Behind Closed Doors

'You Owe Me A Life'

'Can we make a pact Alex?'

'Okay.'

'I saved your life, so you must promise to survive the surgery.'

'I'll try. Just for you kiddo.'

'That's not all. I saved your life, so you owe me. You have to save me, too. I can't let you die on me again. I don't...I won't be able to handle it. When you signed that fucking DNR form, you were signing me over as well. And you don't get to do that. Not again... I want to walk out of this hospital with you... I want to follow you back to wherever you call home, and I want to stay. You owe me. You owe me a home. A life.'

'You're not exactly playing the professional doctor here.'

'I know, and I don't care anymore.'

'...'

'I think being a doctor is the best thing that's ever happened to me. Until I met you. You became the best thing. Person. I choose the best.'

'You're going to give me another heart attack with all this.'

'I'm not kidding.'

'You'll wait for me, right?'

'I clearly have nothing better to do.'

'Clearly.'

'... I'll wait for you. Even if I have to wait sixty years, I'll wait for you. Even if you don't make it. Even if you don't pull through...I'll always wait. Be nice to the surgeon. He is going to replace your heart, after all.'

'Oh, don't sweat it, kid. I'm as sweet as honey when I want to be.'

'You're funny.'

The last little ounce of energy she possessed was gone. The oxygen mask back over her mouth again, and the time, tick, tick, ticking. Counting down the seconds until Alex would be sent to the operating room. To cradle the heart Piper had fought for her. It wasn't necessarily just an organ anymore, a muscle which pumped blood, helping the oxygen travel around the body, no longer just a machine.

Piper would love that heart. Feel it beat beneath her palm, rest her ear against her chest, listen, listen to her breathe, listen to her live, and fear that it might stop. It might simply stop. The fact that this woman, someone so dear and everything to her, could simply cease to be. Could simply disappear. Slip away one final time. It brought them together again, the exhausted, weak organ pathetically beat, beat, beating. The heart made it possible, made it inevitable, made them.

This time, this time around, she wasn't going anywhere.

When the hour arrived, Piper took her hand as her bed was rolled out of the ward, towards the operating room. Stopped, forbidden to go any further, and quietly whispered into her ear three words neither were prepared to hear.

Each little piece was set now.

Alex looked at her once. And when she was gone, taken away, Piper clung to that memory. That look. That sudden realisation she wasn't alone, never had been; that moment when there was life in her eyes. Despite being seconds away from death, despite embracing death only hours ago, there was still a glimmer of life in her eyes.

All for her. All for Piper.

Temporarily just a visitor, there was very little she could do, but stick to her promise and wait.

××××××××××××××××
It became habit.

Four hours. Twenty eight minutes. Thirteen seconds.

An eternity. It became habit, asking for updates. Requesting to observe from the gallery. Approaching a nurse. Mentioning Alex Vause, if she was okay. If the nurse wouldn't mind updating her every thirty minutes. If someone wouldn't mind talking to her. Telling her it was all going to be okay.