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Against the rough padding of the pathetic excuse for a chair, it occurred to her that she had never before loathed a clock hand.
It ticked - slowly, painfully, mockingly. She hadn't slept, refused to sleep until she knew, one way or the other, the fate of her best friend. She surely had dark bags under her eyes; for once, she found herself unbothered to cover them with makeup. Her appearance didn't matter. At that moment, only Brooke and her children mattered and Jackie's festering anger at the continued lack of news increased by the hour.
The dark sky began to bleed into the brilliant colors of an early morning when she and Steven exited the chapel. They had moved to the waiting room, coming across Eric's melancholic half-wave whilst a sleeping Donna used his shoulder as a pillow. Jackie didn't know how her rather rotund friend could possibly acquire any sleep on the chair that felt uncomfortable enough for her own slim figure.
When she became a renowned, wealthy Hollywood producer, she would send Point Place Memorial Hospital a decent set of chairs. Her group would undoubtedly be back in this same waiting area in the future and she despised the idea of returning to an unchanged seat.
Pushing a half-eaten Milky Way into his back pocket, Fez appeared when the first sunray shone brightly, bringing with it a larger crowd affected by a lengthy wedding reception gone terribly amiss. Red followed shortly afterward, mumbling something about checking in for Kitty's sake, who stayed sitting for Betsy with Ade's help.
Jackie caught Steven's slight smirk at the revelation of his older cousin babysitting a toddler he said she normally preferred to avoid.
They sat side by side, his hand placed directly beside hers. Their chosen seating arrangement would have normally elicited inquisitive commentary from Eric, but he had remained uncharacteristically silent under the difficult circumstances. He tried unsuccessfully to engage the both of them in a silent word game; Hyde quickly shut that down.
Telling the kids to make sure Kitty received an update every half-hour so she wouldn't be irritating him with her constant worry, Red hurriedly left when one of his old colleagues from the plant, a member of the disastrous wedding party, attempted to engage him in unwanted discussion.
Just in time, too, for moments later, Bob Pinciotti's former flame Joanna rushed in with a loud explanation to the nurse's hub that she had snagged her bloody arm in a piece of machinery she had tried to display to a new recruit.
Casey Kelso arrived with the younger Jamie Kelso, but not for the purpose to wait on Michael Kelso or his wife; Jamie had been on the wrong end of a Beebee gun and walked with a limp into the other end of the waiting room.
Eric repeatedly shot an ice-cold stare to Casey, who every few minutes eyed Donna's chest with an unapologetic, appreciative smirk.
At some point, Fez selected to purchase the six of them breakfast. Jackie ate without tasting, chewed without a second thought to the carbohydrates she had digested from the offered chocolate doughnut. Coffee didn't help; she barely cared for the beverage, anyway. Adam had been much more of a tea drinker, which he ended up passing on to her.
She sat restlessly, stealing glances at Steven every half-hour, believing he, too, wondered how an answer could take so damn long whilst the surgery itself likely had not.
Jumping to her feet when Michael barreled towards them in an action which surpassed the speed of light, she felt herself accidentally knock against Steven's shoulder.
He stood with her, glaring slightly as he rubbed the spot she grazed.
"Well?" she asked impatiently, crossing her arms.
As badly as she figured she looked, Michael Kelso appeared fifty times worse. His normally kempt hair was bedraggled; his eyes, red and puffy, as if he spent the entire evening sobbing.
She swallowed, realizing he undoubtedly had.
"It's a boy," he gave a small smile, "two boys."
"Twins? Kelso, you magical, horny son-of-a-bitch, way to go!" Fez clapped his shoulder and then clapped his hands.
"Alright," Eric grinned, pumping his fist, "we've got some boys!"
"We have plenty of boys already," Jackie pointed out.
"Ah, mega correction, Jackie. We used to have plenty of boys. If we add in my sister and Hyde's cousin to the mix, plus Betsy and Brooke, we've been outnumbered."
"Okay, you in there, you better come out loving dresses and tea parties, got it?" She spoke sternly, placing both hands on Donna's protruding abdomen. "I'm gonna shower you with jewels that you can wear when you come to Aunt Jackie's for tea with your cousin Betsy."
"No expensive jewelry," Donna requested. "My kid isn't going to be spoiled."
"No expensive jewelry right now," Jackie amended. "I can't promise I won't overbuy in the future when I'm richer than all of you. That reminds me; I expect you all to visit me in my multi-million dollar home. I'll have a chest full of dress-up clothes for Betsy and my other niece."
Eric glared and bent his head down to his wife's stomach.
"Don't listen to your devil of an aunt. No matter what you are, it's Star Wars, Star Wars, Star Wars, GI Joe, Star Wars. Got that?"
"Eric, don't use that devil nickname around our child," Donna warned, wagging a finger at her husband with her other hand simultaneously palming her hip and back.
"Michael, I want full, exclusive naming rights. The last time you and Brooke were left alone to come up with a name, you chose a cake eater's name. You really should've just gone with Victoria for Betsy, instead of, well, Betsy." Thinking of such a name thrust upon her darling girl, Jackie shuddered. "Victoria is a great name by itself. I think you should consider Jacques."
"You want the Rockwells -"
"Kelsos!"
"- to name their son after some bourgeois French guy? Are you lookin' to have Red hate the kid?" Hyde continued with a skeptical glance, despite Kelso's interruptive correction.
"Jacques is a beautiful name," she countered in a huff.
"Yeah, maybe for a European stage show or the cabaret." Hyde shook his head.
Fez's expression swelled with pride that Hyde knew about the cabaret, even if he had spoken down on it.
"How are they?" Ignoring Jackie's blatant attempt at naming a Rockwell-Kelso child after herself or Hyde's negative responses to the idea, Donna turned concernedly to the boys' father.
"They're," he looked cautiously at Hyde, "perfect." His smile brightened, an emotion which fell short of his normally gleeful eyes.
"Kelso, man, what is it?"
"One's really small," he breathed out, squeezing his hands together against his forehead, "much smaller than the other. They think -" His breaths emitted shakily. He swallowed. "- they think he'll have to be here longer than his brother."
"Can we visit them?" Jackie instinctively placed her hand on his shoulder.
"They're both in the NICU. Only parents allowed inside. And grandparents."
"Well whose dumb rule is that?" she glowered.
"The hospital's, Jackie," Eric replied smartly.
She sent a visual dagger his way, aiming it directly for his skinny, bony butt. Terrified to ask the next question, yet carrying the full understanding that she would lack the ability to exhale until she did, Jackie pressed on.
"And Brooke?"
An overdose of adrenaline clouded her veins at the sight of Michael clutching tightly to his side. To her immense terror, he hung his head and began to sob into a baffled Steven's shirt.
"Kelso?" He, too, looked more frightened than she had ever believed him capable.
Oh, she knew Steven Hyde secretly held more empathy than he liked to be known and could get just as scared as the rest of them. He, however, usually did it behind the safety of his glasses, which were still shockingly absent from his face.
"I don't know how she is. They don't even know. She hasn't woken up, Jackie. I don't know what to do. They won't tell me anything. I've just been staring through the NICU window at our boys, hoping I get some damn news about my wife and nothing, not a damn thing. What the hell are these doctors good for? Were they even trained? I'd be way better at this job."
The idea of Michael Kelso as a doctor appeared to cross five minds in unison, resulting in their singular emotion: downright horror.
She felt her heart breaking whilst his unquestionably did the same. Swallowing through her tears, she pulled him into her firm embrace and felt Steven engulf her in his.
She could have sworn he emitted a few tears of his own, but that was ridiculous. Steven Hyde didn't cry. In all the years she had known him, she never once saw him cry. She did see him upset - when they sat in the El Camino and he had told her about the nurse; then their following interaction, where, at the most inopportune moment, he admitted for the first and only time that he loved her. But she had never seen him cry; to think of Steven doing so left her equally unsettled and awed.
"I hate her for leaving me, Jackie," Michael mumbled against her chest.
"Michael, she hasn't left you."
"Yeah, but she isn't here, is she?" he asked both furiously and brokenly.
She saw Donna exchange a worried glance with Eric before the two latched on to either side of Kelso's back.
"Brooke is a goddess and goddesses are strong, Kelso." Features bathed in concern, Fez stood hopping from one leg to the other. His unfinished Milky Way bulged out of his pocket, long forgotten.
"This just - isn't how it was supposed to happen," Michael cried, burying himself deeper into the folds of Jackie's shirt. "I was supposed to be the one to drive my wife to the hospital - not Carolyn like last time, not a freaking ambulance. We should've had hours of waiting; I'd already planned to blow a bigger bubble than I did with Bets. I should've been able to help Brooke with her breathing, not watch them cut into her or be pushed out of the operating room when the doctors made my wife lose consciousness. Two months. That's all we needed. Two freaking months."
"Michael, everything will be fine." Despite her own uncertainty, she ran soothing circles along his back and whispered gently in his ear.
"Are you sure the doctors made her lose consciousness, Kelso? Is it possible Brooke lost it on her own?"
"All I know is that one moment, my wife was awake and breathing just fine and the next, she wasn't, so unless you think she purposely decided to leave me, Bets and our boys, then yes, Donna, it's clearly their fault."
Jackie noticed Donna's struggle for a response following Michael's impassioned - and undoubtedly untrue - speech.
"Come on, Kelso. Show me my nephews." Eric slowly tugged him towards the NICU, his own wife and Fez trailing behind.
Turning her head to Steven, her composure crumbled.
"Jackie, listen to what you told Kelso. It'll be okay, got it? Brooke Rockwell isn't gonna just up and leave Kelso to take care of their three kids by himself. The twins would both be dropped on their heads in a matter of months and Betsy would run off to join the circus," he joked, taking her into his arms.
"Distract me," she pleaded, begging for some kind of reprieve from her overwhelming grief and the nagging fear embedded in her heart.
"Distract you how?"
"I don't know. However you used to do it."
His freely roaming hand slackened on her back.
"I don't think you want me to distract you like I used to," he murmured.
"God, you perv!" She looked up, shaking her head with a slight smack to his shoulder that resulted in his annoyed scowl. "Nothing like that. I mean like you did that day in Daddy's car when you comforted me over Michael's cheating ass."
"Oh, you mean like this?" His hand reached out to tenderly push her hair behind her ear.
"Yeah," she breathed, "that's a good start."
"Let's see. How else did I distract you that day?"
"Well, you let me take you shopping."
"You want to take me shopping?" he asked, surprised.
"Right, sure, maybe in the gift shop." She answered with the same thick sarcasm that he had given her fantastic Jacques recommendation.
"Jackie," his tone lightened, "that's brilliant, actually."
"What?"
"Come on," he grabbed her hand, leading her away from the waiting room, "you're gonna get this party started and then maybe Brooke will decide to join."
Initially confused, recognition dawned when he brought her to the hospital gift shop.
"Oh my God, yes! It's perfect! Brooke can't resist a celebration, especially when I'm the one who throws it. Remember their reception?"
He nodded, glancing over the various shelves.
"Well, I planned it all," she said proudly.
"I know," he answered quietly.
"You do?"
"Yeah. Brooke told me."
"Oh."
If she had half of the funds meant to be automatically inherited had her family's assets not been frozen upon her father's arrest, she would have bought out the entire gift shop. Her bank account held a larger amount than the average college student - thanks in large part to the inheritance received from her late grandmother Burkhart - but significantly less than she had known in her childhood. Still, she could easily purchase half of the supplies and Steven, evidently slightly less of a cheapster with a successful career under his belt, bought the rest.
She had distracted the male receptionist with her female assets and an extra flirtatious smile as Steven snuck a peek down the computer screen to gain the information of Brooke's new room. They had entered, attempting to avoid the second sight of their friend in a hospital bed. Jackie hung streamers. Hyde blew up balloons. Jackie placed on the table two matching teddy bears in tiny bowties for the twins. Hyde spread out celebratory chocolate cigars for the group.
She set down the finishing touch, a vase of wildflowers showcasing Brooke's favorite colors, just before Michael showed up in the doorway.
"Jackie, you did this? Thank you. It looks amazing." He appeared a bit more heartened after showing off his new sons, even if it had only been through a window.
Eric pushed past him with his hand in Donna's and looked around the room.
"So the Devil has a heart after all."
"Eric," Donna groaned.
"Actually, Steven and I both did it," Jackie smiled, glancing at her ex with swelling pride.
"Steven Hyde decorated a hospital room?" asked a shocked Eric whilst he rubbed Donna's back.
As much as Jackie wanted children, she did not relish the idea of pregnancy. Brooke's complications and Donna's blatant discomfort made certain of that. Besides, she faced more than enough pain each month to willingly wish it upon herself for nine.
"Dammit, Jackie, did you really have to give that away? Forman, tell anyone about this and you're dead." Clasping his hands behind his neck, Hyde glowered.
"Aww, Steven Hyde is a softy," Kelso grinned as he walked over to embrace his longtime friend and, at times, rival in the tug-of-war over Jackie's heart.
"Kelso, I am not a softy. Geroff, man!" Hyde's voice came out muffled against Kelso's shirt.
"You got déjà vû, too, right, Donna? Not just me?" Eric's eyes widened at the exchange.
"Hyde, you sure you and Eric weren't swapped at birth?" Donna raised an eyebrow at her husband.
"Oh that's so funny I forgot to laugh," Eric replied bitingly.
They all turned to Jackie, who stood staring at the lifeless woman in the hospital bed.
"She looks so pale," whispered Jackie in trepidation, clutching her elbows. "Brooke, babe, you're missing the party." She covered Brooke's whitened hand with hers, stroking her thumb along the woman's knuckle.
"This sucks," Eric sighed, planting himself on a folding chair. "Brooke's the only woman in Kelso's life who I've actually liked."
"Hey!" Hyde and Jackie spoke simultaneously - the former, adding what about his sister and the latter asking what about her.
"I mean, Angie's alright, but I never really got to know her outside of trying to persuade her away from Kelso. Wouldn't've done half a bad job with that, if Angie hadn't tried to prove something to you, Hyde. And c'mon, Devil, you know how I feel about you."
"Like a little sister who you hate and love at the same time?" Fez asked nonchalantly, entering the room with a tray of second coffees for everyone but Jackie and Donna.
"Yeah, like - wait, no, what'd you say?"
"Ha, Eric, you just said Jackie's like your sister and you love her," Kelso smirked through his pain.
"Did not," Eric mumbled, "could barely understand Fez through his doughnut."
"Really? I thought he spoke pretty clearly," remarked an amused Hyde.
"I mean, Eric, it was only a matter of time." Grabbing her husband's arm, Donna tugged it around her shoulder.
"Kind of like it's only a matter of time until Hyde and Jackie start making out." Fez scanned three shocked faces and two flummoxed expressions. "Ai, did I say that out loud?"
Jackie flicked the briefest glance to Steven, which was instantly met with his own that lasted approximately two seconds - enough time for Fez to become the most observant individual in the room.
"You did! You did make out!" he announced excitedly, pointing between them.
"Wait, hold on, what?" asked Donna and Kelso in the same breath, with Eric at a peculiar loss for words.
"We did not make out." Jackie placed both hands on her hips.
"Oh, but you wanted to." Fez's head tilted to the side. His hands motioned the chewing of popcorn.
"What are you doing?" Though he spoke to Fez, Eric's gaze pinpointed on the accused.
"Enjoying the show, Eric. Duh."
"Nothing happened." Hyde's response was coated with both certainty and the tiniest sliver of confusion, which only Jackie noticed.
"You two did stumble out into the waiting area at an odd hour, together." Eric looked at his brother and reluctant sister pensively, tilting his head with combined interest and repulsion.
"We were in the chapel."
"Hyde, you went to the chapel?" Donna's shock heightened.
"Kelso told us to." His shoulders lifted in a careless shrug.
"You actually stepped into a chapel for my wife? You, the man who acts like entering any place of worship is the same as entering a volcano without any protective gear? Which, I would totally do, by the way. I'd be the first man to survive a volcano."
"Uh, Kelso, in my country -" Fez began, trailing off so that they were all left wondering what he would have said about his elusive country if he hadn't noticed Kelso start to cry.
Wiping at a stray tear lingering on his cheek, Kelso appeared noticeably touched. "I love you, man." He pulled Hyde back into a strong embrace, this time holding on more tightly when the other man tried to escape.
Eric and Donna engaged in their own stunned silence, Jackie's imaginary makeout with Steven blessedly absent from their minds.
It gave her time to think over the odd occurrence with her ex-boyfriend in front of Brooke's hospital room.
No, they hadn't made out. They had barely kissed, just the tiniest brush of their lips before being saved by the beep and a distraught Michael. Yet, it annoyed her that even the smallest feel of his lips against hers invoked a spark, ignited a powderkeg, sent her hurtling so far towards the rings of Saturn that she didn't know if she would find her way back.
After all of these years, he still found a route to climb under her skin. She thought they burnt the road map long ago. He must have sifted through the ashes and pieced it together.
He had certainly matured from the boy she once knew, the insecure orphan who acted tough and rarely allowed his emotions out in the open, to one who held her in a hospital chapel whilst she soaked his shirt in her tears.
Then again, he had done that a couple of times in their adolescence, as well - unusual though it was.
Catching her staring at him, Hyde peeked over Kelso's shoulder to return her intense gaze with his own.
Breaking their eye contact, she quickly glanced back in the direction of their friends.
Wanting to scream, she considered what would have happened if they indeed exchanged a kiss. For starters, it would have become passionate - of that, she was sure. Their kisses had never been suitable for a G rating or, when they were alone, a PG rating. They may have ended up in bed. She would have dubbed the moment a mistake. He would have agreed. He would leave and hook up with some bleach blonde tramp in St. Louis, where Ade had told her he lived. She would return to Los Angeles, gain fame and fortune, a handful of eligible bachelors lining up for her hand, and see him every once in a while at the occasional Forman gathering.
Essentially, they would carry on as they had before they decided to toss a knife into their truce with the complicated act of a one-night stand between exes.
And she knew, without a doubt, that any sex between them could never solely be a one-night stand.
For a moment, she debated a second scenario. They would kiss. Steven would declare his undying love for her. He would join her in Hollywood. They would marry, bear children and die side-by-side after a fatal accident, likely on the return flight from a music festival in some obscure European city. Post-mortem, they would both become stars when their grieving daughter wrote a tragic, Oscar-winning screenplay of their life together.
Steven, however, would never willingly move to the city he blamed for the majority of America's problems and she bore no desire to move to Missouri, of all places.
That would be returning to the Midwest. She swore to herself that she would rather die by hypothermia during an escape from a ravenous grizzly bear on a Northern California mountain than move back to the region she managed to escape.
If she and Steven did fall into that trap, the least he could do was move to New York. That was a location she would be quite pleased to live in.
Yet, despite her inward confirmation that nothing further could occur between Midwest resident Steven Hyde and Hollywood's future top producer, Jackie Burkhart, her eyes dropped to his lips nonetheless.
She excused herself, mumbling some explanation about getting a hot chocolate from the cafeteria.
Steven must have taken that as his cue to follow, for he joined her after a period of time which would not cause the others to inquire of their whereabouts.
When she instead questioned him, he pointed out that she never drank hot chocolate in April - a fact the others missed when she left.
He surprised her further when he reminded her of a conversation they once had during the first year of their acquaintance, when she told him she only drank warm beverages in the winter months and he informed her that he didn't give a shit.
He had been ten years old then and already cursed as if in a daily audition to join the Navy.
Steven Hyde, of course, would rather be thrown in the slammer than involve himself in a government organization, even if it would surround him with like-minded individuals.
"So," he started, clasping and unclasping his hands under the table.
"So." She dropped her gaze into the bubbles of her soda pop, watching them dissipate, then form again.
"Yeah. Uh." His hand massaged the side of his neck.
"You go first," they burst out, in sync.
"No, you," they again spoke at once.
"What was that?" she giggled uncomfortably.
"Pretty sure people call it a kiss, Jackie." His fingers danced over the rim of his coffee cup.
"Then you must not be getting any because they wouldn't call that a kiss where I come from."
"We're from the same place." He narrowed his gaze.
"Well, whatever it was, I'm sure we can agree that it was -"
"- a mistake," he finished flatly.
"Right. Exactly. A mistake," she agreed with significantly more nonchalance than she felt.
"Familiar," he simply replied.
"What is?"
"This conversation. Awfully familiar." Eyes reminiscent of a clear sky over the water hole sitting on the edge of the Burkhart's old summer cabin stared unblinkingly.
He did have a point, she reluctantly realized.
"Well, I mean it was -"
"You can't say a kiss was hot when it barely happened, Jackie," he cut in before an utterance of the exact wording he predicted.
"Well, did you feel something?" she bristled.
"No." He hid his eyes and frustratingly kissable lips in the sip of his cup.
"Right, because you can't feel something when nothing happened."
"I mean, you were -"
"Emotional. Overly emotional. Clearly distraught."
"- and I was -"
"There."
"You probably -"
"Would've kissed anyone who comforted me like that."
"And I can't -"
"Get back together with your drop-dead gorgeous ex who can outshine any model and really should be the frontrunner for Miss USA."
"No, I was gonna say I can't finish my damn sentence with you around." His fingers angrily tapped the table, though his eyes lacked the fury correlating to his statement. "Thanks for proving my point."
"Why would you want to finish it, anyway? You're Steven Hyde. You never talk."
"What am I, Jackie, a mime?"
"You did mime aspects of our relationship."
"Oh, joy. Here we go." He leant back in his chair, his feet drumming on the floor. "Gonna tell me everything I did wrong now, huh?"
"I offered you a life, Steven, an incredibly happy life for once in your lonely, miserable one. You didn't want it," she remarked coolly.
"How do ya know we would've been happy? I was nineteen, Jackie. Nineteen! And you wanted to get married? Who the hell wants to get married at eighteen?"
"Had no problem marrying the stripper, though, did you?"
"Damn it all to hell." He pressed his fist to his forehead. "I am not arguing about Sam with you in a hospital cafeteria."
"Didn't want to marry me. Claimed we were too young, you weren't ready, blah blah blah and then you get married in Vegas?" she exclaimed as quietly as possible.
"What part of I was drunk off my ass do you still not get?" he seethed, throwing his cup in the trash as he stood.
"But you stayed with her, even after you found out she tried to make you a bigamist. I was just the girl you thought should boink the milkman."
"You weren't exactly alone with Prince Eduardo keepin' you company," he bit out.
She, too, stood.
"I bet you never even loved me." She walked out of the cafeteria and away from the listening ears of nosy strangers.
To her bafflement, he followed.
"You're full of as much bullshit as Kelso," he muttered behind her.
"What?" In the quiet corner, she spun around.
"You heard me."
"Wait, are you telling me that you did love me?"
"I'm saying that you're talkin' bullshit if you tell me I didn't."
His expression carried the same amount of sincerity as it did the first time he confessed to her his affection, after he had removed his glasses and peered down at her with those genuine blues which held fear of another abandonment.
He wasn't the only person who had been abandoned in life. He, at least, had the Formans and Kitty's home cooking. She had a nanny fluent in a language she could not understand, who cooked meals that tasted like rubber.
Her first nanny had been Icelandic and she later learnt that the rubber-tasting meal had, in fact, been fermented shark.
Even the posh stars she had become acquainted with in Tinsel Town hadn't tasted fermented shark. At the time, it had been repulsive. Now, it made her more cultured than some A-listers.
"Steven, you told me once that you loved me, after you admitted that you cheated. You told me not to push it a second time and then you couldn't even decide whether or not you wanted to marry me. I had to hear it from Michael, of all people!"
"Why the hell are you insisting on doin' this here?" He gritted his teeth. "What happened to that truce?"
"You're the one who just tried to tell me my opinion is shit. I'm only calling you out for it. I know what you wanted to tell me before I left for Madison."
"You do, do you?"
Receiving a staredown from Steven Hyde's unmasked eyes was unnerving, to say the least, but she prattled on nonetheless.
"Yeah. You were gonna tell me you never loved anyone the way you loved Sam."
He snorted.
"Yeah, Jackie. Okay. Sure. Because I always talk like a Hollywood caricature. You don't have a clue what I would've told you."
"It isn't hard to guess."
"Gotta break it to you, doll. You sure ain't guessing right."
Both fuming, they stood toe-to-toe.
She didn't know who moved forward first; perhaps it had been synchronous.
It was different, a good different. He had always known exactly how to melt her with the touch of his lips, but he must have learnt a thing or two from his ex, just as she had practiced with Adam. Their tongues collided. She soared through the galaxy, a weightless balloon seeking out the stars. His hands roamed over her back. He walked them over towards a door, turning the knob to an unlocked supply closet.
He had her shirt halfway off when they were interrupted by a startled orderly - thankfully before the orderly locked the door. That forgetful orderly managed to stop them from the one-night stand she had feared - and in the closet of a hospital lathered in the stench of strong cleaning products, no less.
One-night stands could only lead to catastrophe, she again determined.
A stiff Steven, a breathless Jackie and a perplexed orderly left the closet. The first two returned to their friends without any idea of the next step in an already chaotic relationship which had just become infinitely more complicated. She caught a glimpse of the latter double-checking the lock of every closet they passed.
She just wanted Brooke to awaken. When a member of the medical staff informed Michael that his wife had slipped into a coma, Jackie understood exactly why he had punched a doctor.
This time, Fez held her back from following suit.
-x
Thank you to those of you who have hung on to this story, despite the long waiting period between chapters!