A/N- Well. . . I got completely fucking wrecked by that, last night. I still feel like I'm in a state of disbelief. Anyways, I don't want to deal with that so we're going to run with canon up until the last thirty seconds of 6x09, and then it's AU from there. Again, I'm not a doctor lol, so this is probably wildly inaccurate. But I'm having fun, and I hope you will, too. Not mine (I wish), no harm meant.

Much of the medical science in this season seemed. . . off. Cardiomyopathy is a muscular disorder, whereas pericarditis is inflammation of the outer lining of the heart. It also seems unlikely a cardiologist would take such a laid-back approach to a patient if it was possible their condition could kill them within a few days. . . leading me to think her illness was rushed along for the purpose of the script. I'm also rather unsure what a "cardiac seizure" is, if it even is at all.

Be that as it is, I'm not writing to debate a past history of poor medicinal depiction. Whatever. I'll let that sleeping dog lie. We'll run with that idea that she collapsed, some kind of acute heart failure, that an LVAD has been part of the plan since the beginning. Let's go.

Oh we were sea bound, and aimless at best / Clutching to the wheel and those charts

But that sea was just a gambler at heart

Gregory Alan Isakov

Rusty froze as the double doors leading from the waiting room began to open again. He didn't see Andy move, but somehow the man was beside him. The both stood in silent anticipation. It had been hours since they had arrived at the hospital.

Sharon's doctor stepped through the doors, sweaty and tired. He pinched the bridge of his nose and swallowed.

She was gone, Rusty knew it. He couldn't- wouldn't- believe it. She hadn't said goodbye. She-

"Your wife is stronger than any of us gave her credit for, Detective Flynn."

Is. Is.

Rusty sucked in a deep breath. Flynn's hand came down heavily on his shoulder as the older man leaned heavily against him for a moment.

"She's okay?" Rusty asked.

The doctor's mouth twisted slightly, and he reached up to pull his scrub cap off. "She made it though surgery, but she's a long way from okay."

"Can we see her?"

"I'm sorry, but no. Like I said it's still very much touch-and-go right now."

"Doc-" Andy interjected.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Flynn." Dr. Torres reached out and clasped the older man's hand. "Your wife's heart fully arrested- stopped- while she was in the OR. Just on its own, that fact indicates that she's very weak right now, and she's been having trouble leading up to this. She's unconscious right now, and we're keeping her heavily sedated. I want her to have time to stabilize and heal some while we look into our options."

"A donor-?"

"Yeah. Here let's sit down." He guided the three of them to the chairs by the front desk, and all of them dropped heavily into their seats. "Right now, I don't think she's leaving this hospital until she gets a new heart. We'll reevaluate later, but you're going to need a small miracle to get her out before we find a donor, to be frank."

Rusty looked at Flynn. The man looked ashen, and his mouth was half-open.

"I take it she's getting moved up on the transplant list?" Flynn said with a sad chuckle.

"She's near the top, now, yes. I know she had reservations about it, but she's a good candidate. She doesn't smoke, doesn't drink, she's otherwise very healthy, and I think a new heart would take her a long way."

Rusty chewed on his lip. "Will she. . . will she wake up any time between now and then?"

"We can't know right now. It depends on how long it takes to get a heart and how strong her body is. If she makes it through the night, we'll see about deceasing the sedatives."

"If she. . ."

Torres nodded slowly. "If she makes it through the night. I'm sorry, but that's not a certain thing. We're doing everything we can, but sometimes, that's not enough. It's up to Sharon right now."

Flynn looked down at his hands, his rings. "If I know her, she's probably having a sit-down with God and arguing about something. Interrogating Him."

Rusty laughed before he could help it, and it turned to a small sob. "Yeah. That'd be Mom." He slowly got up. "I need to call Ricky and Emily. I think Em's in the air, but Ricky's not."

"Take your time, kid. We'll be here." He took a deep breath and turned to the young physician again. "So, Doc, be honest with me. What are her odds looking like?"

"Slim. To be completely honest."

Flynn nodded, still watching his hands. "Okay."

"I said slim, not none. She's got a chance. She was down for a long time before we got pulses back, but the paramedics said you guys were doing really good CPR when they got there. That's a good start. Your wife is a fighter, Mr. Flynn."

"Andy. Andy's fine." He made a mental note to speak to Julio later and thank him, if nothing else.

The doctor reached over to clasp the other man's shoulder. "Andy. She's made it through two of these cardiac seizures and the pacemaker implantation already. That's a lot of stress on her system, but she made it. Don't give up on her yet."

"I'll never give up on her, doc. You don't have to worry about that."

"Okay. That's good. I want to tell you about what we did and our plan moving forward, okay?"

"Yeah."

"So, we took her to surgery and opened her chest so we could physically put hands on her heart to get it going. As you and Sharon and I talked about earlier, we decided to put in the LVAD right then, while she was already under. She's going to need it any way that she comes through this, and I didn't want to risk a third surgery if I could help it, okay?"

"Yeah."

"She looks pretty bad right now, and that's part of why I don't want you going to see her right now. She's on a ventilator, there are IVs, and she's got chest tubes to help drain fluid. It looks scary, but everything machine and tube in there is doing a job and taking stress off her body. The LVAD placement went well, and it's doing its job, basically just helping her heart pump."

They sat in silence for a moment longer before the doctor got to his feet and held out a hand to help Andy up as well. "I know you're both religious, so there will be a chaplain out soon to sit with you. I'll come and find you if there are any changes or if she stabilizes enough to have a visitor. Just one at a time for now, but you can switch out with each other."

Flynn watched the man go and turned back to the rest of his family. Rusty hadn't returned, and they were all watching with baited breath. He walked back slowly, not thinking about what to tell them. His mind felt like static-y white noise, dominated by the image of Sharon. Sharon laughing at him, smiling, hugging Rusty, hanging her damn angel ornaments on the Christmas tree that was entirely too large for the condo.

"Well?" Provenza had stood up and was staring at him.

"She's hanging in there, but it's touch-and-go. They did the LVAD surgery, and she's in the ICU now. We can't see her." He bit down on his lip and blinked hard, trying to keep the tears at bay.

"Oh, well." Provenza pulled his handkerchief out and dabbed at his eyes. "That's something. She's too much of a stick in the mud to go this easily." His voice broke at the end, and he did his best to ignore it.

Julio laughed slightly, nodding his head along. "The Commander would be so pleased with herself if she could see you now. I don't think she thought you were capable of any emotions other than annoyance and exasperation, sir." The laughter sounded forced, and Andy could see the tension in Julio's shoulders.

"Ye gods, that woman."

It was like the ice had broken. Suddenly, everyone was sharing their own stories and laughing quietly. Andy watched them silently. She would have loved it, he thought. She'd told him that she didn't want a funeral to honor her memory; she wanted a celebration of life. There was too much love and joy for everyone's last memories of her to be sad. She'd whispered it to him late at night as they laid in bed.

He lowered his head and prayed.

"Ricky?"

"Rusty? What's wrong?" Ricky could hear the panic in his brother's voice.

There was a muffled stutter.

"Rusty?" Ricky stopped in the middle of the concourse, his blood turning to ice. She was dead. His mother was dead.

"She's hanging in there, but-" Rusty stopped.

"Rusty?" It was little more than a whisper.

"She. . . She was at work. . . We were trying to get her home, but. . . She-"

"She's Mom. You can't force her into anything. I know."

"I was trying, Ricky. So was Flynn, and the whole team. And she. . . She just. . . She had another seizure thing and she went down really hard, and it was really bad, Ricky."

Ricky could hear his brother crying. Rusty must have gone somewhere private.

"Oh my God, it was bad. But they got her to the hospital and she had surgery and we can't see her, but she's hanging in here."

"Hey, hey, deep breath. Are you okay?"

There was a wet, sarcastic laugh. "Yeah, sure."

"You said she-"

"Don't worry about what happened earlier. Just get here, okay? We need you."

"Okay. If you get to see her, tell her I love her, okay?" Ricky's voice cracked on the last word.

"I will. She knows that, but I will."

"Okay. Okay. I love you, too. You know that, right?"

"Yeah. I do. I love you, too. I'll see you soon."

"Okay."

"Okay."