Chapter ten
Jay hated this. Hated just sitting in a quiet room that felt like time had stopped.
He was a man of action. It was who he was. He knew nothing less. He was the person on the front line fighting the person next to him. Even as a child, he was always the one getting into fights and mischief.
Will, on the other hand, was completely different. He was quiet and a bookworm. He liked spending time inside in a book. But sometimes he would play and hang out with him. They would often play hockey out on the street. However, he was more comfortable in a book and that didn't change as he got older. Only thing was that he had started to like to party and being around people that he did knew in a more social environment.
However, in the end, Jay knew that his brother had never been taught how to protect himself right. He was the one who was trained to protect others and that was even more so when it came to his family. He was the one who should have protected his brother. And he had failed.
He had failed his brother, the only family member left that he cared about. And he couldn't make it right. He couldn't turn back time and change everything that had gone wrong with Will. It was odd; most brothers' relationships remained the same throughout their lives with the older brother being the more stronger out of the two. But with them, he had always been the stronger one out of the two for most of their lives.
He might be the younger brother but the Army had changed him. He had grown up. He had too. He had little choice. With the things he had seen and the violence he had witnessed had changed not only his mind but his soul. He had lost the little spark that he saw so clearly in his brother. The spark that allowed him to see the good in people.
Jay looked at his brother's face, which was hard as a tube came from his mouth and nose. But at least some of his brother's colour had returned. He had a hint of pink that he had been watching bleed back into his brother's face. A good sign.
He couldn't remember what time Voight had told him the bad news but it felt like hours ago, and maybe it was.
With a sigh, he got to his feet, only to find that his legs had gone to sleep. Maybe it was hours ago. He had thrown his leather jacket on the back of his seat when he felt the weight of it grow too much for him by wearing it. It was like the weight of carrying all his guilt. He knew that some of the guilt he should have shaken a long time ago but couldn't. Not after what he had done.
Quickly he shook his legs away and started to move around the small room. He had passed an empty room on the way in and saw how big the room was, but not his brother's. The room was filled with machines that were lined up along one side of the room. This only increased his worry. So many machines, machines that were needed to keeping his brother alive. But the number still worried him, it didn't matter the reinsurances he got from the nurses.
Being a cop meant that every day he was in the line of fire and yet here he was, stood in his brother's hospital room waiting for him to wake up. It didn't seem fair.
He needed coffee, some of the nurses and one of the visitors to the ward had been bringing him coffee and water but he could feel that the effect of it had long since worked off. He could feel his body slowly shutting down, and he also knew that Will would be the first one to kill him for not eating all day. It was funny that he knew that WIll had done it all the time but it was a problem if he did it. And Will's smart mouth comment he would come back with was that he was the doctor of the family and knew better. Age was never used. As out of both of them, he acted the oldest most of the time, not counting when he got drunk.
He had skipped breakfast to get a report finished and had missed lunch for another case. And now he was very unlikely to leave his brother unguarded to grab a sandwich so it looked like he was going to have to wait. Wait for the next check-in. He had three undercover S.W.A.T officers stood around the ICU and one unforms, with four others in position around the hospital entrances. And every couple of hours one would check in with him, sometimes informing him if anything had happened that he needed to be aware of. So, he might get the next one to go grab him something or ask for something to be brought.
But the one thing he had learned from the hospital was that each department had a coffee machine however the coffee was crap. Luckily on the ICU floor, the nurses often made fresh coffee and offered it to the visitors.
Looking back at Will, Jay remembered that he knew very little about his older brother when it came down to work. Within the first few hours, he had found that Will had been helping many of the younger doctors and even the students with their work in his free time. Even going out of his way to test them before exams. Also, nearly all the nurses in the hospital knew Will personally and many had commented that Will knew all their names and got on well with them.
He had been inundated with nurses, doctors and technicians coming in and seeing how Will was doing or just coming in to check on Will's condition and if he needed anything. He had also got to know the names of the nurses that kept checking on his brother, and he quickly spotted the telltale signs that the nurses that kept coming had a little thing for his brother. He also knew that Will would find some way to kill him if he told Nat about that he had admires.
Jay moved towards the door and with one quick look back at Will, he slowly opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. He automatically scanned the hall for any threat before closing the door. At both ends of the corridor sat either one or two of the S.W.A.T officers dressed in place clothes but he could see their vests and weapons hidden. Only a trained eye would see them, but sadly Will's attacked had one, guarding the entrances.
Before moving away from Will's room, Jay nodded to the only uniformed officer that was stationed outside Will's room. When Jay had stepped out the first time he was shocked at who he saw. Paul had been Jay's first partner when he had joined the job, they had talked for a little bit before Jay had returned to Will's room. Mainly they caught up on what they had been up too, and Paul had told him that a lot of officers had volunteered to watch other Will.
Not only because of Jay but also because Will had been the doctor on call when many of them had been rushed in after been injured on the job. But also the doctor what always had time to fit them in if they needed to get checked over quickly so they could return to duty.
Jay moved towards the tablet that sat against the wall to another room and closes to the nurses' station. There sat what he was looking for. The coffee pot. It sat in full view of the entrance of the ward. As he had been pacing Will's room, he had spotted one of the younger nurses replace the pot with some fresh coffee and he had smelt it as soon as he had opened the door.
He grabbed one of the cups that sat next to the coffee pot and poured himself one, not bothering to add milk or sugar. He normally added it but today he needed to stay awake. The liquid was hot but that didn't stop him from pouring the liquid straight into his mouth. He could feel the burning sensation as the liquid moved its way down his throat and into his stomach. But he didn't care, he needed the caffeine hit.
However, he also knew that he needed to be careful about how much coffee he drank in front of the nurses. Well some of them. Will had once told him that some of the older nurses would get in the habit of counting how much coffee someone drank and wasn't afraid of cutting someone off if they thought they had drunk too much.
But at least Jay knew that he wasn't the only one being watched about how much coffee he drank, the ward had people coming and going most of the day. People visiting other patients that were in similar condition to Will. And a few he guessed may not make it. He had wanted to close off the ward and make it nearly impossible for Walker to get to his brother but had gone against the task because of Will. He knew his brother, Will would have killed him if he had suggested clsoing a whole ward for one patient. It didn't matter who they were. This was a working hospital. And he knew that Will would be the first to tell him that.
Without a second thought, Jay poured himself another cup but this time added a little milk. He turned his back on June, an older nurse that was stood watching him. She was a mixture of a loving grandmother and a strict teacher all in one. Will had also warned him about her. Jay had laughed at Will's comment but when he saw the look Will gave him he knew that he wasn't kidding. The woman was a force to be reckoned with.
As Jay held the cup to his lips and took in the smell he froze. Something in his body caused him to stop what he was doing and his senses went onto high alert. Something was wrong and he could feel it but he couldn't work out what.
He allowed his eyes to turn to where he felt the danger and saw that four new people had entered the ward.
Two were a couple that he had seen before, both in the early fifths. They had been visiting a gentleman in the room behind the nurses' station who had only arrived on the ward four hours before. From the doctor that came with him, Jay guessed that he had been through a heart operation.
Along with them was a young woman Jay had spoken to a few times since he had been up here. She had been visiting her mother who had kidney failure and was placed three rooms down from Will's. She was younger than him but at the same time not bad looking. Her amber hair was cut in a short style which always fell across her face when she moved her head too much. Him and her had talked a little when the nurses had asked him to leave the room so they could do their checks with a doctor and they had started talking. She had also brought him a cup of coffee a few times when she passed the room.
However then his attention fell on the man that seems to be lagging behind the others. Something was off about him. He was dressed in what he could only describe as a nurses uniform however something about the man's stand rang alarm bells. He walked like a soldier. And on his sleeve he only confirmed it. The uniform didn't completely cover it but he could clearly see a dark tattoo that said 'Ranger'.
Jay started to move after the man and caught Paul's eye. His old partner had also caught something about the man that made him up his guard. But it was too late, as he went to set in front of the man to stop him from gaining entry to Will's room it happened.
As the officers from other ends of the hallway moved closer, also getting the message that this man was no employee of the hospital something in the man's body language changed. And for the first time, Jay saw the man's face. Walker.
Before Paul could fully draw his weapon, Walker had been able to disarm him and wrap his arm across his neck slamming him into his chest, placing his own weapon at his head. Walker was now circled by all four of them with their weapons drawn aimed directly at Walker's head and body. The radio of Paul's chest was screaming with orders, Jay guessed that one of the S.W.A.T officers had raced the alarm when Walker had grabbed Paul.
It was now a standoff. And if he failed Jay knew that his brother would die. And he wouldn't be the only one.