Emergency Medical Dad

LIX: october, present

JORGEN

I open my eyes to find her gaping at me, sweet and gentle and stunned. It's not really what I was going for but she's not exactly all the way calm enough to be acting like herself and I figure I should've guessed this was going to be an incredibly abnormal thing to ask that would spark an equally abnormal response.

"Jay..." she breathes, and there it is again, the feeling in my gut I felt when I saw her on the sidewalk, the tug and the melting sort of urge that I can't decipher.

"I know it's a lot to ask but I have mostly everything set up if you say yes. My house has two extra bedrooms, I know people in the school and they say that they do this sometimes for other kids so it should be alright if we want to do this as well and I know my way around the paperwork now and even though a lot of it is a long long long time in waiting we could do this soon as to not put Connor through any more of that school so I-"

She lurches at me, throwing her arms up around my shoulders, burying her face in my neck and choking out a sort of strangled noise I can't put together.

I catch her, too shocked to do much of anything.

"Jess," I mumble, wrapping one arm up around her back, the other keeping us upright.

She makes another little noise and I realize she's crying, full out crying into my shoulder.

"Hey, hey, hey," I try to get her to pull her head back so I can see her expression, "woah, what did I do? Jessie, what's wrong, what's going on?"

She does pull back, looking up at me, then grabbing my shirt and shaking, "I hate you so much."

That catches me off guard and she gives me one last final aggressive shake, making my hair flop backward and then fall forward into my eyes.

"I hate you I hate you I hate you," she cups under my chin and pushes the hair back. "How can you be so fucking perfect, how can you be so good? How do you do it?"

My mouth is dry, "you're swearing a lot tonight."

"I know, I'm sor-"

"I like it," I blurt before she can finish.

"O-oh."

"So is that a yes or a no on Canada?" I ask, glancing down at her fists still balled up in my shirt.

She nods, another small bout of tears slipping out of her eyes.

"Jessie, sweetheart, please stop crying, please-" I reach up and brush her cheeks off. "Do you want to do this? Or-"

"Yes, I want to," she says with a whole lot more conviction than I expected. "Please, please, please get us out of here. I'm so tired of it here."

I sag in relief, wrapping my arms around her back again and squeezing, "that was a whole lot easier than I thought it would be."

She just hums into the hug, running her fingers up and down my back. "Do you have much of a plan? You mentioned some stuff but I wasn't really listening."

I nod, "do you want to brush your teeth and get into PJs first? It's going to take me a while."

"Sure."

She slips into my bathroom and changes, brushing her teeth while I lay with my shoulders propped up on the headboard, confused, but happy, really happy.

I don't quite know how to feel about all of it, scared, I guess, scared of what the next few weeks or months are going to mean, scared of what my parents might think, scared of moving Connor around again, scared of a lot, but I'm mostly just excited to see her again and excited that all my wandering hypotheticals and mental scenarios have a better shot at coming true now.