This is set a couple of days after my first chapter.
Chapter 2
Jack Bauer's heavy head remained bowed as he quietly sat beside Renee's hospital bed in ICU onto a hard and most likely cheap chair. He sighed, lethargically raising his ocean colored eyes to look at her, not even having moved an inch compared to hours, or days, earlier. She looked genuinely peaceful into her deep comatose condition, so that one could very easily mistake and say Renee was resting only.
Renee had been such a courageous and admirable, vivid woman, and therefore it sure was hard for him, to watch her just lying there being too quiet and passive; being almost unrecognizable to that woman Jack had loved and loved, so much.
She had brought about the very same sensations within him as Teri once had – the very same sensations which he never had thought to feel again with someone else after his wife Teri; which, until Renee, had felt entirely absent, as if having died together with his wife, the mother of his daughter Kim.
His mind wandered to Kim. She had become such a wonderful young woman and mother. His mind wandered further to little Teri, his granddaughter, mirroring Kim so much in appearance… and somewhat in character, too.
Jack reached for Renee's hand with both of his and quietly lowered his head to lean her hand against his cheek and so feel her touch, whereas it couldn't really be described as a touch in more than just one sense of it. Please, Renee, he begged within himself. Please.
Jack Bauer's eyes closed for a second, as he futilely did his best to master that avalanche of thoughts overwhelming him right then. His lips carefully came into contact with her hand, kissing it only tenderly, before lying Renee's hand down onto the cover again and getting up off his chair, watching down upon her like that; momentarily eying her in that position.
He quietly shook his head to himself and wandered to the window, where he sighed once again, watching down upon that Earth, that contained so many hidden dangers, which eventually had led to his Teri being taken away of him and now Renee just as well.
He wasn't dumb.
He fully well knew that being there by Renee's bedside 24/7, was pure torture to himself.
Jack fully well knew that with himself only to be listening to his thoughts and babbling, while watching her in this condition between living and dying; in which she couldn't even feel him, or register him otherwise; in which she couldn't even see, or hear, or smell him near, he slowly must be talking himself to insanity.
His ocean colored eyes fell shut once again, the exhaustion that having forced himself to remain awake in case Renee's condition would alter suddenly brought being the cause of it. He quietly turned around, watching her of his position at the window. She looked so peaceful while slowly losing her fight, her body being really too weak and going over into living vegetative, or sooner maybe rather than later giving up on her and eventually shutting down.
"No, Jack!" He yelled to himself, turning around and dashing his fist hard against the wall, knuckles bleeding when retracting, before crashing down onto the chair by the window. He couldn't care less about any pain soaring through his bleeding knuckles right after. If even he was giving up on her, what chance would she ever have?
He felt like he had failed on Renee; nothing else. He had told her that she was going to be alright, but the word 'alright' was really the last that came to his mind upon seeing her like that. "You're gonna make it. We're gonna make it, I promise," he had said to her into the cab on the way over to the hospital. He wondered if 'making it', held this. No.
His mind was taking a run with him as he evenly shifted into a very disturbed sleep, filled with nightmares that were merely ruthless memories of the past, which he never had wanted to relive again. Jack's subconscious had determined otherwise, though. Jack's eyes twitched lightly behind their eyelids as his subconscious pulled him in and brought him back to that day about eight years ago, which he would later end up calling the longest day of his life.
Teri's eyes were shut, her dirty white top tainted scarlet, as Jack found her tied to a chair, a piece of tape covering her deadly pale lips. He easily got her loose and lifted her into his arms, only then really realizing that his aid had come too late. Jack lethargically collapsed with her in tears, slowly realizing that she would smile at him never again; that he wouldn't hear her laugh or soft voice ever again and…
And then suddenly Teri's face became Renee's… eyes wide open in shock and panic and pain. He wasn't sitting anymore, but running through the building to get her to the hospital while she was rapidly losing blood and dying.
Jack's eyes opened, flashing around him wearily to see the room marginally darker than he had last seen it. He panted heavily, chest rising and falling and buried his head into his hands.
He sometimes wondered why he never could have been a salesman or something else like that; someone who was blind for the dangers around him, or… anything else than what he was. What was he really? News reporters so had the tendency sometimes to describe him as a hero.
He couldn't really feel any less than a hero right then, though… being aware that what his subconscious had made him relive again was no one else's fault but his own. He didn't really feel like a hero, upon watching Renee into the bed once again.
He got up easily enough, before moving over to Renee's hospital bed. Her one arm was draped over her middle now. Jack quietly assumed that a nurse must have come by to check her vitals in the meantime.
He tenderly watched her for a moment, tears filling his eyes without leaving them. He leaned in to touch her forehead with his and reached up with his hand to run through her long, reddish dark brown hair that lay upon the pillow. "I love you," he whispered, carefully kissing Renee's forehead. "And I'm so sorry." I'm so sorry.