Hi Guys- Happy Valentine's Day! A little off schedule but here you go- chapter 5! As usual sorry for any mistakes. And I hope you like it!
Jo had experienced some pretty traumatic things in her life. But the last four hours may have been the worst. She kept her eyes squeezed shut, afraid to breathe, afraid to move. The smell of blood stuck in her nostrils, the cries of victims, long dead, still rang in her ears. By the time they were done rounding up hostages, there were 215 people in the conference room, just a quarter of the people that had come to San Francisco two days ago, now four hours later, there were only 187. Jo was a doctor, she was no stranger to death, but this wasn't death, but this wasn't like anything she'd ever seen. This was killing for fun. This was murder.
She bit down on her bottom lip from time to time, party to distract from everything around her and partly just to remind herself that she was alive.
She wondered if the fear of death was worse than actually dying. That if one of the shooters sent a bullet through her brain, she'd be better off than she was now. The fear had taken over her entire being- and she hated it. Jo had been through a lot, more than most, she thought she was immune to fear. But sitting here watching the time tick away, and watching the people around her just die, she wanted nothing more than for the fear to just go away.
Jo wasn't idealistic or naive. She didn't see rainbows and butterflies and happily ever afters. She was truth, she saw probability, she saw the dark and ugly reality, Jo knew what was going to happen, the chances of her making it out of here alive were waning.
She took a steadying breath, the inevitability of her death slowly setting in. She ran her fingers along the sides of her sweatpants, making a sarcastic mental note about wishing she'd picked something nicer to die in, when she felt something snag on a loose thread of her sweats. She looked down, and for the first time noticed the ring. Right there on the fourth finger of her left hand. She stared at it, suddenly remembering her life prior to today. Remembering Alex.
The corner of her eyes started to sting again. She wondered if he knew. He had to have, nothing travels faster than bad news. She glanced at the ring again, remembering everything the ring stood for, everything it meant for her, for them. The ring symbolized their future. A life together. A life she probably would no longer have.
Her mind flashed back to two days ago, before she'd left for San Francisco, at the ambulance bay.
"Come on Jo! We're going to be late." Stephanie yelled to Jo.
Jo ignored her, her eyes still searching.
"Jo! I swear to God if we're late because of you…" Stephanie yelled again.
Jo tuned out her voice, she knew Alex didn't have any surgeries today. So where was he? Suddenly she felt familiar arms wrap around her waist. She rolled her eyes before turning around, "Alex! Where were you! I.."
He cut her off with a kiss, Jo, slightly annoyed, fell into the kiss as well.
"Sorry" he mumbled after she broke the kiss. Remembering why he was late in the first place he pulled out a bag. "For you." he offered
Jo scrunched her eyebrows and looked at him questioningly, before opening the bag to look inside. Inside, a bottle of calamine, a bunch of magazines, half a dozen chocolate bars, a couple of granola bars and her flash cards. Jo looked up at Alex, a smile growing on her face.
" I figured you could use all the help you could get and then I saw that you left your flashcards at the loft so I…"
This time Jo cut him off, pulling him into another kiss. "I love you"
"Calm down Princess. It's just chocolate and a bottle of lotion"
"Shut up" she playfully snaps back at him before letting him lead her to the shuttle. She turns around and gives him one last peck before looking for her seat next to Stephanie.
"Hey Jo!" Alex calls.
Jo turns around again.
"Love you too"
She ran her fingers over the ring, allowing it to provide some comfort. If that was the last memory of Alex she would have, she figured it would be okay. To be so unbelievably in love and to feel so unconditionally loved. She figured there were worse ways to go.
She watched as the minimal lighting in the room reflected off of the center diamond, and found herself smiling for the first time that day.
Jo was brought back to reality when she heard a loud noise. It seemed she wasn't the only one because everyone looked up as well. One of the guys dragged in a man with a scalpel driven into his abdomen.
"What the hell is this?" the guy, who Jo figured was the leader of the group, asked in the thick French accent they all had.
"I found him upstairs, he was bleeding. I think when he went upstairs to clear the room and the boy inside got a little scalpel happy. He's not waking up but there's a pulse-he needs help now or he's going to die." The other man answered, his accent not as strong, but still there.
The older man ran his fingers through his thinning blond hair, pinching the bridge of his nose.
He turned back to the other man, "Will he survive until tomorrow?"
"No!" he shouted, exasperation in his voice, " He will not survive not to see tomorrow he won't even survive to see the next hour."
And then before Jo's brain could realize what she was doing, she was standing up.
"I'll do it, I'm a doctor I'll do it"
And that's it for chapter 5! I originally wrote this as a longer chapter but decided to split it into two chapters- so look out for chapter 6, it'll be out pretty soon, because it's basically done. This chapter was a lot of fun, getting to write a happy Jolex.
Obviously this story is now slight AU (?) It's not canon with 12x09, which sidebar I was actually pleasantly surprised by, but it should be said my expectations were pretty low. The blanket scene killed me! [insert crying emoji here].