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He hears the calls for Octavia, Jackson’s most experienced doctor, when he’s two streets over from the gate.
He misses most of the details being shouted, but what filters through fills his veins with ice.
“Slipped” and “rebar” and “went right through her.”
The man speaking is one of the group Ellie went out with, one of her first patrols without him on the same assignment. 16 still seems unbelievably young to him to be out in the world without him right there, but kids grow up fast in this new world, and the teenagers only go out with the patrols unlikely to run into anything.
“Oh c’mon,” she’d wheedled two weeks ago, “I’m not a baby, Joel. Plenty of the other 16 year olds go out without their parents.”
It hits him in a cold wave of terror now. There are other 16 year olds who go out without their parents, yeah.
There are also 16 year olds who don’t come back to their parents when they do.
He’s at the gate faster than he’d ever thought possible, and he’s nearly frantic as he scans faces, looking for Ellie’s cowboy hat. She’s taken to accessorizing it recently, and he’s searching desperately for a glance of a bright blue jay feather tucked into a brim because “it’s a blue jay kinda day, Joel.” He pulls himself up as tall as he can get, scanning faces for the third, fourth, fifth time.
No hat.
No blue jay feather.
No Ellie.
Before he can grab someone and shake them down for information, a woman named Monica grabs his shoulder, eyes serious and sorry.
His heart stops.
No. There’s no reason for her to look sorry. Ellie’s done something stupid and will be back late accordingly. She should look irritated or amused. They should be exchanging shared grievances about the trouble teenagers manage to find, benign as it is.
“They had to bring her back slower,” Monica says, but the words are nearly lost in a roar.
“Where?” He asks, voice hoarse. He’s already eyeing the horses, trying to decide which one looks the fastest.
“Joel-”
“Where is she?” He all but growls. He’s worked alongside Monica before. He likes her and her sarcastic sense of humor and her no-nonsense world view. She has a good head on her shoulders. He trusts her.
But right now, she’s an obstacle between him and his child, and if she doesn’t start talking, she’s going to be dealt with as such.
“They’ll be here soon,” she says, both hands extended in a gesture of peace like she realizes the kind of danger she’s in right now. She’s a mother, he remembers distantly. Has two kids of her own. One of them is in Ellie’s age group at school.
And none of this information is solving his problem.
“Where-” He starts, walking forward to intimidate her with sheer size before commotion at the gate distracts him.
A limp figure on a horse.
A limp figure with a hat trailing from its strings around her neck, blue jay feather speckled with red.
He’s at the horse’s side faster than humanly possible, reaching for Ellie’s face with one hand.
“Ellie?” He rasps, and her eyes flutter. “Yeah, baby, open your eyes for me. Look at me, baby girl.”
“Joel…” She trails off, eyes slamming shut again as she moans when the rider behind her starts shifting her down. The rider is named Matt, Joel thinks distantly. He’s a giant kid, same age as Ellie but twice her size. They’re friends, he knows. They always pick each other first for teams, his spinning thoughts provide. They’d high fived this afternoon when they found out they were on the same patrol.
His arms are there in a moment to accept her weight. She’s gotten a bit lankier in the past couple of years, but she still barely reaches his shoulder, and with his adrenaline pumping, he thinks madly that he could carry her for miles no matter her size if that’s what it took right now.
There’s a wad of blood-soaked bandages packed against her abdomen, and even in the few seconds they’ve been back, the stain has gotten darker.
He’s at the door to the clinic without entirely realizing how he got there, and he sets her down gently on the first cot, hitching one leg up on the edge of the mattress to put more pressure on the wound. Ellie throws her head back with a groan, small hands scrabbling at his.
“I know, baby, I know,” he says, barely able to hear what he’s saying over the pounding of his own heartbeat.
He’s nearly dizzy with double-vision. He’s in the moment and he’s also in that goddamned nightmare when Sarah-
No.
No. Not again. Not tonight.
Not this girl.
Not another of his girls.
His hands are red with another daughter’s blood, and it’s only through sheer force of will that they don’t shake. He keeps up steady pressure, even as she arches and cries out, panting and gasping. He can feel the hot slug of blood trying to escape beneath his palms, and he keeps up his stream of nonsense when he presses harder.
“You’re okay, baby girl. You’re gonna be fine. I’m right here, baby. Nothing’s gonna happen to you.”
“Joel.” His name escapes her in a wheezing whine, and her eyes on him are panicked. Again, the fucking double vision, the memory of another pair of wide brown eyes, terrified and still so painfully trusting, sure that he’ll fix it, that he’ll make it better.
He hears distant murmurs about a birth. There’s some discussion about grabbing another doctor so Octavia can be freed up for this, and he barely resists the urge to start snapping orders. Births take a while. Sarah’s had taken 17 hours. Ellie needs a doctor now.
Octavia walks through the door with brisk, confident strides after what feels like far too long, her salt and pepper curls bound back in a large bun. A picture of confident professionalism, she doesn’t even hesitate at the sight in front of her, and he’s relieved by it even as he’s irritated. He wants her to move with more urgency. He wants to know that she understands the gravity of the situation.
“Hold her,” Octavia’s no-nonsense tone instructs, and for a horrible, stricken moment, he thinks the words are for him.
But no, it’s to her assistant, who shoulders him out of the way decisively but not rudely, bracing Ellie in place. He’s around the bed in a moment, cupping Ellie’s face with one hand to stop her from looking down. Her eyes flick up to him, glassy and terrified, and one of her hands–red and sticky with blood like fucking everything else –flails weakly until he takes it in his own. She squeezes with as much force as she can muster, and it makes his own terror higher that it’s a mere shadow of what she’s normally capable of.
In his peripheral vision, he sees Octavia donning a pair of gloves, and then his attention is redirected at once as Ellie screams, a deep, guttural sound that’s going to haunt him for years, as the doctor investigates the wound.
He has no words as his child screams and tries to thrash, mindless and senseless in the face of her own pain. He keeps hold of her head as best he can without hurting her, and the sting of her fingers squeezing his registers only distantly.
“Stop,” she gasps, voice hoarse, “pl-please. Please stop-”
“Shhhhh,” he soothes, ducking his head to kiss her forehead. “Sh, baby, almost over. It’s almost over.”
He doesn’t know if it’s true or not, but all he has to offer right now are hopeful maybe-lies.
She screams again, but her attempt at thrashing is weaker when Octavia empties a vial of clear alcohol so strong it makes his nose itch over the wound, sending a stream of thinned blood to splatter onto the floor and all of their shoes.
“Dad,” she begs, “please, make them stop-”
The name hits like a punch to the gut, something she’s only just started trying out in the past few months, usually as a rushed end to a sentence before she darts out the door before he can even react.
“I’m sorry, baby,” he says, lowering his head to hers again, pressing their foreheads together. “Almost done. It’s almost over.”
Her other hand finds his bicep blindly, and she digs her nails in. The pain is a distant thing, like the warmth of the blood he can feel soaking in through his shirt at the contact.
“I’ve got you, baby girl,” he tells her. She’s stopped struggling against the hold, so he releases her face and starts stroking her hair, trying to limit his shaking so he won’t accidentally yank it.
It’s only on his third pass over the dark strands that he realizes he’s leaving them streaked in blood, has already left her cheek red.
He freezes, horrified, but another whimper from Ellie as Octavia makes the first stitch has him in motion again.
“Almost done, baby. Almost over,” he repeats, a senseless repetition of words said entirely on autopilot.
She clings to him and begs and screams, and he keeps up the same useless refrain.
*
Worse than the screaming is when she starts to go quiet, hand dropping first from his arm and then going limp where she’s holding his. Her skin has gone pale as the sheet she’s on, and he swallows against the knot in his throat as her eyelashes flutter shut.
“No, no, baby,” he says, tapping her cheek gently, barely restraining the urge to shake her back to full awareness. “No, don’t you do this. Don’t you do this to me, Ellie. Open your eyes.”
He looks to the doctor, peeling her gloves off.
“Help her,” he demands, voice rough. “She’s…” He can’t finish that thought. Can’t even think it.
He turns back to Ellie, trying to coax her back to awareness, and he misses, then, when Tommy arrives. He ignores everything around him until his brother is in his field of vision across the bed, sitting in a chair with Octavia swabbing his arm with a cotton pad soaked in alcohol.
“She’ll be alright,” Tommy tells him, even though Joel can see an echo of his own fear on his brother’s face.
He doesn’t make the connection about what Tommy’s doing until Octavia is sliding a needle into his arm and blood starts to flow through a tube connected to it. Tommy’s type O, he recalls through his own haze of panic. Jackson has a little log of type O residents on hand for emergencies. They don’t always have the supplies necessary for things like blood transfusions, but he and Tommy negotiated supplies along with vials of vaccine the last time they touched base with the Fireflies for a new batch of the cure they derived from Ellie’s immunity.
He presses his fingers to the thready pulse at Ellie’s neck and counts beats while he watches the transfusion bag fill. He doesn’t want his brother to hurt, doesn’t want to risk him as well, but he mentally orders the blood to flow faster. He needs Ellie fixed. He needs her better and awake and being a pain in the ass right fucking now.
After what seems like an age, the bag is full, Tommy shaking his head and insisting they keep going when Octavia tries to stop it.
“I’m fine,” Tommy tells her. “Take whatever she needs.”
Joel feels a rush of gratitude for his brother so strong it’s overwhelming.
He watches Ellie’s still face when they start an IV on her, reassured the slightest bit by the way she flinches a bit when the needle slips in.
“You’re alright,” he says softly, cupping her face and rubbing one thumb across her cheekbone, heedless of the way the slowly drying blood is making the contact tacky. “You’re gonna be just fine, baby.”
I’m right here, he thinks at her as he watches the blood slowly drain into her, replenishing what she’s lost. I’ve got you. Dad’s got you.
*
She looks a bit better after she’s drained the bag, and Tommy’s offer to give more is rejected with a critical look from Octavia.
“I already took more than I should have,” she tells him, one eyebrow arched in a challenge to contradict her. “You just sit right there and drink that juice until your wife comes to get you.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Tommy says with a little salute, looking to Joel with a small smile.
He doesn’t have it in him to smile back, not yet, but he nods at his brother, hoping it conveys all that he can’t figure out how to say.
From the way Tommy nods back, he understands.
*
Sure enough, Maria comes along not long after to collect her husband, tsking at how pale he is but still grasping his hand with an affectionate squeeze before she moves past him to take a look at Ellie.
“You alright?” She asks him, and there’s an understanding in her eyes that he feels in his very soul. It’s still a bit rocky, their understanding, but beyond any differences, they’re both parents who know what it’s like to bury children.
“Fine,” he says, looking back to Ellie.
And he will be.
Just as soon as she’s fine, too.
*
He leaves the room only long enough for Maria to help Octavia and her assistant get Ellie changed into some clean clothes Maria brought with her, and then he’s back at her side. She’s in sweats and one of his t-shirts, one of the ones that mysteriously “went missing” on the last laundry day.
“Found it in her pajama drawer,” Maria says with a small smile when she reads the amusement on his face.
“Little thief,” he responds, but there’s nothing but fondness in his voice.
Before she leaves with Tommy, Maria comes to his side, and after only a moment of hesitation, gently rests a hand on his shoulder.
“She’ll be alright,” she says quietly, squeezing his shoulder briefly before she moves to Tommy’s side, hauling him up and slipping under his arm when he sways slightly.
“Thank you,” he finally gathers himself enough to say when they start to leave. “Both of you,” he says with a look to Maria.
She gives him a small smile and then turns to take her husband home.
*
He accepts a warm cloth from Octavia’s assistant before the girl leaves, gently sponging the blood from Ellie’s face and hands. He tries to get some of the blood out of her hair, but one tug has her frowning in her sleep, and he desists.
He helps prop Ellie up when Octavia bandages the wound, her head lolling until it rests in the curve of his shoulder and neck. He rests his cheek on her forehead, trying not to notice how cool her skin still feels in comparison to his own.
Octavia leaves him with some instructions on what to look for and tells him to send for her immediately if anything seems off.
“She’s a strong girl,” she tells him with a reassuringly confident tone. “She’ll be just fine.”
She will be, he knows.
She will be, because he won’t accept any other option.
*
His mind spins in dizzy circles throughout his vigil that night. He feels shaky after so much adrenaline, and he can’t keep his focus on any one thing.
She looks better as the hours pass, bolstered by the transfusion. He thinks idly that she’ll probably get a kick out of that, that Tommy was the one to donate for her. It’s already been a joke of hers that they’re already sort of related since their family has all been dosed with the vaccine derived from her. She’ll laugh, probably, being linked by blood now, too.
She stirs around an hour before dawn, when his eyes are starting to get gritty from lack of sleep. He’s alert at once the moment he notices her shifting in a way that that looks purposeful, her eyes twitching a couple of times before they open. She frowns at the ceiling, looking so much like a grumpy little girl waking up from a nap that he smiles a bit.
“Hey,” he says softly, and she looks to him, relaxing a bit when she sees who’s waiting with her.
“Happened?” She asks, voice cracked. He reaches for a glass of water left on a table nearby and gently lifts her head up for her, giving her little sips.
“You fell,” he says. He doesn’t know more than that, didn’t bother to pay attention to the details of the incident in favor of panicking over the outcome.
“Mm,” she says, when he slowly lowers her back down. “Well that was dumb.”
He laughs, surprised by the statement.
“Very dumb,” he agrees, taking her hand in his when she flexes her fingers in a grabby motion towards him. “Better not do it again.”
She’s asleep again before she even responds.
*
She’s allowed back home the evening of the next day, and it’s quite the production to make it happen. She hates the clinic and was ready to go the moment she was able to be awake more than 30 seconds at a time, and it was only his insistence that kept her there any longer.
He and Maria brace her on either side for the walk. It’s not far, but she’s still about as steady on her feet as a newborn lamb, and they take advantage of more than one low picket fence as an impromptu bench for her.
After about five times the length of a normal walk between point A and point B, they have her settled in bed, her covers pulled all the way up to her chin. Maria returns again briefly to let him know that she brought them food, and he thanks her, genuinely, for her help.
“That’s what family’s for,” she says, with an attempt at lightness, but he can see the gesture for what it is, and when he thanks her, he hopes she hears all that he’s thanking her for.
*
He sits with her all that night again. He needs sleep, he knows, but he’s passed harder nights than dozing against her headboard, right at hand if she needs him.
He extends one hand towards her before he nods off, resting his hand against her belly to feel it rise and fall, soothed by the steady rhythm.
*
By her second day home, she’s decided that an immediate concern is washing her hair. Being sponged off at the clinic took care of the worst of the blood on her body, but strands of her hair are still clumped together, little flakes of blood falling when she moves her head.
“You can do that later,” he still tells her, trying to keep her down without pushing her, but she keeps at it, wincing.
“My hair’s fucking crunchy,” she says. “It’s a now kind of problem.”
Another attempt at keeping her down is equally doomed to failure, and Joel gives up, instead contenting himself with helping her up carefully. She wobbles a bit on her feet when she’s up, and he wraps an arm behind her back and offers his other hand for her to clutch at to stay upright.
“Alright?” He asks in a low voice, and Ellie nods, eyes shut while she gathers herself.
“Yeah,” she says, a little breathy, before she opens her eyes and gives him a small smile. “We should race or something. You might actually beat me now.”
He magnanimously lets that go and helps her down to the kitchen. He doesn’t entirely trust her to stay on her feet in the shower right now, and an offer to go get Maria to help her is declined, so kitchen sink it is.
He boosts her up onto the counter gently and then eases her down with one hand under her neck and the other underher back until her head’s resting on a towel folded by the edge. She smiles at him when she’s down despite the tension in her face that says she’s hurting more than a little with all the movement.
“Thought I wasn’t allowed up on the counters,” she teases.
“That’s when you’re climbing them,” he tells her, turning the water on and running it over his wrist to test the temperature. “Especially when you’re still wearing shoes inside the house like you were raised in a damn barn.”
“Wouldn’t have to climb them if you didn’t put everything up so high,” she counters. “Not my fault you put dishes up where I can’t get ‘em.”
“Maybe you’d get a little taller if you ate your vegetables when I tell you to,” he says, and she snorts, slapping his arm gently.
She closes her eyes when he wets her hair, scrunching it in his hand so he doesn’t miss any spots.
“Feel good?” He asks.
“Mm,” she says in response, eyes still closed.
He tries not to focus on the sight of watery red rinsing down the drain, knowing that the sight will haunt him every time he uses the sink if he thinks about it for too long.
“You missed your calling,” she says after a minute, and he looks to her to find her watching him from the slit of one eye. “You should have worked in a salon.”
He snorts.
“What?” She asks, and he strokes a thumb along her hairline with the simple gratitude that she feels okay enough to tease him. “No one else has one in town. We could corner the market.”
“And what would we call it?” He asks, playing along, as he rinses out the soap before he lathers it up a second time to make sure no blood remains.
“Mmm,” she hums contemplatively, closing her eyes again. “We could run it out of the sheep barn,” she says, and the restrained glee in her voice says he’s being set up for her to deliver a punchline she’s particularly proud of.
He plays along.
“And why’s that?” He asks dryly, knowing he’s given her what she wants by the way her eyes open and her grin broadens.
“‘Cause then it could be a baabaa shop.”
He rolls his eyes, but he can’t hide his smile, and from the pleased look on Ellie’s face, she notices.
Three days in a bed certainly haven’t done wonders for her hair, especially with blood still in it, and he turns the water off to gently work the tangles apart. This was one of the things he’d struggled with with Sarah when she was little, the patience and delicacy needed to tease out tangles without pulling.
It’s a bittersweet sort of a thing, to see that he apparently still has the knack two decades later.
Seeing Ellie doze off under the ministrations, though, goes a far way in mitigating the ache of it.
*
He helps her back upstairs in slow, halting steps, pausing halfway up the staircase for her to sit and take a breather. He’d offered to carry her, but she’d insisted on doing it on her own two feet, partially out of concern for how it would pull on the wound and partially out of sheer stubbornness.
“Shit,” she says, panting slightly. She leans harder into his side, and he shifts his weight to support her better without jolting her side. “I think these things got steeper.”
“Definitely the stairs,” he says dryly. “Not you being stubborn as a mule.”
“Definitely the stairs,” she agrees seriously, even though she can’t quite hide the teasing in her eyes. “Nothing to do with me at all.”
He snorts, resting his head on top of her damp hair, content to wait as long as she needs.
*
She’s asleep again soon enough when they’re upstairs, aided in no small part by a couple of the pills he stashed away after making off with a first aid kit from the Fireflies when they weren’t paying close enough attention last time. They’d agreed to handing over supplies, but he’d figured correctly that they weren’t quite as generous as they could have been.
Well, nothing a few moments of Tommy distracting a couple of guards with a false alarm couldn’t fix.
He watches her sleep, face placid under the influence of painkillers and sheer exhaustion. She’s pale, still, but there’s a little color to her cheeks, and she’s warm to the touch and not cool. He still has the mad thought that he has to keep watching her to make sure nothing bad happens, but she’s stable enough that he knows it’s irrational even as he thinks it.
He wonders if she knows, really, exactly how much of his heart she holds in her hands, if she can fully conceive of the way her death would shatter him. He thinks it might be something someone can’t understand until they have a child, that crazy, all-encompassing kind of love, the sort of love that could make you take down an army with a butterknife if you had to.
He wants to make her promise that she won’t ever go on patrol again, accompanied or otherwise. He wants to secure the front door and keep her locked up in this house forever. He wants to wrap her in bubble wrap and put a helmet on her, wants to ensure that doesn’t so much as stub a toe for the rest of her life. He wants to ensure that she will never put herself at risk again, not for anything.
But he knows he can’t.
She wouldn’t let him so much as suggest it, for one thing, and he knows she’d balk at the very idea of not being as brave as anyone else, stubborn, fearless little thing that she is. No matter how much he wishes he could tuck her behind him and keep her safe forever, he knows she needs to stand on her own two feet, needs to test her mettle and find her place in the world.
And he’ll let her, God help him. He’ll let her figure out what it feels like to get knocked down, will extend his hand to help her back up but also let her pick herself back up all on her own if that’s what she needs from him.
He’ll let her grow into the strong, brave, incredible woman he already sees her becoming, will watch her find her place in Jackson, in the world. He’ll do what good parents should and support her, no matter his own fears, rational and otherwise.
For now, though, she’s still 16, safe and asleep in her own bed, secure in their home, where the greatest danger is a spat over him tripping over her shoes in the entryway.
For now, he can put the future off, just for a little while longer.