The Darkest of Days

part seven

Rosa and Charles widen their eyes, their faces dropping slightly as they turn their heads from the commotion down the hall to Amy sat beside them.

Amy doesn't move from her seat, Mac still lying in her arms, but she watches down the corridor with worry spread across her face. She's unsure if her two friends say anything to her, all she can focus on is the blue flashing lights on the walls and the alert blaring out from feet away.

Her heart begins pounding in her chest, it feels as though it would come out at any moment, and her breathing becomes uneven. Panic begins soaring through her as she watches with uncertainty as new doctors run in the room and old ones walk out.

Suddenly Rosa's hand against her shoulder brings Amy's focus back to normal, her head turning around to face her friend. Rosa's voice is slightly muffled, there are bits she misses, but she makes out most of it.

"Amy, Amy, look at me, okay, just look," Rosa instructs before part of what she says goes through one ear and out the other as the alert plays again, the voice echoing off the inside of Amy's head, "It's gonna be alright, but you've just got to focus on me, nothing else."

The sergeant can hear her heart pounding as she tries her hardest to keep her attention on Rosa leaning over in front of her.

Rosa gives a very fake smile. "Or Mac, focus on Mac for me."

Hearing her son's name does what it was supposed to do, what it needed to do, bringing Amy's full attention down to the infant content in her arms. He seemed completely unfazed by the situation going on around him, he was happily eating and that's all that mattered to him.

In the corner of her eye, Amy can see Rosa nod, what looks like a subtle but genuine smile form on the edges of her lips. "Good, just keep your attention solely on Mac. Just Mac, it's gonna be alright."

She can feel the thumping against her ribs begin to ease, the pain alongside it fading away too, as the intensity of her heart rate appears to go down. It was still pounding, but the sensation of it about to burst out of her chest slowly starts to disappear. 

Her focus falls on the strands of dark hair on the top of Mac's head, the way the ends of the hair on the back of the infant's head begin to curl in on one another. She tries to listen to the small noises he's making as he eats, but doing that makes the voice from the alarm ring through her head again. One of his hand is balled up into a fist and rested just on top of his rounded cheek.

There's is the muffled sound of the alarm, the voice, the announcement, just about able to be heard, but she manages to block out most of the volume. She hears Rosa mumble something in front of her, but following her friend's orders, Amy continues to keep her attention locked on her son.

It's only when Mac begins fussing in her arms, telling his mother that he was done, that Amy looks up again to a sudden silence in the waiting room. The lights had stopped flashing, the alarm had gone quiet, and the corridor was no longer bustling to the brim with doctors and nurses.

Rosa was pacing slightly up and down a small row of chairs, Charles sat in one of them with his head in his hands. Rosa looks up when Amy speaks, the male detective giving a subtle gaze up with his eyes before planting them back down on the bright plastic floor.

"What happened? Why's everything stopped?" Amy questions, furrowing her eyebrows as she moves Mac up to her shoulder to burp the infant.

Rosa's emotionless face doesn't come off handy as she pauses. The detective gazes down the hall for a brief moment as if trying not to make eye contact with her friend.

"Rosa! Tell me what happened." Amy says, her voice much sterner than before, the volume increasing too.

The detective drops her eyes down to the floor momentarily before lifting them up to meet the worried stare coming from Amy. She slowly shakes her head. "They're running tests now, he was down for so long they're worried it might have caused damage. They don't know if he's brain dead or not, but the doctor said there's a possibility he is."