A/N: Yeah, yeah, yeah... I haven't been updating, but there is a very good reason for it!!! I just haven't thought it up yet... so... I've been writing this chapter for about three days. I don't know if this is physically possible, I just know that I work in a chiropractic office and I've seen it before (You'll know what I mean). Without further ado, here goes nothing.

My Latest Mistake

Chapter Four

Jump

Rated K+

A week had past. An entire week that he'd spent in a bloody bed with nothing but Ernest Hemingway and his own thoughts to cheer him up. To put it mildly, he was not amused. Fortunately, his frequent visits to the doctors had given the verdict that he was about to be released from house arrest. Now that he was able to walk in a straight line without falling down and hold up a glass of water, let alone a plate of food, without dropping it, even Luke had agree that it was time for him to be allowed back into the world.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Luke repeated like the broken record he was. Jess eyed him and shook his head.

"I've been sitting in my old bed fermenting, eating your food, stealing your water and generally mooching everything for the past week. I want to help," he shrugged. "Besides, don't I still owe you money from that party, and the car?"

"You don't owe me anything," Luke sighed, shaking his head and letting Jess go down the stairs first so that he'd be there to catch him if he fell.

"I'm not made of glass," Jess grumbled, storming down the stairs and whipping the curtain aside.

"Good to know," Luke returned gruffly.

In the spirit of returning the favor, Jess had volunteered his services to the diner until he was able to leave. Although the doctor didn't know if he should be dealing too much with people, seeing as how he was a ray of sunshine anyway, he still placed 'pouring coffee' on the 'Okay Activities' list.

Almost two hours later, Jess was bored to tears and wondering what on earth possessed him to offer to help, especially seeing as how he'd forgotten a book. Fortunately, there was a small ray of hope to his evening. Every ten minutes or so, he would see Lorelai walk past the diner, look inside longingly, and then walk away. He was keeping a tally, secretly, and having issues not pointing her out to Luke every single time he saw her. It was remarkable. She was almost as on-time with her pacing as Luke was with interrupting him and Rory when they were kids.

Rory, there was that damn name again. Frustration poured through his veins when he thought of how hard he'd been attempting to avoid thinking about her, and how much she was everything into his mind anyway. He'd given up on his autobiography because it hurt too much to write her name even if he was attempting to detach himself. The thought brought his story back to his mind and he yanked the stack of paper out of his pocket.

"Aren't you supposed to be working?" Luke grumbled. Jess looked at him and then at the diner, and then back to Luke with a raised eyebrow. There was only one person in the diner. "Point taken."

Jess shook his head and went back to the story, writing furiously. His hands were sore. Over the past week, he'd written over five hundred pages in both stories, although there was a considerable amount more in the story he was working on currently. Not knowing why, he had already picked out a name for it: 'The Subsect'

"What is that?" Luke traveled back over to him and looked over his shoulder.

"Nothing," Jess brushed off, closing the pages and shoving them back in his pocket.

"That nothing is everywhere in your room," Luke pointed out.

"Huh," Jess continued to evade and went out to refill the two centimeters of coffee that the guy's cup needed and then went back to the counter. Gazing up at the clock, he then looked intently at the window.

"What are you waiting for?" Luke asked with only mind interest in his voice.

"You'll see," Jess shrugged, and lo and behold, Lorelai walked past two seconds later. She looked into the diner, saw them looking, and ran away. "I think you scared her away."

"How long as she been doing that?" Luke asked. His voice was rough, trying to be butch, but Jess knew how much this was probably hurting his uncle.

"Every ten minutes," Jess sighed, no longer thinking it was funny.

"Maybe I should go talk to her," Luke fretted.

"Every time you say that, you make it halfway there and run back here claiming that you forgot something, and that it's too late to go see her anyway, or that she'll be at work, or that she probably doesn't want to see you, or, my personal favorite, that she's probably are her parent's house," Jess taunted, causing the black cloud over his uncle's head to recede a little bit.

"Well…" Luke grumbled, shrugging his shoulders and leaning on the counter a little bit.

"Go see her," Jess nudged, nodding towards the window.

"Three years ago you were doing the same thing," Luke shot back weakly.

"Yeah, but I was eighteen," Jess shrugged, smirked and shook his head.

"Go do some work," Luke grumbled, the black cloud seeming to have been warded off for the moment, but the lines around his uncle's face suggested that there would be no talking to Lorelai tonight, or any night soon. Sighing, Jess leaned on the counter, which Luke was cleaning for no apparent reason, and started writing his story again.

"Was I wrong?" Luke mused under his breath.

"Given how guilty you feel…" Jess mumbled right back.

"I said that out loud?" Luke gaped, staring at Jess, who smirked and nodded. "I'm not guilty."

"You didn't call it off permanently, only until I'm gone… and I don't intend on being here too long, so…?" Jess trailed off.

"I know, I know… but… should I at least, I don't' know, talk to her?" Luke stammered.

"That's up to you," Jess shrugged, going back to his writing once more.

"She's there again," Luke commented lifelessly, and Jess looked up to see Lorelai walking past, sneaking looks out of the corner of her eye.

"Go," Jess shook his head as Luke danced around. "Go!"

"Okay," Luke agreed and dashed out of the diner after her.

Jess shook his head, sighing, and looked down at the words on the page in front of him. He had no idea where all the pages he'd written were. They were scattered between his other story, and occasionally a random journal-esque note he'd write to himself. Every page was numbered and had a little sign beside said number telling which story it belonged to. At least that way he could gather them all back together.

The coffee-man left around eight, which left Jess alone for the last two hours before closing. It was strange not even having one person come in, but that probably had a lot to do with the town's boycott of the diner ever since he returned. Even Kirk was avoiding coming inside, even though he'd forgotten about the boycott three times and came in to order his coffee, before spitting it out and running away the second he saw Jess.

Ten o'clock rolled around, and Jess's hand felt like it was on fire. Shaking it out, he frowned down at the page in his hand and nodded. That was the end… that story was over, and he was fairly pleased at where it had gone. Standing up for the first time in two hours sent him reeling, and he fell down to the ground, feeling a throbbing pain in the back of his neck.

"Luke…" he whispered, knowing that his uncle was no where that he could hear the call.

Struggling over to the phone, he used a counter to pull himself up so he could knock down the receiver and dial the numbers sloppily. It was a number he'd had memorized for years. A number he had long associated with blue eyes and brown hair.

"Hello?" was spoken in a half-teary voice. Obviously the reconcilement wasn't going as well as planned.

"Help," was what he managed to get out before he fell to the ground, the pain becoming too severe.

"Jess?" was shouted into the phone, it was Luke, and he sounded frantic. "Jess!"

Jess tried to gasp out his plea again, but the blackness eating at his vision told him that he wouldn't be awake much longer, let alone talking. Trying to blink it away, he came to the understanding that this most definitely wasn't normal. Back in New York, it wasn't common to pass out because of the drugs, but this just felt… strange.

Ten minutes later, he was still fighting off the blackness, swatting at nothing everyone once in awhile, but trying to keep his body moving.

"Jess!" Luke exclaimed as he burst into the diner.

"Hey," Jess managed, but it came out garbled, and he finally let the blackness take him away.

-gGg-

Luke sat in the emergency room an agitated mess. He didn't know what was wrong, so he'd called in the ambulance and Jess had been carted off to the hospital without him. He'd had to follow them in his truck. There had probably never been a time in his life that he'd driven so fast.

Now, almost two hours later, a doctor was finally coming out to see him.

"What's wrong?" Luke demanded, jumping to his feet.

"The chemicals in his bloodstream are unbalanced and it reacted negatively with the medications that he's taking, causing muscle spasms that cut off oxygen to certain parts of his body, and finally his brain. Has you nephew been complaining of numbness at all?" the doctor explained soothingly.

"Numbness? No… I mean, no, not that I know of, but hey, he doesn't exactly talk much and what does this mean?" Luke rambled a little bit, concern marring each word.

"It means that he needs to be placed on different medications and he'll probably need to see a different doctor, as well as a chiropractic care to make sure that none of the muscles have effected his spine more negatively than it is currently," the doctor explained, then seemed uncomfortable for a second and looked Luke square in the eye. "I'm afraid I have some more bad news."

"What?" Luke deadpanned, looking past the doctor towards the room that he knew his nephew to be in.

"Some of the muscles had frozen in place, pinching nerves… and it appears that they have paralyzed parts of his body," the doctor said solemnly. "We have relaxed the muscles, but the nerves have been damaged."

"What?" Luke gasped, staring at the doctor like he was crazy.

"We're not sure how long he'll be this way, but he will need a wheelchair," the doctor explained further.

"A wheelchair?" Luke repeated, looking down and trying not to think of how Jess was going to react to all of this.

"Yes… you can either rent one, or buy one, depending on how long the specialists estimate his condition to continue," the doctor told him, seeming not to care that the diner man was slowly losing his composure.

"Does he know?" Luke rasped, shaking his head to get the cobwebs out.

"Your nephew is currently unconscious, but we are doing our best for his body," the doctor stated, pressing a hand to Luke's shoulder. "He'll be okay."

"Can I see him?" Luke asked instead of accepting the consoling hand.

"Of course, he's right in there," the doctor pointed at the open room that Luke was openly staring at.

"Thanks," Luke muttered and rushed past him, into the room. Jess was attached to a machine that monitored his heart, but otherwise he was breathing on his own and there were no odd tubes. That small relief let him breathe a little bit easier. Luke looked down at the boy's legs and attempting to ignore the painful lurch in his stomach. He turned away and stared at a chair beside the bed instead. Slowly he moved towards it and sat down with a sigh.

"So… a wheelchair," he muttered, staring at Jess's hand and wondering if he would be appropriate for him to hold it. It was always what they did in the movies, but this wasn't a movie, and this wasn't Lorelai or Rory in the bed, it was Jess, and Jess didn't like being touched. With that in mind, he pulled back and stared at Jess's face again.

"I left before we could really say anything… there was a lot of pointless yelling and accusing and you were brought up… a lot. When you called, we were about to decide whether we were still together… she told me that I should go back to her after I cam here with you. She didn't come with me," Luke stated, and watched Jess's face for some sort of recognition. "She says that keeping you here is selfish, because you're getting between us… I don't know why, but I know that I have to help you. So you wake up so we can start this… you can get better and… do something with yourself, maybe get that book published."

He hesitated, staring down at Jess's prone form and feeling the beginnings of tears at the back of his eyes, but he would not cry for his nephew. "Come on, wake up," Luke attempted to coax him, but Jess stayed unconscious.

"Sir… we're going to have to ask you to step out," a nurse told him, looking at Jess cautiously and then back to Luke.

"Sure – of course," Luke bobbed his head a couple of times, standing up for the chair and turning to look at Jess in contemplation before looking away and walking out of the room so he could sit in a chair and wait all night long, if he had to.