Diventare-Chapter 2
Spoilers all the way through Season 4 including To Hell…and Back 4X25
Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds, I am making no profit from the writing of this fic.
smacky30 is such a wonderful beta and she hasn’t killed me yet, so, you know, bonus! And she gets credit for the title.
Chapter 1
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Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death. –Anais Nin
He’s shown to a small private waiting area with a few chairs and a sofa covered in cheerful fabrics in primary colors. Hotch is there, looking particularly grim. The younger man doesn’t show any surprise at seeing Dave. The whole team will be there eventually they both know. Rossi is only shocked they haven’t shown up in the time it took him to get there.
“Do you know anything yet?” Rossi’s keeping a tight grip on his emotions; yelling and making a scene are not going to help Emily or get him any more information any more quickly.
“They took her for an ultrasound.” Hotch has medical power of attorney for the whole team and JJ has one for Hotch. Considering the nature of their work and the travel involved it’s a good precaution. “She started hemorrhaging in the ambulance.” His tone is flat and tired and that, more than the word “hemorrhaging,” lets Rossi know how bad it must have been. His knees are beyond weak and he sinks into one of the brightly colored chairs.
“Did they give you any idea…” he has no idea how to finish that statement…What’s wrong? Why she passed out? Why she was bleeding? If she was going to be all right? Hotch just shakes his head, his jaw clenched and Dave wants to start breaking things. A heavy silence settles between them and Dave tries to remember how to pray.
It’s not that he’s out of practice; he prays every day. He just can’t seem to keep hold of a thought for very long.
Our Father, who art in heaven…
Should have made her stay home this morning.
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…
What so she could be laying there bleeding to death with no one to find her until you got home tonight?
Hallowed be…
Should have known she wasn’t right; should have taken her to the doctor when she turned her nose up at the coffee.
Thy kingdom come…
Please, God, just…please.
The others arrive en masse less than fifteen minutes later. Both JJ and Garcia have red noses and red rimmed eyes, Morgan looks almost as grim as Hotch, and Reid looks nothing short of shell shocked. If he weren’t about to jump out of his skin he’d take a minute to find it ironic. All the death and violence they see, all the pain and ugliness and they barely bat an eye; but this, whatever this is, with Emily and they’re all shaken to the core. It was the same with Garcia, Reid and Hotch. But those had been a result of the job in some way and this wasn’t and this was…Emily.
There’s pitifully little to say. Hotch mentions the scan but not the bleeding and JJ says she left a message for Ambassador Prentiss with her number. Hotch gives terse instructions for everyone to be sure their emergency contact information is updated the next time they’re in the office. Then there’s nothing to say and the silence becomes tense fast.
When the door opens, they all rise and the doctor who enters looks surprised to see so many people in the room. “You’re here for Emiily Prentiss?” At the collective nods, the doctor’s eyes sweep over the six of them. “I’m Dr. Robert Porter.”
Hotch steps forward and offers his hand, obviously deciding official is likely to get him what he wants faster. “Supervisory Special Agent Aaron Hotchner.”
Dr. Porter looks at the file in his hands and Rossi notes the reddish brown blood smeared on the doctor’s blue scrubs with a sick feeling while the man verifies something in his notes. “You have her POA?”
“Yes,” Hotch confirms.
“Is one of you named Dave?” The doctor addresses the question to the room, but he’s looking straight at Rossi so he just nods. “Are you…?”
The doctor leaves the question hanging, obviously not sure how to read the room. But the unspoken is clear to Dave whatever form it might have taken (Involved? Lovers? Sleeping together? Damned near living together?) so, he helps the doctor out, gives him what he’s looking for.“Yes.”
The doctor nods. “Can I speak with the two of you outside for a moment?”
When they’re all three in the hall with the door firmly closed, Dave shakes the doctor’s hand. “David Rossi. How is she?”
“She’s surfaced a couple of times and asked for you. She’s being prepped for surgery,” he holds up a hand when Dave tries to interrupt. “I’ll take you to see her for a minute before she goes in.”
Hotch’s eyes are moving back and forth between Dr. Porter and Dave as if the doctor is speaking a foreign language that only Dave can interpret. “In the meantime, I need to inform Agent Hotchner about her condition. HIPAA forbids me from informing anyone else without her permission or the permission of the person with her power of attorney. ”
Both Dave and the doctor turn to look at Hotch expectantly, but he just looks confused and frustrated. “What?”
The doctor checks his notes again, then pinches the bridge of his nose. “Mr. Rossi–“
“Agent Rossi,” Hotch corrects and Dave wonders why the hell it matters.
Dr. Porter amends, “Agent Rossi, am I correct in assuming you and Agent Prentiss are involved with each other?”
Hotch’s eyes are wide and sharp as Dave confirms, “Yes.”
The doctor turns back to Hotch. “I’d like your permission to include Agent Rossi in my evaluation of Agent Prentiss’s condition. It impacts him as well.”
Rossi is so tense he feels like he’s vibrating. He’s grateful the doctor is trying to get Hotch to include him, but he’s filled with so much dread he’s swallowing bile and Hotch just doesn’t seem to be getting it. When Dave speaks his voice is urgent and low. “Aaron. Please.”
“Yes. Fine.” Hotch looks like he’d like nothing more than a few days and a fifth of some nicely aged Scotch to process the last couple of hours, but mainly the last five minutes.
But the doctor doesn’t give Hotch the time he needs. “Agent Prentiss has an ectopic pregnancy with implantation in the proximal fallopian tube. “ The doctor isn’t half a dozen words in before Dave’s world is flipped on its side. It takes every bit of self control he has to stay focused on the rest of what the man has to say. “It appears to have invaded the Sampson artery, which is what caused the bleeding. At this point I suspect a rupture, but we couldn’t be sure from the ultrasound. We’ll go in, remove the implantation, repair the artery and the tube as much as we can.”
“Implantation?” Rossi questions. He knows the language is deliberately distant. Make it sound like an invasion, a growth, a cancer; not a fetus, not a baby, not a child. He feels sick.
The doctor gives Rossi a sympathetic look. “Did you know she was pregnant?”
Dave shakes his head, aware of Aaron’s still, intense gaze on him. “I don’t think she knows. She didn’t feel well this morning but she just finished…” He stops himself because he’s not going to stand in the hallway of a hospital and discuss Emily’s menstrual cycle with Hotch listening, for Christ’s sake.
But the doctor seems to have taken his meaning and nods. “The usual symptoms are frequently absent with ectopic pregnancy.” He taps the folder across his open palm. “Provided there are no surgical complications she should be fine.”
Handing some papers to Hotch, he turns briskly businesslike. “If I could get your signature on the release, Agent Hotchner, I’ll take Agent Rossi up to pre-op to see her before she goes under.”
Hotch looked less shocked and rung out when Dave saw him in the ER after Foyet had shot him. He’s only been back at work a month and the part of Dave that is registering anything other than pain and worry feels a sort of remote sympathy for him. There’ll be a lot for him to sort out professionally after this and probably personally, as well, but none of that matters. It all seems so small and distant. There’s a brief shuffle as the three of them each reach into their pockets for a pen, but Hotch has his out the fastest and signs the papers up against the wall without comment.
Taking the papers with a murmured, “Thanks,” Dr. Porter informs Hotch he’ll send someone down to relocate them to the closest surgical waiting room and then he motions for Dave to follow him. When they’re in the elevator, he pushes the button for the fifth floor. “She’s in and out of consciousness and has probably been started on the pre-surgical sedative. I don’t know that she’s really aware of what’s going on. But it might ease her mind if she knows you’re here; lower stress levels generally mean more surgical success and better healing.”
Dave really doesn’t know how to respond, so he just nods. He hopes to hell she doesn’t know what’s going on. He wishes she never had to know. “How did this…what caused this?”
The doctor looks at him with kind eyes. “There are several things that could be contributing factors, but more than anything, it’s just a fluke. It happens in about one in a hundred pregnancies.”
Rossi starts to press him on the contributing factors, but the elevator dings and the door opens. The doctor ushers him out, turning down several side corridors that all look the same, gleaming floors and white walls with tan rails running their length, though the antiseptic hospital smell seems to grow stronger with every turn. Dave tries to pay attention but the slap of the doctor’s shoes against the floor matches his own thrumming pulse, beating out one thought, Em. Em. Em. Em.
Porter pushes through a set of swinging doors and takes a hard right, passes through another door and there she is.
Jesus.
She appears to be asleep and she is paler than he’s ever seen another human being. Well, a live one. Then he clamps down on that horrifying comparison and steps up next to her. The room is full of equipment, and there’s an IV pole with two bags hanging from it and the lines snake over the bed rail and down her arm, to where the needle bites into the back of her hand.
The doctor pauses in the doorway. “Just talk to her. Let her know you’re here.” He gestures down the hall. “They’ll be here to take her to the OR in a few minutes.”
Rossi barely hears him as he takes Emily’s hand in his. Her fingers are cold and he rubs them between both of his palms. He suddenly can’t remember if he’s ever held her hand before and it makes his chest ache. He knows he must have; they’ve been lovers for over ten months, surely he has. But he doesn’t have a clear memory of it. How could he not remember if he’s ever held her hand? They’ve conceived a child together and he can’t remember if he’s ever held her hand. Bending, he presses his lips to her fingers. “Emily?” he murmurs. “Em?”
There is no response, no flutter of eyelashes, no answering murmur; she is so still. He studies her sheet draped torso and abdomen, confirming the rise and fall, the in breath and the out breath. Looking around the room, he sees a wheeled stool a few feet away. Not letting go of her hand, he extends his foot, hooking it around the pedestal of the seat and dragging it over to the bedside. He kisses her hand again and sits.
“Em?” Pushing her bangs back, he rubs his thumb slowly, gently, over her forehead. “I wish you’d wake up for a second. I’m a little freaked out here and seeing you open your eyes would do a lot to help with that.” He isn’t sure at this point if she would be considered asleep or unconscious, but he would dearly love for her to open her eyes, just for a minute. “Everything feels a little surreal right now.” Huffing out something that would have been a laugh on any other day, he traces over her eyebrows. “The doctor said I should talk to you, but we both know I’m not good at talking except about unsubs and profiling.” His finger smoothes tenderly down her cheek. “I don’t know what to say, Emily, but I’m here. I’m here, Em.”
There’s a rustling at the door and he looks up to see a man and a woman, both in surgical scrubs, complete with scrub bonnets enter the room. Neither seems surprised at his presence, and the woman speaks quietly. “We need to get her to the operating room.” Touching his shoulder lightly, she smiles tentatively.
Dave rises and backs away from the bed, stuffing his hands in his pockets, watching their efficient movements as they prepare to move Emily, bed and all, out of the room. Clear the lines, grab the IV pole, lock the rails, unlock the brakes. As they begin wheeling her out of the room, the woman spares a glance for him over her shoulder. “I think you’re in surgical waiting number 3. Take a left out the door and the first left and it’ll be on your right. There’s a sign; you can’t miss it.”
Nodding at her words, his eyes don’t move from the dark head on the pillow. He follows them out watching as they go down the long hall until they go through a set of doors and he can no longer see her.
Suddenly, he’s exhausted, feeling a little like he’s been through a beating or at the very least a building has fallen on him. Slowly, he trudges in the direction the nurse directed him. He pauses at the door, takes a deep breath, and enters. Hotch and JJ are the only two in the room. Hotch looks mostly worried with a bit of pissed off around the edges. JJ is more a combination of anxious with an edge of shock, but she offers him the twitch of her cheeks which was probably supposed to be a smile. He wonders, idly, though not with any real concern, what Hotch told them. “The others went to find some coffee; they’ll be back in a little bit.”
He nods his thanks and sits down to wait.
***
Garcia, Morgan and Reid return from their excursion with coffees, waters, muffins, granola bars and cookies. Dave’s seen so many victims, so much death, and knows the first reaction to grief and tragedy always seems to be to bring food. On one level, he gets it: when there is nothing that can be done, shows of support and love go back to the basics, sustenance and comfort. And he is grateful for their support and friendship, both for him and for Emily; especially, considering they’ve all just discovered he and Emily have been deceiving them for the better part of a year. On another level though, he wants to throw it all against the wall and tell them to get the fuck out: this grief, this tragedy, this fear, this shock isn’t comprehensible to him, and a blueberry muffin or a chocolate chip cookie are not going to make any of it make any more sense. At the moment, nothing makes sense. So, he takes a coffee from Morgan with a murmured “Thanks,” and refuses the food.
They wait for a little over two hours with conversation that almost seems normal alternating with tense and oppressive silences. When the surgeon, Dr. Call, appears and informs them everything went well and Emily is doing fine, there is a collective sigh and the very air seems to change, to lighten. Dr. Call has already contacted Emily’s regular doctor and she should be by to check on Emily when she does her rounds in the morning.
As luck would have it, Dr. Call has read Dave’s books and is a bit of a fan. Rossi suppresses a bit of a shudder and allows he would be happy to autograph any or all of the doctor’s copies if he’d like to bring them by Emily’s room while she’s here. The surgeon agrees with embarrassing enthusiasm.
It’s enough to have them teasing him a little as they head up to Emily’s room and he’s grateful for it, for the sense of normalcy even if it is at his expense. They’ve been informed she’ll be mostly out of it until the morning, but they all want to take a look in on her. Garcia smoothes her hair back, Reid touches her hand and Morgan kisses her forehead. JJ laughs, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her looking this relaxed” and Dave has to admit it’s true. Even asleep, he’s never seen her face so peaceful, so completely free from worry and thought.
“I’m assuming you’re staying?” Hotch asks quietly.
Rossi doesn’t bite off the sharp retort that is his first inclination, just gives him a simple, “Yeah.”
“Do you need anything? Your go bag? Food?” Rossi relaxes a little. There’s no judgment, no censure in what Aaron is asking; he’s being a friend.
“My go bag would be good,” Dave allows. He has no intention of leaving Emily’s side and he knows he’s going to want to change clothes at some point. “It’s in my office. It probably wouldn’t hurt if you brought hers, too.”
“I’ll bring them back in a couple of hours.” Hotch is watching as JJ and Garcia fuss around Emily’s sleeping form, adjusting the bed, the blankets, the window shades.
“Aaron,” he doesn’t know what to say or how to say it so he just says the simplest thing. “Thank you.”
He’s not sure if it’s his friend or his boss who is looking at him from under severely drawn brows until Aaron offers his hand. “You’re welcome, Dave.”
They all bid him goodbye. Reid with a wave, Morgan with a handshake and JJ and Garcia both kiss his cheek. JJ thumbs off some lipstick afterwards and smiles, “Don’t want Emily to wake up and be jealous.” It should have been awkward or pissed him off, but it just makes him thankful they all know each other so well and he suddenly feels this part, at least, will be okay.
As they’re leaving, Morgan mutters something about having missed a meeting that afternoon as he opens his cell phone. “Anybody have Strauss’s number?”
Garcia asks, “Did you try 6-6-6?” Then adds, wide eyed, when Hotch shoots her a severe look, “Oh, dear, did I say that out loud?”
Dave finds himself smiling as their voices fade down the hall and he pulls the chair up to the bed.
TBC…