A/N: Hello, my dear readers, time for a new chapter! Again, I'd like to thank everyone who read, reviewed or put this story on alert. I'm always excited to hear from you!
Not much action in this one, but a few missing scenes from 1x17 "Baby Blue", so obviously there will be spoilers for that episode. Also, this chapter makes reference to chapters 3 and 5 of this story, so you might want to have a peek at those first.
Warnings: As I stated in chapters 3 and 5, there is a lot of violence implied in the backstory. There will be no explicit descriptions, but please take the T rating seriously. I'm not particularly good with trigger warnings, mainly because real life doesn't have any (and neither does regular literature), but if (trauma-related) infertility is an issue for you, you might want to skip this chapter.
Repercussions
"I don't want to know. More importantly, I can't know. Do you have any idea what trouble I'll be in if this gets out?"
Hannah was furious – and John was confused. This was the same woman who'd gone against police, CIA, and all kinds of laws to save his life in a clandestine, hare-brained stunt just a few months back. He had been certain that treating an ill baby was something at which she wouldn't even bat an eyelid. Instead she'd gone right for his jugular (and for Harold's, for that matter). John had the distinct feeling he had missed something important.
"But her chart said she needed regular check-ups for a few weeks because the bronchitis had been so bad it was bordering on pneumonia," Harold tried to reason.
"Well, you should have considered that before kidnapping her, then," Hannah snapped.
"You're not going to help her?" Her brother's tone was incredulous.
"Did I say that?" the doctor shot back. She drew a deep breath, glancing sideways at Leila who was playing happily on a blanket on the living room floor of the safe house.
"This goes against everything I stand for as a doctor," she hissed while picking up the child, gently placing her on the table and pulling off her shirt in order to listen to her lungs. "She needs to be in proper care, and with her family, not ... not here."
"We are trying to get Leila back to her family," Harold explained with uncharacteristic fervour, "and we are doing our best to take good care of her."
"Lungs are clear," Hannah murmured, no longer bothering to argue with the two men in the room. "Temperature's normal. I'll leave you a multivitamin to bolster her immune system," she added in a detached voice, pulling a small bottle from her bag. "Ten drops three times a day. Put it on a spoonful of food, or in her bottle, whatever works best."
The doctor re-dressed the little girl and tried to put her back down on her toy blanket. Leila, however, had taken an interest in the soft, wavy long hair of the woman, stroking it with reverent amazement and smiling a disarming smile.
A look that could only be described as pure agony crossed Hannah's face when Leila threw her chubby little arms around her neck and cuddled into her shoulder. She swallowed hard, rapidly blinking back the moisture in her eyes, and knelt down on the blanket. "Come on, Leila, Mr Bear wants to play with you." The doctor's voice was barely audible, strangled with tears that threatened to make an appearance any moment now.
All three adults breathed a silent sigh of relief when Leila let go without a fuss, grabbing the teddy bear that Hannah was holding out to her, and waving the pretty doctor good-bye.
"Hannah ..." John pleaded, but his sister just shook her head.
"Don't!" Snatching her bag off the chair where she had put it ten minutes ago upon entering the room, she brushed past the two men without so much as a glance back at her little patient. "I'll have Ben stop by tomorrow to check on Leila," she choked out, and then she was gone.
Dumbfounded, Harold stared at John. "What on earth was that?" he asked, his voice even more perplexed than his look.
The tall man had gone very quiet, and very pale. When he replied, it sounded strained and dejected. "That was me being the world's greatest idiot."
*POI*POI*POI*POI*POI*
When Dr Al-Khalil came to check on the little patient the next evening, it was all over. It was after Leila had been kidnapped to be sold abroad, after she had been reclaimed by John, after their coming close to freezing in that refrigerated truck, after a good police officer had been shot because of John's unholy alliance with Elias, and after Joss had cut her ties with them as a consequence. Of course, the good doctor knew none of this when he entered the safe house.
The first thing he noticed was the crying baby. As an intern he had worked in a children's hospital for half a year, becoming quite adept at discerning the different ways children of different ages cried for different reasons. This one didn't sound like she was in pain, or hungry, or in a wet nappy. If anything, she sounded overtired.
A few seconds later John came into sight. He was wandering through the house, tenderly rocking Leila in his arms in an attempt to calm her down. "Hello, Ben. Thanks for coming," John greeted his best friend, hitching the tiny girl a little higher on his chest and tucking her head under his chin. "It's all right, Leila," he said in a low, soothing voice. "You're safe now."
The doctor slightly raised his eyebrows at this last comment, wondering what had transpired before he arrived but considering it best not to ask. "Hannah said this little one needed a second check-up?"
"Yeah," John sighed, rubbing slow, gentle circles on the sniffling baby's back. "She's had a bit of a rough day, too," he added.
Wait – did the man actually sound guilty? "Wanna tell me what happened?" the doctor asked while reaching out for the child.
His friend put the baby in his arms. With his hands suddenly strangely empty, he rubbed his neck in a helpless gesture. "I screwed up. Big time," he admitted.
Ben looked down at Leila, who was looking up at him in turn, her distress momentarily forgotten. "Hey there," he smiled at his little patient. "Feeling icky, are you?" Then, without breaking his focus, he said quietly to John: "I guess you're not only talking about Leila here, are you?"
The man in question turned away to stare out of the window. For the longest time, the only sounds in the house were Leila's babbling and Ben's practised movements around his patient.
"I didn't mean to hurt her," John said at last, and his best friend wasn't quite sure if he was talking about Hannah, or Leila, or both, or someone else entirely.
"I know how badly she was injured in the assault. I read her medical file. I just ..."
Benjamin pressed his lips into a thin line and, not wanting to go there just yet, finished his examination. Eventually he declared: "Leila's all right. Her temperature is a little on the low side, but no cause for alarm. Feed her some sweet snacks for extra energy and keep her warm for a few days, and she should be fine."
Getting the tiny clothes back on the baby's wriggling body with his uncooperative, slightly aching fingers was something of a challenge, but the doctor managed and considered it a small victory. He picked Leila up, planning to pass her over to John, but she snuggled into his chest, grabbing his soft jumper with a chubby little fist and immediately falling asleep with a contented sigh.
Once more, silence descended over the house. Catching on to the lack of sound in the room, John turned around and took in the picture before him with a pained expression in his eyes. He had meant to do the right thing – he and Harold both –, meant to rescue Leila and return her to her family. Instead, all he had managed was to hurt the most important person in his life, estrange someone whom he looked up to and had hoped to win as a friend one day, and put an innocent child in lethal danger. And John was sure that if the man in front of him learned the whole extent of what he had done, he would lose his best friend, too.
What a mess. Suddenly feeling beyond tired, John pushed himself away from the windowsill, dragged himself across the room and slumped down in one corner of the sofa. All he wanted right now was to turn back the clock to two days ago and do it all differently.
Ben seemed to read his thoughts, because he came over, sat down next to the other man and, carefully readjusting the sleeping child in his arms, put a hand on John's shoulder. "When was the last time you ate or slept?" the doctor asked, softly but firmly.
Scrubbing a weary hand down his face, John shook his head. "Don't remember," he mumbled with his eyes closed. Suddenly he felt a hand closing around his forearm and his arm being guided down and slightly turned outward.
"How did that happen?" the doctor's concerned voice asked. Forcing his eyes open, the former soldier dropped his gaze to where his best friend's hand rested a few inches above his bruised and bloodied wrist.
"Trying to get out of a pair of handcuffs." He neither had the energy nor the will to come up with a cover story.
"Looks like the start of an infection. Show me your other wrist?"
Without arguing, John unbuttoned his shirt cuffs and rolled up his sleeves. The doctor made a disapproving sound when he saw the raw, slightly weeping wounds.
"Let me take care of that." Ben stood and put Leila in her crib in the corner of the room, careful not to wake the sleeping child. Then he collected his bag and a few supplies from the bathroom before returning to his friend on the sofa.
In complete silence, Ben tended to John's wounds, cleaning them, covering them in antibiotic cream, bandaging them at last. At some point during the procedure, the injured man fell asleep. The doctor retrieved a pillow and a blanket from the linen closet and made his friend comfortable without waking him. Finally he settled down in an armchair next to the couch, content to keep watch over the former soldier and the child.
*POI*POI*POI*POI*POI*
The sunset was casting a warm glow through the window when John stirred awake. He was surprised to see Ben in the armchair, reading a medical journal.
"You're still here?" he enquired, voice rough from sleep.
"I had nowhere else to be for a while, and both you and Leila needed a nap," the doctor shrugged. "She woke up a while ago, and I fed and changed her. She's playing now."
John sat up, running both hands through his short hair and wincing slightly when the movement pulled at his sore wrists.
"I made coffee. Would you like some? There's also a bag of fresh deli sandwiches in the fridge. Your boss brought them when he stopped by an hour ago to check on you and Leila."
"Thanks," John replied, stifling a yawn and trying to muster the energy to drag himself to the kitchen to get coffee and a sandwich.
Ben leaned over and stopped him with a brief pat on the knee. "Stay here, I'll bring the food and coffee over."
Ten minutes later, the two men had made a sizeable dent in the impressive assortment of sandwiches. "Does Hannah know you're still here?" John asked between bites.
"Yeah, I texted her right after Finch left." He fell silent for a moment before adding, "She's not really mad at you, you know?"
John snorted. "Coulda fooled me. Not that I blame her."
Ben smiled pensively. "You know, you two are very much alike. Always needing to help, to change things for the better. And nothing makes you madder than being helpless."
His friend studied him with a calculating expression. "Your point being?"
The doctor put down his half-eaten sandwich, wiped his mouth with a napkin and took a sip of coffee before leaning back in his chair and taking a deep breath. "Did you know that I proposed to Hannah a while back?" he eventually said after a long pause.
The quiet non-sequitur was the last thing John had expected his best friend to say. Consequently, his dumbfounded reply turned out somewhat unoriginal. "You did?"
Ben smiled sadly. "I did. I did, and she turned me down. She even tried breaking up with me, set me free – her words, not mine. She said she didn't want me to wake up one morning and regret marrying a woman who couldn't give me any children. I told her that I wasn't even sure I wanted children – what with my post-traumatic stress disorder and all –, and that we could always adopt, but she was adamant. I didn't want to lose her, so I dropped the topic."
By now, John had recovered a little and tried to figure out the meaning behind the softly spoken words. "Why are you telling me all this?" he finally asked, his eyes boring into Ben's.
"First of all I want you to know that whatever transpired with Hannah yesterday is not your fault. John, she always avoids treating babies, at all costs. She even has a paediatrician at the clinic so she doesn't have to. It might have been an unfortunate situation yesterday, and, yes, she was very upset, but you couldn't know and you shouldn't blame yourself."
"And secondly?" John asked after digesting his best friend's word for a moment.
"Secondly, I need you to know that I'm very serious about Hannah. I love her more than I can say, John. However long it may take, I want to be with her for the rest of my life, and I will wait for as long as she needs to get over her fears." Benjamin's eyes shone with so much love and devotion that a tiny, warm flame in John's heart started to burn a little brighter at the sincere words.
"One more thing. I don't know the backstory about Leila, and about what you do, but I can see it's complicated and messy. I can also see that you're doubting and second-guessing yourself, so let me remind you of something we were taught in the Army: sometimes you can only pick the lesser of two evils because doing nothing would be even worse. Of course, that doesn't change the fact that it's still an evil. Sometimes the price for getting the job done is painfully high. And sometimes there is no winning."
John stared at Ben for a long moment. "You're right, they taught us that. What they didn't teach us, though, is how to live with the guilt."