Five Strangers
Pairing: Speed/Calleigh
Spoilers: Ostensibly for the season premiere, Lost Son, but also probably a little AU… it’s a medical thing!
Notes: For the LiveJournal 15minuteficlets challenge #73 -- I was supposed to be all about the denial fic, then I saw the word.
You know that you shouldn’t be here, not really. It’s not part of your job, and God knows, it’s not the most pleasant place in the world to be at any time, and especially not now, not today.
You have a husband at home, two beautiful kids, and all you want to do is be with them, pull them close to you, let them remind you of all the good in the world. And if you weren’t there, with them, you have a group of good friends who are hurting just as badly as you are, drowning their sorrows and waking your friend in style.
You know all this, but you’re still here, in this cold hospital observation room, and you look at every second of this operation.
Well, you try to look. Tears tend to get in the way.
You’ve done this before, but you’ve never cried. Usually, you think that this is the miracle of the circle of life, not to mention the miracle of modern technology, of how far we’ve come.
Even now, intellectually, you know how many people are going to be helped by this.
In
In
Two people, a thirty something mother of
one in
Someone in
Five people are getting new lives tonight, and that’s miraculous.
You know that, and you’re happy for them.
You just wish that it could have come any other way than this. Because you know, without even having to think about it, that if you had the choice of saving five strangers and saving your friend, you’d be selfish.
You’d save him.
But life’s not like that, so all you can do is stand here, in this cold hospital observation room, pressing your hand to the glass as if it will bring you closer to him, bring you some comfort.
All you can do is whisper to another dead person, just the way you do in the morgue every day, and hope that, wherever he is, he can hear you.
“Sleep well Timmy. We love you.”