TW for hospital setting, discussion of surgery and GSWs, mentions of injury/violence, minor swearing
May didn't say much as she followed Dr. Addai down the winding hallways of the hospital, away from the ER and into the more somber sections – probably, she assumed, the home of the surgical wing. Countless questions were zipping back and forth, about the surgery, about Jemma, about her injury, but she kept them to herself for the moment. Dr. Addai seemed set on not wasting time, and May had no intention of distracting the doctors from the work of saving her daughter.
"She's in here," Dr. Addai said, pushing open a door labeled Trauma 1. "We're prepping the OR now, so you have a few minutes."
"Thank you," said May quietly as she slipped into the room. Jemma was propped up in the rolling bed that would transport her to the operating room before too long, and a nurse was checking some of the machines nearby.
"You're her mother?" the nurse asked, glancing up from the monitor he was watching.
May nodded, not interested in wasting her few minutes with Jemma on explaining the foster care situation.
"She's hanging in there," the nurse smiled. "She's been slipping in and out of consciousness, especially once we gave her some medicine for the pain. She's lost a fair amount of blood, so she's pretty weak, but the first aid that was done in the field helped her out a lot. Probably saved her life."
May took a few steps closer to Jemma, studied her small, pale face. She looked so diminutive in the big hospital bed, her complexion so colorless against the stark bedsheets. Her face was a little pinched, like even in sleep she could tell that she was in pain and in a confusing, unfamiliar place, and her forehead was damp with cold sweat as May tried to brush some strands of hair off her brow.
Jemma's eyes fluttered at the touch, and she blinked slowly, processing the sight in front of her. "M… May?"
"Shh, try not to talk, love," May whispered. "It's May. I'm here."
"Ursa… May…" Jemma closed her eyes, but her face relaxed a little. Her hand waved listlessly by her side, like she was trying to raise it to tap but didn't quite have the strength.
"She's done that thing with her hand a few times," the nurse remarked, noticing the movement. "We wondered if there was some neurological distress going on as well, but none of the scans—"
"She's trying to tap," May explained. "That's one of her… She's autistic, and the tapping helps her. She's trying to stay calm, maybe say something to us." She took Jemma hand gently and gave it a light squeeze. "I'm here."
"Good to know," nodded the nurse. "We were worried it was a side effect of the injury, a tremor or a sign of seizure, but that's a much better reason for the hand movement."
Jemma opened her eyes again, and this time they latched onto May a little more quickly. A finger on the hand May was holding twitched and tapped a few times on the back of May's hand.
"You're doing great, Jemma," May told her, tapping back. "You're going into surgery soon, and they're going to get that bullet out of you."
"Is Skye…?" Jemma tried to ask. Her voice was hoarse and croaky.
"Skye's okay, she's with another doctor. She's okay. Bobbi's okay, too. We're all okay. Everyone said to tell you good luck. Skye said to tell you she loves you—" May tapped three times in time with she loves you, just as Skye had instructed her to. "—and that she's sorry."
"She doesn't… need to apologize," Jemma murmured, tapping back three times.
"That's what I told her you'd say," smiled May. "But I think she just wanted to make sure you knew."
"He had a gun," Jemma said weakly, her eyes drooping again momentarily. "He was going to… take Skye away. I didn't want… to happen."
"I know."
"He got angry… gun went off. It hurt. Everything."
"I know," May said again, soothing. "You were so brave. And I know it hurts. The doctors are going to help you."
"I don't want to be… brown dwarf."
May wasn't sure what that was supposed to mean, but she did her best to just take the cue. "You're not. You don't have to be."
"Orange dwarf, maybe," mumbled Jemma, closing her eyes once more. "I'd like… to have life."
"I think that sounds good," said May softly. "Life is always good. You stay alive for me, okay?"
"Ursa Major says." A faint smile pressed on the corners of Jemma's mouth, and she tapped a few times on May's hand. May still wasn't entirely sure what Jemma was talking about, but it made her heart skip a happy beat to see Jemma smile, even if it was a feeble one.
Someone cleared their throat behind them, and May looked over her shoulder to see Dr. Addai.
"We're ready for Jemma in the OR. We'll do our very best, and we'll keep you updated as best we can. The surgery should only take an hour or so."
"Okay." May gave Jemma's hand one last squeeze before making room for the doctor and nurses to come in and start rolling the bed away. "We love you," she whispered, although she had no idea if Jemma could hear her anymore. Still, it seemed like an important thing to say, and a true thing, too. She'd be a fool to keep denying it at this point, and Melinda May was no fool.
She had intended to find her way back to Phil and the girls after checking in with Jemma, but for some reason May found herself drifting to the surgical waiting room instead, settling herself in amongst the other grey-faced, nervous friends and family members awaiting updates, praying for good news. It felt wrong not to wait for Jemma here, and she trusted that Phil was more than capable of taking care of Skye and Bobbi for a little while longer. She thought about texting him, even took out her phone to send a message, but she didn't know what she could say that would be worth sending. She had no news, nothing new to report. Just sixty minutes of waiting ahead of her.
She watched as an elderly woman listened to a doctor, her face going slack with happy relief as she heard what she had been hoping for, and she watched as a middle-aged couple nodded grimly as a different doctor indicated they had to wait longer for an answer. So many lives up in the air, so many worlds on a precipice, quivering on a razor-thin point between what was and what might be. A room full of strangers who were all experiencing some version of the exact same nightmare. It was an odd feeling, to be sure, and one of the reasons why Melinda tended to avoid hospitals if she could. Dreams that vivid, feelings that sharp and palpable – she'd never been comfortable with the idea of sharing those things with perfect strangers. And yet, as she sat there, waiting for a word on Jemma, she couldn't pull herself away. It was uncomfortable, and more vulnerable than she liked to be, but it was almost comforting in a way, too. It was a reminder that no one was alone.
After exactly one hour and eight minutes had passed, the door to the waiting room swung open, heralding the arrival of Dr. Addai. May stood as she approached, examining every inch of the doctor's face for some kind of clue, a tell, a sign of how things had gone. She didn't have to wait long before Dr. Addai eased into a contented smiled, and she felt her whole body sag with the release of a tension she hadn't known she was carrying.
"Jemma did great," Dr. Addai informed her. She still spoke crisply and professionally, but there was definitely something more relaxed, more warm in her tone this time. "The bullet was right where we thought it would be, and the damage to the liver was even more minor that we expected. We were able to repair the laceration without any difficulty, and the bullet was removed cleanly. She'll have plenty of recovery ahead of her, but we couldn't have asked for a better surgery."
"That's… the best news I've heard all day," May admitted. Her words tumbled away from her in a rush, all in the space of a deep exhale she had been neglecting to breathe. "I have to tell my husband, he's been so worried—"
"Of course," nodded Dr. Addai. "Take all the time you need."
"Can we see her?" May asked, before the doctor could step away.
"She's still asleep at the moment, but she should be waking up before too long. She'll be a little groggy, and probably in some pain, but I'm sure she'd love some familiar faces to be the first thing she sees," smiled Dr. Addai. "She's in room 207, you're welcome to head there now.
"Thank you. Thank you so much, really, for everything." May gave Dr. Addai's hand a quick, two-pumped shake, and walked as quickly as she could in the direction Dr. Addai had gestured. She sent a quick text as she walked – Jemma out of surgery, went well. Room 207 – and had no trouble locating the room. Jemma was still dwarfed by the bed, still pale and delicate-looking, but her breathing was deeper and slower than it had been earlier, and May could feel a change in the atmosphere around her. Everything felt calmer, more optimistic, more peaceful.
May pulled a chair over to Jemma's bedside and made herself as comfortable as a person could be sitting in a stiff hospital chair, waiting for their child to wake up from surgery. She scooped up Jemma's hand and, without really thinking about it, began to tap gently on the back of her hand, just a little beat to help anchor the both of them and remind Jemma that she wasn't alone. With her free hand, May checked her phone. No word from Phil, which struck her as a little odd. Maybe he was busy with a doctor, or maybe they were on their way. Maybe the hospital just had bad service.
Any further thoughts about Phil's radio silence were driven out of her head a few minutes later, however, when Jemma began to make small sounds of stirring. Her face crinkled, eyes screwed up against the bright light, and she shifted against the post-op pain, wincing as she moved.
"Shh," May soothed, tightening her grip on Jemma's hand. "It's okay, Jemma. Try to stay still."
"Where—" Jemma croaked. She blinked a few times and May caught wild eyes raking across the room, trying to make sense of their surroundings.
"We're at the hospital," May told her gently. "You just got out of surgery. Did great. The doctor was really happy with how things went. You're going to be okay."
"Skye?"
"Is okay, too," smiled May. "She's with Phil and Bobbi. She's probably got a cast on by now. I told them what room we're in, so hopefully they'll be here any minute. Everybody's really anxious to see you."
"Everything hurts." Jemma made a pitiful sound, almost like a whimper, and she twisted her fingers up in May's, coiling their hands together tightly.
"I know. I know it hurts."
"They took the bullet out?"
"They did," May nodded. "It went very smoothly, from what I heard."
"I read once that sometimes they leave it in," Jemma murmured. "But I'm glad it's out."
"I'm sure you could ask the doctor for specifics about your procedure," May said, a wry smile working its way onto her face, "but it sounded to me like they wanted to make sure it wasn't going to cause any more internal damage. They mentioned something about your liver."
"Largest solid organ in the human body," Jemma informed her. It was almost like a reflex, which May would have found amusing if she wasn't so thrilled to hear a faint echo of Jemma's usual self returning to the world, even as her voice wasn't as strong as it should be. "Susceptible to traumatic injury because it takes up so much space. It does a lot of important things – filtering blood, aiding digestion, helping to regulate blood clotting—"
"So I guess it's a good thing they were able to patch yours up," May said, cutting her off gently. She loved hearing Jemma's fun facts, but she didn't want her to exhaust herself reciting from Gray's Anatomy.
"Did you know a person can live without some of their liver?" Jemma asked. She sounded tired, but her excitement at being able to talk about medical marvels seemed to override her fatigue. "And it can grow itself back. It's the only part of the body that can do that."
"Like a lizard tail?"
"Or like hydras."
"Remind me what that one is again? Not just the mythical monster with all the heads, I assume…"
"It's a cnidarian," Jemma smiled. "Related to a jellyfish." She tried to sit up a little, but her smile crumpled away in a grimace and she made another painful whimper.
"I know it's hard, but try to take it easy. You need to rest. Bullet wounds are no joke, Jemma. It's a hard recovery."
Jemma sank back on her pillow and shot May a quizzical look. May forced herself not to smile. Even in the hospital, Jemma was still curious.
"I've been shot before," May explained.
"You have?"
"More than once, actually," she admitted. "It comes with my job, unfortunately. I know how much it hurts, and I also know that the pain doesn't go away as you start to get better. It just changes. Sometimes I think the pain of recovery is worse than the actual injury." She paused, studied Jemma tenderly. She almost added that the pain of being the one by the bedside was even worse than the pain of getting shot, but she thought better of it. She didn't want to make Jemma feel guilty, so she settled for an amended version instead. "I've never been on this side of things, though. I'm starting to understand just how frightened Phil must have been those times when it was me in the bed."
"What happened?"
May pursed her lips, weighing how much she wanted to say. Jemma was smart, and she wasn't naïve, but she was still a kid, still twelve years old, and she had just come out of something that was sure to stay with her for a long time. Melinda didn't want to scare her or worry her any more than she needed to be right now, and while the story of her own injuries ultimately had a happy ending, wasn't exactly a comforting tale. It also wasn't one she told many people. Phil, of course, who had been there, plus her parents, Andrew, and Vic and Izzy. That was about it. Those were her people, the small circle who knew just how much she had lost that day. Maybe one day, when they weren't also dealing with the repercussions of the Cal situation, she would share that part of herself, her history, with the girls. She could stand to widen her circle a bit. For now, though, it would remain untold.
"That's a story for another time," she said softly, running her thumb along the back of Jemma's hand. Jemma's eyes were sagging, growing heavy with oncoming sleep. "You need to rest, sweet girl."
Jemma nodded, almost imperceptibly, and May watched as she allowed herself to relax, closing her eyes and slipping back into the sleep she had probably been fighting off for May's sake.
May sat there, watching Jemma and savoring each steady rise and fall of her chest, the serenity that slowly washed over her fraught countenance, and she felt the coils of stress and anxiety that had been tightening deep within her muscles all day start to unwind. They were safe.
Her phone buzzed a minute later, and she fished it out of her pocket. She was a little surprised it took Phil so long to respond. Even if he had been preoccupied with Skye or Bobbi or another doctor, she would have assumed he'd be waiting for a word on Jemma. She clicked open the phone, expecting to see a thumbs-up, or one of his corny, random emojis that he liked to send in lieu of an actual response (the lobster and the smiley face wearing sunglasses were some of his personal favorites), but instead, she saw a message that rewound the coils tighter than before.
Something's wrong. Come as quick as you can. ER Rm 4.
She hated to leave Jemma while she was sleeping, but May wasn't about to mess around with a 'something's wrong' text. A thousand worst-case scenarios raced through her head as her feet carried her back through the labyrinth of the hospital towards the room Phil had instructed her to find. Skye or Bobbi was more hurt than they had realized. Cal had escaped and found them. Skye had disappeared again. She didn't know which sickening what-if seized her heart the tightest. Why hadn't Phil given her any more information to go on?
She rounded a corner and nearly ran into Phil, who was pacing nervously in the hallway, doing his best to steal glances through the thin strip of window set in the door in front of them.
"Phil, what's going on?"
"Melinda." He looked up, and his face was ashen, his eyes pooled with uncertainty. "There's… the doctor came in and wanted to talk to Victoria about Skye. He said there were some concerns…"
"Why wouldn't he talk to you about it? You're her foster father. Her legal guardian."
"I… I don't know," Phil said, running a hand through his hair. "He just asked me to wait outside."
"Where are the girls?"
"Skye's in there with them. Bobbi had just come back – she went looking for something to eat, I think – and a nurse, the one that's been working with us, said she needed to take a look at something. Took her to another room."
"Which room?" May demanded. "They can't just whisk our kids away and not tell us what's going on, Phil."
"I know," he said. "I know. I don't understand it. I don't like it. Something's wrong."
"Hence the text."
"I didn't know what else to say."
They stood there helplessly for another minute or so before May's patience, stretched paper thin from the time she had woken up that morning, wore out completely. "This is ridiculous." She stepped around Phil and pushed the door open, drawing the surprised gaze of the doctor, the anguished one of Skye's, and the unreadable one of Victoria's.
"Ma'am, please step—"
"What's going on?" she asked, injecting her tone with as much ice as she could. She didn't like to use her work voice when she was off the clock, especially in front of the girls, but she had no intention of letting the hawkish doctor labor under the delusion that she was going to obey demurely.
"May," said Victoria quietly. "There's a situation. I'll explain in a minute—"
"Are you all right?" May cut over Victoria, directing her question straight to Skye, who looked on the verge of tears. "What's wrong, Skye?"
"He's got it all wrong," Skye blubbered. "He's trying to say there's something… he's wrong… he thinks you're…"
"Skye, please don't say anything. I know you're upset." Victoria's voice was sympathetic, but it lacked the warmth May knew she could conjure. She was trying to be professional, diplomatic.
"They're trying to take me away!" Skye erupted, tears streaming down her face.
"What?" Melinda felt like all the blood had been drained from her body. Her heart stopped, locked in a block of ice.
"Ma'am, you really shouldn't—" the doctor tried to interrupt.
"Vic, what is she talking about?" May ignored him. "What's going on?"
"Dr. Townsend and Nurse Owens have some concerns," Victoria said dispassionately. "Nurse Owens filed a report with CPS, and when Dr. Townsend learned I was already here, he requested a meeting."
"What concerns?" pressed May. "They've just come out of something horrific, you're really telling me these quacks—"
"—I beg your pardon—"
"—can't tell the difference between what that monster did to them and… and…"
"It's standard protocol, ma'am, any time a child comes in with injuries like we saw on your foster daughter. Broken bone, cuts, scrapes, healing bruises. Our CT scan revealed there was week-old bruising on a few of her ribs, plus some older scars on her back, an old healed fracture on her other arm—"
"This is insane," May gaped. "We would never… Victoria, you know we would never—"
"I tried to tell them, May," Skye insisted. "I told them about the fight at school. I told them you would never hurt us."
"Combine that with the fact that another child in your care is having surgery to have a bullet removed from her stomach, and you can see why we had no choice but to file a report," the doctor finished self-righteously. "Nurse Owens is conducting a full examination of your other foster daughter as we speak. We're just doing our job, ma'am. We're trained to look for these sorts of things, keep children safe."
"They filed a report with the department, so it went to my supervisor before it came down to me," Victoria said quietly. "It's procedure, May. They have to investigate. They have to take the reports seriously. In this case you and I know there's nothing to discover, but we have to do our due diligence on every case. You know that. I can't play favorites."
"You can't just take them." May felt lost, more lost than she'd ever felt in her life. How had everything gone so horribly wrong? How had they gotten here? "They've just been through hell, and you want to yank them away…"
"Melinda, please don't make this harder than it has to be," urged Victoria. She turned slightly and lowered her voice so that Skye wasn't directly in earshot. "It's not permanent. I'll expedite the investigation, the department will see there's nothing to worry about, they'll clear you. But you have to let us do our jobs, and you have to be strong for them. Skye needs to see you're calm about this. She's already upset. Be strong for her."
"I'm not calm, Vic, I'm losing my kids. Again. I've already done this once today. I'm not strong enough for this."
"I know," Victoria said sadly. "I know how horrible this feels. But I also know you are strong enough. If it's for them, you'll always be strong enough. Just get her through this, and we'll make it right. I'll make it right. I promise you that."
Victoria didn't often make promises – it went against the nature of her job, and against the nature of her personality – but she looked May hard in the eyes as she made this one, and May knew she had no choice but to trust her old friend.
"May?" Skye asked. Her voice was so small, so young and childlike sounding. "May, I don't want to leave. I don't. I'm sorry I left, I'm sorry I ruined everything. Please don't make me leave."
"I know, baby, I know. This isn't your fault. It's not. It's no one's fault, it's just the way things have to be right now." May was fighting hard to keep her own voice steady, to swallow back the cracks and building sorrow. "It's not forever. We want you back, Skye. We're going to fight like hell to get you back, do you hear me? We want you. We choose you. We'll be together again."
"I don't want to say goodbye," said Skye tearily. "You promised we didn't have to say goodbye." May's heart clenched and her eyes burned. She sidestepped the doctor and closed the distance between her and Skye, cupping a hand around her head and pulling her in close. She planted a soft kiss on the top of Skye's forehead.
"I know, love. I meant it. We don't have to say goodbye. This isn't goodbye. We'll see each other again."
"Promise?"
"I promise." She said it with more conviction than she'd ever had, like she was speaking the truth of it into existence, molding it into being by sheer force of will. She had to believe it would be true. She had to make it be true. There wasn't any other option.
"It's time to leave, May," Victoria murmured, dragging Melinda's thoughts back to earth. "I'll call you as soon as I know something."
Phil had been flabbergasted when she'd told him what was going on. He'd demanded to see Skye and Bobbi, but no one had budged this time. Victoria did her best to explain, and Phil slowly began to understand that there was no way he could talk his way out of this conundrum, just like there was no way Melinda could fight her way out either.
They drove in silence as Phil took her back over to the warehouse so she could pick up her car and began the agonizing, empty drive back to Manitowoc, back to their agonizing, empty home. The absence of the girls gaped like a cavern tearing the earth open wide, and there was nothing to do but sink numbly onto the couch together and cry at just how much they had lost. They held each other, because there was no one else to hold, and because there was no one else who's heart was scooped out like theirs were, a half-empty shell without the rest of their family.
"We'll get them back," Phil said finally, once their eyes had dried. The sun had gone down, and the room was growing dark. Neither one thought to turn on a light.
"We have to," May agreed. "And when we do, I swear to god, Phil, I'll do whatever it takes to make sure this kind of thing can't happen anymore. We get them back and then we're never losing them again."
Another terrible place to leave things, I know! I'm sorry, I promise I don't plan for updates to always end in such dangling place, it just happens that way... The next update hopefully won't be too long coming out, so at least we have that to look forward to? As always, I can't thank you all enough for being here, for reading, for reviewing, for sharing your time with me :) You all are so great and I'm so happy you're here!