Title: Extraordinary Measures

Author: J.M. Flowers

Rating: M

AN: I was pretty upset about how short this chapter is, but as a wise, wonderful friend said; "As long as you've said and done everything that needs to be said and done, there's no problem with short chapters!" I'm gonna keep on thinking that she's right.

Super, disgusting thank yous to my BBB (Big Bad Bitches) writing team, who still find time in all our crazy schedules to read my word jumbles and help me make sense of them. This story would be nothing of what it is without them. Pimp, Mermaid... I love you. I love what we've made. I love that I get to call you guys my best friends.

Stay extraordinary! xoxo


Non semper erit aestas

It will not always be Summer

She stirs beside me, groaning as her legs push against the mattress beneath us. I notice the sensitive twist of her hips, her joints stiffened and cramping much like my own. I giggle as her knee pops noisily, gases escaping from between the bones.

"Not funny," she murmurs sleepily, rolling over and burying her face between the pillow and my shoulder.

"You're getting old," I whisper, pressing a kiss against her temple.

She huffs, lifting her head to stare me down. "If I'm old, then so are you."

I nod, leaning forward to capture her lips with my own. "We're old together," I concede, the breathy lightness of my voice making her soften. She collapses back into me, throwing an arm over my torso and resting her head on my shoulder.

I stare up at the ceiling. I can still taste her on my tongue; the salty sweat of her skin, the sweet curl of her release, the hot flush of her breath between my lips. A night of passion has made her even more poignant to my senses, louder in my head than in any instance in the machine. She'd been disappearing from my memory - though I knew the tenses of her muscles before orgasm, there'd been something lacking. I'd forgotten the tastes of her, the smells.

She rubs a gentle circle around my stomach, drawing my attention to her. "What are you thinking?" she asks softly, blue eyes dancing across my face with worried expression. There's a fearful tremble to her lower lip, a sight I witnessed last night in the on call room. We're both still afraid of what could be: her, of my mind tipping wayward and once again falling victim to the 'dreams'; me, of her wounded heart making her leave me, the nagging voice that tells me she should be dead; we're both terrified of being apart.

"I'm just thinking how different this is," I tell her, a single finger tracing a path along her jaw in an effort to keep her grounded, close to me. "When I was with you in the machine, it was enough. Reliving every moment with you was enough. I never even... I didn't realize that it could never be as a great as the real thing.

"I couldn't go back," I whisper, kissing her head again, "Not after having had the real thing. You're better than any memory."

She closes her eyes, her throat clearing softly. "Are you mad," she asks, "at me?"

I shake my head, confusion furrowing my brow.

"You never gave up on me, Callie. You spent the last three months coming back to me, no matter what the cost. You risked everything for one more chance. But I... I was giving up on you. I was going to leave you because I couldn't keep going through the accident, I couldn't keep telling you that I was alive and it was Teddy who'd died. I was going to leave you because neither of us could accept the reality of the worst night of my life." She chokes back a sob, swallowing roughly.

It was the worst night of my life, too.

"I'm not mad at you," I swear. "I could never be. I feel like I've been waiting my whole life just to be here with you, right now, in this moment." My eyes shift to the ceiling, afraid to look at her as I ask her the same thing: "Are you mad at me?"

But I don't get to mention fate or the laws of time travel or that I truly believe Teddy's death is my fault because suddenly her lips are on mine swearing that she isn't and her tongue is pushing its way into my mouth promising that she's not and her hands are beneath my top fighting for our happiness and our whole conversation is being tossed over the side of the bed. Because we're better just together. We're better with fingers in hair and tongues in cheeks and hips thrusting roughly in a search for friction. We solve problems with orgasms, no matter how unhealthy it could be.

No matter how happy I am right now; no matter if I hate myself for the fates I've altered.

#

Yet again, I stumble back into the hospital as though nothing has changed. As if three months haven't passed. As if a resident hasn't left the program, the machine hasn't existed, as if I haven't saved a life at the cost of another. The hospital is a constant flow of patients, of charts, of cases. Surgery is just as it has always been.

It's the repetition that gets me through the day.

Scrub. Slice. Suction.

Saw. Sutures.

Silence.

It fills my head quickly, drips through my veins and chills my fingers. Lifts my focus from the chart I'm reading and sends me running in the opposite direction I ran last night. Down the stairs, across the floor, to room 318A where someone yells code blue.

The thump of the defibrillator, his chest heaving upwards with the surge. The screeching of the heart monitor, yelling out the flat line of his heart. Charge to 200. Charge to 300. Clear. Clear. Clear.

Time of death, 3:18pm. Room 318A.

Senna turns from where she stands at the sliding glass door, tears already soaked into her cheeks. Red rimmed eyes and shaking hands and gasping breath.

"He's dead," she says, the revelation pulling a sob from her chest.

Denia appears around the corner, a vase of flowers in her hands. She pauses when she sees her sister, understanding hits her like a freight train. It knocks the vase from her hands, glass shattering across the linoleum, flowers spilling from their arrangement.

She rushes forward, grabbing for Senna, tucking her into her arms as they both lower to the floor. They fit together like puzzle pieces, as small as children clutching to the reality that their father is gone. Two dead.

And it's all my fault.

I look to the flowers lying amongst the glass on the floor: pink gardenias, yellow senna flowers, a single, red rose. And tucked within them, a spattering of stars of Bethlehem, stark white against their counterparts. His favourite flower, he'd told me once, the flower that stood for reconciliation.

Like purple begonias could line the path to the hospital and scream, 'beware'.