stay like that in the entryway with Jo sobbing into Link's arms as he held her and their knees dug into the carpet. She felt like she was drowning in tears that stung in her eyes as they cascaded down her face. They were never ending and left harsh tracks on her cheeks. Her breathing came out in long sobs, just taking in enough air to cry out again. Jo didn't bother wiping away her tears or catching her breath. She just cried and wailed because that was all she could do. Jo cried herself until she fell asleep in Link's arms.
Jo woke up from a dreamless sleep in her bed with the blankets gently tucked over her. There was an arm around her and for a second, she thought it was Alex. She rolled over to bury her face in his chest and breathe in his familiar scent, but instead, Jo was faced with Link's sleeping face. He slept on Alex's pillow or Alex's second pillow because he took his main one with him. For a second, Jo just stared at him, she gasped as her lungs froze up, and she forgot to breathe again because Alex wasn't home. He wasn't sleeping in the bed beside her.
She rolled back over and glanced at her nightstand, her clock said that it was 2 a.m., and Jo stared into the empty kitchen. It shouldn't be Link beside her, comforting her. It should be, Alex. Link was her person, her best friend in the whole world, but Alex was her husband. He was the only one who had been with her through everything. He knew her better than she knew the back of her hand. She knew him just as well, but she lost him. She lost her husband and her soulmate.
Jo tried to take a deep breath in and out, but it was shaky and she couldn't seem to get enough air in. She squeezed her eyes shut as the tears filled her eyes again. She grabbed the blanket at the end of their bed and pulled it up to her nose, inhaling the sweet scent of him. It wasn't easy trying to fall asleep in their bed without him, but she had to. Taking a deep breath again, Jo counted the seconds as she inhaled, and then counting again, she exhaled, trying to get to a higher number as she breathed in, taking in more air. It was a trick her therapist taught her, to focus on counting and breathing and not how lonely the bed felt because it wasn't Alex next to her. She tried to breathe again on her own. Each inhale was hard because all she wanted to do was break down and cry again, but she held back the tears. She had to learn to breathe on her own. She had to learn to do it all on her own.
Alex had been there for her since the beginning, since her first year as an intern. Since then, they had only been apart for a few months, and even then, she still saw him every day in the hallways of the hospital. Jo thought that the most they had ever been apart was the month she was in the inpatient treatment for her depression. Now, as the days bleed into weeks, it was another day she hadn't seen him, hadn't talked to him, hadn't even heard from him at all. She just wanted to know that he was okay. She would settle for a voicemail, or a text, or a freaking letter.
She regretted that thought a few days later when she was holding his letter in her hands. Alex's letter to her was written in his sloppy cursive handwriting. Jo used to scold him for it because she couldn't read his writing, but now she could make out every word. She knew what the letter was going to say before she even opened it, but that didn't make reading his words any easier. Because nothing he could say was going to save them from this fallout. His voice in her head read it to her, and his words cut deep right down to the bone of her ribs, straight to her heart. When she finished it, she just sat there. It had been a week since the night she broke down, knowing that he left her, and despite how she tried, Jo still felt like she couldn't breathe without him.
She was holding her breath again and there was a tightness in her chest that wouldn't release. Jo got up and drifted through the hospital. She told Link she was going to work, but instead, Jo found herself hiding out in the supply closet, hyperventilating once again as she paced back and forth. She knew what a panic attack looked like as her lungs contracted in quick breaths with air that never quite seemed to reach her lungs. Somehow she was able to calm herself down and go through all of her techniques. Jo took off her shoes and put both feet on the floor as she went through the steps for a chest tube. She had to calm down, she had to breathe again, even if it was without him because there was someone else she might need to breathe for.
Jo waited until her panic attack was truly over and gave herself time to recover before she reached for the pregnancy test. She slipped out of the supply closet and went to the nearest bathroom. After taking the test, Jo didn't look at it, she knew what the results would be. Regardless, she couldn't be at work today. She went back to the attending's lounge and quickly texted Bailey. Bailey offered her the whole week with the sympathetic, I'm sorry, but Jo just took the day. She didn't know how Bailey knew Alex quit his job and left her, but considering that he told his wife in a letter, she assumed he told Bailey the same way. Jo took a deep breath in as she texted back a simple reply.
She tried to keep her breathing even, steady, and deep as she drove over to Meredith's house. Her heart beat faster as she parked on the street and in front of the house she once called her home. Jo took a deep breath, looking down at the pregnancy test before putting a hand on her belly. She took another deep breath and walked up to the house. With each step, Jo took a breath in and out until she got to the door and knocked.
She didn't have to wait long before Meredith opened the door and gave Jo the same sad, sympathetic look as she held a letter at her side. "I just got a letter from Alex. I'm guessing you got one too. I'm so sorry, Jo. I have half a mind to go to Kansas and beat his ass. You don't deserve this."
Jo just stared at her, slowly processing everything she said. She knew that Alex left her, but she would never have imagined that he would leave Meredith too. The realization that he was truly gone was slowly sinking in, and she took a deep breath. She had to breathe without him, or at least she tried.
"Meredith, I'm pregnant," Jo said, her words coming out in a breath.
Meredith's lips slowly parted in shock as she dropped the letter in her hand, the papers slowly falling to lay on the ground. Taking a step forward, Meredith wrapped her arms around her and pulled Jo in for a hug. She let out a breath as she melted into Meredith's arms. Jo could feel the tears spring up in her eyes again, and she let them fall, but she breathed because she had to.
She had to hold it together for the sake of her unborn child. She didn't know what she would do now that she was all alone, without him, but she would try. Even without him, she would be a damn good mother, the kind of mother their child deserved. Jo would learn how to breathe without him and somehow, she managed to take a deep breath in when all she wanted to do was stop breathing because of Alex.