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Just as before, she is the first one to reach him.
The others have been scattered across the hospital by the tumultuous winds of the night, some still in operating theatres, some desperately trying to keep the ER afloat, some sitting in Doc’s with coffee cups between their palms as they reckon with the irreconcilable. Peter has been called in to perform another surgery. And Carter…
Through some miracle, Carter is alive. Peter and Donald sliced him open, stained their gloves with viscera and a mess of barely living organs, and somehow managed to sew him up again, delivering him into the sterile, gentle hands of the SICU.
She spends a few moments outside the glass, leaning on her crutch because her legs feel even unsteadier than usual, and she watches the people in a kind of haze. Nurses moving around the bed. Picking up charts, flicking through them. Checking cath bags, blood transfusions, pain medications. She's sure that most of them don't need to be there, but in truth, neither does she- not practically, anyway.
They're here because they know him, because they probably worked with him even before she did, when he was just a doe-eyed medical student tripping on their surgical gowns to keep up with them.
One of them squeezes his ankle as she drifts past the bed and out of the room. Kerry snaps out of her stupor long enough to murmur an uncharacteristically weak, “Excuse me?”
The nurse turns, likely expecting a nervous relative, and almost jumps when she sees who it is.
“Doctor Weaver?”
“How is he?”
She can't deal with niceties right now. If it doesn't pertain to Carter's condition, she quite frankly doesn't care.
The nurse, thankfully, appears to know this feeling well. She softens.
“Extubated and stable, still unconscious. His BP is slowly coming back to normal levels and his temp is elevated slightly, but not concerningly at this stage. Would you like to see him?”
Kerry nods.
“Of course. Just step right on through, you know the drill. If you have any questions or concerns just flag one of us down.”
The nurse disappears with little more than a reassuring smile, and Kerry is left behind the glass again, staring through into the silent unknown behind it. Carter is stable. He's being taken care of. Peter and Donald and Kovač and Chen and Abby and Lydia and so many others did what she couldn't. They fixed him. They had the guts to stand before his broken body and make it whole again.
So why on earth is it so difficult for her to do the simplest thing? Why can't she just step forward and meet him now, when the blood has been scrubbed away and his vulnerabilities swathed in protective layers?
Perhaps it’s not his vulnerabilities that are the problem.
Perhaps it's hers.
The SICU doors swing open again as another nurse makes her way in, and this time Kerry just about has the strength to follow. She must. Past the glass, the sounds suddenly blossom- monitors and oxygen hissing and quiet chatter amongst colleagues and the regular pattern of shoes against the floor tiles, and Kerry can't look down because when she looks down she sees blood, so much of it that her vision grows muddy and crimson, and it's his blood, and he's sprawled out there with Lucy, limp and pale and covered in the stuff, and she's dropping her crutch and turning him over and placing her hands on his cheeks while his cool breaths barely whisper against her palms.
Oh- oh, no. Oh no, sweetheart, oh no, it's okay- it's alright, I've- I've got you, John, you're alright, honey, open your eyes for me.
She blinks harshly, and the SICU rematerialises in front of her. So does Carter's bed.
It's difficult, at first, to parse him out amidst the wires and tubing, the streak of crimson that runs along his central line catheter, the impossible similarity between the white of his pillows and the pallor of his cheeks. Eventually, though, there he is, marked out especially by the purpling bruise on his forehead from where he hit the ground. His eyes are closed. His hair looks impossibly soft in a way suggestive of human involvement- perhaps a nurse noticed some matted blood. Decided to give it a wash after he came out of the OR.
She picks up on these details mostly because it avoids the whole, and so she can trick herself into slowly moving closer, until at last she's lowering herself on wobbly legs into the chair set up at his bedside. All the breath shudders out of her in a sigh as she takes him in fully.
Central line. Oxygen. John. IV. Catheter. Colostomy. John. Bandages. Antiseptic. Anesthetic. John.
Multiple stab wounds. Blood loss. Near fatal.
John.
Her hand finds his, and she squeezes, desperate for some kind of contact to reassure her that he isn't gone too. Lucy was already too much to bear. She can't imagine losing him too.
Not Carter. Not John.
With her other hand, she reaches up to that bruised spot on his forehead and lets her thumb glide across it, palm resting on the slightly-too-warm skin there. She'll have to keep an eye on this fever. The last thing he needs after everything is a post-operative infection.
He is completely still, utterly placid beneath her touch, and something about that is nauseating. When he was her tenant, there were times where she found him asleep on the couch, a medical textbook propped up on his chest, one hand dangling down beside it. In these moments, she used to allow herself the sort of softness she didn't often let him see. She'd pluck the textbook away. Drape a blanket in its place.
And, on her way out, she'd settle her hand against his forehead for the briefest of moments, her sense of secret accomplishment only growing when he butted gently against her palm.
Now, he is still. Far too still. She knows if she pushed lightly against his cheek, his head would loll all the way to the other side without resistance. Not that she will. Even this small gesture would seem brutal, disruptive. She tries to imagine what must be going on in somebody's mind to want to hurt Carter, to hurt Lucy, and it makes her feel sick.
A nurse comes by and gently slots a thermometer into Carter's ear, a small smile her only acknowledgement of Kerry. When the device beeps, the latter instinctively looks up for information.
Well?
“102.2.” The nurse says, adjusting Carter's blankets. “He only just came out of surgery, though. We can't judge things too soon.”
Kerry nods, but as the nurse walks away, the differential diagnoses are already whizzing around her mind. Infection of the surgical site? A UTI? Something deeper, more systemic? What if he's septic? What if he's slowing dying and they don't catch it until it's too late? What if he's-
Waking up. He's waking up.
His brow twitches into a furrow, and the hand in hers is no longer a lifeless weight, but something that moves and shifts and flexes its fingers with all the awkwardness of a calf learning to walk. His lips move, just as they had done when she first reached his side, and the beeping of the heart monitor grows rapid.
He's waking up.
She finds that she suddenly has no clue what to do, despite her years of medical training and experience. She almost reaches for the call button to summon a nurse.
But then those heavy eyelids unstick themselves and he looks at her from beneath them, gaze swimming with anesthetic and fever and exhaustion and fear, and instinct kicks in. She pulls her chair closer to the bed, cups his cheek with her palm, still squeezing his hand with the other.
“Hey, John. It's alright, sweetheart. You're okay. You're alright.”
His breaths are still forced into slow regularity by the drugs, but a whine emerges in his exhalations. Kerry swallows back the emotion, the nausea that overcame her earlier that day.
“I know, John. I know it hurts, honey. I know. You had surgery. Do you remember what happened before that?”
He blinks, slow and sedately. His gaze meets hers with no acknowledgement of what she's said at all- that's a no, then. How does she… how can she even…?
His nostrils flare, and her turmoil is interrupted by him trying to get up, pressing his shaking palms against the bedsheets and doing his best to lift himself away from them. Before she can even stop him, his own body does the job. He sinks back, breathing rapidly, colour draining from his face. His eyes are wet. He can still barely keep them open, and following his ill-advised attempt, his pupils persistently drift upwards towards the back of his head. It's through sheer force of will that he tethers them to the world around him.
“You need to stay still, sweetheart.” She says gently, carding through his hair. “Just lie back. Deep breaths.”
His breaths do deepen, though it's hard to know whether it's due to her command or an attempt to keep himself from succumbing to nausea. His pasty-white colour clues her in to it being the latter, though.
He closes his eyes. His throat bobs with a sickly swallow.
“John,” She calls quietly.
Nothing.
“Are you in any pain?”
Nothing.
“I can give you some more morphine if you need it, sweetheart.”
A tear slips from beneath a closed eyelid and traces a track down his cheek towards his ear. Another one, on the other side of his face, follows suit.
Kerry's heart breaks.
She reaches up to swipe them gently away, then leans in, pressing her lips gingerly to his forehead. He's so warm. God, he's warm, and she's worried about it of course but how can she truly be when, a matter of hours ago, he was so cold? She’d touched his cheek and he'd been made of ice. Now, he's fire and flame and he might burn out, but at least there is still a heat within him.
“It's okay to be afraid.” She murmurs. “I was too. I was terrified for you, John, more scared than I think I've ever been in my life. But you're going to be just fine. It's all going to be okay now, sweetheart.”
Her words fall on deaf ears. He's already gone again, face blank, tears drying on relaxed cheeks.
She squeezes his hand, and his pulse thunders reassuringly where her thumb brushes against his wrist.
Benton will finish up with his surgery soon. He'll come down here, and he'll take care of Carter.
Not just yet, though.
And until he comes swooping in with his demands and his neuro tests, she will sit here with the boy who used to sleep on her couch, and she will require nothing of him but the continual beating of his heart.