There's no proof that Benton didn't keep Carter's kidney in a jar after the transplant. You can't prove they don't have each others organs in specimen jars on a shelf together. You can't prove it's not mutual.
Big believer that Carter had his kidney in a jar and went as captain Jack Sparrow with a jar of dirt for Halloween one year. Probably used a label maker and decorates it in clothes like a porch goose
summary: A routine appointment becomes an emergency when your blood pressure spikes at 38 weeks, landing you admitted to the hospital for an induction the same afternoon. The night is long and frightening, and just when you think you’re through the worst of it, the monitor alarms.
content/warnings: angst, complications in pregnancy, high blood pressure, implied age gap, married Jack and reader, inaccurate medical procedures, light fluff, soft and worried Jack, preeclampsia, mentions of past miscarriage.
word count: 2k
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°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ Chapter Five
The appointment was supposed to take 20 minutes.
You’d done this twice a week for four weeks — blood pressure check, urine dip, fetal monitoring, a quick scan to confirm fluid levels. You knew the routine so well you could have run it yourself. You’d started bringing a book to pass the time.
Jack had even stopped coming to the monitoring appointments after the first two weeks because his shifts couldn’t always accommodate it and you’d both agreed there was no point in both of you rearranging everything for something that had, so far, been entirely uneventful.
That was the thing about a Tuesday that looked exactly like every other Tuesday. You didn’t see it coming. But you should have. Because the trend was now Tuesdays.
You were thirty-eight weeks and two days when the number on the cuff made the attending pause.
Not long. Just a fraction of a second… the kind of pause that a non-medical person would never catch. But you caught it, because you’d done it yourself, in that same chair, on the other side of this exact equation.
“Let’s give it a few minutes and try again,” she said, her voice perfectly level. She’s pretending to be calm, I know that tone. You put your book face-down on your lap and didn’t pick it up again.
The second reading was worse. Your heart starts beating fast. 171 over 112. She was already reaching for the door before you’d fully processed the number. “I’m going to get Dr. Al-Hashimi.”
The room felt very small suddenly. You looked down at your stomach and at the monitor strapped across it, the steady line of her heartbeat scrolling across the screen, fast and even and completely unbothered. You caught your reflection in the window and pressed your hand flat against the side of your belly.
“Okay,” you said quietly, to both of you. “Okay. We’re okay, baby.”
Dr. Al-Hashimi came in four minutes later with the kind of calm that told you she’d already reviewed the chart on her way down the hall.
She sat across from you, which is what you did when the conversation required it, and you felt the floor shift slightly beneath you even though you were sitting perfectly still.
“Your levels have been trending up over the last ten days,” she said. “Today’s reading, combined with the labs from Thursday — the protein levels in particular — means we’ve crossed the threshold for severe range.” She held your gaze. “We’re not sending you home today.”
You nodded. You’d known, somewhere in the back of your mind, since the first reading. You know the next steps. “Induction?”
“We’re going to get you admitted and start the process this afternoon. Thirty-eight weeks is a strong position to be in. She’s essentially full term and monitoring after delivery will be routine.”
All the right facts. All the right reassurances. You’d said every single one of these sentences yourself.
“Can I call Jack?” You took a deep breath.
“Of course.” She put her hand briefly over yours. “I’ll give you a few minutes.”
Jack picked up on the second ring.
“Hey, how did it—”
“I need you to come. I’m still here and—” Your voice came out steadier than you expected. “They’re admitting me. My numbers spiked. They want to induce today.”
Silence. One beat, two.
“I’m on my way.” No questions, no reassurances, no wasted words. Just that. “Don’t move.”
“I’m literally about to be admitted to the hospital, Jack, where am I going to—”
But he’d already hung up.
He arrived two minutes later and came through the door of the room they’d moved you to and stopped for just a second when he saw you — propped up against the hospital pillows, IV already in, the fetal monitor strapped across your middle, the blood pressure cuff cycling automatically every fifteen minutes.
His eyes moved across all of it quickly and professionally and then landed on your face, and whatever the professional assessment had told him, it was your face that made something in his own briefly come undone.
Jack crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed and pulled you in without saying anything, and you felt him breathe — one long, deliberate inhale — against the top of your head. God, he smelled good.
“I’m okay,” you said into his shoulder.
“I know,” he said, in the voice that meant he was still deciding whether to believe it.
“She’s okay. Her heart rate has been perfect all morning.”
“I know.” His hand moved to your stomach, spread wide and warm. “I saw the strip on the way in.”
Of course he had.
You pulled back to look at him. The carefully maintained composure was all there. His jaw set, eyes clear, the particular stillness of a man who had spent twenty years learning to be the calm in other people’s storms and he had become yours. But you knew his face better than you knew anything, and underneath all of it he was terrified. You were too. You knew by experience how fast these situations could go sideways.
“Hey,” you said quietly.
He looked at you.
“We’re ahead of it. You said so yourself.”
Something flickered across his face. “I did say that.”
“And you’re never wrong.”
The corner of his mouth moved slightly. “Let’s not overstate it.”
You leaned your head back against his shoulder, and he kept his hand where it was, and for a few minutes you just listened to the sound of your daughter’s heartbeat on the monitor. Steady, insistent, completely indifferent to the fear in the room.
The induction began at 2:17 in the afternoon.
By evening, things were progressing slowly in the way that first inductions often did — which the nurses explained cheerfully and which you already knew and which did not make the waiting any easier. Your blood pressure was being checked every thirty minutes. The medication was doing what it was supposed to do. Everything was, technically, going according to plan.
Jack hadn’t left the room once.
He’d called his parents and yours from the chair beside your bed, keeping his voice low and steady, giving the same careful update to each: “she’s stable, baby’s doing well, we’re in good hands, we’ll call when there’s something to tell you.” He did the same with all your friends who were currently working downstairs: Robby, Trinity, Mel, Cassie, and the rest of our hospital family.
You watched him hang up the last call and sit for a moment in the quiet, his elbows on his knees and his head slightly bowed, and you thought about how much energy it took to hold yourself together for everyone else.
“Jack.” He looked up. “Come here.”
He moved back to the bed and you shifted over as much as the monitor and the IV line would allow, and he sat beside you, close enough that his arm was against yours.
“You’re allowed to be scared,” you said. “You don’t have to do the voice.”
He was quiet for a moment. “What voice?”
“The calm one. The one you use for patients. You don’t have to use it with me.”
He exhaled slowly through his nose. Outside the room, the maternity ward carried on — footsteps, a distant phone, the soft rhythm of a hospital at night.
“If I stop using the voice,” he said carefully, “I’m not sure what’s underneath it right now.”
You reached for his hand.
“I know what’s underneath it,” you said. “And it’s okay. We can be scared together.”
He turned his hand over and held yours tightly, and for the first time all day the composure slipped just slightly… not much, barely visible, just a tightening around his eyes and a single slow exhale that carried more weight than anything he’d said.
“I keep thinking about last time,” he admitted quietly. “I know this is different. I know that logically. But I keep—”
“Me too,” you said. “Every day.”
He looked at you.
“Every single day of this pregnancy,” you said. “I’ve just been living there. And I think maybe that’s okay. I think that’s just what this is and will be until she’s an adult… being terrified and doing it anyway because she’s worth it.”
“Even when she’s an adult I’m going to be worried.” Jack added and chuckled lightly. He brought your hand to his lips and held it there.
°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
At 9:46pm, the monitor alarmed.
Not the slow, cycling alarm of a routine alert — the sharp, insistent kind that brought a nurse through the door in under thirty seconds, eyes already on the strip.
Her heart rate had dropped. Not catastrophically, not yet, but enough… a deceleration that sat at the bottom of the screen like a held breath, and didn’t come back up the way it should have.
You felt Jack go absolutely still beside you.
The nurse called for the midwife, her voice professionally calm, and within ninety seconds the room had filled in the quiet, efficient way that medical rooms fill when something requires immediate attention — another nurse, the midwife, and then our friend Dr. Al-Hashimi herself moved through the door, coming straight from the ER with her eyes already on the monitor.
“Talk to me,” she said to the nurse, and they exchanged information in the shorthand of people who had done this many times, and Jack was standing now, on the other side of your bed, his hand on your shoulder, and you were watching the strip and watching Dr. Al-Hashimi’s face and trying to remember how to breathe and all your medical training.
The heart rate came back up.
Slowly, and then all at once, the line climbed back to where it should be and the monitor settled, and the room took a collective breath.
“There she is,” the midwife said, almost to herself.
You put both hands on your belly and felt the tears come before you could stop them — not from sadness, just from the sudden release of ten seconds of pure terror, the kind that left your whole body shaking slightly in its aftermath. Your daughter was so loved and wanted. She had to be okay.
“Hey.” Jack was at your side immediately, both hands on your face. “Hey. She’s okay, sweetheart. Look at the strip — she’s okay.”
“I know,” you said, lips trembling. “I know, I’m not — I’m fine, I just—”
“I know,” he said, and his voice finally cracked, just slightly, on the second word.
You looked at each other.
Dr. Al-Hashimi was speaking and explaining the deceleration, what had likely caused it, the adjustment she was making to your positioning and the IV line, what they’d be watching for over the next hour. You heard all of it and registered all of it.
But mostly you were looking at Jack, and he was looking at you, and the fear that had been living quietly in the corner of the room since you miscarried the first time was still right there between you now, out in the open, and somehow that was better than pretending it wasn’t.
“One more night,” Dr. Al-Hashimi said, from somewhere nearby. “And then tomorrow we meet her.”
Jack pressed his forehead against yours.
“Tomorrow,” he said softly.
You closed your eyes and nodded and held on to him. Tomorrow you’ll meet your daughter.
—
I promise the angst will be ending soon. Not just yet, but soon. Thanks for reading and for all your support. I’m touched that this story resonates with you. I love Jack so much. See you next chapter! (if you want to be added to the taglist let me know). <3
saw someone else take on this on twitter, no idea whom, but I'm taking it and running
I feel like during COVID, John Carter wouldn't be in at general. Since he would have taken a cocktail of immunosuppressants prior and most likely post transplant, a new pandemic is a death sentence.
So County works out a deal for him to take a teaching position for incoming med students. And he soon becomes a fan favorite.
Interesting lectures with jokes, actually taking students' issues seriously and doing his best to make sure that everyone pass his classes.
Full size candy bars at Halloween as incentives for answering questions. He may or may not adopt a few students under his wing, and when it's time for placement, he personally sees that the students go where they would be best suited.
Source- Immunosuppressant Management in Renal Transplant Patients with COVID-19 - PMC https://share.google/y65gNUgzMTiqYAZKQ
hucklerobby is genuinely that one meme where one guy comes out first (Dennis) all marked up and grinning and it's like damn how much fun did you have last night but is followed by a lightly limping one big bruise of a man (Robby)
John Truman Carter iii would be the most amazing girl dad on the face of the planet.
Picture this: early 2010s, Obama presidency. Makemba and Carter are nervous as hell when they find out she's pregnant again. Thought they would just be having one, another chance.
Anatomy scan comes around, and Carter is trying to read the ultrasound machine as Makemba grips her hand. The ultrasound tech lights up and grins. "You have a healthy baby girl, Mrs Carter". She's healthy and safe, everything is where it should be.
Carter is very grateful he's sitting down, because otherwise he'll have a concussion.
Time passes by, and Makemba gives birth, John Carter actually helps to bring his daughter into the world. There's only two women he melts for: Makemba, and now their daughter.
He would stay up late reading to her, cuddling and just talking to her. Telling her how much he loves her, and no matter what she chooses to do, he would be in her corner.
John Carter runs county general like the damn navy, but he is always ready to come home to see his little girl. On a particularly bad day, Makemba brings her by, and she chirps out "dada!" For everyone to hear.
John Truman Carter iii doesn't cry like a baby hearing her first word. He doesn't pick her out of his wife's arm and places kisses all her hair and cheeks, squeezing her. "That's right, Petra. I'm dada"
Petra Carter, named after Carter's mentor, of course
You know whats devastating? Realising just how much of ER fanfiction is just lost because the fandom is so old, the original fanfics were on webpages thats now been shut down for years and gone
I feel like Dennis wanting to work in rural medicine is glossed over in favour of staying with PTMC (which I get is also probably bc it’s a late season 5 scene so it’s fresh) but I wanna see Robby and or Jack adapting to rural medicine “why would you do that with a tractor?” “Why did you wait so long before you came in!”
Jack being worried it’ll be too boring and tame but finds himself on calls to barn injuries using battle field medicine again.
Robby being able to regulate his nervous system and still enjoy intense moments. Being able to step out side and enjoy nature rather than a rooftop.
Give me rural towns slowly accepting the weird tri faith gay throuple doctors as they each receive medical care from them and start to actually respect them.
Give me the towns first pride event (equally funny to me from the uk where rainbows also celebrate health care workers I can see a rural town combining the events)
Give me teens going to their clinic to ask for advice on their own sexuality and it being a safe space for all no matter what
And by give me I mean I’m going to write it in Buckle
pup!den who starts immediately drooling and whimpering when robby sits down to meticulously clean his boots, knowing if he can stay good and still until robby's finished he gets to rut himself stupid on them <3
robby crooning dumb little puppy, so horny and stupid on owner's boots, yeah, aww.. scratching at his scalp, pushing the toe of the boot up so the grind is harder, cruel, making sensitive little dennis yelp and sniffle as he humps his achy little cunt desperately against the leather.
robby calling him fuckpet, mutt, bootslut. cooing the insults out so sweet, laughing down at poor, squirmy little den and tugging lightly at his collar as he cums all over robby's boot, tears rolling down his flushed cheeks.
robby muttering lick, pup, there you go. clean up your mess, while he holds den's head down, makes him lick up every bit of slick and cum off of robby's boot.
robby hauling him up and spreading his legs, spitting down on den's leaking cunt and twitching dick, watching it mix with his slick as he hums ohh, look at that, so fucking wet. owner's perfect little fleshlight, baby, prettiest little puppyparts.
robby hauling those tremoring legs over his shoulders as he croons you've had your treat, fucking yourself dumb on my boot, huh? now owner's gonna have his treat now, as he pushes inside, stretching out den's pulsing little puppyhole with soft pants and grunts, filling his squirmy, whiny pup to the brim.
fuck, baby, real tight... shhh, just breathe, just let me in... thereee you go, good boy, aaall the way in... mhmm, that's it, good puppy. <3
Just picturing Dennis, Trinity Victoria and Mel going as the penguins of Madagascar for Halloween one year and doing a tiktok or something of that one sound from the movie where it's like "ship to Africa, wildlife preserve" and they get Robby and Jack to be the two chimps.
And all the comments are like "aw, it's sweet that Dennis got his dad's involved:))" and Trinity snorts Dr pepper out of her nose.
turnnoffyourmind
dededos
janainaart
ellievsbear
