They don't know how long they've been sitting there. There is complete silence besides the various beeps from the machines keeping their son alive. They sit, holding hands, not talking, and barely breathing. The room is cold, but Jason's hands remain warm, reminding them he's still here. Even though it's hard to see, he's still fighting. That there's still hope. There is only hope. The only alternative to hope is too tragic and insurmountable even to contemplate.

Henry takes a moment to study Elizabeth. Her eyes, usually a bright, brilliant blue, now appear dull and tired. Her face portrays a pang of guilt he's never seen on her before. The closest was when she got home from her Iraqi deployment. The first night she was home, she had confided in him about all the things she had done or let happen. He held her that night as she reconciled her moral code with her sense of duty. Elizabeth hadn't been able to live up to her expectations of herself. But she had lived up to the expectations that the CIA, Conrad, and President Bush had of her. Even if those expectations sent home an almost unrecognizable woman from Bagdad. Henry knows that guilt all too well. He dropped bombs on the same ground his wife had walked on ten years before she went there. If you ask any Vet of any war, the question, do you think you did enough? The answer will always be no. No, I could've done more. Henry could've saved my best friend from basic by being there four minutes earlier. Elizabeth could've spent a year or three as the Bagdad Station Chief and ended the enhanced interrogation program from within. He figures that this guilt, the guilt they feel now, is similar to that guilt. He knows he feels just as guilty as his wife does right now. Maybe, if you ask any parent of any addict who has overdosed if they did enough, the answer will be no. But he also figures that the first step to doing enough is not backing away from his wife.

"Elizabeth?" Henry finally speaks, breaking the heavy silence that has settled between them. Elizabeth looks at him, surprised by his voice. "What do we do now?"

He asks her because she always has a plan. A way out of sticky situations, even when she's going in blind. Most people wouldn't know what to say, but Elizabeth had spent years training herself to think quickly and react appropriately. She can run scenarios with a million variables in minutes if necessary. She can calculate risk better than anyone he's ever met. She has a plan for everything and everyone.

But right now, she doesn't have a fucking clue what to do.

"I don't know." She whispers under her breath. There are tears in her eyes, but she refuses to shed them. Henry looks at her for a long moment. She always knows. Always knows what to say. How to fix everything. He wishes she knew what to do now. He wishes he knew what to do now. But apparently, they're equally clueless.

Elizabeth looks up at him. Her eyes are red, but she is determined not to cry in front of her son, though her son wouldn't know. Henry hates seeing his wife this way. His heart breaks to see her like this.

"Did they say how long the MRI results would take?" Elizabeth changes the subject. She's trying to do what he's asking of her. Make a plan. Manage the crisis. That's what she does. She moves from crisis to crisis, solving problem after problem. She runs the world. Literally, from the outside, the administration takes all the credit. As the head of the government, Conrad gets all of the glory. But every DC insider knows that Elizabeth runs US foreign policy with such a smooth hand that the buck rarely gets to the president. She will need to run this situation and manage this crisis. Right now, she needs to make sure Jason stays alive. That's her priority. Then, she must remain strong for her son and husband so Team McCord can pull through.

"No," Henry answers her question without looking up from Jason.

Elizabeth looks down at her son again. Silence befalls the couple. What can be said? What could ease the pain of watching your child suffer? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. All they can do is wait and hope for the best. Hope that Jason will pull through. Hope that he'll get to live the life that he deserves.

The number of doctors walking into Jason's room after a soft knock is not comforting to the two worried parents.

"Hi, Madam Secretary, Dr. McCord." The couple nods in response. "A lot of doctors, I know. I'm Dr. Jenna Smith, critical care. I'm running Jason's team. This is Dr. Simon Cosgrove, Jason's neurologist. And finally, this is Jeff Anderson, Jason's respiratory therapist."

"Hello," Elizabeth says, not sure what else to say. Her chest gets tight. Her anxiety is just below the peak. She draws a steady breath through her nose, trying to keep the panic at bay. Henry senses it and tries to make a mental note to text Blake about finding her anxiety meds and bringing them to her.

"First, I want to say that injuries like this are unpredictable. The brain is a very complex organ. It's hard to tell how it will respond. But we can make some assumptions based on what we know so far. The MRI showed signs of damage to the frontal lobe. As parents, I know you will want to Google frontal lobe injuries, and you will get a long list of effects, but you need to be aware that rarely are all those effects seen all at once." Dr. Smith starts.

"What are those effects?" Henry asks as he sees Elizabeth's hand start to shake, and she removes her blazer.

"Any number of things that could fall into three categories, behavioral changes, loss of motor skills, and personality changes. But we won't know what effects we're dealing with until he wakes up. But, I will say, the damage is too severe for there to be zero effects." Dr. Cosgrove steps in. Henry swallows hard. Personality changes. He can't imagine that. He can't imagine Jason not being Jason.

"Do you know when he'll wake up?" Elizabeth barely registers her own question. She can hear the fear in her voice. But she's scared for more than just her son. She's terrified for herself. Is that a selfish thing to be terrified of how you are going to handle this loss? This unimaginable loss.

"Jason is currently only scoring a six on the Glasgow comma scale." Another pause as the parents gather their thoughts.

"What does that mean?" It's Elizabeth's voice that breaks the silence. No one answers immediately, each doctor in the room looking at Elizabeth before answering her. Finally, Dr. Cosgrove takes the lead.

"The scale is a scoring system to help access the current level of brain function. It measures three areas, eye-opening, verbal response, and movement. Jason has not opened his eyes and has not had any verbal responses, but he is scoring a four on movement, meaning he is responding to pain. We are monitoring him closely. He is very stable as of now. But if his score does not improve in the next twelve hours, Jason will be officially listed as comatose." Dr. Cosgrove answers.

The McCords look at each other, then at their son, and then back at the doctors. Elizabeth looks down at her hands, her jaw clenched tightly, unable to speak. There's no way to describe what she is feeling right now. Just emptiness, guilt, and grief. She should have been able to prevent this from happening. Henry should've kept this from happening.

"I know this is a lot of information all at one time. But there is one more thing we need to discuss. Jason has acute respiratory distress syndrome. It's prevalent after any traumatic brain injury. He is breathing over the vent 100 percent of the time. So every time you hear the vent trigger, Jason is doing that, which is a great sign. It means his brain stem wasn't damaged during the hypoxic event. So we are going to keep him protectively intubated for the time being. I can't yet give you an accurate prediction of when we can extubate him. But if he maintains stable vitals, and," Dr. Smith pauses to point out a tube in Jason's chest, "This drain needs to be empty. ARDS causes a build-up of fluid on the lungs. So there can't be any fluid being created that needs to be drained. Because we don't want to intubate him again once he's extubated."

The room devolves into silence as Henry and Elizabeth process the information. They look at each other, both knowing exactly what they are thinking. There is no comfort in the words coming from the doctors. On the contrary, each word brings more fear and more uncertainty. Elizabeth's plan of making a plan is quickly unraveling, and it's getting harder for her to draw her breaths. Her chest is hot, and so is her face. And she's sure she can't move her stiff hands.

"I know that was a lot of information. Do either of you have questions?"

She gets two headshakes from the couple. Their faces shell shocked. A moment passes before Elizabeth speaks. "Not at the moment, you?" She looks over at Henry, who shakes his head too. But he feels his wife's discomfort. He feels her resolve slipping.

"Okay, I want to leave you with one more thing. Jason has a very long road ahead of him. So do both of you. Neither of you will be useful to your son if you don't care for yourselves. You need to eat, drink water. Both of you should get some sleep, as impossible as that seems to do at the moment."

With that said, the doctors leave the room. Elizabeth and Henry are left alone with Jason. Elizabeth's sharp intake of breath breaks the silence they are left in.

Her head falls into her hands. Her sobs come in full force as she can no longer control her emotions. Henry stands and walks over to her. He pulls her up and wraps her in his arms.

"It's all right," he whispers in her ear. "That was all good news compared to what we knew twenty minutes ago." He tries to comfort her in vain. Knowing is better than not knowing.

Elizabeth nods through the tears that continue to spill onto her husband's shirt. She places her forehead against his chest and continues sobbing. Henry rubs her back soothingly. His hands are as gentle and loving as they always are. His presence like a warm blanket wrapped around her. She knows he won't let go.

"How did this happen? How did we miss it?" Her words against his chest finally give a voice to the question that has racked both of them for the last seven hours.

"We fucked up." Henry's blunt answer throws her off guard. Her husband doesn't speak like that. For a Marine, she can count the number of times he's used the word fuck outside of the bedroom on her ten fingers. She steps away from him, and her eyes meet his.

"How do we fix it? What do we do?"

Henry takes a deep breath and then another one. He looks at their son. How do they fix it? He's not sure he knows. The only person who can answer as to why and how the addiction started can't give them any answers. They don't yet have the answers to what effects his injury will have in the long term. To fix this, they need a time machine. But those don't exist, and they can only go forward.

"St. Teresa of Calcutta once said, If you want to bring happiness to the whole world, go home and love your family. Maybe that's what we do. We stay with him and love him." He fails at sounding as sure as usual, but Elizabeth buys the platitude anyway. She needs something to hold onto. Anything that can steady her amid the rockiest sea she's ever sailed across. She can love Jason. Maybe Henry's right; perhaps that's all she has to do.