Hardly stoic, Maura Sargent has never seen the point of hiding her emotions. Life is meant to be lived and felt. The good and the bad. Through the years, Jack's seen her full to the brim with joy and laughter, absolutely furious (though never aimed at him or Blue), enveloping both of them in a love that runs deep like the ocean, and crying real tears at the end of Disney movies. But this? Maura hasn't felt anything even close to this since she walked through the door of her childhood home without even a glance back.
Maura's hand drifts down from Jack's face to settle on his chest, fingertips curved around his shoulder. There's no pressure (yet), just resting gently there. A reminder for him to stay still. His injuries may be mostly superficial -- unlike Blue's -- but he needs to take it easy.
"Jack," she says softly, keeping her voice low and even, refusing to let it rise alongside his. "Shhh, shhh, sweetie. I know this is hard. I know."
Maura's voice breaks on the last word.
A light knock on the door jamb and a nurse peeks her head in as if summoned by Jack's raised voice, though in all likelihood it's the sudden uptick in his heart rate on the monitor that's sounded the alarm.
"How are we doing in here?" she asks, eyes drawn to Maura out of habit before they drift over to Jack and she answers her own question. Like she can't read the anguish on his face or sense the tension in the room her whole expression brightens.
"Oh we're awake!" she says, bubbly in the way of people who wake up at 5 AM to get a quick workout in before heading to the hospital for a sixteen hour shift. "I'll go let the doctor know."
"Yes, thank you," Maura manages, her eyes flickering only briefly from Jack's face out of politeness even these circumstances can't quite squash. Her fingers curl around Jack's a little too tightly. Like Calla and Persephone held on to her in the waiting room those first couple of hours.
The door doesn't quite latch behind the nurse.
"I will tell you, but you need to stay calm and take it easy," Maura says, fingertips pressing gently against his shoulder. "Okay? You working yourself into a state or hurting yourself isn't going to make anything better."
Somehow, her soothing only makes it a little worse. He doesn't want her to comfort him, because he doesn't want to need to be comforted, because he wants it to be wrong. He wants it to be a misunderstanding, or a mistake, or a lie. Why are you telling me this?
Because it's true.
No. Absolutely not. Not possible. It's not.
His utter disbelief shifts its target to the nurse, like maybe she can make the world make sense again. Or... maybe like he can't believe she can be perky when things are obviously incredibly wrong right now. She's so happy, he hates her.
"I'm calm, I'm fine," He says, not calmly and definitely not fine, "I wanna go see her. We should- why are you here? She's gonna want you when she-"
His voice cracks. He falters.
Why is she here, if Blue is downstairs? Why, unless there's basically no chance she'd wake up alone? Unless there's no-
The wavering in his tone doesn't fade when he persists, despite what a small voice in his head tries to tell him. A small truth he's ignoring. Quieter, with less certainty, "You shouldn't be here. You should be down there. For when she's- stable."
Because she's going to be. And then she'll wake up, and she'll want her mom. That's the truth. That's- what's going to happen.
Thankfully, perhaps, whatever ire he throws at the nurse goes entirely unnoticed. Perhaps her level of cheer also requires a layer of teflon for everything negative in this world to just slide off.
"I am here," Maura says, her voice cracking beneath the pressure of calm she is trying to squeeze it into, "because you were always going to wake up first."
The statement sits in the air like an exclamation point and guilt sinks its deep claws into her shoulders. Her fingers are pressing too hard against his chest and she makes herself let up, makes herself lean back and wrap her hand instead around the metal rail of the bed. One hand on his, one on unfeeling metal and all she has to remember is to hold his hand lightly where she grips the railing so hard it's a wonder it doesn't snap beneath her fingers.
A deep steadying breath as she arranges her features back into the calm she hasn't had to maintain for days now. The nurses don't care about her redrimmed eyes or the way she's been drifting like a ghost between the floors, spending one night in the foldout chair in Blue's ICU room, and another cramped in the decidedly-not-foldout chair in Jack's very regular hospital room.
"I wanted to be here. For you," she continues, a little steadier now, with no bite to her voice. The joints of her fingers are stiff and iced over, crackling when she forces them to unfurl slightly from around the bed. She grips his hand with both of hers, so achingly gentle now. He needs her, and as much as she hates it, Blue doesn't.
It's the worst sentence she's thought in her entire life.
"Jack," she says, and she's not sure if his name is a plea for his attentive silence or a command. "Blue suffered severe head trauma on impact."
The words are soft. Parroted from the doctor who spoke them in a no-less-gentle tone though devoid of the emotional attachment that clings to every syllable from Maura's throat and lips and tongue, tying them together with her heart.
She is not waking up.
"She--" Maura's voice feels too thick for her throat. The words lodge somewhere around her heart and she knows she can't speak them out loud, so she switches it up, goes down a different path. "They are waiting for the swelling to go down enough for them to risk transporting her to a hospital with a proper neurologist and the right equipment."
Through the cracked open door, Maura is aware of the approaching foot steps. Dr. Lindsfield has a very distinctive gait.
"You can see her as soon as the doctor says you're well enough. Okay? I'll go with you."
Jack isn't stupid. One day down the line, between the cognitive decay of his disease, sleep deprivation and an overabundance of medication, he'll be a little slower to connect dots where those connections seem obvious. Now, he's still coming off that post straight-A sharpness. He's still clever enough to intuit what that means. The implications.
To pick up on what she isn't saying.
Any indication to the contrary is utter willful ignorance. He wants to stay ignorant. He doesn't want to understand.
But he does.
His vision swims, and it's strange, but the urgency in him suddenly goes... quiet. It retreats, seems to mute, seems to leave things cloudy and numb, as though to protect him from the jagged, rusty edges. The news, the offer, they're met with a long period of silence. He stares at their hands.
He's not sure how much time passes. The question arises, and he grapples with it for what feels like forever, unable to force the words out of his throat. It locks up as soon as he tries. When they finally bloom like blood on white sheets, there's a sheen over his eyes and his voice is barely audible.
"When is she going to wake up?"
Maura should know. She should. She's psychic. She should know the answer to this. If she's ever known anything in that way, in that sixth sense time is a circle or a sea way, it should be this.
In every way that matters, the muted silence that Jack falls into is worse than the near frantic pleading. So much worse. Maura's hands feel clumsy and awkward around his and she fights the growing lump at the back of her throat.
He is, she thinks, finally understanding and watching him go through the process is like going through it herself a second time.
When he finally speaks, his words are so quiet, Maura wouldn't even have caught them if it wasn't for the fact that she's been watching his face shut down on itself through it all. Her hands tighten around his and her throat tightens along with them.
"Jack--" her voice falters, and her face falls. The remnants of that calm poker face shredding until she's not the all-knowing psychic or the calm and loving maternal figure. She's just a woman trying to come to terms with the fact that even if her daughter wakes up, there is no guarantee there won't be lasting, catastrophic damage.
"I don't know." The words are soft and broken. A quiet confession. Time is a bathtub filled to the brim, an ocean, a constant, an all at once. And Maura Sargent can dip her toes in the water, can submerge herself fully and swim through it. But she can't see her daughter waking up.
The door swings fully open to admit Dr. Lindsfield, a man whose body and voice both fill up any room he enters near immediately, the nurse from earlier trailing close behind.
"Good afternoon, Jack," he says, his booming voice filling the room from corner to corner.
Maura lets go of Jack's hand and takes a step away, ostensibly to give the doctor some room to work. If it's also giving her the opportunity to turn half away from the bed so Jack can't see the bright sheen in her eyes resolve itself into tears, then that's just a bonus.
"Or should I say good morning?" he adds with a wink and grin.
Behind him, the nurse breathes a quick and obligatory laugh.
"Glad you decided to wake up. Gave us quite a fright, young man. Quite a fright. Your mom here has been worried sick." A quick gesture towards Maura who doesn't make any attempt at correcting the assumption, too busy looking up at the ceiling and surreptitiously wiping her eyes with the heel of her palm.
"We'll have to run you through some quick tests, but good news is you made it through relatively unscathed." The doctor picks up the chart from the foot of the hospital bed, flicking through it while he speaks. "No broken bones. Couple of scrapes and bruises. You'll probably feel some soreness around your ribs and where the seatbelt caught you. State that car was in, it's a damn miracle anyone got out of it alive."
A seed is planted that does not grow today. He doesn't even realize it's been slipped into the soil. I don't know. Why not? It could bud into resentment, or into anger. She can see so many other things, why can't she see this? For that matter, why couldn't she see-
But he can't think that clearly yet, he doesn't have the capacity for any more emotion yet, and even if he did it's all so numb he can't feel it. He says nothing, and the answer hangs in the air.
The doctor comes in and disrupts a placid lake in a way that feels irreverent. Jack looks up at him with red-rimmed eyes, wordless, and doesn't correct the mom thing either. It doesn't matter. It's close enough to be completely irrelevant.
For the first two or three days after his dad threw him out of the car, Jack barely spoke. Not to the social worker, not to the doctor, not to Harriet. Sometimes it's because whatever they said to him didn't matter enough to process and retain, sometimes it's because he didn't know what to say, sometimes he just...
Didn't.
It's like that now.
It's a damn miracle anyone got out alive.
Shut up. Just shut up. It's not a miracle, this isn't a fucking miracle. This is a nightmare. Maybe that's what it is. Shit, maybe that's what this is. Maybe this is a nightmare. Maybe he just needs to wake up. His sleep is fucked up, his dreams are vivid, maybe he's asleep, or the accident happened but he's on some weird drugs giving him bad dreams, and he just needs to wake up. That should be easy, he never manages to stay out long once he becomes aware he's dreaming. What can he do? Look at the clock. In dreams, clocks never show the same time if you look at them, then look away, then look back again.
He looks up at the clock on the wall above the doctor's head. Looks down at his empty hand. Looks at the clock again. It's the same.
Looks down. Looks up. It's the same.
He's not dreaming.
Okay. This is okay. It's going to be okay. It's fine. Everything's going to be okay, he can deal with it, it's going to be-
He turns over abruptly, lurching toward the side of the bed to hang off the railings and throw up on the floor.
A sort of surprised and abrupt silence falls across the room. Like time has stopped on the tableau of three surprised adults. Without seeming to have moved at all, Dr. Lindsfield stands a good five feet further away from the end of the bed and the-- fall out.
"Oops," exclaims the nurse, as brightly as every other word that's left her mouth and time floods back in.
The mom part of Maura's brain kicks back into gear, pushing the grief-stricken person down, and she steps back to Jack's side, a hand curving around his shoulder.
"I'll go grab and orderly," the nurse promises, "Get this mess cleaned right up! Don't you worry hun, happens all the time. We have a bucket and a mop just for vomit!"
With that particular bit of reassurance, she leaves the room. The doctor leans forward to inspect the tips of his shiny dress shoes, his mouth downturned and brows drawn into a deep frown, while Maura rubs soothing circles across Jack's shoulder blades.
"It's okay. It's going to be okay," she promises him in a low mumble, even though she has no idea how.
It doesn't get better from there.
The orderly arrives with the promised vomit-bucket and mop. Maura steps out of the room to call Harriet and 300 Fox Way to let them know that Jack's awake. The doctor does his little tests and proclaims that while Jack is miraculously well, he'll still have to stay overnight for observation. The nausea (a pointed glance to the floor) is a little concerning.
The nurse sneaks Jack a breath mint before Harriet arrives with a another crop of get-better-soon letters from home, a change of clothes, and a brand new book she doesn't think he's read yet.
Harriet can't stay, of course, too many people rely on her. But she gathers Jack up in a big hug goodbye and tells him it's okay if he doesn't have any words right now. They'll come back. The most important thing, she tells him, is that he is okay.
After she leaves, the sounds of angry voices drift in from the corridor just outside his door. Near every voice from 300 Fox Way raised in argument that visitor hours are a stupid construct and they're all family so they should be allowed in. The pep in the nurse's voice begins to sound threadbare the more she repeats the sentence you can come back tomorrow during our regular visiting hours, but he needs to rest right now.
In the end, a compromise of sorts is reached: The nurse swings the door open and Jimi, Orla, Calla, and Persephone wave at him from the doorway, promising to return bright and early in the morning.
"First thing!" Orla yells at him.
"Visiting hours don't start until ten," the nurse cuts in, but her words are lost in the din.
Persephone blows him an awkward kiss before the nurse shuffles them all away and decisively closes the door behind them, leaving Jack alone to his thoughts.
It doesn't last long. Apparently impervious to visiting hours, Maura slips back in shortly thereafter. She hovers in the doorway, arms wrapping around herself.
"The nurse will come by in a moment with a sedative. Something to sleep on." She unwinds her arms from around herself, worried it's coming off as defensive or distancing. She slips her hands into the hand-sewn pockets of her tunic instead. "If you feel up for it, I can take you down to the ICU tomorrow morning when you wake up."
Hit it just right, before the night shift leaves for the day, and it'll be easy to slip inside.
Edited (tightening up some sentences and making Maura act sooner) 2022-01-20 15:01 (UTC)
He barely feels the touch to his back. He definitely doesn't process anything the nurse or the doctor says. The only thing that comes close to landing any real foothold in his brain is Maura, because she's been a constant source of comfort for the last ten years of his life. Fifteen, maybe? She wound up sliding neatly into a role he was utterly lacking until they unofficially adopted him, he's basically engineered to take in the sound of her voice by now.
He barely registers the sound of the rest of the family, and can only weakly wave at them where they stand in the doorway. He loves them, they're his family, but for the first time in his life that he can remember, he's glad he doesn't have to see them right now. He's not sure he could handle it, he's not sure he could even take in anything they'd say to him. He doesn't know if he has the capacity to manage the surge of emotions they'd drag out. He just-
He just...
He just wants to stare straight ahead at nothing, letting himself feel nothing, because the second that door cracks open he's going to break. As long as he stares and disassociates, he won't cry, or hurt, or feel anything.
So he says nothing to Maura for the rest of the night, and when they come to give him the sedative, it's a such a relief that almost brings tears to his eyes. This will be the last time sedatives work on him. This will be the last time he lets himself fall into any kind of sleep wherein he isn't at least somewhat aware of his surroundings.
The next morning, he's awake before dawn light even fully breaches the horizon, when everything is still a little grey-blue and surreal. The only thing he says is with a cracked, tired voice.
It's foolish, perhaps, for Maura to stick around now that Jack's awake and mulishly quiet in his grief. Perhaps she should go home, take that shower Calla keeps hassling her about or spend a night in her own bed for once. But Maura told him a long time ago, she's not leaving him, and that promise stands.
Maura drifts in the uncomfortable chair, not quite sleeping but not quite awake either. She wakes each time the nurse comes in to check Jack's vitals. A ritual she's gotten very used to by now. So when Jack speaks up, she gently unfolds her creaking limbs from the chair and stands. She gives him his privacy to dress and then they take the elevator down past the ground floor. She walks slowly, a careful eye on his progress.
Even at this hour -- at the intersection of very early and exceptionally late -- there is a marked difference between the ICU and the rest of the hospital. Everything is muted. The overhead lights. The nurses. Even their footsteps though surely the linoleum floor is the same all over the hospital.
The space is set up like a wheel with the nurses' station in the middle and individual rooms reaching out like equidistant spokes, all within easy view of the desk.
Maura gives a quiet wave to the nurse tucked up behind said desk and he gives her a nod in turn. They have an understanding. His eyes slide over to Jack and then back at Maura and she gives a slight nod to the unvoiced question. Yes, this is him. Her other kid. Not by birth or law, just by love and habit.
They cross the open middle space, to a room like all the others. Except it's nothing like the others. Thick curtains can be drawn across the windowed wall for privacy, but with no one (conscious) in the room, they've been left wide open. The fold-out chair is tucked up against one corner of the room, a crumpled blanket and pillow betraying where Maura's been getting most of her sleep. On the little tray table next to it, sits the book Maura's been reading since the accident, the little dog-eared corner only a couple of pages in.
The bed takes up the center of the room, demanding all attention where it is nestled between more machines than can be mustered from every room of 300 Fox Way. The different monitors speak their different languages in beeps and wavy lines.
At the center of it all, connected by wires and tubes, lays a slight body with blankets tugged up over her shoulders. Her bare left arm sticks out from under the blankets, her fingers limp against the sheets. The nurses must've forgotten to tuck it back in after checking her IV at the last rounds. Her head and a good third of her face are obscured by bandages and a wide tube extrudes from her lips. What little can be seen of her skin is ashen and devoid of life.
It doesn't look like Blue. Every time she walks in the door, Maura expects to see her daughter, but the figure never quite resolves itself into Blue Sargent. Maura pauses in the doorway, wrapping her arms around herself and giving Jack a worried look. It's not that she's gotten used to the sight, but she's at least seen it before. She's not getting crushed in the first wave of it.
"They're hopeful she'll be stable enough to be transported this afternoon," she says quietly, her voice sounding like a stranger's, even to her.
He moves more slowly than he wants to. Dressing, walking, all of it. It feels like he's struggling through wet sand, time dilating, creeping, dragging itself out. His limbs are heavy and sore. His mind's still got a lingering cocktail of sedative and pain medication floating around in it. The lights on the ceiling of the elevator look surreal, they dance as it carries them down. The people are too irrelevant for him to notice their faces.
He doesn't know what he imagined she'd look like. Not like this. He hates the wires and the tubes. They're disgusting. They don't belong. It's like they're mocking what should be roots and branches of trees, organic and sprawling. These are machines, they're spiders, they're plugs and hooks and chainsaws. More than anything, he hates that they're necessary. That he's not even allowed to wish they'd rip them all out, because if they did she'd-
She'd-
She doesn't look like she's sleeping. She doesn't look like her.
Is she even in there?
He moves like a ghost, like his legs have taken control over his mind and they follow a predestined path to the chair nearest her side. They're too weak for him to keep standing. At some point — seconds, minutes, he's not sure — his back found its way to sloped, his elbows to the edge of her bed, his fingers knit and pressed against his own lips.
It's so much harder to fight back the tide here, now. He has to physically press the sides of his fingers to his lips to keep them from twisting or stretching. His eyes burn and blur.
Another minute, or twenty, or an hour later, he asks it. What he's been thinking, darkly, in the recesses of his mind. He asks it without taking his eyes off of Blue's face. Hushed, wavering, cracked.
"Was this my fault?"
Was it? He doesn't remember it. Is that because he fell asleep? Did his brain short-circuit? Did he veer them off the road into a fucking tree? He doesn't even know the details, he doesn't know what they hit or how they hit it, he doesn't know.
It feels as wrong to leave as it does to stay. So, Maura moves the blanket and the pillow from the foldout chair in the corner and sits down. She picks the book up to give Jack at least a semblance of privacy, staring down at the same set of pages and trying not to listen too hard to the sound of Jack's breaths as they mingle with the quiet woosh of the machine that is breathing for Blue.
Maybe she drifts a little, her mind tangling with what was, what is, and what will be (or what might not be), but she's pulled sharply back into the present by Jack's question.
"No," Maura says with a fierce certainty she doesn't quite feel. She hasn't been able to make herself ask Calla for the details of Tom's investigation, or go searching for her own answers in the deck of tarot cards she has slipped into her pocket. It doesn't matter. Even if Jack fell asleep on the wheel or somehow lost control of the car-- It's not his fault. He could never do anything to hurt Blue on purpose.
Blue might not-- Jack loves Blue. He's loved her since he was eight. More than a friend, and certainly differently than a sister. Maura loves Jack almost as much as she loves Blue. Almost. And if Blue-- If Jack--
It can't be anything but an accident. No one can be at fault.
Maura simply won't let it.
"Of course not." In a squeak of the easy-to-wipe-down rubbery fabric of the chair, and a creak of joints that have ached for days now, she sits up straighter, settles the book in her lap.
"When they transport her," Maura knows in her bones that the transport, at least, will happen, "Calla is going to give me a ride there. It's only two hours. You can ride with us. Calla was going to find some of Blue's books and bring them. She says people say it's good to read to people who are-- That they can hear us. Blue always liked listening to you read. I think it would be nice -- for her -- if you could do that."
Maybe if there's a purpose, Jack won't look quite so lost.
Would she say that no matter what the reality of the situation was? True, false, undetermined, a total mystery, would every possibility end in of course not? He thinks so. She's kind, she loves him, she wouldn't want to let him live with the guilt if it were true. She wouldn't want him to know.
Does he really want to know?
Delicate, like he's handling a crumbling leaf, he reaches out to move her arm enough to pull the blankets gently over it. It's cold in here, even through his shirt, he can feel the chill. He doesn't want her getting cold. She might be, and they just don't care enough to fix it. But he does.
He nods, finally. He'll ride with them. Bring some books he knows she likes. Bring some new ones, so she doesn't get bored hearing the same ones again. He's heard that, too. That if you read to them, people in a coma, they-
Oh, god.
That's when the reality hits. It's like someone reached out and seized him by the throat. Like they're bearing all their weight down on his chest. He's swallowing sound as best he can with middling success, but the tears are a foregone conclusion. The shaking, jolting spasms in his center are out of his control. The wall is broken, and it all comes tumbling out.
He wants to slip into the bed next to her, wrap himself around her, and sleep beside her until she wakes up.
Maybe part of him does. Maybe that's where all his sleep goes.
Perhaps Maura could have missed the muted sounds of Jack falling apart, or the slowly intensifying shudders running through his shoulders, if it wasn't for the quietness of the room or the fact that she's been waiting for it ever since he woke up.
Tears are the natural expression of grief. There is nothing wrong with grief, or giving into it. Hell, letting it all out is better than bottling it up. But, oh, how Maura wishes she could take this pain from him. What she wouldn't give to turn back time and take away the cause of it.
But she can do neither. So she does the only thing she can: She pushes up from her chair, dropping the book back on the seat behind her, and crosses the floor to his side. She wraps her arms around his trembling shoulders, pulling him close against herself so she can hold him while he cries.
Just like when he was a touch-starved kid who no one had loved long or hard enough. Except he isn't a child anymore, and this time, Maura's eyes burn with the same tears.
The last time she held him like this was the last time he and Blue broke up and Blue told him she never wanted to see him again. Enough vitriol in her voice that he believed her, like her heart could ever shut him out. And Maura will always take her daughter's side, team Blue 'til the end, but when she found Jack fighting tears in the backyard afterwards, she pulled him into her arms and held him until the flood gates broke and he cried in her arms. Like when he was a child.
Gentle and quiet, her mouth near his ear, she reminded him of the promise she made him many, many years ago. You are family, she told him, low but fierce, arms tightening around him. Whatever happens with Blue, wherever you go. I will always love you. Nothing can change that.
This time, she runs a hand over his hair and down his shoulder, the words choke her as she speaks them: "It's okay, Jack. It's okay. You get to-- I know it hurts so much. You don't have to-- It's okay. I've got you. I'm right here. I've got you."
Her eyes find the shape of the body in the bed in front of them, and the lack of anything resembling Blue hits her like a punch. Her arms tighten around Jack and the first sob fights its way free from her throat. It's low and primal and everything a mother is supposed to keep away from her children.
He winds his arms around her, hangs on to her shoulder blades, and feels like that kid again. Feels that same sensation of falling apart, of losing his grip on himself, of pure emotion escaping the wide-open gates, soaking her shirt with tears. Except this time, she's not resetting a break to heal correctly. They're not lancing a wound. This shattering isn't leading to anything better.
And then she splinters. It stops being clear who's holding who. Just two people torn open, sharing the same pain, losing the same most important person in their world. Echoing it back and forth like a microphone too close to the speakers. Two black holes that only keep from collapsing in on themselves because of the gravity of the other.
If he had to choose between going back in time and getting thrown out of a car all over again, the snapping of bones and the unforgiving pavement scraping off his skin, or this? He'd pick the car, a dozen times over.
Time passes, because it always does, and Jack continues to have no concept of exactly how much. It's like watching heatwaves radiating off of concrete in the summer, flexing and shifting, barely visible, impossible to nail down. By the time they've both run out of tears — for now, anyway — he's fucking exhausted again. Absolutely drained, and he can't be sure if that's from the accident, the medication, or what they just suffered through.
It doesn't matter. Whatever happens next is a blur. Maybe there are a few more tests, maybe there aren't. Maybe they suggest he stay a while longer, that doesn't matter either, because whoever fights the battle wins and he winds up in the back seat of their car for the two hour ride. Wordless again, leaning against the window, trying to will himself to sleep.
It doesn't really work.
He loses track of how much time they spend there, too. He was supposed to read, he knows, but he doesn't. He doesn't talk. He just sits himself down beside her bed, and waits for her to wake up. Expects her to, the entire time they're there. Expects her to so much, he doesn't want to leave. Five more minutes and it's bound to happen. Then five more, then five more.
It doesn't happen.
So he comes back again, and he waits again. The fourth time, he remembers to read.
Blue's body survives the transportation. The surgery to relieve the pressure on her brain is successful. When they disconnect the ventilator, her body breathes on its own. The swaths of bandages are unfurled from around her face and head. The bruising goes down and then it disappears completely until, to someone who doesn't know her, it almost looks like she is just asleep.
But she doesn't wake up and the significance of those small victories begin to diminish. Some of their luster lost in the far greater failure.
Outside of it all, the accident is officially declared a hit and run. Tom's report is very clear on the existence of a second vehicle. Exonerating Jack of all guilt.
No one at 300 Fox Way sees anything to contradict him.
(The first time they make the drive up, Calla holds a hand out to steady Jack on his way out of the car. The light touch should tell her everything Maura needs to know, but it doesn't. Calla tells Maura later that she can't tell if it's because the accident has been scrubbed from Jack's memory, or because something is blocking her. Either way, certainty is a pipe dream.)
In the hospital, Maura spends more time standing in the corridor just outside Blue's room listening to doctors speak in low tones, than she spends sitting at her daughter's side. There's sympathy in their voices, and then concerns. There are other facilities. Experimental treatment centers or glorified storage units. Perhaps she should consider-- The bills are already compounding on themselves and Maura feels like the world's shittiest mom every time she has to ask and how much would that cost?
The summer passes in a haze of two hour car rides and the smell of antiseptics. It becomes routine. The more often they go, the less able Maura finds herself to look at the body in the bed. Outside, the world keeps spinning on without them, and they're all three of them stuck within four walls with the never ending beeping of the machines.
One day, Maura stands in the corridor outside the hospital room and listens to the sound of Jack's voice as he dutifully reads another chapter to her daughter. There's nothing special about the day or the book. It's the same as countless of visits before it. But something in Maura's heart snaps and breaks.
When he steps out into the hallway, there's no trace of tears on Maura's cheeks, and she gives him a smile that's faded only in the way it has been since he first woke up after the accident.
Before they make the drive home, Maura takes him to one of the many pizza places in town for a rare treat. (Blue used to bring home pizza leftovers from her job at Nino's. Each slice tastes like a memory of her, and it's all Maura can do to choke down each bite.)
She waits until they're nearly finished. Until the check sits on the corner of the table (for whenever they're ready), and Jack is finishing up his last slice.
"Jack," she says, low and careful. "I think you should stop coming up here. The semester is starting soon. You should be moving into your dorm and making new friends. Not--"
Reading book after book to a girl who might never wake up.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Maura's hand drifts down from Jack's face to settle on his chest, fingertips curved around his shoulder. There's no pressure (yet), just resting gently there. A reminder for him to stay still. His injuries may be mostly superficial -- unlike Blue's -- but he needs to take it easy.
"Jack," she says softly, keeping her voice low and even, refusing to let it rise alongside his. "Shhh, shhh, sweetie. I know this is hard. I know."
Maura's voice breaks on the last word.
A light knock on the door jamb and a nurse peeks her head in as if summoned by Jack's raised voice, though in all likelihood it's the sudden uptick in his heart rate on the monitor that's sounded the alarm.
"How are we doing in here?" she asks, eyes drawn to Maura out of habit before they drift over to Jack and she answers her own question. Like she can't read the anguish on his face or sense the tension in the room her whole expression brightens.
"Oh we're awake!" she says, bubbly in the way of people who wake up at 5 AM to get a quick workout in before heading to the hospital for a sixteen hour shift. "I'll go let the doctor know."
"Yes, thank you," Maura manages, her eyes flickering only briefly from Jack's face out of politeness even these circumstances can't quite squash. Her fingers curl around Jack's a little too tightly. Like Calla and Persephone held on to her in the waiting room those first couple of hours.
The door doesn't quite latch behind the nurse.
"I will tell you, but you need to stay calm and take it easy," Maura says, fingertips pressing gently against his shoulder. "Okay? You working yourself into a state or hurting yourself isn't going to make anything better."
no subject
Because it's true.
No. Absolutely not. Not possible. It's not.
His utter disbelief shifts its target to the nurse, like maybe she can make the world make sense again. Or... maybe like he can't believe she can be perky when things are obviously incredibly wrong right now. She's so happy, he hates her.
"I'm calm, I'm fine," He says, not calmly and definitely not fine, "I wanna go see her. We should- why are you here? She's gonna want you when she-"
His voice cracks. He falters.
Why is she here, if Blue is downstairs? Why, unless there's basically no chance she'd wake up alone? Unless there's no-
The wavering in his tone doesn't fade when he persists, despite what a small voice in his head tries to tell him. A small truth he's ignoring. Quieter, with less certainty, "You shouldn't be here. You should be down there. For when she's- stable."
Because she's going to be. And then she'll wake up, and she'll want her mom. That's the truth. That's- what's going to happen.
no subject
"I am here," Maura says, her voice cracking beneath the pressure of calm she is trying to squeeze it into, "because you were always going to wake up first."
The statement sits in the air like an exclamation point and guilt sinks its deep claws into her shoulders. Her fingers are pressing too hard against his chest and she makes herself let up, makes herself lean back and wrap her hand instead around the metal rail of the bed. One hand on his, one on unfeeling metal and all she has to remember is to hold his hand lightly where she grips the railing so hard it's a wonder it doesn't snap beneath her fingers.
A deep steadying breath as she arranges her features back into the calm she hasn't had to maintain for days now. The nurses don't care about her redrimmed eyes or the way she's been drifting like a ghost between the floors, spending one night in the foldout chair in Blue's ICU room, and another cramped in the decidedly-not-foldout chair in Jack's very regular hospital room.
"I wanted to be here. For you," she continues, a little steadier now, with no bite to her voice. The joints of her fingers are stiff and iced over, crackling when she forces them to unfurl slightly from around the bed. She grips his hand with both of hers, so achingly gentle now. He needs her, and as much as she hates it, Blue doesn't.
It's the worst sentence she's thought in her entire life.
"Jack," she says, and she's not sure if his name is a plea for his attentive silence or a command. "Blue suffered severe head trauma on impact."
The words are soft. Parroted from the doctor who spoke them in a no-less-gentle tone though devoid of the emotional attachment that clings to every syllable from Maura's throat and lips and tongue, tying them together with her heart.
She is not waking up.
"She--" Maura's voice feels too thick for her throat. The words lodge somewhere around her heart and she knows she can't speak them out loud, so she switches it up, goes down a different path. "They are waiting for the swelling to go down enough for them to risk transporting her to a hospital with a proper neurologist and the right equipment."
Through the cracked open door, Maura is aware of the approaching foot steps. Dr. Lindsfield has a very distinctive gait.
"You can see her as soon as the doctor says you're well enough. Okay? I'll go with you."
no subject
Jack isn't stupid. One day down the line, between the cognitive decay of his disease, sleep deprivation and an overabundance of medication, he'll be a little slower to connect dots where those connections seem obvious. Now, he's still coming off that post straight-A sharpness. He's still clever enough to intuit what that means. The implications.
To pick up on what she isn't saying.
Any indication to the contrary is utter willful ignorance. He wants to stay ignorant. He doesn't want to understand.
But he does.
His vision swims, and it's strange, but the urgency in him suddenly goes... quiet. It retreats, seems to mute, seems to leave things cloudy and numb, as though to protect him from the jagged, rusty edges. The news, the offer, they're met with a long period of silence. He stares at their hands.
He's not sure how much time passes. The question arises, and he grapples with it for what feels like forever, unable to force the words out of his throat. It locks up as soon as he tries. When they finally bloom like blood on white sheets, there's a sheen over his eyes and his voice is barely audible.
"When is she going to wake up?"
Maura should know. She should. She's psychic. She should know the answer to this. If she's ever known anything in that way, in that sixth sense time is a circle or a sea way, it should be this.
no subject
He is, she thinks, finally understanding and watching him go through the process is like going through it herself a second time.
When he finally speaks, his words are so quiet, Maura wouldn't even have caught them if it wasn't for the fact that she's been watching his face shut down on itself through it all. Her hands tighten around his and her throat tightens along with them.
"Jack--" her voice falters, and her face falls. The remnants of that calm poker face shredding until she's not the all-knowing psychic or the calm and loving maternal figure. She's just a woman trying to come to terms with the fact that even if her daughter wakes up, there is no guarantee there won't be lasting, catastrophic damage.
"I don't know." The words are soft and broken. A quiet confession. Time is a bathtub filled to the brim, an ocean, a constant, an all at once. And Maura Sargent can dip her toes in the water, can submerge herself fully and swim through it. But she can't see her daughter waking up.
The door swings fully open to admit Dr. Lindsfield, a man whose body and voice both fill up any room he enters near immediately, the nurse from earlier trailing close behind.
"Good afternoon, Jack," he says, his booming voice filling the room from corner to corner.
Maura lets go of Jack's hand and takes a step away, ostensibly to give the doctor some room to work. If it's also giving her the opportunity to turn half away from the bed so Jack can't see the bright sheen in her eyes resolve itself into tears, then that's just a bonus.
"Or should I say good morning?" he adds with a wink and grin.
Behind him, the nurse breathes a quick and obligatory laugh.
"Glad you decided to wake up. Gave us quite a fright, young man. Quite a fright. Your mom here has been worried sick." A quick gesture towards Maura who doesn't make any attempt at correcting the assumption, too busy looking up at the ceiling and surreptitiously wiping her eyes with the heel of her palm.
"We'll have to run you through some quick tests, but good news is you made it through relatively unscathed." The doctor picks up the chart from the foot of the hospital bed, flicking through it while he speaks. "No broken bones. Couple of scrapes and bruises. You'll probably feel some soreness around your ribs and where the seatbelt caught you. State that car was in, it's a damn miracle anyone got out of it alive."
no subject
But he can't think that clearly yet, he doesn't have the capacity for any more emotion yet, and even if he did it's all so numb he can't feel it. He says nothing, and the answer hangs in the air.
The doctor comes in and disrupts a placid lake in a way that feels irreverent. Jack looks up at him with red-rimmed eyes, wordless, and doesn't correct the mom thing either. It doesn't matter. It's close enough to be completely irrelevant.
For the first two or three days after his dad threw him out of the car, Jack barely spoke. Not to the social worker, not to the doctor, not to Harriet. Sometimes it's because whatever they said to him didn't matter enough to process and retain, sometimes it's because he didn't know what to say, sometimes he just...
Didn't.
It's like that now.
It's a damn miracle anyone got out alive.
Shut up. Just shut up. It's not a miracle, this isn't a fucking miracle. This is a nightmare. Maybe that's what it is. Shit, maybe that's what this is. Maybe this is a nightmare. Maybe he just needs to wake up. His sleep is fucked up, his dreams are vivid, maybe he's asleep, or the accident happened but he's on some weird drugs giving him bad dreams, and he just needs to wake up. That should be easy, he never manages to stay out long once he becomes aware he's dreaming. What can he do? Look at the clock. In dreams, clocks never show the same time if you look at them, then look away, then look back again.
He looks up at the clock on the wall above the doctor's head. Looks down at his empty hand. Looks at the clock again. It's the same.
Looks down.
Looks up.
It's the same.
He's not dreaming.
Okay. This is okay. It's going to be okay. It's fine. Everything's going to be okay, he can deal with it, it's going to be-
He turns over abruptly, lurching toward the side of the bed to hang off the railings and throw up on the floor.
no subject
"Oops," exclaims the nurse, as brightly as every other word that's left her mouth and time floods back in.
The mom part of Maura's brain kicks back into gear, pushing the grief-stricken person down, and she steps back to Jack's side, a hand curving around his shoulder.
"I'll go grab and orderly," the nurse promises, "Get this mess cleaned right up! Don't you worry hun, happens all the time. We have a bucket and a mop just for vomit!"
With that particular bit of reassurance, she leaves the room. The doctor leans forward to inspect the tips of his shiny dress shoes, his mouth downturned and brows drawn into a deep frown, while Maura rubs soothing circles across Jack's shoulder blades.
"It's okay. It's going to be okay," she promises him in a low mumble, even though she has no idea how.
It doesn't get better from there.
The orderly arrives with the promised vomit-bucket and mop. Maura steps out of the room to call Harriet and 300 Fox Way to let them know that Jack's awake. The doctor does his little tests and proclaims that while Jack is miraculously well, he'll still have to stay overnight for observation. The nausea (a pointed glance to the floor) is a little concerning.
The nurse sneaks Jack a breath mint before Harriet arrives with a another crop of get-better-soon letters from home, a change of clothes, and a brand new book she doesn't think he's read yet.
Harriet can't stay, of course, too many people rely on her. But she gathers Jack up in a big hug goodbye and tells him it's okay if he doesn't have any words right now. They'll come back. The most important thing, she tells him, is that he is okay.
After she leaves, the sounds of angry voices drift in from the corridor just outside his door. Near every voice from 300 Fox Way raised in argument that visitor hours are a stupid construct and they're all family so they should be allowed in. The pep in the nurse's voice begins to sound threadbare the more she repeats the sentence you can come back tomorrow during our regular visiting hours, but he needs to rest right now.
In the end, a compromise of sorts is reached: The nurse swings the door open and Jimi, Orla, Calla, and Persephone wave at him from the doorway, promising to return bright and early in the morning.
"First thing!" Orla yells at him.
"Visiting hours don't start until ten," the nurse cuts in, but her words are lost in the din.
Persephone blows him an awkward kiss before the nurse shuffles them all away and decisively closes the door behind them, leaving Jack alone to his thoughts.
It doesn't last long. Apparently impervious to visiting hours, Maura slips back in shortly thereafter. She hovers in the doorway, arms wrapping around herself.
"The nurse will come by in a moment with a sedative. Something to sleep on." She unwinds her arms from around herself, worried it's coming off as defensive or distancing. She slips her hands into the hand-sewn pockets of her tunic instead. "If you feel up for it, I can take you down to the ICU tomorrow morning when you wake up."
Hit it just right, before the night shift leaves for the day, and it'll be easy to slip inside.
no subject
He barely registers the sound of the rest of the family, and can only weakly wave at them where they stand in the doorway. He loves them, they're his family, but for the first time in his life that he can remember, he's glad he doesn't have to see them right now. He's not sure he could handle it, he's not sure he could even take in anything they'd say to him. He doesn't know if he has the capacity to manage the surge of emotions they'd drag out. He just-
He just...
He just wants to stare straight ahead at nothing, letting himself feel nothing, because the second that door cracks open he's going to break. As long as he stares and disassociates, he won't cry, or hurt, or feel anything.
So he says nothing to Maura for the rest of the night, and when they come to give him the sedative, it's a such a relief that almost brings tears to his eyes. This will be the last time sedatives work on him. This will be the last time he lets himself fall into any kind of sleep wherein he isn't at least somewhat aware of his surroundings.
The next morning, he's awake before dawn light even fully breaches the horizon, when everything is still a little grey-blue and surreal. The only thing he says is with a cracked, tired voice.
"I want to see her."
no subject
Maura drifts in the uncomfortable chair, not quite sleeping but not quite awake either. She wakes each time the nurse comes in to check Jack's vitals. A ritual she's gotten very used to by now. So when Jack speaks up, she gently unfolds her creaking limbs from the chair and stands. She gives him his privacy to dress and then they take the elevator down past the ground floor. She walks slowly, a careful eye on his progress.
Even at this hour -- at the intersection of very early and exceptionally late -- there is a marked difference between the ICU and the rest of the hospital. Everything is muted. The overhead lights. The nurses. Even their footsteps though surely the linoleum floor is the same all over the hospital.
The space is set up like a wheel with the nurses' station in the middle and individual rooms reaching out like equidistant spokes, all within easy view of the desk.
Maura gives a quiet wave to the nurse tucked up behind said desk and he gives her a nod in turn. They have an understanding. His eyes slide over to Jack and then back at Maura and she gives a slight nod to the unvoiced question. Yes, this is him. Her other kid. Not by birth or law, just by love and habit.
They cross the open middle space, to a room like all the others. Except it's nothing like the others. Thick curtains can be drawn across the windowed wall for privacy, but with no one (conscious) in the room, they've been left wide open. The fold-out chair is tucked up against one corner of the room, a crumpled blanket and pillow betraying where Maura's been getting most of her sleep. On the little tray table next to it, sits the book Maura's been reading since the accident, the little dog-eared corner only a couple of pages in.
The bed takes up the center of the room, demanding all attention where it is nestled between more machines than can be mustered from every room of 300 Fox Way. The different monitors speak their different languages in beeps and wavy lines.
At the center of it all, connected by wires and tubes, lays a slight body with blankets tugged up over her shoulders. Her bare left arm sticks out from under the blankets, her fingers limp against the sheets. The nurses must've forgotten to tuck it back in after checking her IV at the last rounds. Her head and a good third of her face are obscured by bandages and a wide tube extrudes from her lips. What little can be seen of her skin is ashen and devoid of life.
It doesn't look like Blue. Every time she walks in the door, Maura expects to see her daughter, but the figure never quite resolves itself into Blue Sargent. Maura pauses in the doorway, wrapping her arms around herself and giving Jack a worried look. It's not that she's gotten used to the sight, but she's at least seen it before. She's not getting crushed in the first wave of it.
"They're hopeful she'll be stable enough to be transported this afternoon," she says quietly, her voice sounding like a stranger's, even to her.
no subject
He doesn't know what he imagined she'd look like. Not like this. He hates the wires and the tubes. They're disgusting. They don't belong. It's like they're mocking what should be roots and branches of trees, organic and sprawling. These are machines, they're spiders, they're plugs and hooks and chainsaws. More than anything, he hates that they're necessary. That he's not even allowed to wish they'd rip them all out, because if they did she'd-
She'd-
She doesn't look like she's sleeping. She doesn't look like her.
Is she even in there?
He moves like a ghost, like his legs have taken control over his mind and they follow a predestined path to the chair nearest her side. They're too weak for him to keep standing. At some point — seconds, minutes, he's not sure — his back found its way to sloped, his elbows to the edge of her bed, his fingers knit and pressed against his own lips.
It's so much harder to fight back the tide here, now. He has to physically press the sides of his fingers to his lips to keep them from twisting or stretching. His eyes burn and blur.
Another minute, or twenty, or an hour later, he asks it. What he's been thinking, darkly, in the recesses of his mind. He asks it without taking his eyes off of Blue's face. Hushed, wavering, cracked.
"Was this my fault?"
Was it? He doesn't remember it. Is that because he fell asleep? Did his brain short-circuit? Did he veer them off the road into a fucking tree? He doesn't even know the details, he doesn't know what they hit or how they hit it, he doesn't know.
no subject
Maybe she drifts a little, her mind tangling with what was, what is, and what will be (or what might not be), but she's pulled sharply back into the present by Jack's question.
"No," Maura says with a fierce certainty she doesn't quite feel. She hasn't been able to make herself ask Calla for the details of Tom's investigation, or go searching for her own answers in the deck of tarot cards she has slipped into her pocket. It doesn't matter. Even if Jack fell asleep on the wheel or somehow lost control of the car-- It's not his fault. He could never do anything to hurt Blue on purpose.
Blue might not--
Jack loves Blue. He's loved her since he was eight. More than a friend, and certainly differently than a sister.
Maura loves Jack almost as much as she loves Blue.
Almost.
And if Blue--
If Jack--
It can't be anything but an accident.
No one can be at fault.
Maura simply won't let it.
"Of course not." In a squeak of the easy-to-wipe-down rubbery fabric of the chair, and a creak of joints that have ached for days now, she sits up straighter, settles the book in her lap.
"When they transport her," Maura knows in her bones that the transport, at least, will happen, "Calla is going to give me a ride there. It's only two hours. You can ride with us. Calla was going to find some of Blue's books and bring them. She says people say it's good to read to people who are-- That they can hear us. Blue always liked listening to you read. I think it would be nice -- for her -- if you could do that."
Maybe if there's a purpose, Jack won't look quite so lost.
no subject
Does he really want to know?
Delicate, like he's handling a crumbling leaf, he reaches out to move her arm enough to pull the blankets gently over it. It's cold in here, even through his shirt, he can feel the chill. He doesn't want her getting cold. She might be, and they just don't care enough to fix it. But he does.
He nods, finally. He'll ride with them. Bring some books he knows she likes. Bring some new ones, so she doesn't get bored hearing the same ones again. He's heard that, too. That if you read to them, people in a coma, they-
Oh, god.
That's when the reality hits. It's like someone reached out and seized him by the throat. Like they're bearing all their weight down on his chest. He's swallowing sound as best he can with middling success, but the tears are a foregone conclusion. The shaking, jolting spasms in his center are out of his control. The wall is broken, and it all comes tumbling out.
He wants to slip into the bed next to her, wrap himself around her, and sleep beside her until she wakes up.
Maybe part of him does. Maybe that's where all his sleep goes.
no subject
Tears are the natural expression of grief. There is nothing wrong with grief, or giving into it. Hell, letting it all out is better than bottling it up. But, oh, how Maura wishes she could take this pain from him. What she wouldn't give to turn back time and take away the cause of it.
But she can do neither. So she does the only thing she can: She pushes up from her chair, dropping the book back on the seat behind her, and crosses the floor to his side. She wraps her arms around his trembling shoulders, pulling him close against herself so she can hold him while he cries.
Just like when he was a touch-starved kid who no one had loved long or hard enough. Except he isn't a child anymore, and this time, Maura's eyes burn with the same tears.
The last time she held him like this was the last time he and Blue broke up and Blue told him she never wanted to see him again. Enough vitriol in her voice that he believed her, like her heart could ever shut him out. And Maura will always take her daughter's side, team Blue 'til the end, but when she found Jack fighting tears in the backyard afterwards, she pulled him into her arms and held him until the flood gates broke and he cried in her arms. Like when he was a child.
Gentle and quiet, her mouth near his ear, she reminded him of the promise she made him many, many years ago. You are family, she told him, low but fierce, arms tightening around him. Whatever happens with Blue, wherever you go. I will always love you. Nothing can change that.
This time, she runs a hand over his hair and down his shoulder, the words choke her as she speaks them: "It's okay, Jack. It's okay. You get to-- I know it hurts so much. You don't have to-- It's okay. I've got you. I'm right here. I've got you."
Her eyes find the shape of the body in the bed in front of them, and the lack of anything resembling Blue hits her like a punch. Her arms tighten around Jack and the first sob fights its way free from her throat. It's low and primal and everything a mother is supposed to keep away from her children.
no subject
And then she splinters. It stops being clear who's holding who. Just two people torn open, sharing the same pain, losing the same most important person in their world. Echoing it back and forth like a microphone too close to the speakers. Two black holes that only keep from collapsing in on themselves because of the gravity of the other.
If he had to choose between going back in time and getting thrown out of a car all over again, the snapping of bones and the unforgiving pavement scraping off his skin, or this? He'd pick the car, a dozen times over.
Time passes, because it always does, and Jack continues to have no concept of exactly how much. It's like watching heatwaves radiating off of concrete in the summer, flexing and shifting, barely visible, impossible to nail down. By the time they've both run out of tears — for now, anyway — he's fucking exhausted again. Absolutely drained, and he can't be sure if that's from the accident, the medication, or what they just suffered through.
It doesn't matter. Whatever happens next is a blur. Maybe there are a few more tests, maybe there aren't. Maybe they suggest he stay a while longer, that doesn't matter either, because whoever fights the battle wins and he winds up in the back seat of their car for the two hour ride. Wordless again, leaning against the window, trying to will himself to sleep.
It doesn't really work.
He loses track of how much time they spend there, too. He was supposed to read, he knows, but he doesn't. He doesn't talk. He just sits himself down beside her bed, and waits for her to wake up. Expects her to, the entire time they're there. Expects her to so much, he doesn't want to leave. Five more minutes and it's bound to happen. Then five more, then five more.
It doesn't happen.
So he comes back again, and he waits again. The fourth time, he remembers to read.
no subject
Small ones that nonetheless feel significant.
Blue's body survives the transportation. The surgery to relieve the pressure on her brain is successful. When they disconnect the ventilator, her body breathes on its own. The swaths of bandages are unfurled from around her face and head. The bruising goes down and then it disappears completely until, to someone who doesn't know her, it almost looks like she is just asleep.
But she doesn't wake up and the significance of those small victories begin to diminish. Some of their luster lost in the far greater failure.
Outside of it all, the accident is officially declared a hit and run. Tom's report is very clear on the existence of a second vehicle. Exonerating Jack of all guilt.
No one at 300 Fox Way sees anything to contradict him.
(The first time they make the drive up, Calla holds a hand out to steady Jack on his way out of the car. The light touch should tell her everything Maura needs to know, but it doesn't. Calla tells Maura later that she can't tell if it's because the accident has been scrubbed from Jack's memory, or because something is blocking her. Either way, certainty is a pipe dream.)
In the hospital, Maura spends more time standing in the corridor just outside Blue's room listening to doctors speak in low tones, than she spends sitting at her daughter's side. There's sympathy in their voices, and then concerns. There are other facilities. Experimental treatment centers or glorified storage units. Perhaps she should consider-- The bills are already compounding on themselves and Maura feels like the world's shittiest mom every time she has to ask and how much would that cost?
The summer passes in a haze of two hour car rides and the smell of antiseptics. It becomes routine. The more often they go, the less able Maura finds herself to look at the body in the bed. Outside, the world keeps spinning on without them, and they're all three of them stuck within four walls with the never ending beeping of the machines.
One day, Maura stands in the corridor outside the hospital room and listens to the sound of Jack's voice as he dutifully reads another chapter to her daughter. There's nothing special about the day or the book. It's the same as countless of visits before it. But something in Maura's heart snaps and breaks.
When he steps out into the hallway, there's no trace of tears on Maura's cheeks, and she gives him a smile that's faded only in the way it has been since he first woke up after the accident.
Before they make the drive home, Maura takes him to one of the many pizza places in town for a rare treat. (Blue used to bring home pizza leftovers from her job at Nino's. Each slice tastes like a memory of her, and it's all Maura can do to choke down each bite.)
She waits until they're nearly finished. Until the check sits on the corner of the table (for whenever they're ready), and Jack is finishing up his last slice.
"Jack," she says, low and careful. "I think you should stop coming up here. The semester is starting soon. You should be moving into your dorm and making new friends. Not--"
Reading book after book to a girl who might never wake up.