Thanks so much to everyone who read and reviewed! I know that was a crazy evil cliffhanger, but you all know I'm not that evil, right?

A couple of notes, before I start the second and final installment of this one: Emergency care as we know it didn't really begin to come about until the 1960s, but much of the theory and practice behind it did emerge from the wartime experiences of military medical units caring for soldiers on the battle field. Sybil, obviously, wouldn't have been anywhere close to the front lines, but she'd have experienced the challenge of caring for truckloads of patients arriving at the hospital all at once, which was why it made sense to me to put her where she was at the time of crisis, so she'd be the first doctor to see Tom.

And if you haven't guessed by now, repmet's prompt was that Sybil is working as a doctor in London and is forced to face a situation in which Tom has been seriously injured and is taken to her hospital. A few weeks ago on tumblr (magfreak dot tumblr dot com), I posted a sort of "prequel" drabble that took place the night before Sybil's first day working as a doctor in this universe. I decided to incorporate it into the story as another flashback, and that's where this chapter begins. Lastly, I hereby acknowledge that this may very well be the most unrealistic resolution to a medical issue since Julian Fellowes wrote the script in which Matthew walked again. Apologies to any people with actual medical knowledge out there. This is just for fun.

Hope you all enjoy how I've wrapped this up!

Tom leaned on the door to their small bedroom and watched Sybil as she fidgeted with her white coat. She rolled the sleeves up slightly. Then rolled them back down. Then rolled them back up. She buttoned the coat and said, "I'm Dr. Branson, how can I help you?"

She frowned, took a breath, then spoke aloud to herself again, "Dr. Branson, at your service, what seems to be the problem?"

"My wife is nervous about her first day at her new job tomorrow, and I don't know how to tell her she shouldn't be nervous because she was born for this."

Sybil whipped around, suddenly embarrassed at having been caught. "Please don't tease me, or I'll be forced to remind you of how you acted before you started at the paper."

"Fair enough," Tom said walking up to her, turning her around so she was facing her standing mirror again and leaning his chin into her shoulder. "But see I don't think you need to be nervous because if I walked into Mile End Hospital tomorrow and saw you, I'd want no one else to tend to my wounds."

Sybil turned in his arms and playfully padded his head with her fingers. "As if any real injury to come to a skull as thick as this."

"You're ready. You've been ready, and now you have the sartorial proof."

Sybil looked down at her white coat. "You know, my old nurse's uniform was actually much more practical."

"But not nearly as becoming," Tom said as he kissed the side of her neck.

"That's not the opinion of yours I remember," she said, giggling at his ministrations.

"My tastes have evolved over time," he whispered into her neck.

Sybil closed her eyes, ready to give in, but the practical side of her—the one who had gotten her through medical college as a wife and mother to two rambunctious girls—begged to be acknowledged before her husband got carried away. Without opening her eyes, Sybil asked, "So you're making breakfast for the girls and walking them to school tomorrow?"

Tom pulled away and began unbuttoning her coat. "Yes."

Sybil's fingers went to his waistcoat. "And, I'll pick them up?"

Tom pushed to coat off her shoulders and started to work on her blouse. "Yes."

"Then, we'll go to the pub for a celebratory dinner?"

Tom pulled Sybil over to their bed. "Yes."

xxx

Sybil absently fidgeted with the collar of her white medical coat.

Kitty had brought it over to her from the spot where Sybil had dropped it earlier, in the midst of the chaos that Tom's entry into the hospital had caused.

Tom's mother, a laundress, had taught her to care for it, so despite all that Sybil had experienced in the year she'd been a doctor, it remained as crisp and white as the first time she'd put it on—a moment bright and vivid in her memory as if she'd lived it yesterday.

Sybil remembered standing in front of her mirror in their bedroom, not quite believing the sight before her eyes—herself as a proper doctor.

And she remembered Tom's encouragement and . . . enthusiasm. He'd pulled her into bed asking her to wear her white doctor's jacket and nothing else for a week.

I can't lose him.

When Saoirse was born, the delivery had been difficult. After, Sybil had suffered seizures and momentarily lost consciousness. She'd lost almost all memories of the event save for a brief flash of holding her daughter for the first time and a shiny-eyed Tom telling her he loved her. When danger had passed, Sybil had begged Tom to tell her what it had been like, to offer her the details that her mind—in the wake of the trauma that had ensued—had taken from her. But he wouldn't. The fear that the possibility of losing her brought to mind was too great. To recall it would be to bring on a cascade of emotions that he thought might consume him entirely, even after he knew she would be safe. Between herself and Tom, Sybil knew that he was the more emotional and sentimental of the two, so she didn't press him. But now she understood.

She was drowning, and nothing would save her. Nothing, except the sound of his voice, the look of his blue eyes peering into hers and telling her that he would be there always. For their daughters' graduations and weddings and grandchildren. For everything that would be made less happy by his absence.

Sitting in the wood chair, just outside the operating theater, from whence she'd not moved since the surgeons had taken Tom in a half-hour before, Sybil felt drops on the backs of her hands. She had become so numb to the tears, they fell from her eyes without her notice. She wasn't going to bother wiping them away until she saw another hand on her lap and a small white handkerchief. She turned, and there was Kitty, still sitting beside her. Kitty didn't smile or speak. She took Sybil's hand and squeezed it, then left the handkerchief at her fingertips. Sybil wiped her tears anew.

"Thank you," Sybil said, her voice hoarse and barely audible.

"I've called Miss Billings," Kitty offered.

Sybil's heart leapt to her throat. "Oh, the girls!" she said, bringing the handkerchief up to her eyes again to dry a new set of tears. "What has she told them?"

"Nothing, yet," Kitty said. "Only that they're to stay with her for dinner because neither of you can get away from work."

Sybil leaned back and looked up to the ceiling. "They're clever girls. They'll know something's wrong."

"But they're in good hands for now and taken care of," Kitty said. "That's what matters at the moment."

Sybil didn't answer. She prayed, once again, that she'd never have to utter the words, not to her daughters, not to anyone.

I can't lose him. We can't lose him.

"When he was my father's chauffeur, he used to . . ."

"He used to what?" Kitty prodded.

Sybil tried to swallow the lump in her throat. "He used to offer his hand to help me into the motor when I was three feet from it, and he'd not let go until I was well inside."

Kitty smiled as Sybil chuckled, in spite of herself, at the memory.

"It was years before I realized he only did that for me." Sybil sighed, then added, "It's like that still."

"What do you mean?"

"He loves me in ways I don't notice . . . I don't—I can't—"

"Sybil, don't lose faith yet. We don't know what's going to happen."

"It's just," Sybil said, lifting her hands to her face. "I'm scared because I don't know all the ways I will miss him if he leaves me."

"Sybil—"

"I'm sorry."

"Please don't apologize," Kitty said, wrapping her arm across her friend's shoulders. "I can only imagine how hard this must be, but you can't lose hope."

"How can I cling to it? I'm a doctor. I know what the worst case is."

"You're not a doctor right now. You're a wife." Kitty shifted to look Sybil in the eye. "All right, then. If you can't stop thinking like a doctor, remember how long he's been in there. If there were no hope of saving him, they'd have come out to tell you by now. That's something, isn't it?"

Sybil sighed and nodded, but it wasn't enough to convince her. His voice. His eyes looking into hers as full of life as always. That's what it would take.

xxx

The first patient that Sybil lost as a doctor was a woman in her sixties who'd come in with advanced pneumonia. She was poor and had only one son, who lived in Liverpool. Her neighbors hadn't realized how serious her illness was and didn't bring her to the hospital until it was too late. Sybil knew from her first examination that there was little that could be done for the woman, except make her final hours comfortable. But that knowledge didn't stop her from trying every remedy immediately available and every therapy she could call to mind. The treatment that Sybil administered helped the woman just enough that her son, when he arrived two days later, easily convinced himself that a miracle recovery was close at hand. When she died a week later, having survived far longer than any of the doctors at the hospital had guessed she would, Sybil struggled mightily to keep her composure as she told the son that it was over.

Sybil had seen many men die during the war, but in wartime, death is an expected outcome. Even though their doctors commit themselves to doing their level best to save them, soldiers strap on their boots knowing that they might not live to take them back off. Witnessing a preventable death, for Sybil, was an entirely different sort of emotional challenge. Many of Sybil's colleagues told her in the aftermath of that first death that the first lost patient is, in its own way, a good milestone to reach and the marker of a novice's final entry into the fraternity of doctors. That lesson—how to go on to the next when you could not help the last—is the last and most important in any medical education.

She'd seen other doctors deliver the worst news. Some did with grace and caring. Others were perfunctory and emotionless. But she'd learned that there was no correct way to do it. How could there be, when some families appreciated a gentle manner and others just wanted you to stop beating around the bush and get on with it?

"A maudlin doctor is of no use to anyone," a patient's mother had told her once.

So how will I react to the news?

It was another half-hour before the door opened and Sybil had her answer.

The sight of her, sitting just outside the operating theater startled the surgeon. Usually, the walk to the seating area at the hospital's entrance offered a chance to collect one's thoughts. Sybil understood his hesitation and looked down, wringing her hands. With a long sigh, he walked over to her. Sybil looked up again when she heard his footsteps nearing.

"Dr. Branson," he began, but stopped to collect himself. He took another deep breath, then continued, "As you are aware, with this type of injury—"

Kitty, who'd stood with Sybil and wrapped her arm around her, rolled her eyes. "Oh, for heaven's sake, Dr. Thornton, just tell us if he's come through it!?"

The surgeon did not take kindly to the reprimand and leveled a glare at Kitty that she knew meant she'd be paying for her insubordination later. (She did not care.) But looking again at Sybil's desperate expression, he knew he had to answer.

"Yes," Dr. Thornton said, finally. "Yes, he's made it through the worst, and his vital signs are stable for the time being."

Sybil collapsed into Kitty's arms once again, this time out of relief. Kitty and Dr. Thornton helped her back onto the chair on which she'd been sitting.

"I do not mean to say he is out of danger," the doctor stressed, kneeling at Sybil's feet, once she'd sat down.

Sybil gathered herself and nodded at the doctor. "The risk of infection is high—I know."

"There's that," the doctor agreed, "and, well . . . the bullet was lodged in the spleen, so in the extraction of the bullet, we had to remove a piece of it. What remains should continue to function normally, but we'll have to keep an eye on any longer-term effects—provided that he wakes up, of course."

"You mean there's still an if, in that regard?" Sybil asked, slightly alarmed once more.

Dr. Thornton sighed. "Your husband's body has gone through a major trauma, Dr. Branson, I don't need to explain the implications of his injury. He remains with us even after all we've put him through. He won't wake until he's ready, and that may be in the next week or the next hour."

Sybil swallowed a lump in her throat. "Or he may not wake at all?" she said in a whisper.

"That's to do with his resilience, and, well, you have a better answer for that question than I do."

"Thank you, doctor," Kitty said.

He stood and took a few steps before turning back toward Sybil and Kitty. "I find that it offers some comfort to speak to patients in such a state."

"For them or us?" Sybil asked with a rueful smile.

Dr. Thornton smiled. "Does it matter?"

xxx

As Tom was taken to a private room to recover, Sybil called Miss Billings and explained the situation in detail, then asked the woman to bring the girls to the hospital so she could tell them in person.

"Are you sure that's wise?" Miss Billings asked on the other end of the telephone.

"I'm not," Sybil said with a sigh. "But Tom would want me to be honest with them about what's happened, and so I will be."

In the time that she waited for them, Sybil sat quietly next to Tom, whose head had been cleaned and bandaged. Save for the setting and his injuries, he looked as if he was suffering nothing more than a particularly deep sleep. Sybil didn't want to give herself false hope, but she found strength and peace in the gentle rise and fall of his chest. She wondered if keeping the girls in the dark—perhaps send them to Downton while Tom was in the hospital—might have been an easier way of handling things. But among the promises that she and Tom had made to one another as parents was never to hide the hardships of life from their children. And anyway, Sybil knew her daughters. They'd suspect something was wrong and steal away from Downton, even with all the servants watching, and find a way onto the train to come back home and find out the truth for themselves. Sybil thought them both much braver—and more audacious—than even she and Tom had been.

When they did arrive about an hour after Sybil had called, Kitty went with Miss Billings to find some bread and ham for a makeshift dinner for them, while Sybil pulled them into her office to tell them the whole story, sparing few details. Saoirse and Susan sat side-by-side holding hands silently throughout their mother's narrative. To gather strength to relate to them the possibility that he might not wake up, Sybil had looked down at her hands. When she looked at them again, they were both red-faced from holding back the tears.

"Oh, my darlings, if you need to cry, do. It's OK to be sad. You don't have to be strong for mummy."

"But we need to be strong for da!" Saoirse said, wiping her cheek forcefully as if frustrated that the tear had squeezed its way out.

"Can we see him?" Susan asked in a voice so small, it broke Sybil's heart.

"Yes, we can," Sybil said, stepping forward and kneeling so she could gather both girls in her arms. The three Branson women held each other tightly and let the tears flow, despite any stated desire not to do so.

After a few minutes, sitting back on her heels, Sybil took turns wiping both of their faces, "and we should talk to him—and even cry in front of him if we need to."

"Even if he's not awake?" Susan asked.

Sybil nodded. "It'll remind him that he needs to get well for us."

"Well, I won't cry," Saoirse insisted, even as she wiped her face and nose with her handkerchief. "Not any more."

"Not even a little?" Sybil asked tucking a small piece of her daughter's hair behind her ear. "Because I daresay he'll think you've gone totally English on him if you don't."

This last made Saoirse laugh in spite of herself, but almost as soon as the sound was out of her mouth it turned into a sob. "Oh, God, mum, if he's gone who will talk to us in Irish? I haven't had time to learn it!"

"Me neither!" Susan cried.

Sybil pulled both girls into her arms once again, and again they cried together for several minutes.

A light knock on the door interrupted them. It was Kitty, a serene smile on her face that puzzled Sybil.

"What is it, Kitty?" She said standing up.

"Tom is awake and wants to know if you're going to spend all night in here crying because he'd like to go back to sleep."

The happy shrieks heard were so loud that the duty nurse ran down the hall to see what all the noise was. They were so excited, in fact, that the doctor—after checking Tom over—offered a stern warning that they calm themselves before going into the room because the patient was weak and needed rest. So Susan and Saoirse went in, kissed their father on the side of his forehead that wasn't wrapped in bandages and then ran back out of the room so they could keep jumping up and down in joy.

"THREE CHEERS FOR DA!"

"HIP, HIP! HOORAAAAAY! HIP, HIP! HOORAAAAAY! HIP, HIP! HOORAAAAAY!"

Back inside the room, Tom could hear the commotion through the door, and he drew strength from it. Sybil leaned her head against his and cried. After several minutes, she stood back up and pulled a chair up to his bed.

"Thank you," he whispered, his eyes opening and closing as if he were fighting sleep.

"For what? For not killing you myself for going on that raid with the police? Don't EVER do that to me again!"

Tom tried to laugh, but it turned into a wince. "You're joking with me, so that's a good sign. Anyway, someone has to write the story."

Sybil smiled. "I preferred it at the start, when your editor didn't trust enough to give you anything more than vaudeville reviews."

Tom closed his eyes again. "That's not what I remember."

"My sensibilities have changed over time."

Even with his eyes closed Tom smiled. Sybil stood and leaned over to give him a kiss on the forehead. "You need to rest. I'll go get those two to settle down."

Tom squeezed Sybil's hand and opened his eyes again. "I was thanking you for saving me."

"I didn't perform your surgery, darling. I was a bit too hysterical for that."

"There's more than one kind of saving."

Sybil smiled. "Well, then, thank you for the same."

They watched each other for a moment.

"Can you do something for me?" Sybil asked.

"Anything . . . well, within reason, given my current circumstances."

"Will you tell me everything is going to be all right?"

"Love?"

"Yes?"

"Everything is going to be all right."