Work Text:
September
17 months since Abby’s death
“Je veux ma maman,” the little girl cried, writhing on one of the cots lined up along the wall of the ramshackle clinic. She was in the late stages of the virus, and delirious from the fever; the doctor said she more than likely wouldn’t make it through the next few hours. “Je veux ma maman."
“Je sais,” Kaitlyn murmured, wiping the girl’s forehead with a damp cloth. She set the rag back in the bucket filled with warm, dirty water. “Je sais.” Her high school French and the year she’d spent abroad in Paris had come rushing back to her the longer she was forced to communicate in the only language her patients knew.
“Ma maman. Oú est ma maman?" she continued to cry, the blood continuing to drip from her nose and ears; even her tears were tinged pink with blood.
“Je suis désolé," Kaitlyn said softly, trying to swallow the lump forming in her throat. “Je suis désolé, mais ta mère est morte, la fièvre l’a emmenée.”
“Non,” the girl whimpered, the fight beginning to leave her. She blinked up at Kaitlyn listlessly, her body succumbing to the exhaustion of death. “Non.”
“C’est bonne, petite,” Kaitlyn told her, tears now flowing down her cheeks. This was the tenth dying child whose hand she’d held this week. “Tu peux aller être avec ta mère."
“Maman,” the little girl sighed, a small smile tugging at her lips before her entire body went limp.
Kaitlyn bowed her head, angrily ripping the gloves off her hands. She couldn’t even let them have the comfort of skin to skin contact as they died. Frustrated, she wiped at the tears that stained her cheeks, before she stood up and carefully draped a thin cotton sheet over the young girl.
She turned on her heel and briskly walked the short distance from the girl’s cot to the exit of the clinic. She needed some air. The hut that made up the clinic was poorly ventilated, and the stench of blood and death clung to her. Shortly after arriving in the small village, she gave up on trying to keep her hair clean. She now kept it pulled back in a French braid then tucked under a scrub cap. She had quickly discovered that washing the smell out of her hair (and her scrubs and herself) was a luxury that wasn’t as readily available over the course of the six weeks they’d been in this remote village as it had been when they were closer to the capital city. The bright images of Tinkerbell on her cap kept her dirty hair out of view (and kept her and others from having to smell it), but it almost felt obscene against the destruction and devastation that surrounded her. In her career, she’d seen death, she’d seen heartbreak and anguish on parents’ faces. This, however, was different from anything she’d experienced before.
Even with better management, people were still dying at alarming rates. There were no body bags, no morgues, only ditches dug behind the clinic where shrouds provided by the local women were placed over the bodies before clinic staff covered them with dirt. Some of the aid workers had chosen “ditch duty” after several weeks of losing several patients a day. They said they’d rather take the hard manual labor than deal with the emotional labor of dealing with the dying. Kaitlyn was strongly considering joining them.
Kaitlyn squatted, not stopping until her butt hit the dirt. She brought her right knee up and propped her forearm against it; she let her head fall back until it hit the side of the clinic. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath in, the air was hot and full of dust, but at least it was fresh.
Her respite was short lived.
“Aidez-moi!” came a cry. “Aidez-moi!”
Kaitlyn opened her eyes, squinting against the sun beating down against her. She brought her right hand up to her brow, shielding the sun from obstructing her view. A woman about her age was running toward the clinic with a lifeless toddler in her arms. Kaitlyn jumped to her feet, running toward the woman, one of the doctors not far behind her. The woman fell to her knees in front of them, clutching her child to her chest.
“Aide mon bébé,” she cried, grabbing on to Kaitlyn’s hand. “S’il-vous-plaît, aide mon bébé.” She tugged harder on Kaitlyn’s hand, causing Kaitlyn to also fall to her knees.
“Je suis infirmière,” she told her gently, reaching for the toddler, her gaze fixed on the unconscious boy. “C’est un médecin.”
The woman’s eyes were wide and desperate as her eyes darted between Kaitlyn and the doctor, but she nodded, carefully handing the boy over to Kaitlyn.
“God, Rick,” she murmured to the doctor, running a hand over the boy’s forehead. “He’s burning up.” Her breath caught in her throat when she looked up and did a visual assessment of the mother.
“Je m’appelle Kate,” she said evenly, taking a slow deep breath, trying to get her heart rate to return to normal. Dried blood filled in the cracks of the corners of the woman’s mouth, the blood was flaking off where her tears wet her cheeks. A rust-colored blood stain covered the front of her linen dress. This woman was infected, and the little boy in her arms probably was too. “Il s’appelle Rick. Comment t’appelles-tu?”
“Adama,” she replied shakily, reaching out to run her hand over her boy’s head.
“Et ton fils?” Kaitlyn asked, giving the woman a small smile.
“Il s’appelle Omar,” Adama said, running her fingers up and down the boy’s cheek. “Je traitais sa fièvre avec des herbes, mais sa peau n’a fait que devenir plus chaude.”
“She was trying to treat the boy’s fever with herbs, but his fever kept getting higher,” Kaitlyn quickly translated for the doctor. “Alors?” she asked, looking back at the mother.
“Il a commencé à trembler et à trembler," Adama told her, mimicking how the little boy had seized. “Alors, il ne se réveillait pas.”
“Combien de temps a-t-il tremblé?” Kaitlyn asked her, carefully running her fingers over the boy’s arm, looking for a pulse. She breathed out a sigh of relief as she felt the faint heartbeat drumming against her fingertips.
“Je ne sais pas,” Adama replied, reaching out again to stroke her boy’s cheek where he lay unconscious in Katilyn’s arms. "Ça a continué éternellement."
“He probably had a febrile seizure, she doesn’t know how long it lasted, just ‘forever,’” Kaitlyn told the doctor, who was beginning to pace in agitation the longer they were outside of the clinic and without personal protective equipment.
“Kate, we really need to get them inside,” he told her urgently, his hands on his hips.
“I know that,” she snapped, turning to look at him over her shoulder. “She’s terrified, and we’re about to take her son away from her, probably forever.” Kaitlyn set her mouth in a firm line, she wasn’t moving from this spot until she was sure she had this woman’s trust. Rick rolled his eyes and moved to pace a few feet away from her.
“Depuis combien de temps est-il inconscient?” Kaitlyn asked, taking the woman’s hand in hers and helping Adama to her feet as Kaitlyn rose to hers.
“Il dormait tout le temps qu’il m’a fallu pour courir ici,” Adama said, swaying a bit on her feet. “Quinze, vingt minutes.”
“He’s been unconscious fifteen to twenty minutes,” Kaitlyn called out to the doctor, who began to walk back to where the two of them stood.
Adama reached out to take Omar back into her arms, but stumbled a few steps away from Kaitlyn.
“Ça va?” Kaitlyn asked, propping Omar on her hip and placing his head to rest on her shoulder while reaching out with the hand that wasn’t holding on to her boy.
“Non,” she managed to croak out before vomiting.
Blood, mucous, and vomit sprayed across Kaitlyn’s face. She turned away from Adama, spitting into the dirt. She took a few deep breaths before awkwardly working one arm out of her scrub top. She switched the toddler to her free arm, allowing her to pull her top over her head. She pressed the scrub top into her thigh, using her fingers to pull the fabric up into a ball bundled in her hand. She used the wadded up fabric to wipe the blood from her face. She adjusted the camisole she wore under her top and turned to head into the clinic with Rick, who had taken Adama by the elbow and was helping escort her into the clinic. Kaitlyn took a few steps before coming to a stop, her stomach lurching.
“Take the boy, Rick,” she called out, shifting Omar so she cradled him in both of her arms and holding the boy out for her colleague to take.
“Come on, Kate,” Rick said, rolling his eyes. “You’ve been holding him this long. Another two minutes isn’t going to drastically change your chance of infection.”
“Dammit, Rick!” she yelled, the bile that was working up her throat now hitting her gag reflex.
Adama rushed over and took the boy from her arms just before Kaitlyn bent forward, hands braced on her knees as she vomited.
“Ah, fuck,” Rick groaned, coming over and giving Adama a push in the direction of the entrance to the clinic. “I need some help out here!”
“Rick, I don’t,” Kaitlyn started, dropping down to one knee. The world around her was going fuzzy. “I don’t -- I don’t feel so good.”
She fell to the ground, the world going from fuzzy to black.
Kaitlyn awoke with a gasp. She brought her right hand up to cover her eyes as she took some deep breaths. The nightmares had become a nightly (sometimes twice a night depending on how well she was able to sleep after the first) occurrence when she and Chris had returned to Boston once she was given the all-clear to leave Atlanta. She had never slept well enough in the hospital to dream, and she had been so exhausted when they’d checked into the Midtown Atlanta hotel, she’d slept too soundly to dream. She lowered her hand to her chest and, carefully rolling from her left side onto her back, turned her head to look over at Chris. He was still asleep.
Kaitlyn sighed with relief, a faint smile pulling at her lips. When the nightmares started, she’d woken up so violently that Chris always woke up with her. He’d hold her while she cried it out, and he’d stay awake with her watching Disney movies or reading to her until she fell back to sleep. Soon enough, they both had dark circles under their eyes. The past few nights he’d slept through her waking up, and she was grateful for that. While she was still on leave for another month, he was starting a new project when they returned to Los Angeles in ten days. He needed the sleep.
Slowly and carefully, she climbed out of bed. “Dogs,” she called out softly. Both Max and Dodger looked up at her from their beds in the corner before following her out of the bedroom. After carefully making her way down the dark staircase, she clicked on one of the table lamps before picking up the throw blanket she’d left on the back of the couch before heading up to bed. She wrapped the blanket around her shoulders as she walked into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. After lighting the range, she pulled down a box of chamomile tea and her favorite mug, which had a rendering of Mr. Rogers and Daniel Tiger on it. The mug reminded her of her childhood. Almost every summer as a kid, she’d travel back to the small Pennsylvania town where her dad had grown up, which just also happened to be the hometown of Fred Rogers. The mug reminded her of when life was just a bit simpler; when the only nightmares she had involved monsters emerging out of the deep end of her parents’ pool and trying to eat her.
She grabbed the kettle off the range just before it started to whistle and cut off the gas to the range, extinguishing the flame. Taking the honey out of the cupboard, she added a generous amount to her mug while her tea bag steeped. Dunking the tea bag a few more times, she removed the bag and tossed the bag in the garbage before making kissing noises at the dogs and heading out to the back porch.
Kaitlyn almost immediately regretted leaving her pajama pants in the bedroom and wandering outside in only the long sleeve t-shirt she’d fallen asleep in. However, the crisp autumn air was what she needed. The air was clean and cool, and the sound of crickets chirping forced her brain to slow down, to appreciate what was right in front of her. If Chris’s work were actually taking him out of Los Angeles, she would have been more than OK staying here until she had to return to work. In the few weeks they’d been in Concord, she was starting to understand why Chris preferred it. At first, she assumed it had to do with it being home for him. Now that she had spent weeks here rather than a handful of days, she realized it wasn’t just because it was home for him. Maybe it was the clean air or the quiet, or maybe it wasn’t something tangible at all. Regardless of what it was, she felt like maybe she was getting a little bit of that peace, too. After a particularly vivid nightmare, she’d come out to sit on the porch. After a few minutes of sitting in the quiet, listening to the crickets and the leaves fluttering in the breeze, she’d feel her heart rate begin to slow, her muscles would slowly relax, and her brain would quiet.
Yeah. She guessed she could say that she was beginning to love it here.
A carton of cigarettes Chris had left on the patio table caught her eye. She grabbed the carton and the discarded lighter off the table. Looking at the carton long and hard, she pulled out a cigarette and placed it between her lips. Flicking the lighter a few times, she stared at the flame as it danced before her then bringing it up to the cigarette that hung from her mouth. Holding it between her index and middle fingers, she pulled the cigarette from her mouth and looked at it for a moment. Bringing it back to her mouth, she took a drag from the cigarette before slowly exhaling through her mouth. The nightmares were varied, but they always ended the same. For the most part, what haunted her every night was something that had actually happened during her time in Sierra Leone to some extent. However, the nightmares didn’t always show how she was actually exposed; her subconscious taking creative liberties on that detail more often than not. Instead of a dirty needle stick, which is what really happened, sometimes she’d have blood coughed or vomited in her face. Sometimes a scared patient would manage to overpower her and hold her down to purposefully try to infect her. Regardless of how the transmission of infection happened, each nightmare ended the same way.
Each nightmare ended with her dying.
----------
“I’m so sorry,” she said softly, silent tears running down her cheeks. “I should have listened to you, I shouldn’t have gone.”
“Katie, please don’t cry,” he told her, leaning forward so his own forehead was also pressed against the glass. “If you cry, I’ll cry, and then we’ll both be a mess.”
She looked up to the ceiling and nodded vigorously, sniffing loudly in an attempt to stop the tears. She wiped at her eyes and gave him a small smile.
“That’s better,” he said, returning her smile. “I’m never going to say ‘I told you so.’ What you did was brave and selfless, and now you’re going to continue to be brave and we’ll get you home soon.”
“Right,” she said to herself more than to him. “You’re right.”
“How are you feeling?” he asked, his eyes echoing the concern in his voice. “Really?”
“I’m tired,” she sighed heavily, running a hand through her hair. “I’ve spiked fevers, but they usually break on their own. Nausea and vomiting have both been relatively controlled.”
“Those are all symptoms,” he stated rather than asked. He’d done his own share of research before she left just so that he would know what to be looking for when she called.
“They are,” she agreed, nodding her head. “There’s still no evidence of the virus in my blood, and I’m not hemorrhaging from any apparent source.”
“Then why is your nose bleeding?” Chris asked, panic spreading across his features.
“Shit,” Kaitlyn muttered, wiping at her nose with the back of her hand. She turned and walked back over to the bedside table and grabbed a handful of Kleenex before pinching at her nose. “It’s fine,” she said, but the tremor in her voice betrayed her fear. “Just a nosebleed from the dry hospital air.”
“Kaitlyn,” Chris's voice came out low and warning; he was not in the mood for her to be nonchalant.
She grabbed another handful of tissues as the first bundle saturated. She bit her lip and pressed her call light. His anxiety increased as she switched out tissues again and Vanessa still hadn’t appeared.
“Chris, I don’t,” Kaitlyn started, bracing a hand on the bedside table. “I don’t feel so good.” She took a few steps around the foot of the bed before she collapsed.
“Katie?” Chris called, slapping a hand against the glass that separated them. “Kate!” He pounded against the glass with his fist, fighting every instinct in him to open the door that kept them apart and run to her side. Instead, he ran out the door toward the nurse’s station. “I need some help in here!”
Several nurses sprang into action. They shoved him aside as three of them filed into the small anteroom. Vanessa was the first to get into her PPE; she kept her eyes on the monitor as she moved to Kaitlyn’s side.
“Get Dr. Hoffman in here,” Vanessa called out to the nurses who were still pulling on their PPE. “She’s having runs of PVCs, we don’t need her to…” the monitor started to alarm. “Dammit! She’s in v-tach, call the code!”
Chris felt like the floor had opened up underneath him and swallowed him whole. He walked backward until his back hit the wall, he slid down it until his butt hit the floor. Bringing his elbows to his knees, he ran his hands through his hair, tugging at the ends in agitation. The door to the anteroom slammed against the code cart that another nurse was pulling in.
“Chris, the blue button over your right shoulder, hit it.” Kaitlyn was standing before him, except she was no longer in her hospital gown and sweatpants; she was in the scrubs she wore when they first met. Several Winnie-the-Pooh’s dotted the scrub top she wore, and the red shirts the bear wore turned into pools of blood before his eyes.
Kaitlyn knelt before him, blood running down her hands where they rested on his forearms, and soaking into the denim of his jeans. He blinked up at her. Looking back over toward where the nurses were working on her; he watched as two nurses lifted Kaitlyn off the floor and onto the bed.
“How?” he whispered, looking back at the Kaitlyn in front of him. The scrub top she wore was now soaked through with blood.
“That’s right, Chris,” she said, rising back up to her feet. “I’m dying. They’re not going to be able to save me. You can’t save me.” Kaitlyn smiled down at him, but it wasn’t the smile that made his heart skip a beat. This one was almost mocking, and it set his teeth on edge. It wasn’t her. It wasn’t her at all.
“I’m dying, Chris,” she repeated before collapsing at his feet.
Chris awoke with a start. Covering his face with his hands he heaved a sigh. He dropped his hands to his bare chest and stared at the ceiling, trying to blink away the image of Kaitlyn falling in a pool of blood. An image, that while it never happened, was now burned into his retinas. It was the same nightmare he’d had while she was in the hospital. He’d had the nightmare a handful of times a week since he’d had it the first time. Luckily, he’d stopped shouting out in his sleep. The nightmares she was having were taking enough of a toll on her, he didn’t need her to worry about him on top of everything else.
He looked to his right to see that Kaitlyn wasn’t there. It broke his heart that she was going through this and that he didn’t really know how to help her. Sure, he’d hold her and get her anything that she needed, but it didn’t do anything to fix the actual problem. Feeling so helpless only increased his own anxiety. She made an appointment with her therapist once she realized her nightmares weren’t going to go away the farther removed from the trauma she got. While that thought eased his mind some, he wished he could take her pain away now. Once her nightmares started, the spark in her that he loved so much had faded to barely more than a flicker.
Climbing out of bed, he pulled on the sweatpants that he’d taken off before getting into bed. He plodded down the hall, looking for her. Her favorite retreat after a more vivid nightmare was the back porch. Sure enough, the back porch light shone through the sliding glass door off the living room.
“Hey,” he called out softly when he opened the door. Both dogs lifted their heads at the sound of his voice, but neither moved. Maximus was curled up at the end of the chaise lounge she sat in while Dodger remained at her side on the ground.
“Hi,” she replied, scooting forward as he walked over to give him room to sit down behind her. She leaned back against him once he got comfortable, pressing her back to his chest. She laced her fingers through his and pulled his arms around her middle. “Did I wake you?” she asked softly.
“Nah,” he replied, pressing a kiss to the side of her head. “My own nightmare did that.”
Kaitlyn sighed heavily, squeezing his hands and wrapping his arms tighter around her. “I’m so sorry, Chris,” she whispered. “I never meant for it to be like this.”
“I know, sweetheart,” he told her. “I know.” He pressed another kiss to the side of her head. “You wanna go back to bed?” he asked. “We can turn on the TV, watch some Disney, Supernatural, Law & Order, whatever you want.”
“I’d like that,” she replied, bringing up one of his hands, still wrapped in hers, and kissing the back of it. “Do you think we could stay out here for a bit first? It’s just…” she paused for a moment, searching for the right word, “peaceful. It’s comforting. The quiet, no extra ambient light. I think I get it now.”
Chris didn’t bother to ask what ‘it’ was. It didn’t really matter right now. She was content, that’s all that mattered. He held her a bit tighter and nuzzled the back of her head, breathing in the scent of her shampoo. Physical touch was always something he craved when he was feeling anxious. He couldn’t even begin to explain how much he loved that Kaitlyn was the same way. Since this whole ordeal started, they’d spent most of their time holding on to one another rather than not.
She wiggled down a bit, her back now pressed against his upper abdomen rather than his chest and her head tucked just under his chin. “It feels safe here,” she whispered, turning her head to one side and tilting her face up a bit, his beard scratching lightly against her forehead. “It’s like we’re in our own little bubble.”
“Yeah?” he asked, turning his head so he could look down at her. “I can try and push back my start date; we can stay here a bit longer.”
Kaitlyn smiled up at him, stretching up to press a kiss to his cheek. “I don’t want to interfere with your work,” she started. “Besides, I want to start seeing Dr. Grant as soon as possible. My first session with her is the day after we get back.”
Chris hummed in response, turning his head to rest his cheek against the crown of her head. He gazed over at the patio table to their right. He snorted when he saw the barley smoked cigarette stubbed out in the ashtray. “But this is bad for me?” he asked, reaching over and pulling the cigarette from the tray, waving it in front of her before placing it back into the tray.
“I took two puffs before my lungs tried to vacate their present premises,” she told him, chuckling. “So, yes, they’re bad for you.”
Chris laughed along with her, squeezing her a bit tighter.
Kaitlyn sat forward, swinging her legs over the side of the chaise lounge, her feet planted on the stone of the patio. She smiled up at Chris, bringing her right hand up against his cheek. “I love you,” she whispered, lightly scratching against the whiskers along his jawline. “I’m not sure I would get through this without you.”
“I love you, too,” he replied, leaning forward to press his forehead against hers. “And I told you a long time ago, we’re a team; regardless of what we’re up against.”
“Til the end of the line,” she replied, unable to stop her giggle.
Chris huffed as he pulled away from her and rolled his eyes, laughing along with her. “You’re so lucky you’re cute.”
“You love my corny jokes,” she reminded him, leaning forward again to press her lips to his. “No matter how many times I make the same Captain America joke.”
“I laugh at yours ‘cause you laugh at mine,” he replied, running the fingers of his left hand through her hair.
She leaned into his touch before pulling his hand from her hair and wrapping both of her hands around his. “Come on,” she said, standing up and tugging on his hand. “Emperor's New Groove?” She reached over and picked up her empty mug before looking back up at him hopefully.
“Whatever you want, pretty girl,” he told her, wrapping his left arm around her shoulders and pulling her to his side as they walked back inside together, Dodger and Max trotting in ahead of them.
“Ooh!” Kate exclaimed, turning back toward the backyard. “Do you think we could build a Katetopia over by the oak tree?”
Chris threw his head back and laughed. “Sweetheart, next summer, I will build you as many Katetopias as you want.”