One Thursday morning, Jess is sleepwalking his way through a shower when his cell phone starts ringing. He lets the first one go to voicemail, but when it immediately starts ringing again, he frowns and hops out.
It's Lorelai. "Don't freak out," she says, and Jess' shoulders go tense. "Luke had an accident."
"What kind of accident?" Jess demands, already moving towards his dresser, tripping halfway on a stray toy and cursing out loud. Willa, still asleep in her little bed by the window, doesn't even flinch at the noise.
"He fell off the roof." Lorelai sounds remarkably calm, but then again Jess still doesn't know her intimately enough to tell the difference between her real calm and the forced kind, the one you pull over your panic to keep from falling apart. "He was fixing one of those stupid gutters, the one with the screws that keep coming loose? And the surface was wet from the rain last night and he slipped." Lorelai barks out a sharp laugh, and not a particularly nice one. "There's a joke in there somewhere I'm sure - loose screws, rainy roofs. I'll come up with one later."
"Lorelai," Jess says, pausing with one fist clenched in a clean t-shirt. "Is he okay?"
"We, uh," Lorelai says, her voice wavering. "Well, they said - his leg's broken, we know that much. It could've been worse, that's what the paramedics - well this one paramedic - said to me, she said it could've been really, really bad. So he was lucky." Lorelai laughs again, and Jess winces. "Lucky! He's a lucky guy, my husband."
"Lorelai," Jess says again. His head is spinning a little.
"We're at Hartford General," Lorelai quickly says, mercifully. "He - they took him away and I haven't talked to anyone yet, they said - it's his back. They think it might be - they're worried about his spinal cord." She clears her throat. "The paramedic told me that, too."
Jess takes one deep breath, then another. Looks over at Willa, who is still sleeping peacefully, and closes his eyes, just for a second. There's something hot and painful in the middle of his chest, throbbing like an open wound. "Okay," he says. "Okay. Is there someone there with you?"
"Sookie's on her way," Lorelai says weakly. "I did call Liz, but she didn't pick up at first and I didn't want to leave it on her voicemail. I wasn't brave enough to call my mom. Maybe I'll do that later, after the joke."
"I'll be there as soon as I can."
"No, you've got work, Jess, and Willa - "
"Chris and Matt can watch Willa, and I can work from anywhere, if I need to," Jess says. "I'll be there."
"You really don't have to," Lorelai says.
"It's why you called me, isn't it?" Jess asks. Lorelai doesn't reply, acknowledging the point with her silence. "I'll drop Willa off and text you when I'm on the road."
"Okay." Lorelai pauses for a second, and Jess imagines what she must look like, sitting in a waiting room, no makeup, her face drawn tight and miserable. "I haven't called Rory yet either. I'd have to convince her not to hop on the first plane back, and they'll fire her if she misses a broadcast, Jess."
"I'll call her for you. I'm meaner than you are," Jess says. He realizes abruptly that he's still standing in place, clutching the shirt, and forces himself into movement. He doesn't have much time. "Listen, are you alright? Can I let you go?"
"Yes, I'm fine," Lorelai says. "I'm - yeah. I'm fine. Thank you."
"I'll text you," Jess reminds her. "And I'll see you soon. Call me back if anything changes."
"Okay," Lorelai says, breathing shakily enough that Jess can hear it. "I will."
"Okay," Jess repeats, and forces himself to hang up. He stares at the floor for a second after, waiting for it to feel real. When it doesn't happen, he takes another breath, and goes to get ready.
He doesn't tell Willa anything, but she obviously knows something's up judging by how clingy she is when he leaves. He can hear her crying as he leaves Matthew's place, but Girl Chris is walking him firmly to the car, talking to him in her no-bullshit asshole-author voice, which is sort of helpful, in a condescending sort of way.
"Call us when you get there, Jess - Jess, are you listening?" She snaps her fingers in his face, rudely, and Jess swats them away, annoyed. "Good. Keep us updated. We'll wait for you before we tell Willa anything. Just don't worry about it, okay? You can stay there as long as you need to - she can spend the night with us, and Matt's on the list at her daycare, right? Right. Hey." She stops him right by the driver's side door, her hands on his shoulders. "Christopher will take care of your meetings, and I can help, too. They took me down to part time at the museum, remember? Jess." She peers into his eyes, mouth pursed. "Are you with me, here?"
"Yes," Jess says.
Chris eyes him, but he doesn't say anything else, and she frowns. "Okay," she says. "It's gonna be okay. He'll be fine, Jess."
"Sure," Jess says.
Chris sighs and then, absurdly, hugs him. Jess endures it stiffly, and glares at her as soon as she pulls away. She looks a little disgusted herself, and immediately crosses her arms defensively.
"Well," she says shortly, "you better get going."
Jess kicks himself back into action, opening the door. "Don't give her any sugar after five," he warns her. "She'll be up all night."
"What am I, the ditzy babysitter?" Chris snaps. "I know that already. Get outta here."
"Going," Jess says, rolls his eyes, and goes.
The four hour trip back to Stars Hollow is quite possibly the longest of Jess' entire life, including the first time he drove it by himself, the day he moved out of Luke's place when he was eighteen. He gets maybe an hour into it and has to pull off to buy a pack of cigarettes, which he smokes the entirety of before he even makes it through Jersey. There's traffic on the Turnpike, because there's always traffic on the Turnpike, and Jess pulls off again to buy more cigarettes and call Lorelai back, who's been texting him updates all morning:leg definitely broken, at eight-thirty. Grade 3 concussion, at nine-forty, which is the worst out of all of the concussion grades? Apparently? At ten-fifty: They don't think anything's wrong with his spine but waiting for swelling to go down. He's awake but they won't let me see him yet, they say he's super out of it.
Jess lights up while the phone rings, the routine movement sort of comforting in a weird way. His lungs are burning, smoking so much after going cold turkey for so long, but his head is buzzing and the jittery get-the-fuck-out thing is gone, so he'll take it.
"Hey, where are you?" Lorelai says, and doesn't wait for an answer. "They're gonna let me visit soon, I think. I've got one of the nurses on the hook with the whole 'hysterical wife' routine. One more sad vending machine coffee and I'm in."
"Are you not a hysterical wife?" Jess asks dryly, which makes Lorelai laugh. A little, at least. "I passed Newark about twenty minutes ago. So still about two and a half hours, at least."
"Okay," Lorelai says, a little more subdued. "Lane is making up the diner apartment for you. I didn't think you'd want to stay at the house - not with Sookie and her two hundred thousand children there, anyway."
"That works. Thanks."
"I haven't called anyone else," Lorelai says, in the tone of a confession. "I keep thinking - Rory should know. And April - God, April. She's gonna be so upset, she'll want to fly back right away too, but I already know Anna won't let her. And I just can't...bring myself to make the calls yet."
"I told you I'd call Rory. April, too. I'll do it right now if you want."
"No. No, it should come from me," Lorelai says firmly. "Thanks, though."
"Okay." Jess sighs, running one hand through his hair. "What about Liz, have you gotten ahold of her yet? I can call her, then."
"I can do it - "
"Lorelai, for God's sake, let me call somebody," Jess bursts out, surprising even himself with it. "I'm goin' crazy here."
Lorelai pauses for a second, then laughs again. They're not really happy laughs, Jess can tell. He's starting to hear the frayed edges in her voice, the same kind of edges he can hear in his own. "Okay, yeah. Have at it." Jess takes a drag of his cigarette, closing his eyes against the burn. "Are you doing okay? With the drive?"
"I mean, I sort of wish I'd sucked it up and just moved back to Brooklyn instead," Jess says, "or somewhere else that's not half a day away. But otherwise, yeah. Whatever."
"Could be worse," Lorelai says lightly. "You could've stayed in California."
Jess takes a moment to shudder. "God forbid."
"Well pull over if you have to. Luke's not going anywhere for the time being." Lorelai pauses for a second, making a small, sad humming noise. "You didn't tell Willa anything, did you?"
"Of course not."
"Good. That's good." She takes a deep breath. "I mean, I think he's gonna be okay. That's just the assumption we have to run with at this point. He's fine. He messed up his leg and bumped his head, but otherwise - he's fine."
"'Course he is," Jess says breezily.
"I do feel sort of bad about making fun of T.J. for doing this same thing all those times, though."
"Screw T.J.," Jess says, saying it like a joke, but really meaning it, in some deep down angry part of his head. That's the kicker, isn't it? Jess has been thinking about that all morning. How many fuckin' roofs has that idiot fallen off of, and walked away with nothing but bruises? Then Luke slips once, and this happens? "Guy gets all the fuckin' luck."
The profanity slips out without his permission, and he winces as soon as he says it. But Lorelai just laughs, a little more genuinely than the others. "Your accent comes out a lot stronger when you're upset, has anyone ever told you that?"
"Couple hundred people, here and there, yeah."
"You kind of sound like a wise guy," Lorelai says, her voice strangely thick. "I should - I - God, I can't remember that quote from The Sopranos right now, but I swear to God, it was really funny and I was gonna make you say it - "
"I'll say whatever you want," Jess promises, and winces as Lorelai makes a choked-off noise of anguish, obviously on the verge of tears. He feels weirdly guilty, like he pushed her into that space, even though he knows she was probably already there - that she's been there all morning. "Hey. You've got Sookie there now, right?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm okay. I'm fine." Lorelai laughs again, hard-edged. "I've got so many people checking up on me, it's actually kind of inconvenient - Babette saw the ambulance pull up, so the whole town knows by now. I've got well-wishers comin' out of my ears."
"Good." Jess pauses. "I should call Liz right away then, before she hears it from somewhere else."
"Oh God! Yeah. Yeah, do that," she says quickly. "I'll let you go. Just drive careful, okay?"
Jess doesn't know when Lorelai started saying shit like that to him, and he doesn't know when he started to expect it from her either, but it's the sort of thing that tends to sneak up on him, anyway. Like falling in love with someone you didn't see coming, or waking up one day and realizing that you're a good father. A kind of truth that existed before he saw it was there, and the moment of epiphany is always quiet, hidden in-between bigger moments - easy to overlook, but so very hard to ignore once he's found it.
"I will," he promises, and hangs up before she can say anything else. It's just a little too much for him, all things considering.
The call with Liz gets him through all the way into Massachusetts, mostly because it's so fucking awful that he stops noticing how long this drive is taking. His mother is good at some things, but stress and worry isn't one of them, and predictably, they get into a fight.
"I just don't understand how you've known about this since seven o'clock this morning, and you're just telling me now," Liz is saying, words strung high and tight. "For God's sake, you live two states away! Lorelai lives down the fuckin' street!"
"She was upset, Ma, and she couldn't get ahold of you at first - "
"So she just stopped trying?!"
Jess bangs one hand against the wheel in frustration, both at the conversation and the slow pace of traffic, still crawling up the highway like goddamn turtles. "Mom, Luke's in the hospital, could we maybe table this fight until we know he's okay? At least?"
Liz makes a choking sound, like an angry sob. "This is just like all of you, really, it is. I'm the last to know, last in line, all the time. The joke, right? Like fine, make fun of me all you want, but to leave me out of something like this? I can't believe it, Jess, I really can't - "
"Jesus Christ Ma, this is not about you! Like just once could you suck it up and not race to throw yourself on some imaginary fucking altar?"
Liz starts crying angrily. "I can't believe this," she spits. "I just can't. How stupid is he, up on the roof in the rain, anyway? What a stupid, goddamn fucking idiot."
"Shut up," Jess snaps. "Don't blame this on him. It's not his fault."
"Of course you'd say that, but when T.J. - "
Jess hangs up on her, and lights another cigarette. Another hour and a half to go.
He pulls over again in Waterbury, because his hands are shaking and he's low on gas. It's almost one o'clock, and he realizes abruptly, standing in line at the gas station, that he hasn't eaten anything all day.
He buys another pack of menthols, and a bag of pretzels, and something vaguely burger-shaped in a plastic shell, which he forces himself to eat in the parking lot. Then he has to go back in and buy some water, because he feels nauseous, and also, his fucking lighter has stopped working.
The clerk doesn't blink twice, but there's a woman standing outside an SUV at the curb with a little kid at her side, both of whom give him identical suspicious looks. Jess walks past them quickly and feels like he's sixteen again, remembering the eyes on his back as he wandered through the aisles at Doose's Supermarket. Is he gonna steal something, or just make an off-color joke? Is that patch on his jacket a gang symbol, or just a metal band? Why hasn't he washed his hair today, is he on drugs? Where's that uncle of his, anyway, does he know what's going on here?
One time, as a joke, Jess made a bingo card of all the stupid shit that people said about him whenever they thought he couldn't hear, and hung it up on the fridge. As far as most of his jokes went, it wasn't nearly as elaborate as the chalk outline, but Luke still made fun of him for using different colors of pen for each square. Then he yelled about Jess being disrespectful, and if he didn't want people to talk shit about him then maybe he shouldn't be a shit, and can you really blame Mrs. Rochester for thinking you're a thug when all you do is glare and snap at her every time she comes in? She's old and crotchety, Jess! Ain't no changing it now, what do you expect? You're not gonna get very far in life until you learn how to catch flies with honey, kid. That's your damn life lesson for the day.
Then two days later Jess told Mrs. Rochester to go buy her coffee somewhere else if she was so damn upset about it being too strong, and she called him a thug again and stormed out. Three hours after that, Jess went upstairs after his shift and found the thug square on the bingo card crossed out, with one of those blunt pencils that Luke always had behind his ear. They didn't ever talk about it out loud, but Jess would find a couple twenties on his nightstand every time they made it to a bingo.
He's still got that bingo card somewhere, Jess is sure of it. He took it with him when he moved out. He left most of his books, and his clothes, and even his damn stereo, the one he'd saved up months to buy, but he took that motherfucking bingo card. Jess leans his forehead on the steering wheel and thinks about pulling it off the fridge at the last second, stuffing it in his duffel and trying hard not to think about it. Pulling it out every time he moved into a new place, and shoving it somewhere out of sight, and then panicking a few weeks later when he couldn't find it. Pathetic. Absolutely fucking pathetic.
His phone rings again, and Jess jerks back so quickly he almost clips his head on the visor. Liz, again. He hits 'decline' and turns the car on, gets the heat running. It's not winter yet, but it's getting there, and Jess wonders if it was maybe ice on the roof, not just water. Wonders if maybe it'd would've made a difference either way.
Forty-five minutes.
He drives around Hartford for a frustrating half an hour, getting turned around. He's never been to this hospital before - he finally has to use the GPS on his phone, which takes him some weird twisty way that doesn't make any damn sense. The angles of the building rising up on the horizon, when they finally appear, seem like a bizarre suburban mirage.
Lorelai meets him at the front doors, clutching her cell phone in one hand. She's in sweats and a t-shirt, her hair pulled into a messy bun on top of her head, and she's wearing her glasses, instead of her contacts. She looks miserable.
"You made it," she says, and reaches out for a hug. Jess steps right past his flinch and into her arms, tentatively wrapping his own around her waist. Lorelai sighs out loud, and squeezes his shoulders, and Jess realizes, with a sudden drop of his stomach, that he cares about her. Not just because she's Rory's mother, or Luke's wife, or Willa's pseudo-aunt, but - just because she's Lorelai. It's a weird thing.
"You okay?" he asks.
"Not really," Lorelai answers, mumbling it over his shoulder, quiet enough that he's not quite sure he heard her right. But when she pulls back, she's smiling. "C'mon. I just came from his room - he's awake again. If we hurry you can catch him."
"Is he - "
"Out of it," Lorelai says, tugging at his arm. Jess follows. "Super out of it. And in pain." She grimaces, stabbing the button on the elevator. "Better than the alternative, though. They still won't know about his spine for awhile yet. They gave him some stuff to take the swelling down, but they can't give him much for the pain because of the concussion, so the next couple days will be rough. Especially since they have to keep waking him up all the time." She frowns up at the numbers, and stabs the button again impatiently.
"Okay," Jess says slowly.
The doors finally open, and Lorelai leads him into a mercifully empty elevator. "He looks really bad, Jess. Don't get freaked out. They have him in traction."
"I wasn't exactly expecting him to look good," Jess says.
"Still," Lorelai insists. "It's...intimidating. I wanted to warn you."
There's nothing Jess can say to that. The rest of the elevator ride is spent in silence.
Luke's in the ICU, which surprises Jess for only a split second, before he walks inside and immediately feels sick to his stomach again. Lorelai was right - he does look really fucking bad.
There's a nurse doing something at his right arm when he walks in, which Jess can't quite see, due to some strange padding propped up between his arms and legs, one of which is in a sort of splint-looking thing, elevated by a sling hanging from a bar above the bed. His neck is in a brace, with a bizarre-looking strap across his forehead, and he looks pale, thin, and strangely small. Jess takes a deep breath, and immediately regrets it when that sickly-sweet hospital smell hits his nose.
"Okay," he says, and Lorelai touches his shoulder gently. "Yeah. Okay."
"Okay," she replies, and takes his arm again, tugging him forward. "Hey, Elise. The prodigal nephew's here."
The nurse looks up and smiles. "Hey, we've been waiting for you all day! Haven't we, Luke?"
Jess looks down at his uncle's face and realizes that his eyes are open - barely, but they're there. He doesn't say anything.
"Jess, right?" Elise says. She smiles again, friendly in a brisk sort of way, like most medical people usually are. "I'm Elise, I'll be taking care of you guys for the rest of the evening. We've just been getting to know each other - you're just in time."
Jess moves carefully to Luke's side, feeling like he's walking on water. "Well that's a change," he says. "I usually have pretty rotten timing."
Luke's eyes flutter open and shut, and he makes a noise that's somewhat like a grunt. Jess feels sick again.
"Hey, Uncle Luke."
Jess holds his breath, but Luke doesn't seem to react. He looks over at Lorelai, who is staring determinedly at Luke's feet, spinning her cell phone against her thigh.
"Just keep talking to him," Elise encourages. "But if he falls asleep, let him be."
"Okay," Jess says, and looks back down at Luke. His eyes are still open, which should mean something, right? "So, the roof, huh? You auditioning for the next Santa Claus movie or what?"
Lorelai snorts softly. Luke still doesn't react.
"Hey." Jess leans down, and touches his forearm - the only place that seems even relatively safe to touch. "Uncle Luke. It's Jess, man. Are you with me?"
Luke mumbles something out of nowhere, his eyes closing briefly, and then opening again. Jess firms his grip on his arm. "Jess?"
"Yeah, Luke. It's me."
"Should be in school," Luke grumbles, the words slurring together. Jess blinks at him, his lungs burning again suddenly, worse than what the cigarettes managed to do. "Shouldn't - " he mumbles something else that Jess can't catch, and his eyes close again.
Jess looks up at the women helplessly. Lorelai's face is set, her gaze directed out the window, and Elise just smiles again, sympathetic.
"It's common for people to be disoriented, with a severe concussion like this one," she says, her voice lowering to a murmur. She leans over and adjusts something else, peering into Luke's face. "We should let him rest."
Jess takes a breath, tries to move away, but he can't quite move his hand. He wants to move it, thinks about moving it, but it just stays where it is, on Luke's arm, right above his wrist.
"Jess," Lorelai nudges, and he watches his own hand unclench, fall away. "Come on. Let's get some coffee."
"We'll page you when he wakes up again," Elise says kindly, reaching out and touching Jess' shoulder, the same way Lorelai had. Jess looks at her hand strangely, feeling weirdly detached from the gesture, like he's watching her do it to someone else.
Lorelai tugs him out of the room again, and Jess can't do anything but follow, feeling like a stoned puppy. She deposits him outside in the hallway, and Jess leans against the wall for a second, rubbing his eyes.
"Yeah, so," she says, and trails off into nothingness.
"Yeah," he says.
Lorelai squeezes her cell phone against her chest, and Jess leans a little more heavily against the wall. Down the hallway, a phone rings, and he hears someone answer it. Somebody is speaking over the intercom, and a man in purple scrubs walks briskly past, his eyes glued to a smartphone.
"Have you talked to Rory yet?" Jess asks finally.
Lorelai nods. "She's going to fly out next week. She's arranging it with her boss now. And Anna's going to talk to April and call me later."
"Good." Jess rubs his eyes again. "I told Liz. Didn't go well."
"Yeah," Lorelai says, dry and tired, "I heard."
They fall into silence again.
Jess sighs after a minute. His chest is still burning, and he wants another cigarette. "You said something about coffee?"
"Grade A, organic vending machine," Lorelai says. "Come on. Sookie's holding seats for us. You can do the freaked out thing down there. We've been doing it all day, trust me, we've got the routine down."
"Great, I love having company for that," Jess says.
Lorelai smirks, and takes his arm again. Get it together, Jess tells himself, and lets her lead him away again.
i'm sorry! don't hate me! i've had this planned from the beginning! (luke will be fine, i promise!)
also i don't know if they ever mentioned what part of nyc jess is from in canon, but i like the idea of him being from brooklyn. so, he's from brooklyn. (because come on, he does kind of look like a wise guy.)