"If this world is wearing thin and you're thinking of escape
I'll go anywhere with you, just wrap me up in chains
But if you try to go alone, don't think I'll understand"
-Stay With Me, Shakespeares Sister
Sunday, June 11, 2023
Night
She doesn't want to leave. Somehow Elliot has defied the fucking odds so far and he's too stubborn to give into the doctor's prediction and though his life is hanging by a thread, he's still alive. He's still breathing, albeit aided by a machine that's doing the heavy lifting there, and he's been cut open and sewn back together three times in thirty-six hours and it seems like something important that he's still trying.
The second surgery was on Friday morning when they were satisfied his organs were functioning and decided he was strong enough to survive the surgical repair to his arm. The third time he was rushed into surgery was on Friday evening when the initial repair of his liver apparently hadn't held like they thought and he started bleeding out again and the doctors had asked then if the family wanted to go ahead with the surgery or keep him sedated until it was over since they weren't sure it would actually help and he could easily die on the table because fuck he'd tried repeatedly during the first surgery and the kids were too upset to think and Bernie was downright hysterical and asking someone to call Joe and Olivia pretended to be confused about Elliot's living will and let the kids decide they wanted the surgery to give him a chance and Olivia agrees with them even though she knows it's not what he wants if he's never going to wake up anyway, which the doctors have suggested is highly likely given they have no idea how long he wasn't breathing before paramedics resuscitated him except the aircrew reported he was briefly awake on the flight although they were only able to report that his eyes opened and he was responsive to pain and even Olivia knows a pain response is a low fucking bar but still, it's something and it's all they're going to get while he remains heavily sedated. She's not ready to let him go and the kids aren't either and Bernie is living in her own world at this point and Olivia doesn't want a front row seat to watch this family fall apart.
But he made it through the second and third surgeries and didn't even try to die again and the machines are keeping him breathing and medicine is keeping his blood pressure up and the repair to his lung is still holding and the second repair to his liver seems to be holding this time and his arm is stable enough for now, though that's going to be a very complicated recovery processes if the trauma surgeon is to be believed, and, according to the respiratory therapist, the machine is now only doing some of the work, meaning he's still trying to breathe.
The kids cycle in and out, Maureen and Kathleen mostly there during the day, the twins at night, and Eli has come by once but he was too upset to speak and literally ran out of the room in tears and Olivia chased him down and held him while he cried and he texts her for updates every few hours, but he says he can't come back to the hospital and she understands that it's too much for him.
As for her, she can't leave. She hasn't gone further than the restroom since she arrived and she's borrowing phone chargers from the kids and the staff when she needs to keep her phone operational and her clothes are a sight and her feet are killing her and her son is understandably upset to have been shuttled off to Amanda's and Fin is holding the precinct up for her while McGrath is apparently breathing fire about her behavior. She doesn't care if she gets fired and she honestly had that thought before her world crashed to a halt and the only thing she does care about right now is that Elliot keeps doing his share of the breathing and the monitor keeps sounding a report that his heart is still beating and his hand remains warm in hers.
That's the thing though, she realizes, it's important that his hand stays warm, but over the last few minutes, it feels like it's getting warmer and she's afraid of saying anything because Elizabeth is asleep in the chair on the other side of Elliot's bed and Olivia doesn't want to scare her and she doesn't want to rock the boat and bring up the end-of-life discussion again but as she's sitting there telling herself she's imagining things, she notices the fine sheen of sweat that's on his brow and the way his body is starting to tremble and the incremental rise in his heart rate and she knows he's running a fever, which she'd say was a good thing since they were having trouble keeping his temperature up yesterday but she knows a fever in his condition is not a good thing.
She's aware the nurses will be in to check on him soon, they're in every half hour or so, but she doesn't know if she should wait on them to notice or if a delay will make things worse. Luckily before she even has time to decide it's too risky to wait, the evening nurse comes through on her last round of her shift and listens to Olivia's observations and agrees that it seems something is up and by the time that nurse has gone home for the evening, the doctor has been by and determined Elliot is now battling an infection on top of everything else and he says Elliot is too fragile for visitors right now and though he likely got sick because he was shot six times and laid on the ground for over an hour while the police secured the scene and arrested the shooter and he had multiple surgeries, they can't rule out that one of his family members introduced a bacteria his immune system is too weak to fight off and so he kicks them out for the night and says they'll reassess the idea of visitors in the morning.
She nods as Elizabeth decides to go home because she doesn't see the point in waiting since she'll have to leave for work before they're allowed back in anyway and she texts the group - which has expanded to include Olivia now - that no one is allowed to visit at least until morning because he's gotten sicker and then Olivia is alone in the hallway and she doesn't want to leave because she's afraid of what will happen if she leaves his side because all of eternity won't be enough time at his side. The night shift barely glances at her when she drags a chair over to sit just outside the closed door of his room and they tolerate her asking for any changes when they continue their checks and she stares at the group chat that is silent in the wee hours and she tries to ignore her conscience as it whispers that she brought this on all of them because she'd gotten angry and left on Thursday, because if she'd stayed with him, she's sure they would have called out sick from the hangovers and spent the day in bed not resting and Elliot wouldn't have been anywhere around the shooting. It's her fault that he's on borrowed time and probably dying if the doctors are to be believed and his kids are suffering and his mother is completely losing her grip on reality and Olivia is going to lose him again and this time she has no one to blame but herself.
She faces a cold truth as the Monday morning shift arrives in the ICU. Losing him doesn't hurt any less because she never told him she loved him. She'd stupidly convinced herself that she was protecting her heart by not giving in and she knows now that was bullshit because she still loves him whether she says it or not and she will always love him and it will never hurt less because they could have had something together all this time but she denied them their chance because she was pissed off.
By the time the sun rises, Kathleen is back and she's brought Bernie and Olivia hasn't moved from her chair and there haven't been any meaningful updates and so she is silent as the other two women drag over chairs to flank her and Kathleen rests her head on Olivia's shoulder and Bernie grips her hand and Olivia is trying to hold herself together but she can't because Bernie is starting to cry as she talks about her sweet baby boy and how she can't live without him and Olivia can't help the tears that form because it not only reminds her of Noah, but also because she's seen Elliot with his mom and she knows he's sweet to her and she's rarely seen that gentle side of him because she always gets the gruff side of him because she knows he's afraid of being vulnerable around her because she can and has eviscerated him.
All three of them are crying now and Liv is thinking about how he was trying to let her in and convince her to open up and she'd fucking slapped him and no wonder she gets the angry tough guy persona from him and she swears if she gets a third chance she'll be different, she'll let him in, she'll let him be the loving, protective, sweet man that he really is under that shell he's developed to protect him from the world.
It's the same doctor from overnight who comes by in the morning and announces Elliot's fever is apparently a good sign because his body is trying to fight the infection but he reminds them that he's extremely vulnerable - a word that stabs through Olivia's gut because she's finally getting the message from the entire universe - and requests that they are very careful to not introduce any more pathogens and so he'll allow them in the room, but they have to wear masks and gowns and gloves and they should avoid touching him and Olivia is convinced they're just waiting for him to die now and she wants to crawl in the bed and die with him.
Bernie is somehow more afraid and panics when they're cleared to visit again and begins loudly telling Olivia about which of the nurses Joe has had an affair with and Kathleen agrees to take her home because Bernie isn't calming down any time soon and she's just getting louder and louder and Olivia would prefer they don't all get kicked out. She returns to Elliot's room alone in all the protective gear and she sees the way he's shivering and she wants to get him more blankets and hold his hand and climb up into the bed beside him and hold him until he's warm again except he's burning up with that fever and she's too afraid to touch him because she's not supposed to and she's afraid that it was her holding his hand and stroking his cheek that made him sicker.
When Maureen comes in an hour later, Liv is still leaning on the wall across the room barely inside the door, so scared that she'll make him worse that she can't approach, and Maureen takes her lead and stands by the window, opening the shade and blinding Liv with the bright sun and commenting on what a beautiful day it is. Kathleen texts the group to report that Bernie is very upset and then there's another group chat excluding the older woman in which Kathleen reports she's more than a little worried because Bernie seems to be getting much worse and asking if anyone recognizes the name Buster.
Olivia waits for someone else to answer because she really hopes someone else already knows.