My Split Conference

The sun was shining brightly the next morning, and the ICU floor was quiet. Most of the rooms were brightly lit, and though most of the patients were sick or sedated, the staff certainly seemed to be alert.

The nice morning seemed to have a cheery effect on everyone. Winter was slowly drawing to a close, releasing its chilly grip on the small town.

Still, not all was bright and happy. Things weren’t always that neatly tied up, after all. Unless, of course, you were on a thirty-minute AB sitcom.

Perry, however, was not.

The lights were turned out in his room, and he’d managed to flag a nurse down long enough to gesture her to pull the blinds down. He’d looked around the room long enough as she checked his vitals for her to ask if he wanted his belongings.

Perry shivered under the blanket, even though the room was actually a bit warm.

The nurse smiled pleasantly at him though, and turned up a plastic bag of the clothes he’d worn into the hospital. She had left after that to report his morning’s vitals to the doctor on the floor.

Hesitantly, Perry ran fingers over the white plastic bag. How many times had he turned this over to a patient, walked away, and not given it a second thought?

Now, as he sat in the bed in silence with fingers still tingling and aching, he maneuvered his good hand to tip the bag over.

JD’s borrowed hoodie fell out to his lap, along with a pair of blue jeans, a t-shirt, socks, and sneakers. Most of it, he threw back to the floor.

But the hoodie still held that girly scent, and though there were now bloodstained holes over it, it still smelled like JD.

Perry jerked uselessly at the restraint on his hand. It was too familiar to the nylon cording that had been tied around his sore wrists for days. They still ached, even though they were beginning to heal. He wondered if that would scar too.

He looked around in the darkness. It wasn’t nearly dim enough in the room, and what little light did spill in made his head hurt. The facts of the broken life that he had to put back together were beginning to close in on him vaguely, and it made his stomach knot up.

Perry struggled to take a deep breath in, and slowly relaxed against the sheets. He twisted JD’s hoodie between his fingers as horrible thoughts began to occur through his mind. Something in him screamed for that dark bathroom again, mostly because if he were back in the tub, he wouldn’t be here trying to figure out how to piece his life back together again.

Perry looked at the thick, cotton material in his fingers. It was close enough until Carla could sneak him in to see the kid again.

That thought only pushed the others off for so long, and Perry buried his face into the pillow. He didn’t want to be back there; had he forgotten so easily how a man without a mind had tied him to a wall and brutally beat him into submission? Had he forgotten without a care how that man had taken away everything, and only left him with raw feelings that he didn’t understand?

He shoved the tears back down his throat as a lump rose behind his mouth and made him ache. The room was too bright, and he wished the sun would go down and never come back up again.

Perry shut his eyes tightly, biting hard on the pillow to push away the memories of that stupid bathroom. Every time his eyes were shut, all he could see was JD’s pale face in the darkness, could still feel JD’s hands pressed harshly against his own, feel the blood pooling and gathering in his own wounds.

It wouldn’t stop, and memory after memory washed over him, making him wish even more that he wasn’t in the hospital. If he were here, he had to deal with it.

And most of it was just too painful; he couldn’t face it. He wasn’t ready to break apart yet; it was too soon. He wanted more time before this frantic scrape of emotions began to claw at him again without relent.

He shoved the tears down again, feeling nauseous as he did so this time. He clutched the jacket in his hands harder, and managed to toss it up to the pillow where he could bury his face into it and lose himself in the smells of the jacket.

If he closed his eyes now, he could smell JD’s faint, feminine products, could feel the ceramic walls of the bathtub pressed against his aching shoulders, his wrists burning in protest as the cords tightened around them, could remember kissing JD as gently as he could so he wouldn’t scare him, and then…

Perry did sob then, tears soaking the thick material beneath his nose. Had it hurt that much for JD as it had hurt for him when Thomas had…had…done what he did?

He already knew what a big problem it was for him not to be able to think it, let alone say it.

Only shoving his face harder into the material, Perry felt his lungs ache as oxygen came slower to his chest. He couldn’t sleep well without the sedatives, and couldn’t sleep at all without JD there.

He had tried to accept that after Carla had left him in his room last night. Still, as long as he didn’t talk to anyone, that meant only JD could understand him.

And if only JD could understand him, well, that meant he didn’t have to tell anyone about what had happened. After all, JD had been there. JD already knew what had happened. JD had known all along why the silence was so important.

He didn’t have to tell anyone.

XXXXXXXXXXX

JD had managed to get Carla to get his personal things earlier then Perry, and though she had looked at him comfortingly in that motherly way she had, he had still jerked away from her when she made to brush his limp hair from his forehead.

He did jerk at his restraints and give her a questioning look.

"I don’t know, Bambi. I don’t think Dr. Taylor will let you out of those unless you talk to her when you meet her today," Carla replied, and dumped the white bag out on JD’s lap.

Carla watched with vague interest and curiosity as JD fished out his hoodie and used it to cover his face.

"That’s not funny, Bambi," Carla said in exasperation.

JD didn’t pay much attention to her as his eyesight was thrown into darkness in the already slightly-dim room. Carla had drawn the line at letting him have a nurse pull the blinds closed. She hadn’t even let him turn all the lights out.

JD smirked under the hoodie. She probably hadn’t seen Perry’s room yet, he imagined.

Carla sighed and crossed her arms. "You have to talk to someone, Bambi."

JD jerked his head forward to knock the hoodie off and gave her a roll of the eyes followed by a slightly annoyed, frustrated look. He was already talking to someone; hadn’t she seen him last night with Perry?

"Bambi, I don’t know what these looks mean."

JD raised his fingers and drummed them over the blanket. Perry and he had begun to work on a series of finger-taps just before Thomas had taken them out of the bathtub for the final time. While they hadn’t yet perfected it, it was enough for basic needs.

Carla seemed to have missed it. She sighed. "I have to get back or Kelso’s going to have my hide. Turk will probably come and see you later though." She leaned forward to kiss his forehead, but he jerked away again with an angry frown.

JD threw the hoodie back over his face and ignored Carla’s hurt sigh. He looked at the dark material of the jacket, basking in the darkness he’d managed to find beneath it.

He tapped his fingers lightly against the sheet, wishing suddenly that he wasn’t quite so alone. He didn’t want to be alone, didn’t want to think that Thomas really was still out there.

JD didn’t want the solitary confinement he suddenly felt, but knew that only one person would be able to understand the silent gestures and expressions he made.

Frustration built when he realized he didn’t want to be in the hospital, didn’t want people to give him those pitying looks, and he certainly didn’t want people talking to him like he was some poor trauma victim.

JD pushed away the rational side of his mind that pointed out he was a trauma victim. He missed Perry hard then, and tapped his fingers against the sheets. His hand made the okay sign once into the sheet, and closed his eyes, wishing he could feel the retaliatory thumbs-up on his skin.

He didn’t care where, as long as he could feel it.

Still, it wasn’t hard to remember Perry’s hand pressing a thumbs-up into his hip. It wasn’t hard to remember Perry’s hands pushing his hips down either.

JD’s face colored under the jacket and shame coursed through his body. He jerked at the restraints on his wrists and squeezed his eyes shut tighter. With Perry, it had been okay. The man had been shaking as badly as he, had been in as much pain as he, and if JD let himself think about it more, it had been…acceptable.

JD felt that "acceptable" was a safe word. "Needing", however, was not.

Still, the torture of Thomas shoving him to the floor with the glass fragments, Perry’s hard, muffled sounds yelling from the wall as he shoved against the nylon cords, and Thomas pushing hard enough to scar for life…

JD bit his lip as something threatened to snap in him again. He shoved the feeling away, wishing the stupid psychologist would come in and take the damned restraints off already so he could go to Perry’s room.

Perry understood his face, understood his hands, and knew what he was feeling more so.

No one else could say that, not with their stupid pitying smiles and their moronic lies that it’d "all be okay eventually".

Elliot had tried that in a shaking tone, but JD had only stared at her evenly that morning as she flipped off half the lights for him.

She had told him that Jordan still hadn’t woken up yet, and that her mother hadn’t left the room and that Elliot herself hadn’t even been in to see her yet because she didn’t know what…

The longer JD stared at her silently though as she rambled, the more she had broken up her words in mid-sentence.

Elliot had finally just mumbled that he’d be okay, and everything would be all right eventually.

JD wondered who the hell she thought she was kidding. Still, the guilt came then as well. Jordan was lying asleep in a hospital bed because of him.

Even then, the guilt grew more. If he’d just looked out of the peephole back at the hotel, Perry and Jordan wouldn’t even be in this mess.

JD breathed the material of his hoodie in deeply, and struggled to calm his haggard breathing as panic threatened to turn what little water was in his stomach in to the floor. He missed the real darkness of a pitch-black room, missed the enclosed space where he could feel Perry’s legs against his own, feel the even breathing of the other man, feel his hands pressed numbly into his own as they struggled together to prevent permanent nerve damage.

The burning was still painful around his wrists and ankles, and JD tilted his head into the pillow, still covered by the jacket.

His fingers tapped endlessly against the blanket as he remembered listening to Perry’s heartbeat against his own ear.

Silence wasn’t so bad when he could remember the sound of Perry’s steady heart. He thumped lightly against the blanket in time with the memory, imagining that they were back in that tub, talking to each other with hands and looks that spoke of the horrors they’d endured.

Talking was overrated.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Dr. Taylor observed the young man in the bed with the black hooded sweatshirt over his face. She had the feeling he knew she was there, but hadn’t deigned it necessary to look at her yet. She watched as, like Dr. Cox, Dr. Dorian drummed his fingers lightly against the blanket.

And it didn’t take a medical degree to see the beginnings of a secret language that no one else could understand.

"Are you going to talk to me, Dr. Dorian?"

JD finally knocked the hoodie from his face and sat up a little. He only cocked his head at her with a questioning look on his face.

"So you were abducted at the seminar?"

JD gave her a roll of the eyes, but grudgingly nodded. He already knew that Perry probably wasn’t cooperating much (if at all), and if he wanted to visit him today again, he’d have to do the niceties.

"You seem in a better mood then your friend."

JD shrugged at that.

"But certainly no less chatty," Dr. Taylor murmured, jotting notes down. "Did your abductor do the wounds to your chest and arms, Dr. Dorian?"

JD gave her a look that anyone (not just Perry) could have derived the word "duh" from. He tapped his fingers against the blanket in what both he and Perry had decided meant moron.

Why they had decided to come up with something for that word so early, JD wasn’t sure, but it made him smirk inside.

"And you two were kept together?"

JD didn’t answer that one.

Dr. Taylor frowned. "When you first came in to the hospital, you asked for Dr. Cox. Why is that, Dr. Dorian?"

JD didn’t answer that one either, but was giving her a look that she felt the older man down the hall would have understood.

"So you’re not going to talk to me either?"

JD didn’t change his look at that, nor did he move his fingers on the blanket.

Dr. Taylor made a "hmm" noise under her breath. "Do you think if you saw Dr. Cox, you would be able to talk more?"

JD considered his options there. Flat-out lying never bothered him before (well…much…okay, it usually did, but this was different), and it was the question he had been waiting for.

Looking over at her and trying to go for as sorrowful a look as possible (which wasn’t hard considering how badly he needed the touch of the other man to calm him down), he nodded to her.

"And you don’t think about hurting yourself further?"

JD snorted and shook his head easily enough for that. He pulled plaintively at the restraints then.

Dr. Taylor considered. After all, the younger man hadn’t attacked anyone. He’d been difficult to restrain, but the psychologist attributed that to the past trauma.

However, with their captor still missing, Dr. Taylor had other thoughts about Dr. Cox and the role that he had played during their captivity.

Standing, she smiled pleasantly at him, and left the room as she flagged down the hispanic nurse that seemed to constantly hang around both men’s rooms.

"Nurse Espinosa," Dr. Taylor said absently as she wrote out the order for JD’s restraints to be removed. "Dr. Dorian can go unrestrained."

"And Dr. Cox?"

"I haven’t spoken with him yet today. I’ll be seeing him later this afternoon; I have other patients right now."

"Can I take JD…Dr. Dorian, that is, to see his friend?"

Dr. Taylor considered for a moment. "Keep an eye on them." She signed JD’s chart and slipped it into the shelf before she left.

Carla felt relief wash through her. Sometimes it really sucked taking orders from a doctor (especially when they thought they knew a patient better then the nurse who had known them for years).

Still, Carla didn’t waste any time and jumped into JD’s room. "Good news, Bambi. Dr. Taylor says I can remove the restraints."

JD didn’t respond; he had thrown the hoodie over his face again. He already didn’t like Dr. Taylor, so he could only imagine how Perry might have reacted to the woman.

He felt Carla’s smooth hands undoing his restraints, and tried not to jerk away from her. Still, the minute her hands were gone, he pulled his arms to himself and twisted his fingers into the black cotton of the hoodie.

"I’m going to take you to see Dr. Cox."

JD did throw the hoodie from his face at that as he sat up and slipped it over his shoulders. His ribcage screamed at him then, and he winced.

Carla noticed the strong grimace of pain. "Your ribs? I can call a doctor for pain meds."

JD debated that too. With drugs running through his system, he wouldn’t be able to hold his thoughts together as well. Still, the harsh pain was making it almost impossible to really do anything else.

He finally nodded, hating that he was pushing off his visit even more.

XXXXXXXXXX

Perry looked up with a gritty face when he heard the metallic opening of the door. Light flooded in from the doorway, and dread rose up in his chest and stomach out of habit.

Still, it was only Carla backing a wheelchair in.

On the other hand, if Carla was pulling a wheelchair in, that meant possibly going to see JD again.

Perry didn’t know why that made him feel a little better, but still made him feel frightened as well.

Still, when he looked up and saw JD’s pale face in the darkness, his heart lurched and his mind screamed in relief and fear at the same time. Need was a strong word, after all.

And now, as he sat in the hospital bed and watched JD’s eyes never leave his own, he felt better then he had all day. He shoved it away as he leaned back into the pillows.

Carla pushed JD in, and locked the brake beside of Perry’s bed. "I can’t leave you two alone; Dr. Taylor’s orders."

Now it was JD’s turn to tap his fingers against Perry’s still-restrained hand and give a look that had Perry snorting derisively.

Carla pulled a chair up, and watched them quietly from out of their eyesight.

JD gestured to the hoodie underneath Perry’s head.

Perry rolled his eyes at him, and twittered his fingers in a now-familiar gesture that always had a touch of sarcasm to them.

Still, JD shook his head, tapping his fingers quietly against Perry’s hand. Then he gestured around his neck in a mimicry of a stethoscope.

It took Perry a few minutes to understand the new gesture, but then understood when JD placed one hand to his ear and the other to Perry’s heart, followed by a twirling motion beside of his head.

Perry rolled his eyes, and made his hands do a strangling motion. Then he tapped his fingers back against JD’s slowly.

JD looked at him with his jaw open at the insult, and then shook his head with a wave of his hand to indicate Dr. Taylor wasn’t that bad.

Perry nodded back at that in a deliberate movement that yes, she was. Then he raised his hand and gestured it towards JD.

JD rolled his shoulders in a familiar shrug and made an injection motion towards his IV tube.

Perry nodded with an amused look on his face, but instead of tapping his fingers this time, he grabbed JD’s hand. To his relief, the crawling feeling on his skin did stop when he felt JD’s medicine-roughened fingers wrap around his own.

JD looked at him, the memories of their experience washing over his face as he stared at Perry with a solemn look.

Perry understood that look more then all of the others; that mix of desperation and fear with a tinge of horror just beneath it. It was the look that JD had often worn in that little tub, and-with the darkness of the room-Perry ignored the relief that came with feeling as if he were back in it.

He squeezed JD’s hand tightly in the darkness, and cocked his head to the side a bit. He tapped out a quick succession against JD’s palm, telling him in one of their other agreed phrases that it was all going to be fine.

JD rolled his eyes at that, but if he was going to believe anyone, it was Perry. Even so, JD sent him that same look that was meant to the both of them to mean "bullshit".

Perry nodded his head, but shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

JD wished he could lean his head over, but knew that would put too much tension on the fresh wounds in his ribcage. He settled for just holding Perry’s hand in the dim lighting of the room, Carla all but forgotten behind them.

Perry watched JD’s look slowly change into one that he wasn’t quite as familiar with. There was something hopeful about the kid’s face this time, and JD’s free hand came up to point to Perry’s chest and then his own.

Frowning for a minute as he combined both look and gesture, Perry finally realized the kid was asking him to stay in some capacity or another.

Perry squeezed his hand in response, and let go of it to give him a thumbs-up again.

JD felt more normal then he had in a while since coming to the hospital as he gave the okay sign back, and held Perry’s hand again.

Perry had to think for a minute, realizing that if someone had told him a few weeks ago that he’d be sitting in a dark hospital room, his body aching and his heart slowly shifting his emotions while holding JD’s hand, he’d have told them to blow it out their ass.

And now, it was the only thing that kept him from screaming.

Carla watched them quietly, struggling to keep up with their gestures and expressions. She knew them well enough to recognize some, but there were others that didn’t change enough from the previous for her to know what was going on. Even then, there were the wordless gestures and the finger-tapping that she couldn’t figure much out at all.

Some were obvious as far as the gestures went, others weren’t.

Carla resisted the urge to go back to a childhood habit of biting her thumbnail. Her hand was halfway to her mouth when the door opened again though.

JD and Perry both jumped on the bed, and Carla felt herself mentally knocked 0back as she saw the looks of primal, animalistic terror that flashed over their faces.

It reminded her brutally that they weren’t okay.

Turk entered the room, frowning at the darkness. He flipped on the lights. "What the hell’s going on in here; a funeral?"

Carla was halfway out of her seat to wave her hands no, but the damage was already done.

JD’s hand increased its death grip on Perry’s hand, flashbacks and memories making him feel horribly sick.

Perry felt the hand squeeze his own and jerked quickly at the restraints and sent JD a pleading look of terror.

JD suddenly realized this time was different then the last time Thomas had come in; his hands were free…he could change something this time!

JD set to working Perry’s uninjured hand from the restraint, trying to remember when Thomas had hurt the other hand.

"Bambi, don’t do that!" Carla yelped, and pulled him back down to his wheelchair, cutting the contact of Perry’s hand with JD’s suddenly and jerkily.

JD screamed out of instinctual fear, pushing hard against the hands that had suddenly grabbed him.

Perry didn’t see Carla standing behind JD’s thin shoulders; his eyes saw someone else. He jerked hard at the restraints, both feeling and hearing something snap repulsively in his right hand as hard pain flashed through his feverish body and blinded his senses. He stopped struggling with that hand, but kept yanking with his ankles and left hand in desperation.

"Turk, get a doctor!" Carla snapped at her husband.

Turk watched in horror at the desperate flailing from both his best friend and the man he had been struggling to blame for what had happened to JD in the first place. He stood frozen, but then common sense jerked his body from the room out of self-preservation to get away from the situation.

JD struggled against Carla’s hands, whining with desperation and misery under her tight grip. He looked over at Perry, his look still hard and terrified.

A doctor did come in then with a stocky orderly in tow.

JD started shaking his head wildly, and his flailing became harder for Carla to handle.

Another orderly outside of the door took notice of the skinny young man under Carla’s grip, and shoved him back down to the chair as the doctor injected more sedative into Perry’s IV.

By that time, to Carla’s horror, it was Perry sobbing, and JD still had yet to cry.

Still, the whimpers and cries escaping from JD’s mouth were almost as difficult, if not worse, to deal with.

XXXXXXX

When JD was back in his own bed and sleeping from the sedative, Carla glared at Turk in the quiet corridor of the ICU ward.

"Turk, how could you just bust in the door like that?" Carla felt the furious desolation hurting her heart as she struggled to see her husband’s point of view.

"I wanted to see my friend!" Turk snapped, the frustration hurting in his stomach and mind like nothing he even wanted to deal with right now.

"You don’t know what they’ve been through; you know better then to do that around trauma victims!"

Turk glared at her, the rage finally spilling over. "What if that jerk’s the one that hurt JD in the first place, baby? Did you think about that?"

For one of the first times Turk would remember, Carla slapped him hard against the face.

"Turk, you are looking for someone to blame," Carla snapped at him hard, stomach reeling in sickness from the accusation. "They are both victims; you haven’t seen them in the same room together."

Turk sighed, rubbing his cheek. Some part of him knew that Carla was, indeed, right, but that need to blame someone or something was ripping away hard at his stomach like a monster that wouldn’t die. It had his normally recognized emotions jumbled up, and if JD or Cox wasn’t at fault, who the hell was?

A faceless man who hadn’t yet been captured, that was who.

Carla looked at him, wondering how long Turk was going to remain silent. "Papi, you’ve just got to give it time. They’re not okay; you can’t blame Dr. Cox for this."

Turk sighed, raising his hands helplessly. "Then who can I blame?"

"That’s the hard part, papi." Carla pulled him into a tight hug. "All you can do is be there for JD."

Turk sighed and hugged her back. The anger hadn’t abated yet, and he shrugged out of her hold after a minute.

"I’m going to catch some ball with the guys," he finally said, and kissed her quickly before leaving.

Carla sighed and returned to work.

XXXXXXXXXXX

When Elliot returned to Jordan’s room after her shift was over, it was to find that Jordan’s mother had left the hospital. Danni was sitting the room, looking slightly bored and still holding a fussy Jack on her lap.

Elliot entered the room with a quiet smile that she had adopted around comatose patients.

"Heya, Flap-Jack," Elliot said pleasantly.

Danni looked at her in slight recognition. "You’re that other girl…the one I dumped JD over."

"Oh…um…yeah, I guess."

Jack looked between the two, frustration evident on his face as he reached his arms up for Blondie. He was tired of the smoke he kept inhaling around both Grandma and Aunt Danni. Not to mention Aunt Danni just didn’t play with him.

Jack squirmed harder.

Danni snorted in what could have been construed as disgust. "Looks like he really wants you. I could use a break; Mom stuck me here."

"Oh." Elliot suddenly found her arms full of Jack. "You’ll be back?"

Danni shrugged. "Eventually." She gave a last look at Jordan. "Hey. Is she going to be okay?"

Elliot shifted Jack on her hip. "We won’t know until she wakes up." Still holding slight distaste for Danni, Elliot tried for a kind smile. "Take a break. You know we’ll call if anything changes."

Danni gave a concerned look back in Jordan’s direction, but decided she wasn’t sure she could stand another minute in that quiet room. She left, handing Elliot her cell number as she went.

Elliot blew a piece of hair out of her face. "How about you, Flap-Jack? I bet you’re bored out of your skull."

Jack rolled his eyes in a motion that was so close to Dr. Cox, it almost made Elliot laugh.

"You definitely got that from Daddy."

Jack perked up at that. Mommy and Blondie hadn’t talked about Daddy in forever; if Blondie was mentioning him, that must mean he was back.

"Where’s Daddy?"

Elliot bit her lip, and glanced in Jordan’s direction. "Maybe later, Flap-Jack. Okay? He’s sleeping. He’s got a really bad cold."

Jack shrugged on her lap. "Wake up Mommy."

"She’s really sick too, Flap-Jack," Elliot finally decided after a minute, and pointed to the tubes running from Jordan’s nose. "She got hit in the back really hard, and these are making her feel better."

Jack wasn’t sure he understood how tubes in the nose could help a person’s back, but Blondie did seem to know what she was talking about.

And she had one of those cool heart-thingies around her neck.

Elliot sat down on the edge of Jordan’s bed, Jack balanced in her lap. "Say hi to Mommy."

"She’s sleeping." Jack pursed his lips; didn’t adults know anything?

"She can hear you though. It’s a special sleep," Elliot replied. "A really deep sleep. Maybe if you say hi, she’ll wake up."

Jack frowned; another misty memory was there of Mommy definitely not being happy with Daddy for waking her up.

There had been a lot of yelling, as he recalled. And Daddy had left for a few days.

"It’s alright. Go ahead and say hi, Flap-Jack," Elliot said, trying to keep desperation from her voice.

Jack shrugged. Well, if Blondie thought it was okay… He leaned forward and flapped a hand over Jordan’s shoulder.

"Hi, Mommy," he chirped. "Blondie told me to."

Jordan didn’t stir on the bed; her even breathing keeping tandem with the heart monitor the only sign of life from her.

Elliot sighed and pulled Jack back away from Jordan’s chest to avoid his arms getting tangled up in the tubing. She wondered vaguely how JD and Dr. Cox were holding up; they’d both been in horrible shape yesterday.

It was wearing on those who worked at the hospital around them.

Elliot sighed as Jack leaned forward to say hi again. "Flap-Jack, I don’t think she’s going to wake up."

Jack rolled his eyes. "You’re sleeping hard." He frowned then as his hand slapped against his mother’s shoulder again. It began to occur to him for the first time that she was sleeping too hard, and that something was wrong. He grabbed at Elliot’s stethoscope then with a confused face. "Fix her."

Elliot bit her lip. "I can’t, Flap-Jack. She has to wake up by herself."

Jack hated falling back on the kid-wiles that usually got him what he wanted (too much and they didn’t work, after all), but this was serious. He pouted his lips and let his eyes water up a little.

"Fix her now!" he demanded.

"Jack, I can’t. She’s really sick," Elliot said again, voice beginning to shake a little.

Jack threw the stethoscope at Elliot’s chest and real tears began to fall from his eyes. He opened his mouth and let out a wail of a scream.

Elliot felt something twisting in her chest as she stood and struggled to calm Jack down against her shoulder. Jack reached over for the bed again though.

It was very much akin to young toddlers who have realized thirty minutes after their parents left that they were gone.

Jack screeched against Elliot’s hold again, squirming as much as he could.

Elliot patted Jack’s back as best she could, holding him tightly around the hips. "She’ll wake up soon, Flap-Jack. Don’t worry."

A grunting moan made Elliot whirl around.

Jordan shut her eyes tightly, swallowing against her hoarse throat. God, she hurt…what the hell, she hadn’t drank that much, had she? And why in God’s name was Jack screaming like someone was beating him?

"Christ, Blondie," Jordan coughed out, wondering why her throat was so sore. "I told you not to beat…him…" As her eyes adjusted to the sterile, white room around her, she realized she wasn’t at home.

And memories flooded back and her eyes opening wide. She opened her mouth to ask something, but Elliot had dropped Jack to the bed.

Jack wrapped his arms around his mother’s neck tightly.

Jordan winced at the deathgrip, wondering how Elliot had known she wanted her son.

"JD and Dr. Cox are fine…well, sort of," Elliot said quietly, hitting the call button for a nurse. "They’re down the hallway."

Jordan coughed again, trying to turn her head away from Jack’s head as she did so.

Elliot had her phone flipped out, furiously dialing numbers to get in touch with Danni. Calling Jordan’s sister reminded her that no one had called Dan Dorian yet for JD.

But then the nurse was in and grabbing a doctor.

Jack finally released his mother’s neck, and Elliot sat down near Jordan’s legs to hold Jack in her lap.

"Told you she wasn’t sick," Jack told Elliot smugly.

"Oh, big boy you are," Elliot said solemnly, though her throat was aching as she pushed tears away. She settled a hand on Jordan’s leg. "You’re right; she woke up. And see, she’s not angry at all."

But Jordan’s face had gone white as she stared past Jack’s tear-streaked face and Elliot’s tensing expression to the blonde woman’s hand on her knee.

Before Jordan could say anything though, the current attending, Dr. Baker, entered the room and shooed both Elliot and Jack out.

Elliot stood outside of the glass with Jack, who seemed more content now that his mother was awake.

If she’d seen the look on Jordan’s face on other patients once, she’d seen it a million times. It was that awful look of realizing that there wasn’t any feeling where someone touched you.

And as Elliot watched the quick examination, that look never left Jordan’s face.

But then Danni showed up with her mother, whisking Jack away and going back into the room.

Elliot caught a snippet of the doctor’s explanation before the door shut.

"…feeling below…"

Feeling wrung-out and tired, Elliot rubbed her temples. She hadn’t slept in thirty hours, and worry for not only Jordan but JD and Dr. Cox were stressing her emotions so thin that she knew she was going to break if someone breathed on her too hard.

As Carla rounded the corner, she breathed a sigh of relief and caught the woman’s elbow.

"Drinks after work?"

Carla nodded vigorously, making Elliot wonder what, exactly, had been transpiring between Turk and she.

Continues with Chapter 12