Chapter Text
The phlebotomist came in a couple minutes after the doctor left, and by the time she did Jaskier was already thinking forward to the endoscopy, wondering if he should leave once Geralt was taken for the procedure.
It was getting late. With the anesthesia he might be able to sleep all night, and Jaskier really ought to go and relieve Eskel and try to get a good night’s sleep in his own bed so he could come back first thing in the morning.
“Alright, sit back,” the tech instructed. “Are you ready?”
“Hmm.” Geralt held out his right arm, the one closer to her. Like Jaskier, he was probably thinking more about the procedure, not about what should be just a simple blood draw.
He barely winced when the needle sunk into the crook of his elbow, but after she filled the first vial he looked over to Jaskier, panic behind his tired, glassy eyes.
“I don’t feel good.”
“This’ll be over in just a second, love.” Jaskier grabbed the basin and set it in Geralt’s lap.
“All finished.” The phlebotomist pulled the needle out, expertly wrapped a bandage around his arm, and undid the elastic around his bicep. “We’ll have the results from these in the next few hours.”
Jaskier thanked her, but most of his attention was on Geralt, braced for whatever was going to happen next.
“I don’t feel good,” Geralt repeated, more urgently this time.
“Do you want to go and sit in the bathroom again?” Jaskier wasn’t sure he had it in him to move again, but what other option did they have?
“No, not that.” He noticed the basin then, and pushed it back toward Jaskier, who wasn’t sure if he should view this as a good thing or a bad thing. “Bit dizzy.”
“Do you feel like you’re going to faint again?”
His heart monitor started to beep faster. Geralt looked on the verge of passing out. He had that same look he’d had earlier when they’d still been at home, like if he didn’t hold onto something he was going to lose himself. Jaskier took his hand.
“Just breathe, love. It was probably just the blood draw. Just lay back and rest.” He would really like for him to avoid fainting, but if his body needed rest then this probably wasn’t the worst thing. Maybe he’d finally sleep.
“This feels wrong.” Geralt was more insistent than he’d been in hours, and his panic was sharper. “Something is wrong.”
Jaskier pressed the call button, not letting go of his husband’s hand. “Someone is coming to help. Just lay back.”
Geralt had pushed himself upright when Jaskier thought he might start puking, but now he guided him back onto the mattress. He really did look on the verge of fainting, and Jaskier wanted him laying down when it happened. He wanted them both to be prepared.
He had no idea what they should be preparing for.
The monitors started blaring a half second before it began. Geralt’s eyes were shut, and for that half second Jaskier was confused. Was this how the monitors reacted to a faint? His brain barely had time to register the question before Geralt started to thrash.
Jaskier pressed the call button again, calling out as he did it. “Help! Please, help!” His own heart was ready to beat out of his chest, and he watched the horror unfolding on the bed, unable to do anything about it.
Geralt’s eyes were half open again, rolled all the way back until only the whites showed, and his neck strained, alternating between shoving his head back into the pillow and going slack.
Jaskier worried he was going to rip out his IV with the way his arms were moving, his legs doing the same. Possibly the most unsettling thing of all was his mouth, pink foam spilling out past his slack jaw, threatening to choke him.
Jaskier didn’t realize help had arrived until he was being pushed back from the bedside. The first thing the nurse did was roll Geralt onto his side, and not a moment too soon. With the next thrash came a rush of bile from his mouth, streaked with blood and foam. It was accompanied, not by the usual retching sounds Jaskier had grown so accustomed to, but these horrible wet gasps alternating with an almost croaking sound.
Halfway through the next heave Geralt’s jaw clamped shut, the vomit being forced through the gaps between his teeth and then a second later out his nose, which began to bleed again as soon as the vomit passed through. Jaskier clamped a hand over his mouth, horrified.
The nurse who was holding Geralt on his side turned to her counterpart who had been fumbling with the IV port.
“Do it now! He’s going to start aspirating,” she barked, calm but urgent.
“I can’t get it. He’s moving too much and there’s air in the line.” She sounded noticeably less calm.
As if on cue, Geralt’s IV ripped from his arm, blood welling in the crook of his elbow.
“Take him. I’ll do it.”
“I can’t hold him,” she protested as the first nurse took her and forcibly switched their positions. “He’s too big. I’m not strong enough.”
“You’re going to have to be.”
The entire exchange took only a few seconds, but it felt like hours knowing that at any moment the vomit might enter Geralt’s lungs and start suffocating him.
“You’ve got to hold him steady!”
“I’m trying!” the second nurse cried. “He’s strong.”
The first nurse wasn’t listening anymore though. She’d caught hold of Geralt’s arm, tucked it between her own elbow and her side, and sunk the needle into the vein in his wrist.
“Got it.”
It was as if a switch had flipped. Geralt’s mouth fell open again, releasing one last mouthful of bile to soak into the sheets and drip onto the floor before he fell completely, unnaturally still. The only signs that he was still alive were the beeping monitors and the blood pulsing from his nose.
Elaine was right. The helplessness was the hardest part. It was all encompassing. Gut wrenching. Heart breaking. And paralyzing.
Jaskier stood, shell shocked, unable to remove his hand from his mouth, watching while the nurses cleaned him up. He didn’t move until the doctor came in the room, and even then only enough to turn and face her, and acknowledge it when she told him they were moving Geralt up to the ICU.
Geralt was gone by the time she left the room. Jaskier hadn’t even seen them take him. It was all he could do not to burst into tears.
Instead he stumbled out to the elevator and took it up to the intensive care unit. When he arrived he stood and stared at the sign for a full minute, wondering how he would find Geralt before he remembered the nurse’s station existed.
“Hi, um, my husband.” He realized as soon as he started speaking that he was in no shape to be trying to communicate. “I’m sorry. They said he would be here. I don’t know—“
“What’s your husband’s name?” The nurse cut in before Jaskier could spend another minute rambling senselessly.
“Geralt,” he replied. “Geralt Bellegarde.”
“Okay, Bellegarde.” She squinted at the computer in front of her. “He isn’t in my system, but if he’s just being brought up here they might not have inputted him yet. Let me go see.”
She left Jaskier there at the station and he stood and waited, shaking and staring glassy eyed at the picture of someone’s dog hung up behind the desk until she returned.
“Mr. Bellegarde?”
Jaskier snapped back to attention. “Yes.”
She gave him a warm smile. “Your husband is just down the hall. He’s in the last room on the right.”
She pointed him in the right direction and she thanked him before walking as fast as he dared down the hallway, desperate to be there, and terrified of what he might find when he arrived.
He felt equal parts fear and relief when he saw Geralt laying perfectly still on the bed. The scales tipped to fear when he noticed the oxygen cannula snaking its way under Geralt’s nose. He nearly jumped out of his skin when the doctor spoke behind him. He hadn’t even noticed she’d entered.
“He’s resting comfortably.”
He wasn’t resting. He was out cold. How could she possibly know if he was comfortable or not?
“His lungs.” Jaskier scrambled to gather his thoughts. “Is he not breathing on his own anymore?”
“His respiration is a little labored still,” she began. “But I’m not concerned about his lung function.”
“But the oxygen,” Jaskier stammered.
“He lost oxygen for over a minute during his seizure.” She broke the news gently, but it still felt like a punch to the gut.
“The likelihood of brain damage is very low, but we wanted to put him on some supplemental oxygen to be safe, and to just make sure his body isn’t working harder than it needs to.”
“Have you sedated him?” Jaskier asked, not sure which answer he wanted to hear.
The doctor shook her head. “He hasn’t regained consciousness since the seizure,” she told him. “His vitals are stable though. We think the best thing to do is let him rest.”
“What next then? More tests?”
“Our plan is to let him rest until we get the blood panel back, and then re-evaluate from the information we get there.”
“Okay.” Jaskier was shaking like he’d been dunked in ice cold water. “Thank you.”