(here is prelude again, and I’m gonna go ahead and slap a big ol trigger warning on this one: tw: miscarriage. sorry folks, this is the soap opera AU.)
It’s generally considered that the nightmare scenario for a dispatcher is to take a call in which a friend or family member is involved, but John’s got three brothers in three separate lines of emergency service, and it’s not that big a city. He’s pretty sure if he worked it out, he’d find he routes a call to one or the other of them at least once a week, and this is compounded by the fact that he hears about it, any time one of his colleagues dispatches one of the Tracy brood for whatever reason. John and his brothers are halfway to being city mascots, by this point.
It’s probably because he and his brothers are almost city mascots, and that John’s already a senior dispatcher despite being in the younger half of the crew, and because John hasn’t frozen on a call in years that his supervisor stands him down immediately.
It’s probably mostly the latter.
It’s a minor miracle that John’s here. She so easily could’ve been alone.
Gordon’s feeling good as he saunters the half-block down to Penny’s cafe.
In the end, he’d had to admit that they’re not really family.
Not in the on-paper way, which is all that matters. Technically all John is to Penelope is a friend and a neighbour, and neither of those things had qualified him to stay in her hospital room. He’s been unceremoniously removed to the waiting room, and has been informed that Penelope’s next of kin have been contacted. John doesn’t know much about Penelope’s family, but it’s possible that that’s a very, very bad thing.
He hasn’t called Gordon, because he hadn’t been able to determine whether Penelope wants him to know. He hadn’t been able to ask her whether she’d known herself, though she’d been so pale and frightened and shocked by the entire situation that he has to imagine she didn’t. It’s always been in her nature to keep secrets—it’s why John doesn’t know much about her family, or what’s brought her six thousand miles across the pond away from them—but she wouldn’t have kept this from Gordon. He knows her better than that, knows that she loves him too much.
So John hasn’t called Gordon. He hasn’t called anybody, though he’d texted Alan to tell him that he’d have to come straight home from school to cover a couple shifts with Grandma so Virgil could get to work. He hasn’t called Gordon, but Gordon shows up anyway, stumbling out of the elevator, pulling a petite woman with dark hair and glasses along behind him.
He looks terrified, in a way that someone wearing a paramedic’s blues just never should. When he’d first taken the job, John had had his doubts about how well his second youngest brother was going to be able to adapt. Gordon’s always had the tendency towards letting his thoughts and feelings play immediately across his features in the exact same moment as he thinks and feels them. But somehow he’d learned. John’s not sure how long it had taken him, but there’d been no doubt of it by the time Gordon was through his training, he’d managed to build a persona to hide himself behind.
There’s no trace of it now. Gordon’s scared, and it’s plainly apparent in every aspect.
In the little waiting area across from the elevator, John pushes himself to his feet just as Gordon does a double take at the sight of him.
“She’ll be okay,” is the first thing he says, before his little brother can get a word out, before he can do anything more than get himself across the waiting room, his hands catching urgently at John’s forearms, where John’s reached out, instinctively, to steady him. “She—I mean, the last I saw her, they said she was going to be all right. It’s—” he stops abruptly, unaware of just how much his brother knows. The girl he’d brought trailing behind him wears a uniform to match Penny’s and a nametag that identifies her as “Moffy”, but John doesn’t know her. He knows Penelope’s harridan of a boss, a lady with hair red enough to make his own look brassy and ginger, and who’d once told her off for spotting him a coffee after he’d dropped her off at work. The fact that she’s here with Gordon means that Gordon must have gone by the cafe, hoping to meet Penny at the end of their respective shifts. What he’d found instead— “—did…did anyone tell you what happened?”
Gordon’s trembling and wild-eyed, and when John moves to sit him down, he resists, shaking his head. John stays standing, moves a hand up to Gordon’s shoulder, steadying. “I—I mean, no. No? I don’t…I don’t remember. We just came here. I didn’t…there was a hell of a lot of blood, John. They just said it was Penny. They called an ambulance. She can’t lose that much blood. Where’s her room? Jesus, I need—please, please, I need to find her. Where is she? John, help me. What—god—what happened?”
This isn’t Gordon Tracy, experienced paramedic, this is Gordon Tracy, terrified boyfriend, and he’s edging up towards real, actual panic. John’s grip on his shoulder tightens, and he hates that he has to be the person to tell his brother what’s happened. But he’ll do it, if it means that Gordon doesn’t have to hear the truth from a stranger. A little more insistently, John manages to coax his brother into sitting down. He practically collapses into the hard plastic chair, and John doesn’t let go of him, as he steels himself and finds the words.
“Listen, Gordon—I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. She probably wasn’t more than eight or nine weeks along, but—”
“…nine weeks…pregnant? She’s pregnant?”
And John’s heart breaks for his little brother, as he’s forced to make the correction, “…she was.”
Rent Day Blues 