Present Day

Now she was drowning.

And it was his fault. He knew better, knew they were under threat, knew how to respond to that danger, to alternate routes so they couldn't be followed, so their routines couldn't be anticipated. He could make her drinks for fucks sake, she would have loved it if he'd done that for her but he hadn't and now…

Tess let out another groan as Adam made a hard left but though his friend was quick to apologize he was grateful for his speed, for the rest of their team who were racing along behind and beside them, clearing the road in a way that usually only happened when a fellow officer had been injured. It didn't matter to them that she didn't wear the uniform, she was still one of theirs, something the many patrol cars assisting them made clear. But all the gratitude he felt was overshadowed by his panic that such drastic measures were needed. By the terror that there wasn't anything any of them could do to help her. Jay didn't know shit about poisons, didn't know how to tell what she might have been given, what it might be doing to her, but he knew from looking at her grey face that it wasn't good and her unconscious state was only a mild mercy. The other was that he was fairly confident it wasn't cyanide, thank fuck because she'd once forced him to google everything he could about it and for his last image of her to be her foaming at the mouth…

The world would be grateful for what she'd turned into after losing Lydia if he lost her like that.

If he lost her at all.

That surety centered him, much like he imagined it had her, an understanding he appreciated as much as he hated it but thankfully it was time to focus on getting her to the people who could help her. Adam had only just put the car in park, jumped onto the curb to get them as close to the ED doors as possible before Jay was jumping out and rushing inside, his immediate search for Will halted when he saw Choi running over.

"Where's my brother?"

"He's in surgery, I've got her." Ethan said firmly and since his specialty was infectious diseases he quickly followed the fellow veteran into one of the bays, unable to stop himself from wondering if a disease would be better or worse than poison.

Thanks to David Seldon he knew exactly how easily people could be infected.

It was only because he was busy thinking of all the horrible things that could be happening inside her body that April and Doris were able to push him out after he laid her down, that and the firm grips of Adam and Voight as they each took hold of his shoulders, to comfort as much as control. And of course the knowledge that the doctor and nurses knew what they were doing and he did not. But he knew them, had watched each of them work enough that he could read their faces and he didn't like what he was seeing. The speed with which they took a sample of her blood and sent someone running down to the lab calmed him some, as did Vanessa rushing after them to make sure it was bumped to the top of the line but when they started their examination… That was confusion as they took her heart rate and blood pressure, furtive looks shared between them as Ethan started pressing on her stomach. Could this be another period?

He'd been keeping a close eye on all her cravings since the last one and nothing had seemed out of the ordinary, but then she didn't have one anymore. He almost felt himself relax at the thought but then he realized Ethan was cutting her open and his panic came rushing back, so much Adam and Voight needed to stop him from rushing back in.

"What-"

"It's an endoscopy- a tiny incision." April calmly explained as she slipped out, no doubt because she saw how terrified he was and was trying to help but the unfamiliar terminology just made him more scared.

"Why? Why do you need to cut her at all, what's happening?"

"It's so we can see what's going on inside her. We've got her Jay but you've got to let us do our job." She urged, shifting to block his view when he saw Ethan slipping something inside her- a tube?

A camera.

To see inside her.

He forced himself to take another step back, half pulled by his team but he knew he had to listen and when she saw that April slipped back into the room, thankfully leaving the curtains open. He might not understand what was going on but he knew not being able to see Tess would make things a lot worse. Whatever Ethan's hunch had been it seemed like he was right because the confusion on his face lessened as they looked over whatever was on that tiny screen but considering he still looked worried Jay didn't feel any better. Especially when the next thing he knew she was being wheeled out and Ethan was getting in front of him, actually pushing him back when he tried to follow.

"Man, you can't take her away without telling him where." Adam said harshly, almost as upset as he was about being kept out of the loop, which the doctor clearly understood based on his quiet sigh and upraised hands.

"She needs surgery-"

"What about an antidote?" Adam cut in again but Jay didn't mind- he didn't care who asked the questions, just that he got the answers.

"She wasn't poisoned." Ethan explained with a small shake of his head, which was why even though everyone behind him relaxed Jay didn't allow himself to, knowing they weren't in the clear yet. "She has an ulcer and it's perforated- she needs emergency surgery, but we won't know how extensive the damage is until we can see for ourselves how bad it is."

He kept talking, saying how they could follow him up to the waiting room but that he had no more information to give but while his feet automatically moved to keep up with his brisk pace, to keep Tess in his line of sight as long as possible his mind remained stuck on his words.

Not poison.

An ulcer.

An ulcer?

He didn't even know if he knew what that was, and nor apparently did his team because as soon as they took her into the OR he watched numbly as they all started taking out their phones to google it. Dimly he could hear his brother's voice telling him to stay off WebMD and if he'd been here he would have listened but he wasn't so instead he listened to his team as they read off various articles, something he quickly regretted. She had a hole in her stomach. Or her intestines depending which kind it was, and depending on that, and how bad it was she could go into septic shock. Was that why her face had gone so grey so fast?

"They can develop because of bacteria, after a shock, sepsis or…"

"Or what?" He asked Kim when she trailed off, her wide eyes finishing her sentence before she finally whispered it.

"Or trauma."

I get this… twisting, in my stomach sometimes.

Not often, just, you know, whenever I think of everything I have to do to keep everyone safe.

"Jay-"

"She told me." He said to Voight, staring straight at his eyes but not really seeing him. "She told me, when we pushed her to join the team, that she couldn't carry anymore. She told me. And I made her do it anyway."

In unison all of them took a step towards him, and then took one back when he waved them off, a sharper shrug when his Sergeant tried to follow him down the hall before he too let him be. There wasn't anything they could do for him, wasn't anything that could make up for what he'd done. He'd failed.

Again.