Disclaimer: All still apply.

SOMETHING TO PROVE

(PART TWELVE)

Mark,

By the time you receive this letter I'll have gone. I don't know where yet, but maybe I'll write again when I get there. Although, with the way things have turned out, I don't suppose you'd care if you never heard from me again.

I know that I didn't do anything wrong, but it's obvious that you don't believe me. I saw it in Amanda's face and in the way that both you and Steve have been avoiding me. And if my own friends don't believe me, what chance have I got before the Board?

I don't understand how you can think me capable of such a thing, I thought you knew me better than that. I thought we were friends. I guess I don't know you as well as I thought I did.

Consider this letter my resignation. It will save you the bother of firing me.

Jesse Travis.

*****

No sentiment, no goodbye, not even 'yours sincerely'. The young doctor had simply signed his name, with the intention of walking out of their lives forever.

"Oh, Jesse," Mark murmured, after he'd finished reading. He could hardly believe that his young friend, no matter how depressed he was, could think that they were anything but one hundred per cent behind him.

Steve took the letter from his dad's unresisting fingers and began to read, holding it so that Amanda could also see its content.

Blame enough to go around. The young pathologist remembered her own words to Mark, just a short while ago and they left a bitter taste in her mouth.

"But I wasn't avoiding him," Steve protested. "God, if I'd have just got there two minutes sooner..."

"Don't Steve," Amanda cut in, tearfully. "There's too much guilt here already. We drove him to this. I know we didn't mean to and I know that the things Jesse says in his letter aren't true, but that doesn't matter. It's what he believes."

"He wasn't behaving rationally," Mark tried to reassure her, her obvious distress overshadowing his own bleak feelings. "He didn't mean those things..."

"He did when he wrote them. And nothing has changed to make him think any differently now, not as far as he's concerned." She looked at them both, unable to hide her fear. "What if he doesn't wake up?"

"Amanda, he will wake up." Mark answered firmly. "He is not going to die."

"But what if he does?" she persisted. " What if... What if he... dies, believing that we'd turned our backs on him, that we didn't have any faith in him?"

*****

The hours dragged on. Jesse was transferred from the trauma room to x-ray and then straight into surgery. All the three friends could do was wait.

They had adjourned to the doctor's lounge and sustained themselves with endless cups of bitter coffee, whilst awaiting the news that none of them were sure they were ready to hear.

Eventually, as the evening drew in and Steve's pacing was beginning to wear on the other two's nerves, the door opened. Justin Wilson, Jesse's surgeon, stepped into the room, his expression unreadable. He looked at the three faces turned expectantly towards him. Three voices, all at once, asked the same question, each in their own way.

"Justin?"

"How is he?"

"Doctor?"

"He's still unconscious," Wilson answered, grimly. "And his condition is very, very serious. He suffered severe head trauma, which resulted in a fractured skull and bleeding to the brain. I'm sorry, I wish it were better news."

"Justin, what's the prognosis?" Mark asked quietly.

"It's too early to say." The doctor shook his head. "You know how it is with head injuries, Mark. All we can do is keep him comfortable and continue to monitor him."

"What...?" Amanda's voice was barely audible, so she cleared her throat and tried again. "What about his other injuries?"

"Well, in that respect, he has been remarkably lucky," Wilson answered, with the ghost of a smile. "There was no permanent damage to his spine. There's some very nasty swelling, some nerve and muscle damage, but nothing that won't heal, given time. His right femur was broken in two places, but that should knit cleanly. And the rest is just cuts and bruises. If it weren't for that head injury, he'd have got off remarkably lightly."

"But when is he going to wake up?" Steve demanded sharply, cutting to the chase.

"That's not a question that Doctor Wilson can answer, Steve." It was Mark who spoke, saving his colleague from the need to deliver even more less than encouraging news. "We can only wait."

"Dammit!"

Steve turned away, running his hands through his hair in sheer frustration. There were things that he needed to say to his friend, things that couldn't wait.

The letter had hurt him more deeply than he had thought possible. For Jesse to think that he no longer cared, that he in fact thought him guilty of that ludicrous accusation, almost defied belief.

But he had read it with his own eyes and now he felt an almost desperate need to seek forgiveness. Steve had already lost his sister through estrangement, he wasn't about to go through the same bitter experience, with the closest thing he'd ever had to a brother.

*****

"I'm going to sit with him," Amanda said, as soon as Doctor Wilson had once again left them alone.

"Amanda, it's getting late," Mark protested. "And it's been a long day. You should be getting home."

"How can I? You saw what he put in that letter. He was running away from us, Mark. He was leaving, without saying goodbye, because he thought that we didn't believe him. He's not going to wake up without our help. He has no reason to wake up. Jesse thinks that we have turned our backs on him and now we have to show him that he's wrong. That we always have and always will have nothing but absolute faith in him. We have to give him the reason to live."

She stopped then, her cheeks flushed by the sheer passion of her outburst. Her eyes were filled with tears of anger, at the unfairness of it all, but they still held a steely determination. Both Mark and Steve knew better than to try and convince her that going home was a viable alternative.

Mark sighed, feeling a fresh wave of guilt wash over him. That letter had been so impersonal. It made no reference to the wonderful times that the four of them had shared. No mention of CJ or Dion, the former of which Jesse himself had helped to bring into the world. They both would have missed him terribly, but their favourite 'uncle' hadn't even seemed to care.

How had he, Mark Sloan, renowned for his compassion and empathy, allowed the young man to degenerate into such a state? Shouldn't he have seen some clue in the drink driving episode? It was so out of character and yet, he had let it pass with barely a comment.

As a thousand 'if onlys' ran through his head, Mark felt his weariness drop away from him. Amanda was right. It was up to them, his friends, even if he didn't recognise them as such right now, to help him on the road to recovery.

"Of course, you're right," he said, eventually. "Jesse shouldn't be alone until he's through this. We'll all sit with him, talk to him, let him know how wrong he was and how much he means to us."

Steve smiled, with grim determination.

"We'll bring him back."

It wasn't a statement. It was a promise.

TO BE CONTINUED...