This is all just a bad dream.
That was what Nick Valentine continued to tell himself as he fought to tune out the suffocating buzz of activity around him.
He wasn't sitting in the emergency department of Milton General Hospital… he wasn't bouncing his heels against bleach-treated linoleum… his thighs weren't going numb from sitting in an unfamiliar chair for however long he'd been here… he wasn't freezing cold in the re-circulated air of the large waiting area, after Donny had confiscated his blood-stained coat…
Nora hadn't been gunned down in the street. This was all just an elaborate and incredibly detailed nightmare.
The moment he stopped stubbornly trying to convince himself of that would be the same moment he fell apart, and he couldn't afford that right now. He wasn't even sure if he'd be able to put himself back together again if he did.
He rubbed his eyes, trying to rid himself of the strain inflicted by the hospital's harsh lighting, and struggled to figure out how the fuck he'd gotten here.
Nick finally felt as if he understood all those victims he'd interviewed in the past. The ones that'd been unlucky enough to have front row seats to whatever incident he'd been questioning them over, but only seemed to remember the bare minimum of details.
Try as he might, the only image the shell-shocked detective could call forth was the sight of his father-in-law cradling Nora's crumpled form… her blood painting the pavement.
He must have held her in his own arms before the paramedics took her away, why else would there be crimson patches drying on his clothes?
He couldn't even recall Donny and Williamson tackling Arthur Black to the ground, knocking out a few of his teeth as he hit the concrete. He only vaguely remembered listening to them as they gave their oral report to Captain Widmark in the emergency department's waiting room… wishing that the fucker had cracked his skull open instead.
No one was talking about Eddie Winter. The officers that passed through his peripheral vision stayed silent, only talking to him directly to when they offered food, drinks and useless platitudes. None of them wanted to tell him what he'd already deduced from their more than obvious avoidance of the topic; that he was gone. That the son-of-a-bitch might as well have turned into a cloud of smoke and escaped through the air vents after ordering Arthur Black to shoot his pregnant wife… to kill her.
She's not dead! Nick reminded himself harshly. Unless he'd hallucinated the update on her condition he'd received earlier;
She was alive, and miraculously, so was the baby. There was no need for a premature delivery at this point either. But the reporting doctor made it crystal clear that such good fortune could (and very likely would) change at any moment. Especially since the surgeons hadn't found the bullet or completely staunched the bleeding yet.
He'd then been made to sign a form; written permission for the surgical team to remove Nora's right kidney, damaged beyond repair by the slug still AWOL inside her.
Nick forcibly ejected the nauseating images holding his mind hostage and stood from the uncomfortable chair, pins and needles immediately swarming his legs. Perhaps he'd moved a little too abruptly, because he found himself looking down into the startled visage of Franklin Fitzsimons, seated across from him with a blanket draped around his hunched shoulders.
There was something inherently wrong with the sight of the happy-go-lucky older gentleman ashen-faced with tears drying on his cheeks. It was alien, it made the detective feel off balance. More so than the chill of the room, or the endless racket of the crowded emergency department.
"I need some air" Nick mumbled before heading for the door, though he didn't bother to check if it actually led outside, he just needed to get away from the noise for a few minutes, childishly venting some of his frustration and nervous energy by kicking a vending machine that he strode past.
Nick then doubled-back upon realizing that the contents of the machine were exactly what he needed right now; something small and familiar and comforting. Something to ground him in the midst of this pervasive nightmare.
He just hoped that Frank had a lighter.
The pack was almost empty when the doctor returned, causing Nick and Frank to jump to their feet in unison as he approached their little smoke-shrouded corner of the waiting area. Snuffing out their current cigarettes in a communal ashtray they each searched the practitioner's face for tells pertaining to Nora's condition.
A clipboard was presented to Nick before any could be found.
"We need your signature again" was all Doctor What's-His-Name had to offer as an explanation, and it was a piss-poor thing to lead with under the circumstances.
"What for?!" Nick snapped, with every ounce of his mounting irritability on display. "What's going on?"
A shadow of concern settled into the lines of the doctor's face as he spoke;
"The removal of your wife's kidney was successful. But the surgeons still haven't found the bullet, and they've gone as deep into the wound as they dare. If they continue to search blindly through the point of entry they'll only cause more damage"
The doctor paused and seemed to consider his words before continuing, and Nick dimly noticed that Frank was clutching the sleeve of his shirt, looking faintly green in the corner of his vision… he imagined that he didn't look much better himself;
"We need you to consent to an x-ray, as well as a prophylactic dose of Rad-X. Once the-"
"Whoa, whoa- wait a minute!" Nick interrupted, throwing off Frank's grip with a wave of his right hand and carding the left through his hair anxiously. "Isn't that the drug that causes miscarriages? I- I think I read about it in the paper, or in one of Nora's baby books, I dunno… but it was definitely rad-something"
"You're thinking of Rad-Away" the doctor corrected. "It's an intravenous medicine designed to purge radiation from one's body, and you're right, it can't be given to pregnant women, as the process kills the fetus and triggers early labor. Rad-X, however, is a harmless preventative. X-rays give off radiation, as I'm sure you're aware, and I'm afraid our only avenue for protecting both mother and child during this procedure is to administer Rad-X beforehand. A course of Rad-Away after the fact would be out of the question"
Frank managed to find his voice as Nick struggled to absorb the new information, suspicion clouding his hesitant tone;
"You said it's harmless, but if that was really the case then why would you need his consent at all?"
The medical professional had the courtesy to look grim and slightly embarrassed before answering;
"Because we have no idea what kinds of side-effects an unborn baby might experience following a dose of this type, if any. Rad-X is still fairly new to the market, and all accounts seem to suggest that the drug is innocuous. But we've never encountered a scenario quite like this before"
Nick quickly raised his hand, wordlessly calling for silence before his distraught father-in-law could bite the doctor's head off. He massaged his brow as he ran through the facts on hand, as if the self-soothing gesture would cajole his tired brain into running more efficiently.
"What happens then?" he inquired wearily. "After the x-ray, what happens after that?"
"We ensure that both Nora and the baby remain stable while the images are processed" came the explanation. "Once finished they should clearly display the bullet's current position. As we've had no luck fishing it out, or even finding it through the entry wound, the surgeons will likely need to make a small incision in order to retrieve it safely from a more agreeable angle, as well as stem the last of the bleeding"
"The path of least resistance" the detective muttered to himself, before burying his face in both hands and swallowing around a thick lump stuck in his throat.
He had a difficult decision to make, but there was only one option, wasn't there? The doctor hadn't mentioned any sort of alternative, and there was no work-around that he could see.
If he said 'no' then the surgeons would try their best to stop the bleeding and stitch Nora back together, but the bullet would be lost inside her, and then what? Would it stay where it was until it could be safely located once the baby was born? Not freaking likely… he'd heard far too many horror stories of other cops who'd thought themselves shrapnel-free after surviving bloody shoot-outs, only to suddenly drop dead months or even years down the track when an errant fragment of metal shifted and pierced a vital organ or artery.
Nick couldn't be sure of anything in this situation. He was a policeman, not a doctor. His insufficient knowledge of the human body began and ended with what he'd witnessed splattered across dozens of gruesome crime scenes. He shouldn't be the one making these choices. Wouldn't he be more help back at the station putting the screws to Arthur Black? Or hunting down Winter?
This is what you signed on for, you useless schmuck, Nick's inner voice reminded him harshly, and that was the shitty truth of it all, wasn't it? When he slipped that wedding band onto Nora's finger he bound their lives together in every sense of the word, becoming her medical proxy in emergencies exactly like this one, no matter how fucking inept he was at the task. And he'd be the most despicable kind of coward if he backed out on her at the first hurdle… on both of them.
Nick forcefully derailed the multiple trains of thought running through his head. Then with a fortifying breath, and the unshakable feeling that he was gambling with the stakes set far too high, he snatched the clipboard and pro-offered pen before any other parts of his mind could weigh-in and confuse him.
The doctor left immediately without another word after having the signed forms thrust against his chest, and Nick slunk back to his earlier seat with his eyes fixed firmly towards the floor, speaking in a voice only marginally louder than a whisper when Frank eventually took the chair next to his;
"There was only one choice, wasn't there? Why does it feel like I made the wrong one?"
"Because you're a parent, Nick" came the older gentleman's matter-of-fact reply, punctuated by the click of a lighter and tinged with something that sounded an awful lot like regret. He took a long draw of his freshly-lit cigarette before wistfully expanding on his words;
"Your child may not have been born yet, but every choice you make from here-on-out regarding their well-being is going to feel either partially or completely wrong. Doesn't matter if it's the only option or one of a thousand. You want them safe, and happy. You're always going to wonder if the decisions you made were the best ones… or if you missed anything along the way…"
Nick glanced up as the elder's words trailed off into silence, and had his suspicions confirmed at the sight of Frank's thousand-yard-stare; that he wasn't talking about his unborn grandchild anymore, or even the precarious state of his daughter. He was dwelling on the infant son he'd lost.
He'd heard the full story only once before from Nora, and mentally cursed himself for forgetting it now of all times…
A mere two weeks after his first birthday Nora's baby brother contracted meningitis. Franklin and his wife both mistook the symptoms for a bout of the flu and tried to treat him at home. By the time his fever peaked and the parents rushed him to the hospital the point of no return had already come and gone.
What followed after was four days of strict quarantine, and the mother and father could only watch helplessly from behind a pane of glass as their little boy wailed, and seized, and slipped in and out of consciousness as a small team of dedicated pediatricians worked around the clock, applying every treatment they'd ever heard of and coming up with new ones when the existing methods fell short.
In the end it was all for nothing.
It was sheer fucking luck that Nora had been touring the landmarks of Washington with her elementary school when they discovered that her sibling's flu was, in reality, a deadly and contagious virus. When the field trip ended she was shuffled off to a friend's house for a "special sleepover" that lasted the better part of a week. Only learning of her brother's fate when her parents eventually came to pick her up. A black dress already waiting for her in the back seat of the family sedan.
Frank blinked vigorously as he snapped out of his fugue, giving Nick a sheepish smile that only looked a little bit forced before murmuring an apology for losing his train of thought, passing him the shared lighter and the last smoke in the pack.
"To be honest, I don't think I've ever been happier that you married my daughter" his father-in-law pondered aloud, in a somber tone that made Nick feel uneasy.
"Why's that?" he asked carefully.
"Because it made you next-of-kin" Frank replied flatly. "You're a smart guy, Nick. You brain-storm and obsess over every possibility and see the angles that lesser folk are blind to. I could practically see steam coming off your head as you processed everything that doctor was saying. There may have only been one available option, but it was still an impossible thing to be saddled with. You made the right choice, for whatever that's worth coming from a man who only ever seems to make the wrong choices when it comes to his family"
Nick scowled around the cigarette between his lips as his unsteady fingers fumbled with the lighter, he didn't have enough energy to point out to the melancholy bastard how utterly full of shit he was.
Did he mean to say that the Nora of today was nothing but a series of "wrong choices?" Sure, maybe it hadn't been the best idea to send her away to boarding school while she was still mired in grief. He'd certainly never put his own kid through the same ordeal, but he'd be a god-damned liar if he didn't admit that she was all the more amazing after surviving that rocky adolescence.
Those years had forged the love-of-his-life into something singular. Something radiant, and determined, and powerful.
And she's going to be fine… they both are! Nick stubbornly affirmed. He simply couldn't wrap his head around the concept that this would be the incident to bring down his iron-willed wife.
Nick gave his half-smoked cigarette away to Frank as he spoke, after sucking down the lion's share of a pack in such a short period of time the nicotine was beginning to make the room spin;
"I expect you to amend that statement when this is all over" the bleary-eyed investigator warned, only half-jokingly. "This is the happiest you've been that I married her? Bullshit. Give it a few months, then talk to me again after you've held your screaming grand-kid for the first time"
The affirmation he received from his father-in-law came in the form of a single resolute nod. Just a scant few seconds before the rapidly spinning emergency department suffered an abrupt blackout.
"Hey, Sleepin' Beauty… c'mon, time to wake up"
Nick Valentine cracked his eyes open as slowly as possible at the prompt of the faraway voice… a familiar one, despite sounding as if it were bubbling up from the bottom of a lake.
"Donny?" the name was muffled by what he guessed was a pillow. When did he go to bed? He searched his fragmented short-term memory, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the sparse light of… wherever this was. "I thought you went home"
"I went to your home, don't you remember?" He honestly didn't. "Dropped off your stuff and checked on the dog, he's with the neighbors for now. I called your mom too, she jumped on the first train outta Chicago when I told her what happened. I might've also gone through your closet, figured you'd need some fresh clothes. I think the stained ones you're wearin' have been freakin' out the other patients"
The detective felt a surge of affection for his work colleague shine through the thick fog orbiting his brain, squinting through the shadows as he tried to bring the man at the foot of the bed into focus. He figured after bringing down a perp as slippery as Arthur Black he'd be itching to taunt and interrogate his catch through a set of iron bars, or at least sleep off the post-adrenaline crash in the comfort of his own home.
But no. Instead he'd run around taking care of all the smaller details on Nick's behalf, things that never once occurred to him while he'd been uselessly haunting that waiting room. His mother would still be clueless about everything. Shit. Bogart probably would've destroyed the apartment by now if it weren't for Donny. The boisterous fur-ball didn't cope well with loneliness, boredom or an empty bowl.
"Anyway, your mom's here now" the blurry silhouette added. "Frank's bringin' her up to speed. I wasn't supposed to-"
"Wait a minute, what?" Nick interrupted as his scrambled gray-matter slowly did the math; if she's here now… coming from Chicago by train… He tried to push himself off the mattress, forcing down a wave of nausea and cringing at a sharp pain in his forehead. "How long have I been here?!" he demanded.
"Hey! Slow down there, tough guy. You hit your head pretty bad when you lost that round with the floor" his partner quipped mirthlessly, bringing a hand to his chest in a half-hearted attempt to keep him down. "After hittin' the deck one of the doctors found you a bed, said you went into shock, or somethin'… made your brain short-out"
"I'll deal with it after I've seen Nora" he gritted out, awkwardly pulling himself into a sitting position on the edge of the bed. "Is she okay? Did they do the surgery yet?"
"Yeah, it's over… she's sleepin' it off right now" Donny answered, coming into sharper focus as his eyes recovered. "The doctor wouldn't say anythin' else though, he wanted to wait until you woke up. I'm gonna go track him down, just stay there!"
Nick did as he was told, partially because Donny's tone didn't leave a lot of wiggle room for rebellion, but mostly because he didn't trust himself to walk straight just yet. He brought a curious hand to the site of the mystery pain in his forehead and discovered a trio of fresh stitches bisecting his left eyebrow, along with a hint of dried blood among the follicles. An insignificant wound, but likely to scar considering the location.
It was nothing compared to the scars Nora was going to walk away with.
By the time Donny returned with the same nameless doctor in tow the detective had recuperated enough that his eyes barely hurt at all when the rest of the lights were suddenly turned on, revealing a room that didn't look like a standard setup for sick people, unless they'd started using bunk-beds to fit more patients into one room, which didn't seem likely.
"Oh, you're in the on-call room" the physician explained, inferring the question from his puzzled glances. "It was easier to move you into here than to wait for a ward-bed to become available, I'm sorry to say"
He leafed through a few papers attached to his ever-present clipboard with downcast eyes before continuing;
"You don't appear to have a concussion, but after suffering a psychological shock of that magnitude I must warn you that you're at high-risk of developing post traumatic-"
"Doc, I couldn't give a rat's ass about any of that right now" Nick interjected, with a deep frown that flooded his face with razor-sharp pain as punishment for ignoring his new injury. "What happened with the surgery? Is Nora going to be okay?"
He enunciated each word slowly and deliberately, fixing the white-coated man before him with a dark, unwavering glare that hopefully got his secondary message across; that he'd happily strangle him to death with his bare hands if he kept skirting around the question.
The doctor's stance and expression shifted as he seemed to mull over his answer, filling Nick with a heavy, sickening sense of dread. Suddenly finding himself far less eager to hear the truth than he'd been a few seconds ago.
"Your wife is fine" came the long-awaited answer, but in a hesitant, stalling voice that suggested the complete opposite. "The x-ray went smoothly, but the bullet's location was… unexpected, to say the least. I'm afraid the surgical team had to conduct a larger operation than originally predicted, going in through the uterus in order to retrieve it, as well as the body of the child… which it was embedded in"
…the body?
"But you- you said the baby was fine!" Nick choked out over the sound of his own blood now roaring through his ears. "You said it was healthy. That you could hear it's heartbeat!"
"Mister Valentine-"
The doctor was standing closer to him now with a bracing hand on his shoulder and a questioning furrow of his brow. Nick's palm came up to grasp at his own chest, a hopeless defense against the violent banging beneath his rib-cage. This was normally the point where nightmares ended, wasn't it? It was time to wake up now… time to escape.
But there was no escape. He wasn't waking up. This wasn't a dream, was it?
Oh fuck, this is real.
"-were you aware that your wife was expecting twins?"
Wait…
…what?
Author's Note: Guess who's back? ME! That's who! Yeah... sorry for disappearing on you all, and after that horrible cliffhanger to boot. I won't bore you all with the gritty details though, I'll just say that mental illness is an evil, insidious beast that can never be completely defeated, only pacified for stretches of time :/
No fun facts this chapter. There was no fun in this chapter, only anguish :(
Next Chapter Preview: Nora wakes up, and both parents begin on the road to recovery. Nick's idea of recovery, however, leaves much to be desired. Leading to an intervention, and the answer to a question he wishes he'd never asked.
I still love you all, dear readers, even if you've probably given up on me by now. Your reviews and comments over the past year made me feel both loved and unbelievably guilty for my absence... but mostly loved :)