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"Anna, go!"
Standing in the back of the ambulance, her hand outstretched to her boyfriend ensnared in the thronging crowd below, Anna does something rare: she obeys. She pulls the doors closed, sick to her stomach, and when Zadro urges the vehicle forwards without Carter in it, she does not object.
She leaves him.
"Slow down, slow down: what exactly happened?"
She's pacing back and forth in the doctor's lounge, Kerry and Mark standing a short way away, wary, like they're dealing with a caged, terrified animal rather than a human being.
"We- we had to leave," she blurts, raking a hand through her hair in agitation. "They were- God, they were trying to climb into the ambulance, and John was still outside, and-"
"He couldn't get in?" Kerry interrupts.
Anna shakes her head. Even just the image of him, grasped at by so many hands, swallowed gradually by the bloodthirsty crowd, makes her nauseous. She'd tried to explain to them that she, Carter, and Zadro were just there to help, that they weren't picking a side just because the ambulance had been called for the instigator of the tenants' anger. Earlier that day, after all, she'd had to treat a man with a swastika tatted across his upper arm. Medicine isn't about being judge, jury, and executioner. If it were, she knows Carter well enough that there isn't a doubt in her mind what side he'd have taken here. He'd been barely controlling his tongue the whole time they were examining the landlord.
It didn't matter, though. The shouting was too overpowering, and even if she could have been heard above the noise, she doubts they would have chosen to listen to her. Their minds were already made up.
"Were the cops called? To break things up?" Mark asks.
"They were, and I thought- they told me that when they cleared the scene they'd give me an update, get Carter back here in a patrol car or something, but then they told Carol-"
"He wasn't there." The attending completes, voice lowering, brow creasing with concern. "Right… okay."
Clearly, he doesn't know what to do either. And who can blame him? Chicago is a big city, and if Carter isn't on that street anymore, he could be anywhere, in any condition.
"I'll call," He continues. "See if they can put out a BOLO for him. Maybe they already have."
Anna doubts the Chicago PD are that proactive, and frankly it scares her that locating Carter may well be in their hands now. She thinks of the hundreds, the thousands of people who go missing every day. How few ever turn up alive.
It's early, though, she reminds herself.
He could still turn up.
"Can I get a little help here?!"
Kerry's shout pulls Anna from her stupor, while the dozing patient she's supposed to be working on doesn't stir. It only takes a second for the events of the past few hours to come back to her, and then she's practically leaping from her stool in her haste to find out what's happening. Whether her hopes and fears are true.
As she rounds the corner into the ambulance bay (where Kerry's voice originated), her steps falter.
It's John.
He is here, and it's such a relief it makes her knees weak, except he isn't unharmed. His hand is pressed to his temple, from which blood trickles all the way down his cheek, while his other arm (the elbow of his ridealong jacket torn to reveal stuffing) is pulled close to his chest as though injured. His gaze is foggy, wandering even when Kerry holds him steady and shines her flashlight in his eyes.
"John? Hey, look at me, sweetheart. Where are you hurt? Can you tell me where you're hurt?"
He looks like a lost little boy. Confused, shellshocked, pale.
But then he spots Anna, and a different sort of light enters his eyes.
"Anna," he greets, voice faint. "You're alright?"
She wants to bundle him up in her arms. She wants to throttle him. He's the one who's been missing and evidently roughed-up, yet his concern is only for her, the person he martyred himself for in the first place. Stupid, stupid, lovely boy.
"I'm okay," She tells him, stretching out a hand. He lowers his from his head (there's a sizeable gash where it was sitting, surrounded by purple bruising) and intertwines their fingers until hers are slick with blood too. "Now let's focus on you."
She tugs gently, and this time, he's the one to obey.
They get him into a quiet exam room (he refuses the trauma room) and start an assessment, gently stripping the tattered jacket and the shirt he's wearing beneath it. His boots. His jeans. The bruise on his temple isn't solitary: many similar ones adorn his chest and back, and a large red mark engulfs his shoulder. When Kerry presses against the joint, he jerks away and yelps in pain.
It's dislocated. Not by much, but enough to cause significant discomfort. Kerry gets Anna to distract him with meandering conversation while she and the nurses reduce it. She feels cruel when his foggy attention sharpens into agony, but he seems soothed by the kisses she presses to his forehead in apology.
His head injury proves more difficult to resolve. On the surface it seems like little more than a cut that doesn't even require stitches, but the bruising and the altered mental status are a cause for concern. It becomes unignorable when, as Chuny starts an IV line in his arm, he suddenly murmurs that he's going to be sick, and follows through on that promise.
Vomiting is never a great sign.
While he retches and Anna rubs his back, Kerry orders a CT scan.
"Just to be on the safe side," She says.
By the time the results come in, John is already fast asleep. He isn't supposed to be, of course, and Anna has been trying to keep him awake, but even propped up and conversed with he slips away from her. She'd given up in the end and tucked the blanket around his waist, resigning herself instead to simply watching over him.
Kerry doesn't admonish her for this as she walks in, and it's this which provides the first clue that John isn't too badly off. If the head injury were anything severe, she wouldn't be so blase about him sleeping. Anna's suspicions are soon confirmed.
"It's a mild concussion," The attending days, gaze drifting between Anna and her charge. "He'll need time off and some TLC, but he'll be alright."
Anna looses a breath she didn't know she was holding. "Good… good."
"Mark says he's able to get John a room upstairs on one of the wards, but he figured you'd probably prefer him to stay here for the night."
Anna smiles weakly, reaching out to comb her fingers through John's hair as he dozes. Exhaustion and relief render her completely placid.
"If that's okay."
"Of course it is." Kerry pauses. "Would you like us to put a cot bed in here?"
Anna's cheeks heat at the realisation that, despite neither of them informing their colleagues about their relationship, today has all but confirmed what might have been only suspected before.
"Oh, uh- yes. Please."
"Alright… I'll get that sorted for you."
Upon Kerry's departure, Anna rests her chin on the railing of John's hospital bed and slips her hand into his. Warm, and soft, his pulse thumping steadily against her wrist.
She won't be going anywhere anytime soon.