Emergency Medical Dad

XLVII: present, late july

yeah i know it's like a saturday and i post on monday's and thursdays but i finally got over the sluggish pace i've been going (likely because i have a history midterm on tuesday and I absolutely adore stress writing) but i'm excited to have something that i feel like is pretty okay and so i'm posting

also because the peeps on my instagram voted for it, shout out to yall <3

so, some fluff for the crowd

JESSIE 

He's gone when I wake up, so are the crutches from next to the bed. Saturday. His shift should be the midday one, eight to four. I pray he found someone to cover it.

It really is too early to be awake for a Saturday, seven am, but I figured when he moved he must've moved me enough to knock me out of a sleep cycle.

I manage to get up and brush my teeth before slowly making my way downstairs for a cup of tea and to see where he went, still nervous about what he saw last night and in need of a good long conversation about what we think we're going to do now.

He's sitting on the back steps with a coffee mug in his hand, his phone in another, scrolling through something.

I decide on a glass of water before going to join him. "Hi."

"Good morning," he looks up at me, a little puffy around the eyes from exhaustion.

"You didn't get much sleep," I reach over and set my hand on his head, pushing it back so I can look in his eyes and so he stops giving me the downward angle sulky face. Connor does the same thing.

"Couldn't really sleep," he sighs, setting down his phone. "I spent most of the night content to just hold you there and let you sleep but I got restless a few hours ago, I needed to do some things. I had to make the email to my uncle that he doesn't need to keep looking for trainers, that I'm now planning on coming back unless something drastic happens, and one to my doctor, and an overview text to Ron so that when he gets up I can talk with him, try to offload some of the stuff from last night."

I reach over and set my hand over his, "how are you handling it?"

"I'm alright," he sighs. "Rattled, mostly, and I feel awful about wanting to go home and not stay here, especially because it means leaving you and Connor."

"It's alright, you know that?" I squeeze his fingers. "I'd rather you be healthy and away than spiraling and right here."

"I want to stay, I need you to know that, I want to stay so badly, but," he looks down at the stair his foot is on, "I can't handle last night happening again, I don't think I'd be able to come down from it a second time." He rubs his free hand down his face and then picks up the coffee again. "Hobbes had to spend two full hours trying to get me to calm down and even then I haven't... I'm not all the way back. I still need time. I just, if this weren't Chicago, if we had the means to be in a suburb where I wouldn't see what I know I'll see day in day out here, it might be better."

"Has this happened before?"

He purses his lips, "toward the end of my time here a few years ago, yeah. I... went a little sideways. I couldn't see a path forward, emergency medicine is rather dead end, there's no goals once you get to the top so I was out of things to drive for and I couldn't... figure anything out for a while. I got irritable and messed up quite a few relationships I had at the time because I was flat out paranoid of everything. Still am, because of that, but it was worse. I just... with the speed at which I'm approaching that again, I don't want to risk my relationship with you and Connor because my job is making me weird."