Desperate Times…

Summary: … Desperate Measures. This is why he never stopped loving her. Drabble- Joel. Post-ep to S02Ep08.

Warning: First one here.

Set: S2Ep08.

Disclaimer: Standards apply.

She was amazing.

Alex Reid just saved a woman's life with the help of dental floss, a condom, cosmetic tissues and pure determination. Twenty minutes before they had been bickering over his sense of direction and her panic attacks before talks and had been generally behaving like idiots. Or like a married couple. Joel hadn't felt it then but it all came rushing in suddenly, from the moment Diane asked how long they had been married.

[He had wanted to ask her. It had not been the right way, as everything he did when it came to her was somehow done wrong.]

Watching Alex operate under conditions that were so far from normal he hesitated to even try to classify them he felt adrenaline surge through his veins: a steady buzz, making his heart race and his mind go from normal to surgery mode. It meant he could think better, but also that he was hyperaware of his surroundings and all the people around him. And it was Alex he was focused on right now.

Alex was amazing.

She'd always been. He'd seen it before she walked out on him but hadn't been able to change anything, and now the past was the past. She was beautiful and skilled and intelligent, she took control of the situation, she was a brilliant surgeon. She was Alex, a woman who – how had he called it? – McGyvered a surgical process out of everyday drugstore supplies. Then, she had helped him stabilize the woman's husband – who had been run over by a car – and then she had cut open her wrist to do a blood transfusion. She had risked losing her hand, a surgeon's life insurance, and she had done so in order to save a life. She hadn't thought of herself, hadn't thought of her future – had only thought of her patient. And that was exactly why he had never stopped loving her.

It was a hollow ache.

Joel knew it was over. But one did just not stop loving someone just like that. He'd seen Dawn look at Charlie – this was similar, he guessed. He knew Alex loved Charlie now. But a part of her would always belong to him.

It had to be enough.

[He holds the world's record in longing.]