Don't Let Me Go

by tjmack1986

Tears blurred her eyes as she watched him being wheeled off, not even knowing if he was alive or dead. He had risked his life for her's, and she hadn't even been able to tell him... now she wasn't sure she would ever get the chance to tell him … she still loved him.

"I know, God, Steph. You were a rockstar in the O.R. today. Everyone knows it." Jo laughed, as she thunked her friend on the shoulder.

"Don't get too down on yourself, you'll get your chance next time." Stephanie said, even though she couldn't keep the smile off her face. It wasn't she couldn't, she didn't want to lose the adrenaline high she was currently on.

"Yeah, we will see." Jo mumbled. She had been more than distracted lately. She hadn't told anyone about the anonymous threatening text messages she had been receiving. At first, she thought that maybe one of the interns had found out about her past, and they were messing with her. It was sick, but something that she wouldn't put it pass any of them. That was until she came home and found her apartment broken into. Nothing had been taken, but a threatening note with a single black rose was left on her bed. She had called the cops, but nothing had seemed to have come from it. That had been a week ago, and no new threatening texts or notes had been left for her.

"What is up with you? You've been distracted for weeks now."

Jo merely shrugged her shoulders, her mouth bobbed open to answer with an I don't know, when she saw him. It couldn't be, could it? She had been so careful. Hell, Alex had been willing to go to jail for her, so that he wouldn't find her. So, it had to be a hallucination, right? Thinking too much on the weird threats lately had her on too high alert that it made her paranoid.

"Who is he?" Stephanie spoke aloud.

In that moment Jo knew it was him. The day she had feared most had finally come. She wouldn't make it out of this alive, she had barely made it out the last time.

"Steph. Go get security, now."

"Why? Who is he?"

Jo fixed her clueless friend with a glare. "Just do it."

Stephanie blinked rapidly a few times before taking off back into the hospital.

"So, Jo Wilson, that's what you go by now?"

Jo took a staggering step backward. Away from the man that caused her nightmares for years. Nightmares that had only started to fade when Alex had showed up in her life. Showing her that men could be different. That violence didn't have to fuel their lives. That was the real reason she hadn't allowed him back into her life. To see that even Alex was capable of the kind of rage and violence that she had been treated to so many times in her life. It fractured her view of him, and of their relationship.

"Stay back, Paul. Security will be here any minute."

He merely shrugged. Completely unmoved by her words. The same, sinister smile crossed his lips. The smile she had fought long and hard to forget. "Guess this will need to happen quickly then."

As she took another hesitant step backward, he made his move. He lunged toward her, purposely. He tackled her hard to the ground, and Jo felt a snap. He was a good hundred pounds heavier than her, and it didn't take much added pressure to break a rib or two.

Jo howled out in pain, as she attempted to take a swing at his face. "Get off." She gasped, the air escaping her lungs.

"But what would be the fun in that, sweetheart? How am I supposed to finish what I started long ago if I let you go?"

Jo could almost see her life passing by, as he put added pressure on the side that her broken rib was located on. She howled out again, tears streaming down her cheeks. "Let me go!" She fought back, trying to kick at his legs.

"Jo!" She heard a familiar voice scream out. It wasn't but a couple seconds after that, that the added pressure on her small frame disappeared.

Grimacing, Jo sat up to see what had happened. Alex had tackled him to the ground, but it didn't take long for Paul to gain the upper hand. She saw it. Alex was holding back, she had seen what he had done to Deluca, and though he hadn't deserved what happened to him, Paul did.

"Jo." The word came out almost strangled before he could speak again. "Run."

She couldn't see Alex's face, but she knew that he was in bad shape. All she wanted was to listen to Alex, to run, to get him help, but every single time she moved, the world tipped and swayed in a dizzying way. It was getting harder for her to breathe and she was worried that more damage than a broken rib had occurred when Paul had tackled her.

"Help!" She screamed as good as she could, with her arm tucked against her sore side. "Please, help!" she tried again.

This time Ben and Owen came running out of the hospital, with Jackson hot on their heels. In the distance she could hear sirens. Someone was finally coming to put Paul away. There was no way he would get out of trouble this time. Too many witnesses, and they weren't in their hometown where Paul was looked at as the prodigal son. Here all he was was an abuser and an attempted murderer.

Once the police arrived the scene became chaotic. Ben and Owen had pulled Paul off Alex, who Jo still couldn't see. Jackson held Paul to the ground, one arm behind his back, with Jackson's foot keeping him in place with an even voiced threat coming from Jackson occasionally. Ben and Owen were checking over Alex, yelling for a gurney when the police pulled up.

Stephanie had tried and failed to help Jo to her feet. Tears blurred her eyes as she watched him being wheeled off, not even knowing if he was alive or dead. He had risked his life for her's, and she hadn't even been able to tell him... now she wasn't sure she would ever get the chance to tell him … she still loved him.

"Steph." Jo gasped out. The pain was radiating through-out her entire body, or at least it felt that way. "Is he alive?" Her breathing was becoming more labored the longer she sat on the soggy ground.

"He's alive. We have to keep you that way too, alright?" Stephanie spoke softly to Jo, before turning her attention to Jackson who made a move to follow Ben and Owen. "Jackson. I need help."

Jackson turned and ran toward Stephanie and Jo. "Hey, talk to me. What happened?" He asked, kneeling before Jo.

"Hurts." Was all she could force out before the darkness that had been threatening to overtake her, finally won its battle.

"Get me a gurney!" Jackson screamed out.

Jo woke with a start. Her entire abdomen burned and ached. The events from before she lost consciousness came flooding back with a nauseating vividity. She tried hard to fight back the wave of nausea as she hit the call button on her bed. While she might remember what happened, she didn't understand why she was the one in a hospital bed. Broken ribs did not require hospitalization.

"Thank God." Meredith mumbled under her breath, as she hit the call light off, before pulling the pen light from her lab coat. "Do you know where you are, Jo?"

Opening her mouth to answer, vomit spewed from her mouth, blood etched within the filmy substance that came out of her. "Oh. I'm really sorry." Jo mumbled; her abdomen burned from the movement of heaving up the contents of her stomach.

"Damn." Meredith mumbled again. "I need a nurse!" She yelled out, before flicking the pen light between Jo's eyes. "Don't apologize. I do need you to answer my question though. Do you know where you are?"

Jo wanted to merely nod but figured that was not the best idea. "Yeah. Grey Sloan."

Meredith nodded in approval, before testing Jo's reflexes. "You have been admitted for a head contusion. It was something we didn't immediately check out because Stephanie said when she found you, that you were gripping your midsection and complaining of pain in your side. You have three broken ribs, a four that are merely cracked. It will be painful, but not dangerous. When you lost consciousness, and didn't regain it for hours, we decided to run you through the MRI machine to check for a head injury. While your head injury isn't serious, it is enough for us to hospitalize you for observation for a few days. No swelling or fluid on the brain, which is the good news. You do have a small skull fracture though, which will need to be watched until it heals." Meredith finally finished her tests of Jo's senses when she realized that the younger woman was not paying attention to her. "Jo, did you hear anything I just said?"

Jo's head twisted toward Meredith, causing her to grimace at the pain in her head. "I hurt my head. Broke some ribs. I'm fine. I need to know how Alex is."

Meredith's face crinkled at her question. "He is critical but has a good prognosis."

"What do you mean that he's critical? How bad is it? Do not play the easy option here. He took the beating I was supposed to receive, I need to know." Before Meredith could answer Jo though, a realization hit her hard. "Wait, why aren't you with him? If this were you, he wouldn't leave your side."

Meredith's face crinkled again. "Before Alex lost consciousness, he begged me to stay with you. To make sure that everything was checked and double checked to make sure that you were alright."

Jo wanted to cry. "And…?"

"Alex has several broken bones. His right arm, his left thigh, and most of the bones in his face. Jackson is going to do surgery on the bones in his face in the morning if he is stable enough. His arm and leg were cleanly broken, so the bones were set and placed in a cast."

Jo sighed, if Meredith started with broken bones, then Alex was obviously seriously injured.

"He has a pretty massive head injury, Jo. He has swelling on his brain, as well as very deep bruising. He is being monitored closely but, he has a long recovery coming his way."

"Dammit." Jo shouted, as the nurse that Meredith had called for finally entered Jo's room. Seeing the vomit on the bed, she sighed. "He will recover though, right?"

"As of now, his prognosis is good. He may not fully recover, but it will be as close to a full recovery that we can get him to. He is in excellent hands."

Jo knew this of course. She worked with these doctors daily. She knew they were capable of miracles. There were no other doctors on the planet that she would pick to oversee Alex's care then the ones he currently had.

"Paul?"

"He is in jail. Stephanie and Owen went to the courthouse this morning to help the prosecution get him held without bail. They used the knowledge that Paul is not from the area and the fact that he is a doctor with the money to disappear. Plus, there is the two attempted murder charges."

"Two?"

Meredith nodded. "He didn't come here to merely catch up with you, Jo. He came here to kill you. The police searched his car. He had stuff in his trunk to aid in getting rid of your body. Including acid to disintegrate your organs and tissue."

Jo's stomach heaved again, but she fought against it. The nurse had just switched out her blanket, she really didn't want to make the nurse have to change it again. "And?"

"The judge granted the prosecution that Paul be held without bail. He will be held in jail until his trial. I am so sorry, but you will probably have to testify."

"Don't apologize. If I hadn't been a coward before and tried to get him put in prison the first time… well none of this would have happened. Alex wouldn't be fighting for his life." Tears filled Jo's eyes.

"That's the one thing I don't understand. Alex is a fighter, there is no way someone like Paul should have gotten the upper hand on Alex."

"He was holding back. I think he was afraid of scaring me again, like when he attacked Andrew. This time it was different. Paul had it coming… and I'd rather have Paul in the hospital than Alex. It was my fault, just like this entire mess is." Jo couldn't stop the tears as sobs racked her body.

"Hey, none of this is your fault. You didn't ask to be beaten for merely loving someone. You didn't ask to be hunted down. Alex made the decision to go easy on the piece of trash that deserved so much more." Meredith sat softly on the edge of Jo's bed and put her hand on the younger girl's knee. "I'm here if you need me. Even if it's just to talk. Just, no more of this blaming yourself."

After a week in the hospital to keep an eye on her head injury, Jo was finally released. She was too afraid to go home, fearful that even though Meredith promised that Paul would not be getting out of his jail cell anytime soon, she couldn't help but fear that Paul would find a way. It was who he was. So, Meredith, keeping her promise to Alex, told Jo that she could crash with her and her family. The first few days had been awkward, especially with the questions in Meredith's children's eyes, but no answer to give. At least not one that wouldn't give them nightmares. Meredith merely explained that Jo had an accident and that she needed to stay with them for a little while.

That had been almost three full weeks ago. In that time, Alex's broken bones had started to heal, if only a little slower than everyone would have liked. It was his head injury that still had everyone worried. In the four weeks since Paul had come and wreaked havoc on everyone's lives, Alex hadn't so much as batted an eyelash. No finger twitches, nothing to indicate that the man they all loved and cared about was even still inside.

Meredith merely told Jo to keep her hope alive. Alex would recover, and Jo wanted to believe her. She knew that Meredith had been an up and comer in neurology alongside Derek for a long time. No one had ever told her why Meredith had decided to change her field of study, and Jo never thought to ask. However, she trusted Meredith's judgement every time she looked over Alex's scans. She always pointed out a new spot that showed healing and that it didn't seem like there was any scarring on his brain, at least not yet.

So, the question always left on Jo's lips was why he hadn't woken up or twitched… anything to prove that his brain was still functioning and that he planned to return to them. Meredith never had an answer for her, merely stating that everyone reacted differently to head trauma and that Alex would wake up when the time was right.

Even though she had been cleared to return to work, Jo had taken an extra few weeks off. She stated mental distress, but everyone knew that all she really wanted was to be by Alex's side in case he woke up. None of them blamed her because none of them wanted Alex to wake up alone. Anytime that Jo had to leave Alex's room for some reason, one of the other doctor's would sneak in and take up camp beside their friend. While none of them knew for sure that it helped, they all talked to him in hopes that he could hear them. That he would know that they all were waiting for him to come back to them. Alex had become a sort of pariah at the hospital after his attack on Deluca, but now even Deluca felt sorry for Alex and hoped that he would be okay.

"Hey." Jo said as she entered Alex's room for what felt like the one-hundredth time. Aside from letting Alex know that she was in the room, and that she wasn't leaving until someone made her, she never really spoke to him.

It had occurred to her recently that maybe that was what was keeping Alex from returning to them. Sure, she was there, but she didn't talk to him. The only thing that she could think was that he thought she sat with him out of duty. He protected her, saved her life, so to him, it would seem like this was her attempt at paying him back. Today would be different. Today, Jo was going to say more than her usual hello. Today, Jo was going to tell Alex what she has wanted to tell him for quite some time now.

Sighing, Jo fell into the chair beside Alex's bed. Trying to figure out where to start, she pulled the chair closer to his bed and grabbed a hold of one of his warm hands. "I realized something today, Alex. I realized that everyone that you love and care about come in here every single day and tell you how much they miss you. How much they love you, and how much they need you to come back to them." She could fear the tears prick at her eyes as she continued. "Everyone that is, except me. I don't want you to think that I haven't spoken to you like that because of anything you may have done the in the past." She didn't need to say the words, they would both know exactly what she was talking about. "It's because of me. I know that is the lamest excuse a person could give, and most of the time that person doesn't even mean the words. The whole, it's not you, it's me, thing is rarely ever meant, I know that. This time though, I mean it. It most definitely is not you. How could it be? You ran headfirst into danger and took a beating that was meant for me. You saved my life, Alex. I need you to know that. If you hadn't shown up when you did, I would likely be dead right now. I would not have survived the beating you took, I mean hell, he broke two of my ribs and gave me a slight head injury in the short time that his hands were on me…"

Putting her head against her forearms to stop the tears, she continued. "I'm getting off track here. What I'm trying to say is that the reason I haven't spoken to you yet, is because I am ashamed. I am the reason you are lying in this bed, fighting for your life. It's my fault. I dragged you into a mess that I should have fixed years ago, but I was too afraid. I was a coward then and you are suffering for it now. But I realized earlier this morning that you needed to hear my voice… more than that you needed to hear what I have wanted to say to you for a while now. Did it scare me to see you attack Andrew like that? Yes, it did. I was terrified because I saw you as the opposite of Paul. To me, you could never hurt someone the way that he does, until you did. However, I see the difference now. Yes, you hurt Andrew badly and possibly could have killed him, but I also see that it wasn't out of malice. You didn't do what you did because you wanted to inflict pain on Andrew. You did it because you thought Andrew was hurting me, and while what you did was wrong…I know now that your heart was in the right place. I can see it so much more clearly now. The thought of someone hurting me…taking advantage of me broke something in you. In that moment you were full of pure rage at the thought that I was being hurt. Paul does what he does because he enjoys it. Because it feels him with this sick kind of pleasure. Not you, you were afraid of yourself. I could see it in your eyes after you came back to reality. You wouldn't have tried to save Andrew if that weren't true."

Heaving a heavy sigh, Jo picked her head back up and forced herself to look at Alex as she spoke her next words. "I was so angry with you because I was so afraid of you, and I never thought you could ever do anything that would make me fear you, Alex. Just because I was angry and hurt, it didn't mean that I ever stopped loving you. I need you to know, that from the bottom of my heart, I mean it. I love you, Alex Karev. It is something I should have said a while ago and I feel awful that I'm saying only now that you are unconscious. This whole incident has made everything that has happened recently so much clearer for me, and one thing I now know for sure is that I cannot stand the thought of living out the rest of my life without you in it. Being put in this position where you might not make it and having to think of a life without your beautiful heart makes me physically sick. I need you, Alex. I need you in so many ways that there are not enough words to describe how badly I need you. I promised myself after I got away from Paul that I would never need another person. It only has ever led to heartache for me…then I met you and I knew that I needed you. I need your kind spirit and your general goodness…but most of all Alex, I need your love. Because you have loved me in a way, I never thought I deserved. So, please, come back to me. Because life without you is unbearable."

Jo used her free hand to swipe at the remaining tears in her eyes, as tension filled the hand that was still connected to Alex's. Looking at her hand, she saw his hand was tightening softly around hers. She looked back at Alex's face. His eyes were fluttering but hadn't opened yet. Jo made a move to hit the call light, when the most beautiful sound filled the room.

"I love you too."