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When he first found out his paramedic ride-along was coming up, Carter was enthusiastic. He'd picked up his jacket as soon as he was able to, traced the lettering on its back with tentative fingertips, and shrugged it on in the mirror, turning this way and that to admire his new look. For days, he'd paid more attention to handovers, internally taking notes about the treatments the EMTs already had in place. Hell, even this morning he'd woken up an hour earlier than usual, bouncing on his tiptoes while he brushed his teeth.
As he's tossed around in the back of the ambulance, though, neck sticky with sweat, the sirens insistently wailing in his ears- he's decided the idea of a ride along was far superior to the experience itself.
“You good?” Raul asks from the passenger seat, and Carter remembers he's lucky in at least one respect. They put him with 47. He knows 47.
“Uh, yeah!” He calls back, voice barely audible over the noise. “Just- it's, uh, it's a little warmer than I expected back here!”
Shep snorts from the driver's seat. “It's July, buddy, what sort of temperature were you expecting?”
Carter tries for a grin, but as he dips his head down he feels a flush of shame rising to his cheeks. Right. Of course.
Shep and Raul get back to the conversation they were having a minute or so ago, and Carter strains to hear in vain for a moment before accepting at last that it isn't meant for his ears. Instead, he tightens his grip on the seat and prays they meet the next patient in an air-conditioned building.
This isn't the case, of course. They pull up outside a play park, and Carter learns that their patient is a kid who fell a little too hard from the monkey bars. It makes a nice, less lethal, break from the often critical patients he's called to consult on in the ER, and he's looking forward to testing out his pedes skills a little.
When he steps out from the ambulance, however-
“Woah, woah, easy, Tiger. What do you think we're going to do without any equipment?”
Carter frowns at Shep, then, with a small noise of understanding, gestures to the inside of the ambulance. “Oh, did you- did you want me to…?”
Shep directs an amused glance at Raul, then nods to Carter. “Absolutely. Why don't you grab the back board and that kit in there, follow us out when you're ready?”
He doesn't wait for Carter to reply, simply turning and walking away in the direction of their patient. Raul sighs.
“Sorry, man. He always lets power get to his head. I'm sure things’ll cool down soon.”
A few hours, three cases, and a whole lot of heavy lifting later, and any hope Carter has of Raul's words coming true is slowly slipping away. The heat has not subsided- metaphorically, yes, but also literally. Somehow, the Windy City is sitting at a temperature of over a hundred degrees, and it isn't even midday yet. A troubling weather report on the radio foretells of record-breaking figures to come.
“Dios mío, it's hot.” Raul exclaims, swiping his forehead with the back of his hand, leaning against the ambulance in a rare moment of quiet.
Shep laughs. Takes a swig from his water bottle. “You’re a fireman, buddy- this should feel practically arctic compared to what we're used to.”
Carter, crouching nearby, drenched in a cool sweat, can't help noticing that when Shep calls Raul ‘buddy’, it's spoken with far less bite than when he addresses Carter. And perhaps that can be put down to simple workplace familiarity and fondness for his partner. Perhaps it has nothing to do with Carter. Perhaps the sneer in Shep’s voice is imagined, and Carter is simply overthinking things, but he’s hardly unaware of how this stuff works- back in high school, Richard Skinner called him his ‘best bud’, then left sticky notes on his back when he wasn't looking and tripped him over in the halls. He knows the looks of these kinds of guys well.
Shep doesn't like him.
As if on cue, the medic whistles like he's summoning a dog, tapping a foot on the ground right beside Carter. “Come on, Johnny. Places to go, people to see.”
Carter squints up in the white hot sunlight, and sees the same bemused smirk from earlier on Shep’s face. Unfortunately, there's no time for him to deconstruct it any further. He pulls himself shakily to his feet. Tries to ignore the slight blotting in his vision as he does. Wanders back to the rear doors of the rig.
His shift will be over soon, he thinks, and then he can take the coldest shower of his life.
By the time lunch rolls around at two pm, Carter is feeling too nauseous to consider eating. He's been dragging gurneys around all morning, lugging kit bags for what feels like miles, and barely getting a moment's respite to take a drink of water.
So, while Raul and Shep tuck in to some sandwiches from a local deli, Carter finds himself in the same spot as before, desperately trying to choke down some water beside the ambulance. This time, he lacks the strength to crouch. He sits with his knees tented in front of him, pounding head bowed between his legs after every sip.
“Sure you don't want a sandwich, John?” Raul asks, genuine concern in his voice.
Carter shakes his head. Tries, yet again, for a smile. “Uh, no thanks. I'm… I'm alright.”
It doesn't feel quite true- ‘alright’ doesn't take into account his rising queasiness, nor the cramping in his muscles, nor the slowly drying stickiness of his skin- but Raul nods and lets him be anyway. As Carter takes another weak sip from his bottle, he hears fragments of a discussion from somewhere nearby.
“Lay off a little, won't you?”
“Oh, come on… not a kid.”
“...know that he's one of Carol's friends, right?”
“What the hell does that matter?... suddenly have to baby him?”
“... carry all the equipment? That's not protocol, man, and you know it.”
Carter tips his head back, letting it thunk limply against the cool metal. God, he's tired. If he could just sit here for a while and rest, he'd definitely feel better, but he's soon being tugged back from the brink of sleep by a hand on his shoulder- Raul gives him a sympathetic smile.
“We're moving again. Sorry.’
When they return to work, Shep is in an even pissier mood than before.
The hours start to pass in a haze, like the one that settles over the horizon on a long, hot road. Carter drags a backboard under his arm. Carter deposits it beside a patient. Carter stands, half delirious and barely aware of where he is, until he's called back to the ambulance again.
In the rig, he checks his watch. Despite the trembling of his arm, he can just about read that it's a little after three pm, which means…
Oh. It hasn't been ‘hours’ at all. Only one has passed.
When he swings his gaze towards the front and passenger seats, it tilts unnervingly. The nausea that’s been building steadily since mid-morning hits him all at once.
“Raul?” He calls. His voice is breathy and odd.
And now that he thinks about it, his breathing itself is odd too. Fast. Shallow. And his pulse. And-
“John? Hey, what is it?”
The medic glances back and forth between the road and the wing mirror- he's the one driving now, which at least makes this request a little easier.
“Could you…” Carter clears his throat. It changes nothing. “Could you pull over? Think I might b’about to throw up.”
Raul swears under his breath in Spanish, at once swerving onto the side of the road and finding a place to park. Shep, too, turns around from the passenger seat, and the way the colour drains from his cheeks isn't a reassuring sign.
A second later, the rear doors of the ambulance are swinging open, and Carter is stumbling out, doubling over by the roadside and retching onto a patch of dried grass. His vision swims. A hand finds his back, and a gentle voice drifts in from beside him.
“Easy, man, easy. Deep breaths.”
From further off comes another- less immediately gentle, but tinged with a concern that wasn't there before.
“Hey, he's good, right? Motion sick?”
Carter's nostrils and throat burn. His neck burns. His chest burns. Every muscle in his body burns.
“I don't know, Shep.” The hand on his back finds his forehead, but is drawn quickly away. “Jesus, man, I think you gave him heatstroke.”
“What?!”
“Yeah, I think he- alright, hang on a sec, John, just… just sit down. Sit down, I need to-”
His neck stops burning. His chest stops burning. Every muscle in his body stops burning. All he can feel is heaviness, and a deep drowsiness that pulls him into an embrace and doesn't let go. He sinks down.
“Woah, John? John? Hey, are you with me? Are you-?”
The world falls away completely.
“Need some help out here!”
Carol's sitting at admit when she hears Shep’s shout, the edge in his voice so sharp that it jolts her out of her seat. As she stands, she sees a hardly unfamiliar sight- her boyfriend and Raul hurrying a gurney down the corridor- but something feels inherently different. Wrong.
Mark reaches the gurney before she’s even really moving, the expression on his face making her stomach twist.
“What happened?”
“Heat stroke.” Raul answers, while Shep remains oddly silent. “BP 80/60, pulse 120. Vomiting followed by altered LOC and a Grand Mal seizure that lasted five minutes.”
She swoops around the admit desk, catching them just as they turn the corner, her hands landing on the railing just as Mark calls the name she least expects.
“Carter? Open your eyes, bud. Open your eyes.”
And then he's there, the nameless patient on the gurney suddenly transforming into the kind-hearted med student she knows and loves, the baby brother of their little family. His paramedic jacket is balled up by his feet. His eyes are closed, his skin pale yet flushed at the same time. He doesn't respond to Mark's command at all.
“Alright, let's get him into trauma two.” The attending announces, then flashes Carol an imperative look. “We need as many ice packs as we can get, cooling blankets, and fans, now.”
She nods, spinning around to leave and bumping into Doug Ross, whose brow immediately furrows as he takes in the scene.
“What-”
“Carter has heatstroke.”
“Christ. How the hell did-”
“Later.” Mark cuts in tersely. “Right now, we need to focus on cooling him down. Carol, ice.”
The urgency of her mission recalled to her, she tears her eyes away from the collective shock of the scene and sets off at a sprint down the corridor.
By the time she returns less than a minute later- a basin of ice packs under one arm, a fan and cooling blankets under the other- those in the trauma room are already getting to work. They've stripped Carter of his scrubs, stuck ECG leads to his chest, inserted IV lines into reddened arms. He's wearing an oxygen mask that fogs with each rapid breath.
“Got the ice.” She calls out. Mark slings his stethoscope round his neck and approaches her, already pulling ice packs from the basin while Doug glances briefly in their direction. He's standing at the head of the bed, checking Carter's pupils.
“What’re we looking at?” Carol murmurs.
Mark hefts the cooling blanket on top of the ice pack bundle in his arms. His gaze is serious.
“Not good. Rectal temp is 106.2.”
He turns away before she can even begin to process his words. And she doesn't want to, really, which is perhaps why she wastes no time in rushing to Carter's side and setting up the fan she's still got a hold of. It's something for her hands to do.
Mark and a few of the other nurses start arranging ice packs, tucking them under Carter’s armpits, against his groin, his neck, his sides. The cooling blanket- thin, damp- is draped over the lower half of his torso. Once Carol gets the fan going, she positions it towards his face and chest.
Despite it all, though, he shows no signs of waking.
“Carter? Come on, bud, open those eyes for me.”
Doug’s words have as much effect as Mark's. The pupil check reveals a sluggishness that isn't promising, either.
“Definitely post-ictal.” He murmurs. “How long did you say he was seizing?”
This question is directed towards Raul and Shep, of whom the latter remains glued to the corner of the room. Carol tries to shoot him a look, brow furrowing, but his gaze is averted.
“Five minutes.” Raul answers. “I was prepping Lorazepam when he stopped.”
“And how long ago was that?”
“Ten, fifteen minutes ago? As soon as it was over we scooped and ran.”
There are a few nods and more hurried orders for medications, yet Carol's mind lingers, and as she wrings out a wet rag to drape across Carter's forehead, she asks,
“From where?”
Raul turns to her. “Pardon?”
“You said as soon as it was over, you scooped and ran- from where? Where were you when it happened? What exactly were you doing?”
She doesn't mean to launch an interrogation. Still, the flush that rises to her boyfriend’s cheeks is alarming, and she's about to prod him- specifically him- again, when-
An alarm blares. The gurney rattles. When she looks down, she finds Carter's eyes rolled all the way back, his nostrils flaring, his entire body tensing and jerking.
“Seizure!” Mark calls out, removing Carter's oxygen mask in one swift motion. “Someone grab a bite block, and draw up a loading dose of Dilantin- 10mgs per kg.”
The room erupts into activity. One of the nurses darts away and returns with a bite block that Carol slots between Carter's teeth, his saliva bubbling over onto her fingertips, his eyes flickering like faulty bulbs. Another nurse manoeuvres his arm while Doug attaches a syringe to the IV cannula there. Pushes down the plunger to deliver the dose, fighting to keep Carter held down long enough to do so.
The doors to the trauma room swing open, and the uneven gait of this new entrant makes her identity obvious. Kerry’s speed only increases when she sees who's on the table.
“What happened?”
That's exactly what Carol wants to know.
“Heat stroke, the exact circumstances of which are currently unknown. Temp 106.2, BP 80/60, pulse now-” Mark glances at the monitor. “134. Had a grand mal seizure approximately fifteen minutes ago and hasn't regained consciousness since. Current seizure has been going on for-” Another check, this time his watch- “30 seconds. Loaded him up with Dilantin, currently waiting to see if it'll subside.”
Kerry nods, and, contrary to what Carol expects, doesn't immediately start barking orders or overturning the ones currently in place. Instead, she moves to Carter's side and places a hand on his forehead, helping to calm the motion as he continues to seize.
“Alright, sweetheart.” She murmurs, barely audible over the blaring alarms. “Shh, it's okay. We're looking after you.”
After another surreal ten seconds, the rattling slows, and the alarms grow less insistent in their screeching. Carter sinks back limply against the gurney, breath shuddering. Flickering eyes falling closed.
“There we are.” Kerry soothes, before turning her attention back to the others. “Let's get a new temp.”
Haleh doesn't hesitate to step in and fulfil the request.
“105.3.” She announces once the thermometer beeps. “Nearly a whole degree lower than it was.”
Kerry nods again. “Good… good. Let's hope it continues that way, and quick. Any idea of his neuro status?”
Any sense of relief is snuffed out by this reminder. Doug shakes his head.
“Before the last seizure his pupillary responses were delayed, and we're yet to see a significant LOC.”
“Alright. Keep trying… Do we know where his resident supervisor is?”
Of course. Benton.
Now it's Mark's turn to shake his head. “Dr Benton has been up in surgery for the last few hours, and we haven't had time to page him. I’ll… I'll let him know what's going on. Dr Hicks, too.”
“Good. Anyone know Mr Carter's emergency contact information?”
Carol's chest constricts. It may just be her, but all that she really knows about Carter's family is that they're wealthy. She looks down at their new patient again and slowly withdraws the bite block from between his teeth. His jaw is slack again. His lips slick with spit.
She plucks an unused cloth from a basin nearby and wipes it across his chin, her other hand beginning to card through his hair in a facsimile of Kerry's movements.
“I'll find it.” Lydia says, voice a little wobbly. Carol knows how she feels.
And God, she's feeling it again just looking at him. The others are moving, adjusting wires, swapping out ice packs, yet she remains right there by his side with heated cheeks and stinging eyes.
He's 24. And he's gentle, naive, and clumsy.
He's just a boy.
Her gaze lifts and at last meets Shep’s.
What the hell happened to him? She tries to convey with a look.
Her boyfriend inhales a sharp, shallow breath, and ducks out through the trauma room doors.
The screaming pain hits him like a brick wall. One moment he's there, drifting in the nothingness, and the next he can feel everything. His muscles are cramping, his stomach is churning, his skin is so hot he's burning from the inside out. There are fountain pens jabbing at his arms. Wax seals on his chest. A horse-feed bag over his mouth.
He's in his father's office, he's in the dry grass under the apple tree. He's somewhere and nowhere and he hurts.
His arm spasms the moment he tries to lift it, and when he cries out in pain, the sound is muffled. A hand clasps his.
“Hey, stay still, Carter. Don't try to move, sweetheart.”
Another touch brushes against his cheek, but it's ice-cold, and he finds himself lurching away from it- only to end up gripped, yet again, by the worst agony of his life. For a few moments, he's stuck in a negative feedback loop, jolting away from the pain that makes him jolt away, thrashing, crying out, trying to sit up, trying to lay back down. More hands press against his skin, all of them frigid, and push him to the ground.
“Shh, it's okay, it's alright- you're okay, baby, calm down. You're safe.”
A different voice now joins in too.
“We're taking care of you, bud, just relax.”
He forces his hammering heart to slow and resists his instinctual urge to flee, instead letting the hands keep him grounded. Their touch, in turn, loosens, still present on his skin (and more soothing by the second now that they're starting to warm up), but caressing rather than gripping.
“Good boy. Good boy, Carter, you're doing so well. Can you open your eyes for us?”
Exhausted and confused yet eager to please, he puts all his energy towards ungluing his sticky eyelids. When they're first pried open, his vision is too blurry to make anything out, but a tissue soon wipes away the thin residue keeping him blind.
“That’s it… good job. It's alright to cry, honey, but I promise you're safe.”
Faces bob into view. He knows them. There's Kerry, and Mark, and Doug, and Carol and Haleh and Lydia and-
Something nearby starts beeping quicker, and a few of the faces withdraw, others moving in closer to take up more of his attention.
“Take some deep breaths for me, Carter.” Mark says. Carter complies. “There we go. Very good. And can you follow my finger?” Carter complies. Mark nods. Turns to somebody Carter can't see, lying down as he is.
“Neurological function appears intact.”
His face swims back into view more clearly, and he gives Carter a smile that patients must usually be on the receiving end of. Which is odd, because Carter isn't…
He looks around despite the immediate instructions to keep still. He's hooked up to wires, and tubes, and there are ice packs all over him, and he's practically naked.
“You've got heat stroke, bud.” Mark explains. He's brushing back Carter's hair as he speaks, and it's enough to make the recipient of the gesture drowsy again. “You’ve been very sick for a few hours and you’ve had a couple of seizures, which is why you might be feeling a little confused about what's going on. It's also why you're probably very tired right now, and sore. We can get you some pain medication if you'd like it, okay?”
Carter nods on instinct, but even this small movement sends pain shooting up his neck. He looses a whimper and squeezes his eyes shut.
“I know, buddy, I'm sorry. I’m gonna go get you some morphine. Don't go anywhere.”
This last line is delivered like a joke, and Carter knows he must be coming back to himself because he can recognise this. He flexes his fingers, wiggles his toes. Begins to catalogue the sensations other than the aching in his muscles but gets tired pretty quickly, eyes drifting closed again before Mark even returns.
A hand cards through his hair, touch lighter than the attending’s. He recalls that there are others here, lurking in the corners just out of sight, and opens his eyes to identify them. He's met with Carol peering down at him.
“Hey there.” She begins softly, still stroking his hair. “You gave us a hell of a scare, Carter.”
Guilt swirls in his gut. He tries to tell her he's sorry for frightening everyone, but he's too tired to speak properly- and even if he were able to, Carol is quick to stop him.
“Shh, don't try to talk.” She adjusts something over his face. Not a horse-feed bag, then, but an oxygen mask. Of course. “Just breathe, sweetheart. In and out, nice and slow. That's it.”
As she speaks, voice low and soothing, she resumes her ministrations, and Carter allows himself to melt beneath the touch. There are questions that he still has to ask, and things that he must surely be doing. Right now, though, none of them matter. He can't even recall them, boneless and brainless as he is.
“Here we are.” Mark re-emerges, wafting a syringe in view before it dips to a cannula in his arm. Carter’s gaze rolls down to watch it align with the port and emits a single, breathy laugh at the surreality of the whole thing. He should be administering morphine, not laying on a trauma table receiving it.
“And iiiiinnn it goes.” The plunger is slowly depressed, the syringe disconnected and discarded. “This’ll probably make you quite sleepy, alright?”
Carter nods clumsily, and in a matter of moments he's already feeling it. The creeping warmth, the buzz of encroaching oblivion, the urge to just close his eyes and forget his own name. Carol’s hand rakes again and again through his hair.
“ICU got a bed for him yet?” She murmurs.
Mark sighs, shoulders sagging. “Nope. Looks like we might have to find a quiet bay for him down in the ER, keep an eye on him that way.”
“That's no bad thing. I'm sure everyone else’ll be glad to have him close by.”
Carter’s vision starts to blur, eyelids drooping.
“Oh, no doubt… Kerry’s going to call a meeting in a little while, by the way.”
“A meeting?”
“To find out more about what happened. She only really wants Shep and Raul in there with us, but you're more than welcome to join, too. You might be able to get a little more out of Shep than we can.”
He blinks slowly, the world around him sinking into obscurity.
“You think he's hiding something?”
“I don't know, but I think maybe we need to consider the fact that…”
Sweet, sweet oblivion.
Carol’s too busy helping Carter get settled to attend the first half of Kerry's meeting. She doesn't have to be there- Haleh, Lydia, and Chuny would definitely be fine without her- but she doesn't have it in her to leave before everything is in order.
Once he's comfortably napping in a new bay, though (and the other nurses have agreed on a schedule of bedside vigil), she bids him adieu with a kiss on the forehead, and makes her way to the empty exam room in which the meeting is taking place. From the moment she steps inside, it quickly becomes obvious that the verdict has already been reached.
“You understand, Mr Shepherd, that what you're describing is grossly irresponsible, not to mention needlessly cruel?”
Kerry’s tone is sharp, and though she controls her voice with the same fortitude that she displays in her personality, it continually rises in volume. She's on the verge of snapping.
Something has seriously gone down.
Carol's gaze flits to Shep, looking (ironically) sheepish, eyes avoidant, hands shoved deep into his pockets.
“Yes.”
“And that not only were you intentionally causing Mr Carter discomfort, but endangering his life in the process?”
“Yes, Dr Weaver.”
What?
Kerry stands abruptly, and Mark soon follows suit.
“Thank you, Mr Shepherd. I believe we've heard enough. Mr Melendez, thank you for your time.”
Together, attending and chief resident depart the room, the latter shooting Carol a sympathetic glance before he leaves. Raul murmurs something to Shep, then makes a swift exit as well.
And then there were two.
Carol crosses her arms, prickling with confusion and discomfort. Shep still avoids her gaze, leaning against the kitchen counter a few metres away.
“Well?” She says. “What the hell was that about?”
Her boyfriend has the nerve to shrug.
“Shep.”
“I made a mistake, alright? A stupid mistake. That's all.”
He sounds like a petulant child, and it only serves to make her angrier. His youthful tendencies used to seem endearing. When did the tide change?
“What kind of mistake?”
Another brief period of silence. A sigh. He kicks his foot lightly against one of the cabinets as he starts to speak.
“I… it was supposed to be kind of a- a hazing, Carol.”
Her blood runs cold.
“What do you mean, Shep?”
Another sigh. This time, he rolls his eyes too.
“Hazing. Y’know, make him carry all our shit? Run back and forth between the patient and the rig? That sort of thing. I mean, it hardly constitutes as torture.”
For a moment, she's so dumbfounded by his nonchalance that she can't speak a word. After a moment, though-
“So… during the middle of possibly the worst heatwave in the city’s history, you made him run around for you? Christ, Shep.” She scoffs humourlessly. “You think that sort of thing is funny?”
He throws his arms up, brow furrowing in frustration at her. “Oh, don't try to play the moral high ground, Hathaway, you ER guys are always playing pranks on the new kids!”
Pranks.
Pranks.
“Is that what you think that was? A prank?”
He’s convulsing, head thrown back, lips totally bloodless while his cheeks blaze with heat. She has to hold him steady to keep him from shattering.
Shep exhales, arms flopping down again. “Yeah. It was a prank. He was being a little irritating, asking loads of questions, and I just- I thought maybe it'd shut him up for a while.”
He's silent when he wakes for the first time after the seizure, gaze blank despite her gentle coaxing. She calls his name- both names- but is met with no response. He simply blinks slowly up at her, vaguely frightened, like a lost little boy in the midst of a busy shopping mall. She wants to lead him back to familiarity. She just doesn't know how.
“He asked too many questions.” Carol parrots dully.
“Yeah. Yeah, it- it was just hazing. I didn't mean for him to get- he was never supposed to get hurt. You get that, right? I mean, it's not like I went out there with the express purpose of-”
“But you knew how hot it was outside.” She cuts in, patience wearing thin.
“Well, yeah, but- do I really have to go through all this with you? I mean, c’mon, Carol, you know me-”
“Apparently I don't.”
Whatever excuse he was about to rattle off trails into nothingness instead. He meets her eyes fully, then steps forward as if to take her gently by the arms. She steps outside of his grasp.
“We’re finished, Shep. Go home.”
Her voice only wobbles a little, and then she's turning back to the door, pulling herself up taller and ignoring his initial pleas for her to wait. To listen. Then from bargaining comes anger, and-
“Seriously? That scrawny kid means more to you than our relationship?!”
Carol bristles. She wheels round to look at him again, and judging by the way he jolts, the look in her eyes could kill.
“If you knew me at all, you'd know that Carter is like the ER's little brother, Shep. Like my little brother. And he's more of a man than you'll ever be.”
By the time he's finding his stammering voice again, the door to the lounge is slamming behind her.
The little bay, as she steps within its confines, is about as populated as she expects it to be. There are nurses scattered at the bedside, Benton standing in the corner with his arms tightly folded, Kerry meticulously checking IV lines and continuous temperature readings.
And, of course, in the middle of it all, Carter. Eyes closed, chest rising and falling regularly, still draped with several damp cloths (one on his forehead, another on his neck, more on his arms), but looking far more like the med student taking a nap they've all stumbled across before.
After a few moments, Benton is called away and Kerry flits off as well, leaving only the troupe of nurses.
“How is he?” Carol murmurs.
Haleh, holding his hand, smiles fondly. “Sleeping. Poor baby’s had a long day.” Her expression fades into something more solemn. “We heard about what happened- the way he got sick, I mean… How did things go with you and Shep?”
Carol wanders to an empty seat at Carter's bedside. The air still smells vaguely of sweat and illness, but it doesn't matter.
“There is no ‘me and Shep’ anymore.” She says, sitting down. Reaching out and brushing her thumb idly against the scar on Carter's cheek.
Nobody asks her to explain any further. Nobody needs to.
Instead, they all sink back into silence, listening to the sound of him breathing and waiting for him to come back to them fully.