Chapter Two
Ethan had been stood looking down at his chart for over ten minutes and still hadn't really read it. He was worried. Worried about Will and had been for a long time. The young doctor's life had gone from bad to worse in such a short period of time. And it had affected his friend more than he would ever say.
Personally he had no idea how Will was keeping everything together at all. He knew that if it had been him, he would have lost it a long time ago. It had all started for his friend when he had taken a week's leave out of the blue.
And he meant out of the blue, the night before Will had told them all that he would see them tomorrow but then as the day went on he never arrived. No one knew the reason behind it, well expect Ms Goodwin and Doctor Charles. All she would tell them was that Will had called in telling her that he needed some time off. But everyone had a feeling that she knew more than she was telling them.
However what annoyed him the most was the comments said by Doctor Rhodes and Doctor Zanetti. Ones that they didn't keep to themselves quietly and said whenever someone was close to them and talking about Will. They had complained about how Will was able to call in and get the whole week off when they knew very well that they couldn't without a serious reason. He had to restrain himself from snapping at the pair when they talked about how unfair it was and how Will hadn't made the best impression but still got time off.
Personally Ethan could only guess that whatever had happened to cause Will to miss work was to do with his younger brother. He had seen the pair at Molly's and he could tell that the two brothers were very protective of each other and close even if they hadn't spoken for a few years. And he had been right.
On the fourth day he had gone down to the outpatients section of the hospital to see a friend that he knew was coming in on his lunch break. However what shocked him was that after leaving his friend with the doctor he saw Will stood in the hallway speaking to one of the attending on shift. And their conversation looked very hushed and secretive as Will stopped talking every time someone passed them.
After watching Will leave the unit, he had gone up to the doctor who was luckily a friend and asked him what Will was here for. Hoping that his friend wasn't hurt. But the news was far worse than he had thought and it horrified him.
The doctor told him very little but enough to know why Will wasn't at work. Will had come in to get his brother's wounds checked as he had found that one of the wounds had become infected and needed some antibiotics to fight it.
Ethan had meet Will's younger brother Jay at Molly's but mainly the two brothers liked to stick to their own worlds when with others but he liked the young hearing that Jay had been kidnapped and tortured, horrified him. When he was in Afghanistan he had seen soldiers come to him with wounds that were caused to inflicted pain and twice as many civilians. But he never got use to them and to think that someone could do that to Jay angered him.
He then understood why Ms Goodwin had given Will the week off, he needed to be with his brother. If it had been a member of his family he would have demanded time off to stay with them. It would take time for Jay to heal and not just from the physical wounds.
On the Monday, he had spotted Will's car pull in over the road from him. So he waited, he knew that Will might not want to talk about what had happened with his brother but at the same time he needed a friend.
That didn't stop the others from asking him every time they corner him; he had tried to help his friend by reminding them that it was one of their business and to leave Will alone. Luckily for him Maggie and Dr Charles had also started to step in. Maggie even more protectively. She had alway had a soft spot for the young doctor and had become almost like an older sister.
As the days went on, he had spotted Will speaking to Doctor Charles, but not as often as Will calling his brother on his phone every chance he got. Most of the conversations were a few seconds long, mainly due to Jay hanging up after telling his brother that he was fine.
But sometimes their conversation lasted longer. Will often spoke quietly into his phone when he was around people. Ethan could only guess that something had gone wrong or Jay had suffered another nightmare. He knew that those could seriously damage the mind.
As time went on he saw his old friend slowly coming back and he had spotted Jay coming into the hospital for work related reasons and not just to see his brother or Doctor Charles. However that wasn't to last, slowly Will he started to fall back into his old ways of not speaking to anyone unless he had too, hiding from any connect with his friends. And he hadn't been the only one to spot this.
Doctor Charles had started to watch the young doctor more closely over the weeks since Jay was hurt, and with this odd behaviour he had tried to speak to Will any chance he got. However he had mentioned to Ethan who he knew every well was also worried about their friend that Will was proving to be a hard to crack. But that didn't mean he was going to give up.
After a few weeks Ethan could only think about talking to one person. The one person who might know what was going on with his friend. Will's brother, Jay. And he was easy to find, one night he spotted him drinking alone in Molly's. Jay had mentioned he was waiting for the rest of the Intelligence unit to arrive however it was the only chance he could see. He had gone and sat with Jay explaining what he started to happen with Will. And an hour later and three bottles of beer later he had found out the truth.
It was very close to the anniversary of their mother's death. And that every year Will became quiet and distracted before he crashed unable to hid his emotions any longer. And as he got up to leave Jay to move to sit with his unit, Jay had asked him to keep an eye on his brother. So he did.
On the anniversary of their mother's death, Ethan had headed over to see if Will was alright. And true to his brother's word he found Will in tears unable to hold his emotions in any longer. He had never seen his friend like that and he promised Will that no one would find out.
However now, with this new problem he didn't know what to say to his friend. Will had been given a crap hand. They all had cases that just got to them, that kept them up at night however he had a feeling that his case was going to haunt Will.
A mother had been brought in with her son by her husband, as she was having dizzy spells and falling. In the end the boy went home without his mother with only a heartbroken father to care for him. One minute she was fine and Will was ordering some more tests and the next she had coded and after ten minutes of trying they called it.
He could only guess that Will could relate to the family a little too much. And with the father blaming Will for not saving his wife made everything worse. After the husband had been taken away by security Will had left saying he needed a break. And everyone understood why. No one had expected it to happen.
Ethan only looked up when he heard the sound of the ER doors opening. Today had been an odd slow day for them all. He saw Will slowly walking towards the desk and quickly gripping the edge of the desk. Will looked more pale than he had done when he left, and with that Ethan moved towards Will. Something was wrong.
"Will, are you ok?" Ethan asked as he got closer to his friend, he could see that Will's arms were shaking as he tried to hold his grip on the desk.
Hearing his name Will had looked up at him, Ethan in that moment saw something in Will's eyes, something he had never saw before in his friend's eyes, fear.
But he couldn't think much about it as a few seconds later he watched in horror as his friend's body bucked and then collapse to the floor. All Ethan could do was try to catch him before his smacked his head off the floor. He watched in horror as Will's eye rolled into his head.
"Will!" Ethan shouted trying to wake his friend but then shouted to the people around him. "I need some help here!"
He tried his best to shake his friend awake but then noticed something he hadn't before. His friend's hands were covered in blood. As was his jacket. Ethan could barely see the amount of blood on his friend's red jacket but he knew what had caused it. In the blood soaked jacket was a long cut in the fabric.
"Oh my god, Dr Halstead!" The voice made him look up, Sarah was stood in shock looking at the scene in front of her.
"Sarah get me something to stop this bleeding now!" He quickly shouted he had already pressed his hands on his friend's abdomen to try to stop the bleeding but his hands were become more and more stained. She nodded before running to one of the treatment rooms, he could hear her opening draws getting him what he needed.
Soon April was kneeling next to him feeling for Will's pulse. Her face was plastered with concern as she saw the blood. She like him knew that their friend was in trouble.
"Here." Sarah said as he returned with her hands full of pressure bandages. As quickly as she arrived with them April worked on opening the packs as Ethan ripped open Will's jacket to show their friend's scrubs that were swimming in their friend's blood. It was worse than he had first thought. He couldn't even see the wound due to the amount of blood that pooled onto Will's skin.
"Bloody hell." The voice made them all jump, Ethan looked up to see Connor stood there before he jumped into action. He quickly set himself in checking Will's pulse.
"What happened?" He demanded, needing to know what they were dealing with.
"He has been stabbed." Ethan said after a moment of silence, a crowd of people had gathered around them waiting for them to be asked to get something they needed. Ethan had then remembered that it was the first time he had said that outloud.
Connor looked from Will's pale face to Ethan. What the hell had happened? Who would want to stab Will? It was true sometimes the young doctor was a pain but he meant well. He pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind, at this moment he needed to focus on Will's health. Looking at the bloody bandages that Ethan and Sarah had been working on he knew that time was running out. His friend was bleeding out in front of him.
"My god." April whispered taking hold of Will's bloody hand; every bone in her body wanted to make sure that her friend knew that his family was around him. She felt so useless, as she knew that there was nothing she could do to help. She had seen what stab wounds could do to the human body and silently prayed for her friend.
"Get me a gurney now!" Rhodes ordered as he quickly Will's airways to make sure they were not compromised from the stab wound. His relationship with the young doctor had been difficult and he knew that it had been made that way mainly because he had trust issues. But also because he knew the man was smarter than him. He was more keyed into medicine more than he had ever been. Even though he would never admit it, he was jealous of the man.
Will had given him ideas that he would have never thought of and he had quickly defended him when needed but also he wouldn't hide his opinion. He wasn't worried about what he thought of him when he did that but if he was wrong he admitted it. And that had been clear when the firefighter that was brought in, he secretly knew that he should have taken him to surgery but he did want to wait. Wait to see if it would stop, but he might have just risked the man's life.
Soon Maggie and Doris quickly set the gurney ready for them to transport Will into trauma one. Maggie quickly moved away from the crowd and set the other nurses to get trauma one ready with everything they possibly could need. Sadly she found herself unable to take her eyes of the young doctor. He looked too close to death, and even when April had finished hocking him up to the multi-parameter ECG monitor. It was a small comfort to the staff to know that he was still there.
"Damn it." Connor whispered.
"Someone get me a tube, I need to intubate him now." Connor shouted.
He could see that blood was already in Will's trachea and that could only mean that Will's lungs had been damaged. Connor was now flat on his chest as he used the laryngoscope to watch his friend's throat as he pushed the tube down until he could see that it had indeep gone into the lungs. And allowed Doris to bag him, taking over his breathing.
"Ok, lets get him into trauma one. We can't go anything here." Connor called as they got ready to lift Will onto the gurney.
Maggie quickly called Sharon, who she knew was in a meeting with the board. However this was more important, one of their doctors had been stabbed. She had also pager Doctor Charles. One of their own had been attacked and was now fighting for his life. They were going to need someone there to talk too if they needed it. Personally Maggie knew that the news would hit Natalie the worse.
The two doctors might be blind to what chemicals were mixing around them but the whole hospital knew that the two liked each other. And it didn't matter what Nat said, she cared for the annoying red haired doctor. It was just lucky that she wasn't in the ER when he came in.
As Doris, Connor, Ethan and April lifted Will onto the gurney as carefully as they could, on the floor sat a worrying sign. A large pool of their friend's blood now sat directly in front of the desk. Quickly they pushed him into trauma one where everything had been set up to aid their friend.
"Ok, April get an IV access for liquids and blood. And some call the blood bank. We are going to need a lot of O negative." Connor called as he entered the trauma room. They need to work on stopping the bled,and work on stabling Will now before they could take him for a CT.
April nodded and took hold of Will's left arm. And quickly placed the cannula and attached the line that was already filled with a mixture of blood and liquid. April then moved to help in securing the tube that was now breathing for Will.
"CPD are on their way. And so is Will's brother Jay." Maggie said from the doorway. She knew that there was a lot of people already in the room and they needed space to move.
Connor nodded and then moved to see Ethan cutting the remains of Will's scrub top away avoiding the knife wound in the fabric as he knew that it was now evidence. After the scrub top and Will's jacket had been removed and placed in a bag Connor watched as Ethan tried with the bandages to mop up the blood that had stained Will's abdomen before throwing them to the floor.
"I want an bedside x-ray of the chest now." With his words the x-ray machine which had already been placed in the room was set over Will's chest. Lead aprons where thrown over Ethan who was now applying more pressure onto the wound and Doris who was still breathing for Will.
Everyone else stood at a safe difference. Seconds later they had the x-ray and it was not good. The knife had caused a large hemothorax in Will's left lung which explained the blood in the throat. But also the x-rays showed real problems with his diaphragm. There was little he could do without surgery and with the damage he could see he didn't want to go in blind and cause his friend to need more than one surgery that he might not wake up from.
"I need to put in a chest tube now." Connor said as he moved to wash Will's blood off his hands and then allowed April to help him with his apron on with fresh sterile gloves.
As he held the scalpel blade over Will's skin, he found himself stop for a moment and look at the young doctor's face. He snapped back to reality when April called his name, he looked at her and then got to work. Making the long incision, Connor was able to fit the tube quickly and soon it was attached to the machine which sadly was drawing a lot of blood from his friend's chest.
Ethan however was having trouble with the stab wound. It was a thin but deep wound that lit up their friend's bloody skin in the centre of Will's abdomen very close to his lungs and diaphragm.
Been able to see the wound Ethan and Connor both looked at each other at the same time. They had a strange feeling that the knife had gone up into the chest but more likely had gone directly though the diaphragm.
Quickly Rhodes ordered for Will to be taken upstairs for a CT scan, he needed to know where the knife had gone. It had already caused serious damage to his lung but he had a feeling that it had done a lot worse to what they were seeing now.
"Ethan, we need to pack this wound now. We need to slow down this bleeding or he isn't going to make it to the CT." Rhodes said and as quickly as he finished the sentence Ethan and him got to work. They needed to get him stable before they could take him to CT. And they needed a CT to see what was going on or they would be doing in blind.
Ethan had too much experience packing wounds but to do this to his friend was hard. However as he placed the first five packs he found that his friend was just bleeding through them. But as he placed the tenth pack on top of the wound, finally the bleeding seemed to slow.
Connor ripped off his gloves and his apron into the bin and watched as Ethan finished tapping down the packs to stop the bleeding. He looked at the heart monitor that was telling all that their friend was still fighting but it was a little low for their liking. His IV stand stood with over four fresh blood bags that were set to replace their friends lost blood. They all hoped that they would help keep their friend's volume up.
But he also saw the four empty bags already on the floor where they had been thrown when they had been replaced. They had been pushing the blood quick into their friend's body trying to stop him from going into shock. And in this state would cause them to lose him.
"Doctor Rhodes" Ms Goodwin's voice made him turn to see her in the doorway.
"How is he?" she asked. Connor looked back at Will and then rubbed his hand across his face. He knew that the news wasn't good but at least Will was still breathing.
"Get him ready to go to CT." Connor said before stepping out to speak to Ms Goodwin.
"I don't know." Connor said looking back at Will, Doris had now attached him to a ventilator which was needed to keep him breathing when they were in the CT.
As he turned back he saw that they had been joined by Dr Charles, he knew that both of them knew that it wasn't good.
"He has lost a hell of a lot of blood, we are trying to replace it but it is like every time we bump more blood into him he is losing it. I need to get him onto a table and try to stop that bled. It's the only way." Rhodes said. He knew that he could have told them his worries about where the knife could have gone but they didn't need to know those just yet.
"With that much blood loss he couldn't have traveled far. That only means he was stabbed just outside the hospital." Doctor Charles said looking at the scene in the room in front of him.
Ms Goodwin nodded, "Maggie has told me CPD is on their way. Do what you have to do Doctor Rhodes, we do not need to lose a good doctor like him…" She added but before she could finish her sentence they were interrupted by Maggie arguing with someone right behind them.
They found that most of the reception was full of CPD. At Maggie had her hands full with an emotional Detective Halstead who was demanding to see his brother.
"I don't care." Jay was repeating and quickly he got pasted her, Maggie looked towards the three other CPD officers who had not dared get involved.
"Jay…" Rhodes started to say to Jay wanting to stop the young detective from running into the trauma room when they had only just got Will stable and had were nearly ready to move him to CT.
"What happened?" Jay demanded looking at Rhodes who was finding it hard to meet his eyes.
Connor didn't know how to tell Jay what had truthly happened to his brother. He didn't know why it was so hard for him to talk. He had given bad news to people before but he didn't know why this one was so hard.
"Detective, your brother has been stabbed. Other than that we don't know what happened." Ms Goodwin said, seeing that Connor was finding it hard to explain what had happened. This got Jay's attention off Connor.
"What I can tell you is that we are going to do everything in our power to make sure he survives this." She added taking hold of the young man's arm just in case he made a run for the trauma room. She hated this part of the job as she knew that this was the worst possible news to the young detective.
At this moment, April and Doris pushed Will out of the trauma room and made their way to the elevator and to CT. Jay's face grow grey at the sight of his brother, he didn't know what he would do if he lost his older brother. He knew that they hadn't been close for many years but he had started to be thankful that their relationship had started to mend.
"Jay…" Hearing his name he snapped back to the room and looked at Connor. He knew that it was his voice who had said his name.
"...I will do everything to keep Will alive. After the scan I am taking him to the OR. I will get back to you as soon as I can." Connor finished and quickly patterned Jay's arm before heading to follow Will to CT. He had made a promise that he knew he might not be able to keep but he was going to do his best to keep.
Maggie quickly lead Jay to the OR waiting rooms, she knew that Jay wouldn't want to see the mess that now littered trauma one.
...
Ethan ripped off his blood soaked gloves off his hands along with his apron only to see that his hands were already stained red with Will's blood. He remembered that when he had started to work on Will, he hadn't put gloves on till he needed to pack the wound in Will's abdomen. All he had seen was a friend who needed his help.
Every part of him wanted to run after Will and stay with his friend during the CT and then in the OR but he knew that he couldn't.
Now like Will's brother Jay, all Ethan could do was to sit and wait.
However at this moment he needed to get the blood off his hands, without a word to anyone he quickly walked into the doctor's lounge and quickly headed over to the sink that set near the coffee pot.
Turning on the water he soon found himself scrubbing the dried blood off his skin. He couldn't stop rubbing the blood off, it was like every pour in his skin was now filled with his friend's blood. He couldn't tell if the blood wasn't washing off or if the hot water kept his hands red. But he kept at it. He needed to clean himself of his friends blood.
He heard the door to the room open and then close but Ethan didn't pay much attention. All his focus was on washing off his friend's blood from his hands. He had enough blood on his hands, but his friend's blood was killing him.
"I think you're done." A voice came from over his shoulder. Ethan stopped rubbing his hands and placed them on the unit to brace himself. He looked up to see Doctor Charles stood next to him holding a paper towel out for him.
He took it after shutting off the water; he quickly dried his hands on the towel and saw that the blood had truthly gone. He sighed knowing that he had been panicking.
"Ethan you did everything you could for Will. Now he is in the best possible hands and we know Doctor Rhodes will do everything he can to save Will." Dr Charles said.
Ethan turned around still holding on to the unit to keep him up right to see Doctor Charles had sat himself at the table. However he couldn't make eye contact with him, Doctor Charles was one of the few that knew about his PTSD.
"This is not your fault." Dr Charles said, being all to familiar with the look on Ethan's face. He knew the young man was blaming himself, he had seen this before in their chats.
"I just feel so helpless." Ethan said knowing that his emotions were at breaking point.
"If I had gone after him he wouldn't have got stabbed." Ethan said gripping the edge of the unit until he could see his knuckles turning white. Will needed to talk to someone and instead of being that person he had let him go and now his friend was fighting for his life.
"Maybe, but you don't know if that would be true or not." Doctor Charles started. He then sighed and quickly added.
"And you couldn't find out if that would be true as we can't change the past. What we need to do and when I say we I mean us all, what we need to do is to stay strong for our friend and let him know that we are fighting this battle with him." As Dr Charles finished, Ethan nodded.
All any of them could do now is to be there for their friend and make sure that their friend knew that they were there for him.
A soft knock on the door made them both look at who was stood there, April slowly opened the door and looked at them both. Her eyes were red like she had been crying and they both guest that she had been.
"They have taken Will to Will is in theatre now. I don't know how long they will be." She said and her voice also made it clear that she had indeed been crying. Dr Charles nodded to her and gave her a soft smile.
"Also Detective Halstead have called in the rest of the Intelligence Unit to find whoever did this." She added but this time with a little more force as if she was trying to keep herself together.
"Thank you April." He said and Ethan gave her a small smile this time.
Now it was up to Connor to fix Will's wound. But also on Will himself. He had to fight. And they all knew that he had a hard fight ahead of him. And all they could do was to sit back and wait. And pray.