"Oh no I've said too much

I haven't said enough"

-Losing My Religion, REM

Thursday, June 15, 2023

Morning

She appreciates that there's a comfortable chair that pulls out to a bed in Noah's room. She appreciates the gentler, softer approach of the hospital staff when giving her updates. She appreciates that Noah is breathing easier than he was at home, but she wishes it wasn't due to a great deal of medicine and an oxygen mask strapped to his face.

And she really doesn't appreciate that the two people she loves most in the world are lying in hospital beds in different hospitals and she's terrified for both of them.

The thought gets lodged in her brain and rolls around and it feels like it has shaken loose something that she's kept buried in her unconscious for a long, long time. Last week - fuck had it really only been a week - she'd started to acknowledge that she was interested in pursuing this thing with Elliot and understanding that her idea of being happy had something to do with having Elliot in her life, but today, after the stress of the last week, of waiting in that hallway with Ayanna and Jet to find out if Elliot was still alive and holding his children while they cried over the fact that he might not be alive for long and trying to comfort Bernie while she was losing her grip on reality and the one two punch of Noah getting sick and Bernie's death, well, she doesn't have time for pretense anymore, at least not in her thoughts, not with herself, and she's ready to admit that she fucking loves Elliot and she needs him in her life and she wants Noah to see Elliot as a role model because she'll be lucky if her son grows up to be the sort of man Elliot is.

And she's sitting on this comfortable chair and watching Noah sleeping and being glad his breathing is easier and accepting that she loves her son more than anything in the world but Elliot is a close second and she'll fucking kill to protect both of them. She's able to see Noah with her own eyes and hear those same damn beeps that tell her nothing is any different than the last time the nurses came through and were satisfied that Noah was stable, but she doesn't have that same perspective on Elliot. She hadn't left his side for five days and now she has no idea what's going on with him and he just had another big surgery to hopefully fix the damn infection that was killing him and she doesn't know if it worked or if he is lying dead and she misses the way the damn group chat would blow up in the morning as the family all awoke and checked in and she wishes she could be there with Elliot and know he's alive and find out what news Maureen had gotten from the doctor the day before and she fucking hopes it was good news, but there's no real reason to expect that it was because four surgeries in and only one of them planned, Olivia knows the likelihood that the doctor was calling Maureen to say something had suddenly gone right isn't high.

She tries to fight back the tears at the situation, at not even knowing if he's alive, because Noah is so damn sick and she thinks about McGrath and how he's probably going to show up here and scream at her and she's starting to feel like she made all the wrong choices in her life and prioritized her damn job over her relationships and now she could lose both Elliot and Noah and she'll probably lose the stupid job too and then she'll have absolutely nothing to show for dedicating her entire life to trying to fucking help everyone but herself and she's close to having a damn meltdown as she listens to Noah breathe because the whole fucking house of cards is about to come tumbling down around her and she has no one to blame but herself.

And possibly the last fucking straw is that she forgot her phone during her terrified scramble to bring Noah to the hospital. There's a phone in the room and she knows she can use it in an emergency to call Fin, whose number is about the only one she remembers anymore since she mostly just asks Siri to call people by name, but it's not going to provide any sort of distraction from her own thoughts and fears and she's fighting to hold herself together because she cannot possibly explain anything to anyone and if the staff sees her sobbing, they're going to to try to help her and no one can help her right now. She needs her family to be ok and no one can guarantee her that.

Noah wakes up around seven, groggy and confused at first, but when the initial panic over the oxygen mask wears off, he remembers coming to the emergency room and he remembers one of the nurses was wearing scrubs with a cartoon character from one of the games he likes and Olivia is able to let out a breath finally. After the doctor comes in and checks on him and tells him about the video games he can access on the computer in the room, Olivia is a little worried when Noah just nods and starts to drift back to sleep rather than investigating, but she reminds herself the doctor is right here and not worried and she knows the cough medicine they gave him makes him sleepy but she's also well aware of the fact that her son is hooked up to oxygen and IV antibiotics after being admitted to the PICU so she feels she's entitled to worry.

She thinks he's asleep once again and she's about to sit down, when he starts, his whole body jerking and she's worried for a second, but she sees that he's fine, at least as fine as he was a few minutes ago, and he's motioning at the bag on the table that's holding the pajamas he was wearing when he came in.

"What, baby?"

"I need to text Connor. I always text him on my way to school."

She hates to let him down, but she definitely didn't think to bring Noah's phone. "I don't have my phone, honey. I'll call the McCann's later." After she sends someone to her place to get her phone because she absolutely doesn't know their number.

"Use my phone."

"I didn't bring anything with us last night, Noah, I was too scared."

He shakes his head at her. "It was in my pocket."

She swears her heart leaps in her chest. She's never been so glad that Noah doesn't put his phone down, even if it means it was in his bed while he was supposed to be sleeping instead of on the table where she can be sure he's not staying up all night playing games. She digs through the bag and sure enough, Noah's phone is in there, and she lets him have it to text his brother and then, while he's drifting back to sleep, she commandeers it, knowing Fin and Amanda's numbers are saved in there and that both of them will absolutely answer a call from Noah's phone.

By lunch time, Noah's passed another check from his doctors, although his lack of appetite is concerning to her, and Amanda is using her lunch break to retrieve Olivia's phone, a charger, and a change of clothes for her, and Fin has agreed to deal with McGrath until she has her phone again and he has also sworn he hasn't heard any news about Elliot's condition, which she rationalizes means Elliot is ok because Fin would have heard something if he wasn't.

She has only just gotten her hands on her phone when the doctor and a group of residents come in and she's trying to be unobtrusive so she doesn't get kicked out, but the doctor is using words she doesn't know and the residents are asking questions that scare her and suggestions that make her wide eyes lock on the doctor in pure fear and the older woman smiles broadly and pats Olivia's shoulder and tries to explain that lack of experience tends to make the young doctors look for the exceptional, rather than a child with asthma developing pneumonia, and suggests that perhaps next time they'll discuss the case outside the room after they complete the examination.

It takes a while to calm down again after that and Noah is awake and asking her to ring the call bell so he can listen while the computer system is explained because he actually wants to play it now and so she feels better and finally looks at her phone.

Maureen sent her a text during the evening, when Olivia was panicking over Noah, informing her that Elliot was awake and coherent and that was good to hear because the doctors had been worried about his brain function, but she's upset that she wasn't there to see him and she isn't there to see him and won't be there to see him as long as Noah is sick. She's really worried about how Elliot is going to take the news about his mother and she knows he won't lean on his kids because he never asks anyone for support except her and she's not there and will probably assume she just doesn't care considering the way they left things a week earlier.

She thinks about asking one of the kids to tell him she was there, but she can't because they're busy planning a funeral and can't even celebrate the fact that their father is alive. She thinks about the priest she encountered, this Father Hogan who has known Elliot since he was child and she figures maybe he might mention that she'd been there to Elliot, but then she remembers how uncomfortable the man had made her feel and she wonders about that because she and Elliot have almost always agreed when it came to their instincts about people, but then she remembers how Hogan had indicated Elliot hadn't been the parish in some time and she thinks maybe he came to agree with her after all.

She feels guilty even thinking about it, knowing she's probably just wasting his time and her energy, but she sends Fin a note, asking if he can check on Elliot because she can't and she explains that she can't bother the kids because of Bernie and Fin agrees, he always does, but she suspects she owes him a lot for everything he's done the past week and she can't complain when he says it won't be for a day or so because he's busy doing her job and Olivia can only hope that Noah will be better by then and she can go check on Elliot herself.

A few minutes later there's another text from Fin reminding her you still haven't explained why your truck was at his place and Olivia has no idea what she's going to tell him because he'll never believe the truth, except maybe he will because it's exactly on brand that they had an enormous fight right before a crisis.