Chapter Text
Im trying not to feel this music’s for you
Chapter 1
Betty squints out into the treeline at the strong silhouette of FP carrying his son, limp in his arms. She is shocked at how suddenly small and vulnerable her boyfriend seems cradled there – gone is the broad shouldered cocky front he puts on as the eighteen year old serpent prince. It’s unsettling and yet nobody can tear their eyes away. As FP steps closer Into the light, illuminated from the outbuilding behind them, Betty can see his face clearer; his eyes are red and wet and his lips are pursed together from the effort of the weight he is carrying and, she suspects, the effort it is taking not to cry and scream and fall apart. Just as she is close to doing right at that moment.
Betty gasps and looks over the boy in his arms, and she feels like she can’t breathe; he’s covered in mud & blood and everything is dark, dark against the dark of FP’s jacket, the darkness of where he’s just come from and the darkness in the rest of the hours stretched out before them. As he approaches she doesn’t want to look, but she has to, it’s just that it’s painful; it’s Jughead, her Juggie, but right now he’s almost unrecognisable. She can see the blood dripping down jughead’s arm from where the tattoo has been savagely removed with a dirty blade, the tattered and ripped flannel – and she then notices the absence of his Serpent jacket, probably taken as a trophy… His hair is matted with the mud and dirt and his face is swollen. The beginnings of purple & black shadows, too many to count, are just starting to surface. He’s too quiet, too still and his eyes are closed.
Oh baby how could you go through something like this…?!
FP staggers forward and, as his arms burn and his back muscles shout at him, he drops to his knees, hard, and places his son’s body on the ground. “I’m so sorry, Jug, I’m so sorry”. It’s then that Betty starts repeatedly screaming “JUUUGGGG! No!” and then he does the same, and it’s a gut wrenching sound and he pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes “MY BOY…LOOK WHAT THEY DID TO MY BOY!”
He’s not moving, just lying there completely motionless on the ground.
No, no, no oh god, no Betty screams internally to herself. She wants to see him, she needs to get to him to see he’s alright – that it’s not as bad as all that, that she’ll hold his hand and he’ll open his eyes….
Betty starts towards the love of her life, stumbling from the trembling coursing through her legs, but she’s faced with a struggle against a tangle of hands and arms and shoulders pushing her back trying to shield her from the scene – Archie and Veronica – whom love Jughead as well, who are also hurting but nowhere near as much as they know Betty is. Their instinct is to protect her. Betty continues to scramble against them both to get to him, she hits out and she screams, but her raven haired best friend is gentle “B,B,… look, look, look at me, look at me,” she says whilst cupping Betty’s face and trying to divert her gaze away, “sweetie… sweetie it.. it’s gonna be ok…”she wraps up her friend in an embrace and strokes her hair. Betty lets the tears fall fast “Oh, om, oh my god, he… he can’t be dead, please don’t …he’s gone…” and she collapses against Veronica in defeat. All her energy is zapped and she’s go no fight left to try and break away. This allows Archie to run over to Jughead. “KEEP HER BACK!” He barks.
‘SOMEBODY, CALL AN AMBULANCE! NOW!” Archie orders, and several Serpents at the outbuilding, including Toni and Pea, along with Veronica all reach hastily for their phones and it’s on its way. The young Bulldog goes into full cadet/soldier mode now; he turns his head and hovers his ear over his brother’s nose and mouth and watches anxiously for the steady rise and fall of this chest - it’s there, and uneven and only just. “He’s breathing , I think’ he sighs in relief. He keeps a watchful eye for any changes and, ripping more of the flannel, wraps a tourniquet around Jughead’s bleeding arm.
When the ambulance arrives Betty is, again, held back from view while the paramedics work on him. ‘They won’t let me see him” she begs. FP is the only one allowed to travel with him “one family member only” they said. She manages to rush forward and can just squeeze his hand one last time before they load him in. But FP reassures her that he’ll “fix it and not to worry”. For now Jughead is alive and the team in the tiny ambulance are working hard to keep him that way.
Betty’s fingers find the handle of the car door, even though she’s not entirely sure how she got there, and she collapses in onto the seat in a heap. Archie has to scoop her up like a child to sit her round the right way and then he buckles her up. Archie puts his foot down to catch up and within minutes they are at Riverdale General.
****
After a period of time, no one is quite sure how long precisely, a set of double doors are flung open and then four bodies get up their feet.
“Jones family?’ The man before them is young, not much older than Jughead and Betty. He is tall and athletically built, maybe a cyclist, with clipped short brown hair and kind eyes, He is dressed in blue scrubs, clean and fresh, and clunks his knuckles and squeezes his hands nervously in front of him. The man discreetly assesses the group before him and asks himself how many hearts are about to break with what he’s about to say – and whether the one belonging to the younger blonde, still sitting looking at the floor, had already shattered. He always loathed this part.
FP, Alice, Veronica and Archie all start firing questions at the young doctor at once:
“Is he ok?”
‘When can we see him?”
“What’s happening, why is everything taking so long?”
“What is going on?”
‘Why can’t anyone tell us what’s happening?’
Betty doesn’t speak, but just keeps her gaze fixed to the same spot on the floor, turning over his beanie in her hands and trying to find some comfort in its soft and familiar texture. Thank god he’d taken it off before the fight and left it with the motorcycle.
To an outsider looking in at this group it could be perceived that the younger blonde looks cold and lacking in any kind of emotion or empathy. The states of high arousal following a traumatic event or when faced with something the brain perceives as a threat are well recognised. Everyone has heard of fight or flight – god knows of course Betty was certainly in fight mode back at the clearing – but there is a third state, the very state Betty found herself in at that moment. It’s that classic ‘deer caught in headlights’ unable to move moment; in a state of complete shock, it’s the reason viewers of horror movies throw insults at their TV sets and call the characters stupid when they just stand there staring wide eyed and mouths agape instead of running away from the crazy man with the knife - it’s ‘freeze’. Betty’s legs might as well have been submerged in buckets of set concrete for all they were worth right then. The poor girl was glued to her chair and couldn’t move even if she wanted to. She was going numb physically and emotionally and starting to disconnect herself – her mind’s way of protect itself.
The man raises his hands in a sort of defence and tries to coax them all down, and he tries to grab the script from the shelf in his mind that he’d been rehearsing over and over whilst scrubbing his hands and changing into clean scrubs. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t had to deal with relatives before, he was, unfortunately, pretty well versed in what was good practice, but every time it was different and this kid he was so young
“Um shall we…? He gestures with one hand out, hoping to move the group on to somewhere more private and beginning to feel uncomfortable himself about starting this conversation out in such a public area. All Betty’s mind can register from those three words is that she hopes they aren’t being taken into that little room, no good ever comes from people being shown into that little room. “I just thought, uh, you light like to go somewhere more private…?” He explains.
As if reading her mind, FP looks over at his son’s fragile girlfriend and utters “no, thanks Doc, I think we’’l stay put”.
“Very well then…I’m Doctor Lewis. I’m one of the registrars on the ER…he’s out of resuss now and being prepped for surgery.. there’s a consultant with him who’s just briefed the team and I’ll be going back in shortly…”
FP reached out to tap the young doctor on the back “thanks doc…” he started to say and Dr Lewis puts his hand up again.
“His heart stopped, twice. But he’s a fit and healthy boy generally and we managed to get it going again with the de-fib. However… it remains in arhythmic state…” he explains. “The electrical discharges of his heart are irregular. We know he fractured some ribs and this caused a pneumothorax; his lung collapsed…”
FP steadies himself on the arm rest and lowers himself to sit again, before leaning forward with his head in his hands letting everything sink in. Archie and Veronica are next to sit and Archie wipes his eyes and holds his girlfriend closer to him, as she buries her head in the crook of his neck. He glances over at Betty who has no one.
Alice is the last to take a seat, and she awkwardly sits down next to FP and tentatively puts her arm around his shoulder.
Betty was listening and committing all the important words and management plans to memory. However while her mind was working overtime at the same time she seemed to have forgotten how to breathe naturally and was doing her best to regulate her own oxygen levels, and the band around her diaphragm was getting tighter every time she tried to correct it. She was beginning to feel light headed and she shouldn’t tell if her vision was blurring from tears or something else entirely out of her control.
Dr Lewis continued to explain. “we managed to get a chest drain in and that’s resolved the breathing for now..” but he wasn’t allowed to continue because the words of an desperate father interrupted him.
‘“But, I mean, he’s going to be ok right?... y, you haven’t said he’s going to be ok…?”
“Look, I, d, I don’t think there is anyway I can… I wish there was some way to sugar coat this for you but I can’t… I am sorry. His injuries are…” he paused for second rubbing his hand over the back of his neck feeling panicky himself now and rushing his way to the end of this conversation, he tried to find the right words, “…significant, and I suspect there may be some internal bleeding – we’ll know more in surgery. We want to perform an exploitative laparotomy to assess the damage to the internal organs, and there’s some clinical evidence of blunt force trauma to his head, that we need to assess with a CT.”
Nobody spoke. There was nothing to do or say at this point except hang on the words of this doctor and hope there would be something positive in there somewhere.
‘His prognosis is uncertain and, I, I’m sorry it’s going to be a long night for everyone… we do have a relatives room – it’s on the next floor up; close to recovery, there’s a kitchenette and cot and bathroom… I’ll, um have one of the ICU nurses take you”
Dr Lewis stood for a moment rocking in his heels; not knowing when would be the most appropriate point to slip away and feeling obligated to stay until someone wanted to ask a question.
“We’ll do everything we can for Mr Jones…”
“Jughead”, Betty whispered and looked up into the eyes of the doctor for the first time.
“I’m sorry…?” He didn’t recognise her voice mixed in with the torrent other others earlier and wasn’t sure he heard her correctly.
“His name, he prefers Jughead” Betty manages to breathe out.
“ ok, well of course,”he nods with a hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth, “we’ll do everything we can for Jug-Head”. And just like that he turned back to the double doors and left them alone again.