Author's note:
Hey everyone!
As always, thank you for coming back every week, for reading and reviewing
Hope you enjoy and I will appreciate your thoughts!
Andy holds Robert's hand tightly.
She is leaning back as much as possible in her helicopter seat, and closes her eyes in order to keep the tears at bay and the pulsing headache somehow under control.
He has already coded twice during their short commute to Grey Sloan Memorial, and the paramedics barely managed to bring him back each time.
He has to stay alive.
Her eyes stay closed as the helicopter lowers, before finally landing at the top of the hospital. They transfer him out first, then there is a hand reached out to help her climb down. She is unsteady on her own two feet, and it feels like the world is spinning around her.
She probably suffers from a concussion, she remembers.
Before she knows it, there is a set of familiar arms embracing her tightly. "Herrera." She hears Meredith call her name, which does nothing to subside the tears falling down her cheeks. The firefighter wraps her arms around her friend, and for a long moment they just stand there, comforting each other, while the wind throws their hair in every direction.
Amelia and Maggie are there, taking care of unconscious Robert while Meredith walks to the elevator, never letting go of Andy's hand.
She manages to smile tiredly toward her friends, but they can see right through the show she tries to put on, trying to pretend the world isn't crumbling around her.
Before any of them speak, there is just that awful beeping of the heart monitor again. It is different now, a rhythmic beeping indicating that he is still alive, unlike the one long sound that hinted that Shannon's heart is no longer beating. By now Andy is certain the sound will haunt her in her sleep.
"You look like a mass." Amelia notes, trying to lighten the mood during the unbearable slow descent of the elevator.
"Well, you should try being stuck in a car for an entire day, during a 85 miles per hour wind storm, without anyone knowing where you are or coming to rescue you. That really makes you look like a team of hairdressers have been working on you the entire day." Andy bites.
"You have a point." Amelia shrugs, and even though her head is still throbbing, just being in the company of these women, who are like sisters to her, make her feel better.
She couldn't trust his life in the hands of more capable surgeons.
"How are you feeling?" Maggie asks with concern in her voice.
"I just have a headache. I am sure it is nothing. I am not the one you guys should be worried about." Andy says as the door finally opens and they arrive at the surgical floor.
"We can be worried about the both of you. Go down to the ER and get yourself checked. It might be serious." Meredith orders as they arrive at another door, with a writing 'Medical staff and patients only beyond this point' on it.
"Do you know who his emergency contact is? Does he have any relatives? Family that you can call?" Maggie asks.
"I don't know." Andy admits. The feeling hits her like a wrecking ball. She has spent two long months in the bed of this man, and she doesn't know the first thing about his relatives. His people. "He had a wife who died. He never mentioned any parents, any siblings, any friends."
Andy has so many people around her. Her father. Ryan. Maya and Vic. Meredith, Maggie and Amelia. Everyone at her station has been her family for the last few years. If something might happen to her, she knows every single one of these people, her people, will come running to be by her side. Yet for all she knows, he might not have anyone in this world. Anyone beside her.
But there has to be at least one name on the emergency contact list in his health insurance, right?
"We will take care of this. This is as far as you can go." Amelia says, and only then Andy notices she has been holding his hand for the entire elevator ride, and that their fingers are still entwined.
She lets go reluctantly, and sees Maggie and Meredith roll him behind the door she is not allowed to go through. Andy falls down on her knees, the weight of the day finally catching up to her.
"Hey." Amelia places a comforting hand on her shoulder. "I need you to put your brave face on. I won't be able to do my job knowing that one of my best friends is falling apart outside of my OR. You need to be strong for the both of you."
"I am not sure I know how." Andy admits.
"Do you need me to be your friend right now, or do you want me to help the man you love who is currently hanging on a thread between life and death? I can't do both."
The man she loves? Where did she get that notion?
Andy doesn't have it in her to correct the neurosurgeon, just answers. "Save him, please."
"On your feet, then." Amelia orders, pulling Andy up by the arm. It is the second time in one day someone has to physically lift her off the ground, because she is not able to do so herself, she understands. "I want you to stand with your legs apart, your fists on your waist, and your head held up high."
"Like Superwoman?" Andy asks, her brow furrowed in confusion.
"Exactly. I stand like this every time I need to gather up my strength. I have heard you saved the both of you today. You are a hero, never forget it."
She doesn't feel like a hero. She feels like a normal woman, who wants a certain man to comfort her, the same man she felt like she was created to fit in between his arms. But that man is unconscious and about to go into surgery. Even if he didn't, there are about a million reasons why she can't find solace in his arm.
Amelia does the same, and for a long moment the both of them stand in front of the closed door, posing like Wonder Woman.
It takes five minutes, give or take, but Andy starts to feel the strength her friend was talking about coursing through her veins again. She doesn't feel like a superhero, not by a long shot, but suddenly the hope returns to her heart.
"Better?" Amelia asks as she pushes the door open with her back.
Andy nods, and sees her friend disappear into another corridor. She stands there for a while, the doctor and nurses never giving her a second glance. As if seeing a dirty, exhausted firefighter posing like a superhero is a routine at Grey Sloan Memorial.
It takes a long while, but she slowly gathers her faith and confidence, restores her courage and bravery.
When she feels like she can finally get it through the rest of the night without collapsing on the floor once again, she wipes the tears off of her cheeks and makes her way down to the ER.
Andy touches the window at the outer side of room 105.
Her palm is pressed against the glass, leaving fingerprints, and she looks at peacefully sleeping Robert.
Her uniform is filthy, her hair is a mess, and she could definitely use a shower. But she couldn't care less.
Every member of station 19 came to visit him on the first day he could receive guests after his surgery. They brought flowers and 'get well soon' cards for him. They called her a hero. But none of them stuck around longer than what was absolutely necessary. He still was their captain, and not one anyone can say was broadly liked among the firefighters of station 19.
By now, everyone knew Sullivan had months of rehabilitation before he could get back to active duty. On the other hand, Andy was discharged from the hospital the first morning after the accident. She was suffering from dehydration and exhaustion, things easily fixed by fluids and a lot of rest. She wishes she could say the same about his injuries.
She spent every free moment she had ever since in the hospital. She would disappear as soon as her shift was over, more often than not with her uniform still on. She would race down the three blocks separating the station from the hospital, and would only get back home after Maya was already down for the night.
However, she couldn't bring herself to walk in that room.
"Herrera." She hears her name spoken in Meredith's voice, and she doesn't have to turn around to know who is standing behind her. The three sisters are there, all looking into the same room she has been staring at for the past hour. "It has been over a week. I know a lot of things happened between the two of you, but as his doctor, I am asking you to put your problems aside and be there for him. The road to recovery will be hard, and he will need you. As your friend, I know you feel something for him, and even though I never quite understood what it is that the two of you have,I think that you won't forgive yourself if you leave him now, when he is at his lowest."
The four of them close the distance between them, until they are standing in some kind of a weird, partly suffocating hug.
"He has been asking for you." Amelia says. "He calls you Andrea sometimes. I personally find it cute." The neurosurgeon smiles at her.
"He is the only person in my life who uses my full name besides my dad. I just don't know if I can do it." Andy admits. "I don't know if I am strong enough."
"There is only one way to find out." Amelia adds.
Breath it, then out. In, and out again.
She makes her way to the closed she presses down on the handle to open it, Maggie touches her shoulder lightly to get her attention. "There is one more thing you need to know. Yes, he has been asking to see you, when he is awake and lucid. But when he is in severe pain or under the influence of the morphine… He is calling someone named Claire. Do you know who she is?"
It feels like someone punched Andy right in the guts, and deflated her from all of the air inside her. Even fifteen years later, he is still so in love with her. She is still the woman he longs for by his side when he is hurt.
She must have been someone special, this woman.
"Claire is his dead wife." Andy breaths out.
"I am sorry. I just thought you needed to know, in case he would say her name."
"That's OK. Thank you." Andy reassures her as she turns her head back to get one last look at her friends. They are all smiling at her, silently encouraging her to take the one step she has been hesitant to make ever since they took him to the OR. She opens the door as quietly as possible and enters the half darkened room. She lets her eyes a moment to adjust to the different lighting, even though she looked into this room so much she knows where every single thing is by heart.
She makes the few steps from the door to his bed, then kicks her boots off and slides right next to him.
He steers as he wakes up, whispers "Andrea" even before he opens his eyes to see who the guest in his bed was.
"Hey there…" She greets and wraps her arms around his middle.
He kisses the top of her head, and then, on some kind of an instinct, she lifts her head up and he bends just slightly to catch her lips in his. This is the softest kiss they have ever shared, a kiss both know isn't leading anywhere, and not ending anything. A kiss that lingers, where they both take the time to enjoy the presence of each other.
"You came." He whispers into her hair after they finally break their kiss. There is disbelief in his voice, as if he actually thought she would never show up for him, no matter how much he begged her to. Andy realizes she had let him down once again. He needed her by his side, and she was too concerned with her own feelings to notice.
She places her hand exactly on top of his heart. For a long while she just enjoys being enveloped in his warmth, and feeling his heartbeat beneath her palm, his rib cage rising and falling rhythmically to the sound of his breaths and the constant beeping of the monitor.
"You are alive." She marvelous.
"I am." He confirms. "And you will make a terrible EMT, if you think this is the proper way to take someone's pulse."
He smiles at her, and she can't prevent the tips of her mouth from going up crookedly.
"I am sorry that I have woken you. Go back to sleep."
"Don't be. You coming to lie in my arms... I would give everything I have in order to wake up this way every single day." He must be pretty high on those painkillers. There is no other explanation for him speaking like that, considering where they left things off before the aid car rolled off the road. "Stay." He pleads.
It has been so many days, hours, minutes, since the last time he asked her to do so.
It is the first time she doesn't argue when he asks her to linger in his bed. His fingers run up and down her arm, and before she knows it her eyelids become heavy and she drifts off into a blissful sleep.
It is the first time since her team members rescued her from the aid car that she rests soundly, a sleep with no nightmares, no vivid dreams of her patient dying and her not being able to save her captain. The first sleep from which she is not waking scared, sweating and heavy breathing.
When she wakes up from her nap, Robert is still sound asleep. The bed is not fit to hold two grown adults, especially as one of them is way over six feet tall, so they end up a mess of limbs cuddled tightly together.
As she rubs the sleep off of her eyes, she notices Meredith sitting at the corner of the room, a soft smirk on her face. The surgeon smiles at her friend, then half asks half determines quietly, in order to not wake up her sound asleep patient.
"He is your person, isn't he?"