Chapter 5 is now online! It's a bit short but I promise I'll make myself forgive with the next one… enjoy and review!
John jumped on his motorbike zipping through New York's streets so fast to look like a crazy dot, his head full of horrible and scary thoughts, he knew there were high chances she lost the baby but he couldn't lose her too, he simply could not. He arrived to the hospital before the ambulance itself and watched when they brought her directly to surgery: paramedics were running through the corridors, blood and I.V. She was unconscious now.
Are you a relative? The nurse asked but he didn't know how to answer. What to say? He was… what? Her boyfriend? No. The father of her child? Yes. The man who left her without going back? Yes. The helpless man you watched her bleeding on the floor? Yes.
Noting his hands covered by blood and misunderstanding his silence with confusion, the nurse was about to call the security but Finch arrived just in time to save the situation and lead him to the bathroom to wash himself. It was useless asking him how he knew John was at the hospital, the wizard of technology, the man who created God, could track his partner with a blink. They headed to the waiting room but John didn't want him there, he wanted to be alone, to fight with his demons without any witness because it was all his fault, he was the one who had to protect and he wasn't ready, he wasn't alert, he was lost in her and Zoe ended up being a collateral damage, a collateral damage the machine wasn't able to predict.
"Mister Reese, are you okay?"
John didn't reply, he kept pacing back and forth with the hands in his hair, wild and red eyes, his white shirt unbuttoned and stained of blood, her blood, he looked like a dangerous caged animal. He'd have killed that son of a bitch who shot her as soon as she was out of the surgery, out of danger, until then… back and forth, back and forth, again and again and again.
"John, she's going to be fine" Finch said putting a reassuring hand on his shoulder
"You don't know that!" he grabbed and slammed Finch against the wall, the arm blocking his neck and those mad eyes staring at him "Like your damn machine didn't know she was in danger!"
John was blaming him, was blaming himself, was blaming the world, so mean and bastard to make that happen. He let Harold go, his voice trembling "She's pregnant with my child, Finch"
As soon as those words left his lips, he fell on the floor like a burst balloon under the shocking gaze of Finch; he figured something happened between John and Zoe that day at the Coronet hotel but he didn't expect that. It was true, John has been acting strangely during the last two months, his awful mood and lack of sense of humor, his tendency to spend more time alone, more angry, more lonely, that explained all. If there was something to say, Harold couldn't find it, he came back to his chair watching his friend falling apart, his ex CIA friend, trained to hide emotions, thoughts and feelings was now seated on the floor desperate, a broken man.
John Reese felt he was drowning, he couldn't breathe and his head was exploding. The idea of losing Zoe, to lose the woman he loved again, for the second time, was unbearable, he barely survived after Jessica's death, turning into a dirty ghost who wandered for the city until Finch gave him a reason to live and to fight for. But if Zoe died, everything would have been useless, if she died, in one moment all the stars would have been darkened.
He had never prayed in his entire life, but in that moment – when he was literally hitting rock bottom – he begged God to save her, to let her live, because he wouldn't made it without her.
Streams of re-discovered pain seemed to leak from his never healed wounds, he'd have ripped his own heart of the chest if it could make him feel a little better, if it could make him feel a little less.
John recollected all the moments he lived with Zoe since the first time, he must have fallen in love with her the night she came back home barefoot in that black dress that didn't leave much to the imagination but it took him so much time to realize it. She was quite a woman, strong, self-confident and always willing to help them, to help him insomuch to accept to marry him. A brief smile passed on his lips thinking about the nights in Far Rockaway, drinking scotch, smoking cigars and playing poker and she was good, so good to make him lose all his money… he'd have never divorced her. Flashes of their first rendezvous at Coronet hotel passed through his mind: the arousal in her eyes, the unexpected deep connection he felt with her, how they made love, how they conceived their baby.
Zoe's face, her expression when she was on the floor kept haunting him, fear and shock in her eyes, he could have prevented it, he could have… John passed a hand through his short hair frantic feeling hopeless.
He kept blaming himself, he let the guard down distracted by her presence, blinded by jealousy and that was the result: one life lost and other two hanging in the balance.
Waiting without any update or news was a torture, he needed to know, he couldn't sit on his ass doing anything so he started pacing back and forth again.
Finch offered him a coffee but he refused, unloading his anger towards the machine on Finch seemed the right punishment: why didn't the machine send her number? Why didn't it warn them of the danger? Did it consider Zoe irrelevant? No, because it already sent her number once so why? So many questions but no answers.
After what it felt like an eternity, the doctor entered the waiting room, the expression on the his face made John's stomach sink.
"Are you Zoe Morgan's relatives?"
"Yes, how is she?"
And he started talking.