Emergency Medical Dad

XXXIII: present, peter's wedding day

yall gotta comment on this one cuz i feel like it's outta the blue and i feel like the intro should be longer

SENSITIVE CONTENT: PLP EPISODE, MENTION OF GUN MALFUNCTION/INJURY, SLIGHT PTSD. SUMMARY AT THE BOTTOM. 

JESSIE

Something is wrong with Jorgen, more wrong than he's been letting on to or more wrong than he even knows. He's fidgeting when we sit down and fidgeting more when the ceremony starts.

He makes it through the first half hour but then Ben Peters comes up to do a reading and I watch him go clammy and he lasts only a minute before whispering to me that he needs to go to the bathroom and will be back.

I lean over to May the second he's out the back door of the hall, "I'm going to follow, can you keep eyes on Connor?"

Connor has buddied right up to May, sitting on her other side between her and Bernie.

"Yes, go," she nods, keeping her voice quiet.

I nod and slip out behind Jorgen, keeping my head down, walking straight to the side door and into the cool room on the other side. I follow the signs for bathrooms and find myself at the bottom of a stair in the church basement, looking down the hallway toward two doors that look like bathrooms.

I have a sudden flashing image of Jorgen pulling me into one and kissing me against the door but it's gone before I even have time to process it, replaced with anxiety over the soft thud I just heard from the first door.

I set my hand on the handle and push, the latch popping open much to my surprise.

"Jess, please, not now," his voice is half strangled.

"Jorgen?" I fall to my knees the second I see him, back propped up against the wall, legs extended.

"Jessie I sai-'' it's cut off by a look on his face I can only describe as agony. He buckles and I flip my legs around, crossing them on the bathroom floor.

"Jorgen? Jay-" I scoop his head up and settle it into my lap as he comes down from whatever that was, my hand on his cheek. "What's happening?"

He shakes his head and then starts again, legs stretching and pulling in fingers curled tight around my wrists, mouth open on the heel of my hand. I put my other hand down on his chest, unsure what to do, resting it there and feeling how quickly his heart is going.

And I watch, unable to help, unable to stop it. I have to watch the pain in his face and the sweat on his forehead and listen to his quick breathing and the tiny little stifled whimper when he seizes up again and I don't know what's wrong. I don't know how to fix it.

He goes limp but the look on his face is nothing but agony. I reach forward to touch him but he bats my hand away, rolling off my lap and curling up, a strangled sound escaping his throat, muscles going tense, body curling tighter into itself.

I slide forward, trying not to manhandle him but encouraging him to put his head back into my lap just as he seizes again.

After a few more seconds he presses his cheek into my hand and a tear slips out of his left eye. It's alarming, to me, to see that, to feel him actively searching out my hand on his cheek, to see the tear fall.

"Jorgen," I say, softly, pushing back the hairs that were knocked loose.

He doesn't say anything, just turns his head fuller into my lap, hiding his face from my view, his long body stretched out across the tile, ruffled up in his suit, back just starting to relax.