Jason stuffed his hands in the pockets of his worn jeans and made another pass through the corridor of the emergency room. His mind was swimming as the sights and sounds around him were all consuming. The one that held him hostage was the blaring ambulance siren that echoed in his ears. Jason didn't know who called 911, him or Tom but the sight of Jake prone on the concrete garage floor was frozen in his head. The remainder of the events played out in some bizarre suspended animation that Jason couldn't seem to get to make any sense. One minute the three of them are laughing and working on his car and then the next Jake is crumpled on the floor grabbing at his heart.
Jason felt his body start to shake all over again the way it had been when the ambulance crew arrived. The paramedics and other emergency workers pushed him out of the way as they went to work on their patient – his friend – his second father. Jason heard them shouting orders. He watched them administer a series of three electric shocks before Jake was stabilized enough so that he could be transported. After being shunned from the back of the ambulance, Jason grabbed his keys and made a mad dash for his own car but Tom stopped him before he could climb behind the wheel.
The pair rode in utter silence to Presbyterian Hospital neither one of them willing to speak about what they had just witnessed. Jason barely waited for Tom to park the car before his was off and running again. He slid through the glass emergency room doors making a beeline for the first person in a white coat that he saw. His biggest fear being that he would lose Jake like he had lost his father. After being shuffled from one person to the next Jason was finally told to take a seat and when there was news on his friend he would be told. So there he was now for the last half-hour pacing the blue and white checkered floor fearing the worst.
"Here man." Jason took the white Styrofoam cup filled with black coffee that Tom offered him yet he never took his eyes off the swinging doors almost willing anyone that could give him word on Jake to walk through them. "Jake's a tough old bird. He's going to be fine," Tom said knowing how forced those words sounded even to his own ears. The sight of Jake doubled over clutching his chest wasn't an image that was easily erased from his mind anymore than Jason's. It was just that his friend had far more to lose if god forbid Jake Russell didn't make it.
Jason turned back and looked at Tom but words escaped him. He knew that in his own inept way Tom was trying to comfort him but it wasn't working. Jason wasn't sure anything at the moment would except for maybe Jake to come waltzing out of the emergency room claiming it was all some practical joke. In his heart Jason knew that wasn't about to happen though. He lifted the cup to his lips and let the scolding liquid burn a path down his throat. On any other occasion he would have cursed the hot liquid and the blisters it left on his tongue yet he didn't. Jason wasn't even sure if he could feel it – he was numb.
Numbness was a feeling he knew all too well. He spent month and months drowning in a sea of grief and anger when his father had been killed. All of a sudden he was thrown back to that place only this time he didn't have Jake to pull him back from the edge. Jason dropped his body into one of the hard blue plastic chairs and swallowed a sob. He watched the actions of those around him and it all seemed to be taking place in slow motion. Like a video that was being played frame by frame. The sheer sluggishness of it all was unnerving to Jason. He lived his life at the fastest pace possible and suddenly being held still – suspended in time almost – wasn't something he knew how to deal with.
"Excuse me," he jumped up when he saw the same young red haired nurse walk passed him for what seemed like the millionth time.
"Yes," she stopped hands full of supplies as she tried to get back to her patient.
"Jake Russell – is there any news on his condition?" Jason asked pensively. Tom joined his friend as he waited for the young woman's reply.
"I'm sorry...." Before Jason could hear the remaining words she was speaking his eyes misted and his heart skipped a beat and nearly stopped. I'm sorry – those were the words he and his mother had heard from the doctors when they came to tell them that they had lost Erik on the operating table to massive internal bleeding. Jason felt like that angry young man all over again unable to deal with the news of his father's death. This couldn't be happening – not again. Jake couldn't be dead. "Sir, are you all right? Do you want to sit down?" the nurse asked as Jason stood rigid before her his breathing erratic.
"Jas?" Tom rested his hand on his buddy's shoulder. He remembered when Erik Morgan died and what a blow that had been to Jason. He could only imagine what was going through his friend's head right now.
"I'm fine," Jason whispered though he was far from fine. "Can I see him?" he asked still believing the worst had happened – that he had lost Jake.
"The doctors are still assessing his condition. I really need to get back in to them with this medication," she said showing him the vials in her hands. Jason expelled a deep breath – one he hadn't even realized he had been holding until he understood that Jake wasn't dead but alive. "My name is Melanie – Melanie King. As soon as there is more news on your friend's condition I will be sure to have someone come and find you."
"Thank you," Jason said.
Melanie looked back before she passed through the swinging doors as the young man she was just talking to stuffed his hands in his pockets and started pacing the hospital floor again with worry etched across his features. She wished she could have stopped longer and talked to him. Helped ease the tension she was sure he was feeling. It was never easy sitting in the waiting room expecting to hear the worse. She wanted to offer words of encouragement but she knew better. She knew the meds that the doctor had sent her for spoke that the young man's friend was in serious trouble and by the look on his face that was the last thing he needed to hear.
"Why don't you sit down man?" Tom asked as Jason's pacing was making him even more nervous.
Jason looked at the bank of chairs and he knew that sitting still wasn't something that he could do right now. Ignoring Tom's suggestion he went on with his wearing a path in the blue and white tile. He had done this with his mother that fateful night after his father's crash. He followed her back and forth tracing her steps with his own neither one of them talking but both knowing what the other was thinking. Jason was haunted by those same thoughts now. Possessed by the ghost of his father and how his life had been cut short in his prime. There wasn't a day that didn't go by that Jason didn't miss him or didn't think about turning around to ask him a question or show him something he'd done. If it hadn't been for Jake, Jason was sure that he wouldn't have made his way in the world. He would have gotten lost in his own sorrow to the point that it would have consumed him. Jake had stepped up and taken on the role of father to him when Erik had no longer been there to do it. Jake trusted him to know his own mind when it came to racing when his mother would hear none of it. Jake taught him to be a man.
A single tear escaped passed Jason's thick lashes and made a track down his cheek. He pressed his fingers against his ice blue eyes forcing the remaining tears back from where they came. He choked on the cries that hung in his throat. He so desperately wanted to sob. He wanted to let loose with the full-scale torrent that quaked within him yet he held it at bay. He had to stay strong for Jake and for himself. If he let his mind really think about losing Jake, Jason knew that he would be a goner.
"Mr. Morgan?" An older man in hospital scrubs approached them unsure which one was Jake Russell's family.
Again Jason snapped to attention readying himself to hear the worst. "Yes? How's Jake?"
"That's what I want to talk to you about. Why don't we have a seat over here?" the man pointed to a few chairs set off to the side of the room. With his heart in his throat Jason followed him. The nurse from earlier now joined them and offered Jason a faint smile. "Mr. Russell has suffered a massive heart attack. We are having difficulty keeping him stable." Once more Jason's breath hitched in his throat. "Our preliminary findings indicate that several major arteries are ninety percent blocked or better. He's going to need by pass surgery."
That's where Jason's comprehension of the doctor's words stopped. He knew that the man was still talking to him yet Jason tuned out the dialogue. His mind was swimming with the little he had heard. Jake – heart attack – blocked arteries; those words and many others skipped around in Jason's brain in no particular order. Yet he knew that it wasn't good. Jake was in serious condition. Even without being told it Jason knew that there was still a good chance that he could lose Jake.
"Mr. Morgan – Mr. Morgan?" the doctor's voice prodded for Jason's attention. "I will need you to sign some release papers. Do you have any questions about what I've told you?"
Questions, Jason thought to himself – yeah he had questions like when was someone going to wake him up from this nightmare or when was the world going to stop spinning out of control cause he wanted to get off now. But he didn't ask either of those instead he went with something a little more obvious. "Can I see him?"
"I'm afraid he's already being prepped for surgery. It's imperative that we get those arteries open as soon as possible. If you follow Nurse King, she will help you with the paperwork and then show you to the coronary surgical waiting area."
Jason watched as the man in green scrubs walked away from him. He felt as if he had just been dismissed without so much as a thought. There he was basically being told that his best friend – the only father he had had in years could possibly die. It was surreal to Jason. All he wanted to do was to see Jake. He hated to think of the possibility of his dying on the operating table without him being able to tell the man that had shaped his life in his father's absence thank you.
Suddenly he felt as if he was being strangled. The noose around his neck was suffocating him. The panic that filled him rendered him motionless. There Jason stood in the hurried atmosphere of the hospital emergency room unable to move a single muscle.
"If you will follow me," Melanie offered guiding him to the nurses' station. She laid the papers out before him but his expression was one of shell shock. He nodded in all the right places and signed on the lines she indicated but deep down Melanie was sure that Jason Morgan didn't know a damn thing of what he was doing. He was going through the motions. She had seen it many times before. Families were bombarded with so much information that they felt like a pinball machine that had just been tilted. "Do you have Mr. Russell's insurance information?" she asked.
Jason stared back at her dumbfounded. He had no clue about what she was asking him. Jake not only handled the mechanical end of his career but the business end as well and Jason knew nothing about it – and he liked it that way. "I don't know," he looked at her with a vacant stare.
"Don't worry about that right now. We have someone here at the hospital that can help you get that all together."
"Thanks," Jason said.
"That's all of the paperwork. If you want I can take you up to the surgical waiting room."
Melanie stood outside the doorway and watched as the two men sat on opposite sides of the room staring off into space. This was the part of her job she disliked the most. She knew all the right words – those that were supposed to comfort people in situations like this but they always sounded so hollow and flat. They never really served the purpose they were supposed to. There was little solace to be found in well meaning people telling you that everything would be fine when no one knew it that was even true. Melanie turned her back and made her way to the elevator. When she reached the ER admitting desk she picked up the phone. "Hey Liz," she began knowing her friend was probably curled up settled in for the evening yet something in Melanie told her that Elizabeth Ryan's expertise in dealing with the family of critically ill patients was needed in this situation.
"Hey Mel, what's up?" Elizabeth asked muting the television. After her conversation with Leo that afternoon about Billy Weston she had barricaded herself in her room to watch several sappy romantic movies where everything ended like a fairy tale romance.
"I know it's late and you are done for the day but... ..."
"But what?"
"Would you mind coming back to the hospital? An older gentleman was admitted. He had a massive coronary and is in surgery now and well let's just say his family is in desperate need of you."
Elizabeth looked at the digital display on the face of the VCR. It read nine o'clock. She was a half-hour away from the hospital so that would put her there quarter to ten at the latest. "What seems to be the trouble?" she asked shrugging off her robe and searching the room for where she deposited her jeans and sweater.
"I can't say really. It's just a feeling. I think that most of what Dr. Benson said went right over their heads. Not to mention that no one could give me any insurance information for the patient."
"I'm on my way."
"Thanks Liz. Stop in the ER and I will give you the chart with what information I do have."
"Okay, bye." Elizabeth turned off the television and continued getting dressed. She suddenly was thankful for the diversion since what was real for her was vastly different than the fairy tale story she had been watching.
Jason and Tom sat quietly in the waiting room as the hands of the clock on the wall ticked off the minutes, which turned into hours. Jason was going stir crazy without any news on how Jake's surgery was going. He tried to remember how long the doctor had said it would take but nothing from that earlier conversation had made a permanent impression on his brain – well except the fact that there was a possibility that Jake might not make it.
"You think maybe you should call your mom?" Tom's voice broke the eerie silence. "I would think she would want to know what's going on."
Jason rubbed his hands over his face and let out a labored breath. The last person he had thought to call was his mother. It wasn't that Alison Morgan didn't deserve to know what was happening to Jake – Jason just didn't want to be the one to tell her. To say that Jason and his mother had parted on bad terms was nothing short of an understatement. The way she had turned him away because she couldn't understand his need to follow his father's dream – a dream that had become his own still hurt Jason to this day. He couldn't help resenting her even though he tried like hell not to.
Jake did his best to make the then adolescent Jason understand his mother's pain. She lost her husband and feared losing her son to the same fate. Many times Jake played go between for the pair when they refused to speak to one another. Jason felt a smile ease onto his lips recalling the day that Jake threw his hands up in the air and said to hell with the both of them. It was the first time since Jake's collapse that Jason let himself think about the times he and Jake shared. He knew that his mom should be allowed the same thing. No matter what his difficulty was with her was she had every right to be there for Jake – and maybe just maybe she would finally come through for him as well.