Chapter Text
Hailey never actually sees the blast. It hits her as a flash of light, heat, and violent noise that knocks her off her feet. She remembers the pavement pounding under the worn-out soles of her boots while she pursued the suspect until she lost the ground and went airborne. Her limbs flail in search of something to break her fall. She never finds it. Hailey hits the ground with flames around her, and the world goes black.
There is so much smoke. Hailey tries to breathe, and her chest burns. Her ears ring. Her legs won’t move. There is a moment, maybe two, where she tries to force herself into consciousness. The air is too hot, the smoke too thick, and her body too battered. She sinks back into the asphalt and slips away again.
Jay knew what this was the moment he heard the crack of the explosion hit the air. He may not have witnessed the truck going up in flames or the debris launching everywhere, but he has heard enough bombs detonating to recognize the sound immediately.
He opens his eyes to find himself lying on the sweltering asphalt. He croaks out a few breaths through the smoke and takes in his surroundings. The suspect is long gone, but he couldn’t give chase either way. His limbs are heavy but uninjured so he pulls himself up to scan the parking lot.
The white cargo truck is a shell, reduced to nothing but flames and tattered pieces. He does not care about that, though. He does not care about the truck, the suspect they were pursuing, or any of the burning projectiles falling around him. Jay’s head pounds while he scans the hazy parking lot until he spots her. Hailey. She is sprawled on her back about twenty yards behind him, motionless.
“Hailey!”
Jay has seen her beaten, bruised, and battered. He has seen her fight with everything she has. She has won plenty of those fights, and lost some too- but he has never seen her lifeless. Jay has been scared many times in his thirty-eight years, but he now is not sure he has really known what fear was until he sees her bloodied body lying limply amongst the fire.
“No,” he croaks out while he forces himself to his feet. “No, no, no.” Jay runs as best he can on shaky legs until he reaches her. It takes his years of training and discipline to keep him from pulling her straight into his arms and squeezing her until she opens her eyes. Instead, he runs his hands over her torso gently to check for injuries and pleads with her to hear him.
“Come on, Hailey,” he begs. “I need you to wake up.” Jay puts one hand on her shoulder and the other gently on her cheek. “Come on, please.” He does not see any obvious injuries to her body. She has a cut across her face and there is blood pooling by her ear that he prays is just runoff from the scrape. He can not move her. All he can do is run his thumb gently along her uninjured cheek and beg while sirens start wailing in the background.
“Come on!” Jay yells. He never yells at her. That was established early in their partnership after he raised her voice at her once and she recoiled in front of him. It never happened again. There is no anger or frustration in his voice today- only fear.
He radios the team quickly to get the ambulance moving faster before focusing back on Hailey. Jay does not know what else to do for her. He checks her pulse for what must be the tenth time since he knelt by her, and he still finds it shallow. He is just about to start pleading again when he notices the slightest twitch in her left hand.
Hailey is dragged back to consciousness by a ringing in her ears and pounding in her head. Her body hurts. She can not pinpoint where or why- it just hurts. She squints her eyes open and they burn in the light and smoke around her.
Nothing makes sense. Hailey sees Jay before she hears him, but he moves over her like he is speaking. She does not hear anything- just ringing. God, the ringing is so loud. Hailey coughs up smoke weakly and writhes on the pavement, twisting uncomfortably while she tries to make sense of the burning world around her.
“Don’t try to move,” Jay says while he pushes her softly back down to the pavement. “It’s okay. I’ve got you, I’ve got you.” She collapses back and he reaches for her hand just to touch her somehow.
Hailey can not hold still. The ringing in her ears remains, but other sounds are starting to break through. She can make out the whipping of flames around her and the screeching of sirens nearing them. She grabs at her pounding head and turns towards Jay, willing it all to just go away. He pushes her down again and takes her hand, but it does not feel like enough.
“Sarge, Hailey got hit by the explosion,” he shouts into the radio. She does hear that- albeit faintly. The explosion. Hailey sees blood slicked on her fingers after she pulls her hand from her face, and a new wave of panic hits her when she considers all the damage she knows a detonation like this can cause.
“Hey, look at me,” Jay says when he sees her begin to register her surroundings a little more. “I’ve got you, okay?”
She does not respond.
“Hailey, can you hear me?” Jay speaks to her in a low voice. He is trying to keep her calm by keeping himself calm, but she looks up at him with an unbridled panic. “Hailey?”
Nothing.
“Hailey?” he tries again, louder. He hates shouting in her face, but she nods slightly and squeezes his hand so he lets himself huff out a sigh of relief. Ash and soot spread across his mouth when he presses a kiss to her hand, but he sits next to her and holds it close to himself nonetheless.
“Jay,” she croaks, her voice hoarse and weak.
“Yeah, it’s okay. You’re okay,” he speaks loudly against her skin. “Your ears ringing?”
Hailey nods again while she catches her breath. They do not talk about his Army experience often, but it is not lost on her that he has been in her position before. He knows what this feels like. “Jay, this hurts,” she groans.
“I know it does,” he answers. “The ambulance is almost here. I’m not going anywhere. You’re going to be okay.”
Jay shifts away from her reluctantly when the paramedics pull up and race to her side to get to work. He gives her hand one final squeeze before standing back and letting them load her onto the backboard and towards the ambulance.
For every minute the paramedics work with her, Hailey seems to come back to herself more and more. She can hear the questions they are asking her, and she makes note of the feeling in her limbs now that the adrenaline that coursed through her body is tapering off. The door of the ambulance shuts with a loud thud, and Hailey feels herself begin to relax for the first time since the sound of the explosion ripped through the air.
“Jay?” she calls out while they drive to Lakeshore. She is still constrained to the backboard, unable to turn and look at him like she wants to.
“Yeah, I’m here,” he runs his knuckles up the side of her arm.
“Are you hurt?”
He almost laughs at the irony of the situation. He wants to tease her about worrying over him while she lies strapped to the gurney, but he hears the undeniable worry in her voice. He gets it. “I’m good,” he answers her. “I was farther away from the truck. My head hurts, but the paramedics cleared me.”
“And the rest of the team? Escano?”
“The team is fine, Hailey. I don’t know about Escano. Don’t worry about any of that right now.”
All Hailey has done for the past two weeks is worry. She hears Jay make a quick call to Voight to assure him that she is okay and beginning to recover, so she stares up at the ceiling of the rocking ambulance and lets her thoughts take over again.
They are losing control of this case- of Anna. Hailey has been trying to protect her. She has rallied and fought Voight to put Anna first, but she is fighting a losing battle. This explosion only serves to prove that they are rapidly running out of options, and they are out of time.
The ambulance eases to a stop in front of Lakeshore Memorial’s loading bay, and the door flies open while a team of nurses emerge to wheel her into the Emergency Department. This hospital does not have the same comfortability- if a hospital can even be comfortable in the first place- as Med does. Hailey’s eyes dart around the unfamiliar building and she catches Jay’s doing the same while he walks close beside her.
“Detective Hailey Upton?” A middle-aged doctor greets her in one of the rooms, clearly prepared for her arrival. “I’m Dr. Torres. I’ll be taking care of you today.”
Hailey does not even have a moment to greet the doctor in response before she is calling for her team of nurses to transfer Hailey from the ambulance gurney to the flat hospital bed. The medical team flits around her rapidly- almost too rapidly for how assured Hailey is becoming that she is unharmed. Her hearing is almost fully restored and the pounding in her head is going away. Once the straps on the backboard are released, she is sure she will be up and walking in no time. She is fine, really.
“You’re the partner?” Dr. Torres peers over at Jay before pulling a stool up to Hailey’s bedside.
“I am,” he responds quickly. “Partner and husband.”
“Alright, Mr. Upton. You were cleared on scene, correct?”
“Halstead- and yes ma’am. I was.”
“Pardon me?” Dr. Torres flicks her eyes back to Jay while she begins checking over Hailey’s limbs for any clear injury.
“His last name is Halstead,” Hailey speaks up. “We’re married, but I kept my name.”
“Ah, apologies,” she tips her chin toward Jay who gives her a dismissive wave in response. “I shouldn’t have assumed. My wife and I did the same.” Dr. Torres moves on from Hailey’s limbs to begin assessing her head. She shines her penlight into Hailey’s red, irritated eyes before moving on to check each of her ears.
“Well, Hailey,” Dr. Torres continues, “I have to say, when I got the call of a detective caught near an explosion, loss of consciousness, and temporary hearing loss, I did not expect this.” She scribbles notes on Hailey’s chart while she talks. “You’re remarkably unharmed, given the circumstances. That’s not to say you’re in the clear, but your head and ears look good so far.”
“I feel okay,” Hailey urges. “I’m sore, but nothing unbearable.”
“That’s good to hear, but we’re checking every box just to be sure. Tell me if you feel any discomfort,” the doctor instructs while she applies pressure around Hailey’s abdomen. “Here?” She presses on her lower right side.
“Nothing,” Hailey answers.
Her lower left side- nothing. Center- nothing. Dr. Torres moves her hands around Hailey’s torso, nodding every time she is assured there is no pain.
“Nothing,” Hailey grunts when the doctor pushes on her upper left side, just below her ribs.
“Well, Hailey,” she chuckles lightly. “Let’s be thankful you went into law enforcement instead of acting, because you aren’t very good at it. Tenderness on the left side?”
“Just a small amount,” Hailey waves both the doctor and Jay away when they eye her intently. “I’m okay.”
“Okay, or not,” Dr. Torres scribbles some more notes onto a chart before handing it off to a nurse, “I'm ordering a CT. We aren’t taking any chances here. Not with tenderness, spinal injuries, none of it. I’m not sending you home unless I’m sure. Transport will be here in a minute or two to take you.”
The doctor nods definitively and is flying out the door towards another patient in the blink of an eye. Jay untucks himself from the corner of the room and moves to stand by Hailey’s bed. She has always been small-framed, but she is almost swallowed up by the wires and monitors and backboard they still have her strapped to. He has never seen her in a hospital before. Marriage has brought them many “firsts”, but the glimpses of her unconscious on the asphalt or immobilized in the bed are new experiences he could have done without.
He sees where her elastic hair tie is barely secured on her head, so he pulls it from her hair gently and wraps it around his wrist. His fingers slide softly through her disheveled waves, cautious of her neck since he still does not know what this CT will show.
“You’ve got that look on your face,” Hailey whispers from below him.
“Hmmm?”
“Say what you need to say, Jay.”
He chuckles humorlessly because he really thought he could hide this from her. That would have been another first. “I’m sorry, I’m trying to be calm,” he starts while he reaches behind him to drag a chair forward and sit by her head, “you just scared the shit out of me.”
“I know, I’m-”
“Don’t apologize. Please.” Jay moves his hand from her hair to cradle her face, mindful of the butterfly bandage that had been applied to her cheek. “I just-”
“Hailey Upton?” A young transport worker knocks on the open door, and Jay pulls away again to give them room to work.
“Hold that thought?” Hailey smiles weakly at Jay while she is wheeled from the room. An undeniable look of concern crosses his face, and she wonders how many more times she will have to assure him she is fine before it disappears.
Jay sits alone in the Emergency Department room and sends off a quick message to the team to update them on Hailey’s condition. His foot taps while he pictures her lying flat on the table, being moved in and out of the large, rumbling CT machine. He shakes his head to get rid of that image, and stands up to pace.
Jay walks to the edge of the room and back, to the door and back. He counts the number of tiles on the ceiling- seventeen- the number of monitors Hailey was hooked up to- three- and the number of minutes since she has been taken from him- eleven.
He knows a CT does not last long, and even less so since she was ushered to the front of the line. Yet, however quickly they will wheel her back to him does not feel near quick enough. Jay sits in silence for another thirty minutes before he hears the wheels of Hailey’s bed squeak when they turn the corner back into the room.
“You were saying?” She has a teasing smirk on her face when she sits up in her bed. She is no longer tied down on a backboard- instead reclining with flimsy sheets and some heated blankets. Jay sees her turn her head towards him and lean slightly with the motion of the bed, and he releases a deep breath he may as well have been holding since he first saw her sprawled out across that parking lot.
He stands as the transport team leaves the room and takes a few steps to be in front of her again. Hailey eases herself to sit sideways on the bed, facing him with her feet dangling towards the floor.
“Can I hold you without hurting you now?” Jay asks softly.
Hailey reaches forward to hook her fingers in his belt loops and pull him closer between her legs. “You can,” she smiles. “Just go easy on the left side.”
Jay wraps his left arm snug around her right side and buries his right hand into her hair to swipe slowly along the back of her neck. He feels Hailey pull him closer with her hands clutching at his waist, and this is how he has been dying to hold her all morning.
He presses his lips to the top of her head when she rests her forehead against his chest. Her “I love you” is muffled into his jacket so he pulls away half an inch to be able to look down into her eyes.
“I love you so much,” he responds. “Jesus, Hailey, that scared me.”
Hailey burrows back into his chest and runs her hands up and down his sides. “I’m good,” she whispers. “I’m good.”
“Knock, knock,” Dr. Torres strides back into the room. Jay pulls himself away from Hailey, but drags his chair under him at her bedside so he can keep a firm grasp on her hand.
“Hailey, how are you holding up?”
“Good,” she assures. “I’m still a little sore on my left side.”
“I should think so,” the doctor answers while she looks down at the papers in her hand. “Your head looks good. No broken bones. You do, however, have extensive bruising in the abdomen. That’s where the tenderness is coming from.”
“Bruising? That’s not too bad,” Jay interjects. “Right?”
“Yes and no. You won’t need further medical intervention beyond pain management,” Dr. Torres looks at Hailey over her glasses. “But it does mean you have to take it easy. Rest isn’t just a suggestion right now, it’s a necessity.”
Hailey nods along with the doctor’s instructions and takes her first dose of over-the-counter pain relievers. Just as she told everyone, she is fine.
Jay and Hailey walk out of Lakeshore Memorial twenty minutes later after Hailey has been discharged and changed back into her mangled clothes. There is a stiffness to her gait that Jay clocks immediately, but he does not say a word. She inhales sharply when she slides into the patrol car waiting for them outside the hospital, but he keeps his mouth shut. Jay does not speak up until they arrive at the district and she turns towards the roll up doors rather than to his truck.
“Hailey, where are you going?”
“Work?” she answers rhetorically, as if it is the most obvious answer in the world.
“You were just told to rest,” he sighs. Some part of him saw this coming, and some part of him can not blame her because he knows he would be doing the same.
“Rest doesn’t mean bed-ridden. I can take it easy at a desk or in the interrogation room," she argues. "Don’t ask me to sit this one out, Jay. Not this one.” Hailey turns from him and leads them into the district. She’ll ride a desk if she has to, but she will be damned if she abandons this case after everything it has put them through.
This case is testing everyone, but Jay feels a pressure that was months in the making. He made a deal with Voight to keep things above board, and his time for reckoning is coming. When they stumble on Escano’s body after Anna fled protective custody, he knows from almost a decade of experience that Voight is about to go off book to protect her.
He owes a lot to Voight. Jay was young when he joined Intelligence- inexperienced and naïve. He found himself falling through trap doors as a direct result of the unit he worked in. Voight had a saying. “ Tell me the truth so I can lie for you ”- and he did.
He owes a lot to Anna, too. Intelligence sent her in to work with Los Temidos. She was undercover for months, forced to relive her traumas, and pushed past her breaking point. Her mess is their mess.
“None of that is true,” Hailey shakes her head angrily in the passenger seat of Jay’s truck when he puts these thoughts into words. They are driving back to the district after locating Anna’s abandoned car outside of a warehouse. She is on the run for Escano’s murder, Voight is helping her, and Jay is coming dangerously close to helping him.
“ What the hell are you doing, are you going to help him commit a felony?” Hailey had bit at him when they found Voight throwing evidence in the river. Now, the car ride back to the twenty-first is tense.
“I don’t care what kind of mentor Voight was or what you think he has done for you,” Hailey continues. “You don’t have to fall on your sword for him.” She pauses to breathe and shifts her weight away from her throbbing left side. "And Anna… I wish we could help her, Jay. I really do. We tried to help her- but if she did what we both know is true, we can’t make that go away.”
Jay is about to argue back, but instead he watches her shove two more pain relievers in her mouth. She swallows them harshly and leaves him alone when they pull into the district parking lot. He needs a new plan. Voight barrels down his path of personal justice while Jay grasps at him from one step behind.
He needs to get ahead of this. Anna is on the run, Voight is in pursuit, and Jay is at a crossroads. He just needs to get one step ahead of them both.
Hailey never thought she would have to pull Jay back from this. After everything they went through months ago, cover-ups and lies were behind them. At least, they were supposed to be. She has not been resting all day, but how can she rest while she watches Jay slip into every trap she fell into before?
She finally confronts him again in the district garage, pleading with him to see that he will not win this fight. Voight can not be saved, and anyone who tries will go down with him.
“We can’t do this again… you and me. We can’t do it.” Hailey does not want to cry here, but her eyes go glassy when she thinks back on the months of panic and separation they endured. Jay hears her, but he does not hear her. He assures her that he will play this right. He just needs to catch up with Voight and Anna, and he can find a way out of this.
The night Jay discovered the truth about what happened with Roy Walton, he had every reason to walk away. She was startled awake by his silhouette in her doorway. He looked disappointed and distant, yet he stepped forward to hold her in their bed all night. He promised he would not leave her side.
They found a way out, but they lost a part of themselves in doing so. That was supposed to be the end of the blurred lines. Hailey watches Jay walk out of the garage in pursuit of Voight and Anna, and she has to decide whether or not to follow. She hesitates for half a moment, but that is all it takes. If Jay is taking this risk, she will not just sit by and watch it happen. Where he goes, she goes.
He looks at her tentatively when she climbs into his truck. “I don’t like how much you’ve been moving today, Hailey,” Jay says when he glances between her and the road. Her skin looks clammy and she winces with every sudden movement his truck makes.
“I don’t like it either,” she answers, “but I’m not letting you go alone. I’ll rest when this is over.”
They pull up on Voight and Anna in the middle of the busy street. Anna looks broken- trapped and helpless. She is shaking and unsteady with her gun is raised to Voight's chest. Jay and Hailey do not even have time to formulate a plan or wait for Voight to talk her down before Anna pulls her trigger, and Hailey pulls hers.
Jay and Hailey race into Chicago Med side by side. There is a bustling of nurses and doctors moving around them, but the noise is overcome by the droning tone of the flat line on Anna’s heart monitor. She succumbs to the injuries brought about by Hailey's gun, and Voight all but crumbles in front of them. He stands pitifully by Anna's bedside with a clear agony on his face and a fresh bullet wound in his shoulder.
Hailey watches the scene in front of her and feels the room closing in. The high-pitched tone from the monitor rings in her head, and the fluorescent lights burn. Bile rises in her throat, and the room starts to tilt. She stretches her hand towards Jay’s to link the tips of her fingers with his.
“I can’t do this again,” she says in a frantic rush of words.
Jay barely hears her over the commotion coming from Anna’s room. His focus is pulled away when he feels her fingers brush his, and he looks down at Hailey to see her eyes already brimming with tears.
“That was a good shoot,” Hailey asserts weakly. Her eyes are red-rimmed and pleading. “This can't be the same as before.”
“It’s not,” Jay tries to assure her while he glances around them. He shifts to block Hailey’s view of Anna’s room, and gently grasps her biceps. “It was a good shoot, Hailey.”
“I can’t do it again. The shooting, the investigation, the FBI…” Hailey rambles.
“Hey, hey. Look where we are,” Jay’s eyes dart around the Med Emergency Department hallway to ensure there is no one within close hearing distance.
“Jay, I can’t do it again,” she repeats.
“Okay, alright, come here,” Jay guides her by the arm gently. If she is going to fall apart, he will at least make sure she will do it in private. Hailey stumbles next to him while they walk, and he notices the sweat gathering along her hair line. She looks as gaunt as she did the day he coaxed her down from a panic attack in the district break room, and he is preparing to do it again.
The door to the doctor’s lounge creaks open as Jay guides Hailey inside. “Sit down,” he urges her toward the couch. Hailey all but falls on the sofa and drops her head into her hands to quell the waves of nausea taking over her.
“I’m not okay, Jay,” she rasps out.
Jay kneels in front of her and places a protective hand on the back of her head. He encourages her to just keep her head down and listen to his voice. They will get through this together. Hailey rocks back and forth on the couch, twisting awkwardly to the right.
“What do you need?” Jay asks.
“I don’t know,” Hailey breathes. This is a sensation she has never felt before. Her body aches and she is teetering on the edge of exhaustion. Her mind is frantic and hazy, and the room still spins in a nauseating motion. “Water,” she whispers because she is not sure what else to ask for.
“Water?” Jay did not expect the request to be so simple. “I can do water.” He grips the right side of her face and presses a kiss to the left side. “Just hang on for me, we’ll figure this out.”
Jay curses when he sees the “out of order” sign taped to the vending machine in the doctor’s lounge. He sifts through Will’s go-bag hung in the lockers for any water bottle and comes up empty. There is a sink in the corner of the room, but nothing to collect the water in. They are in a damn hospital, and he is struggling to find his wife something to drink.
“Hailey, I’m going to have to go find some,” he finally admits.
She nods shakily on the couch without taking her head from her hands. Her breathing is shallow, but steady. Jay can at least relax on that front. The first time he saw this happen to her, she struggled to fill her lungs at all. He gives her shoulder one last squeeze before striding out of the room.
Jay never thought it would be so difficult to find water at Chicago Med. He has walked a few hallways in frustration. By the time he rounds another corner only to come up empty again, he is about ready to march into a stranger’s room and steal some water from their meal tray. He sees a dead end ahead of him, so he turns sharply on his heel and directly into Will.
“Woah,” Will stumbles back when his brother collides into him. “I thought I saw a Jay-like blur go by the window,” Will quips before he notices the panicked look on his face. “What’s up?”
“Ahh, I don’t know,” Jay stutters. “Water. I just need to get Hailey water. I think she’s having a panic attack in the doctor’s lounge so I promised I would find her some.”
“Okay,” Will tries to calm him down and motions to the right. “Go down that hall and through the double doors. You’ll find a vending machine in the ortho waiting room. Get her some water, and I’ll come check in when I’m done with this round, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Jay answers in a rush. “Yeah, thank you.” He nods to Will in thanks before taking off down the hall.
Jay buys one water, then one more just in case. His steps echo through the hallways of the hospital while he paces back towards the Emergency Department. He dodges nurses and transport beds, his eyes fixed on the half-open lounge door in front of him.
“Hailey, I got so-” Jay stops short when he crosses the threshold and spots her. For the second time today, he finds her sprawled out and lifeless on the hard, unforgiving ground.