A clatter.
A shouted curse, heavy with a Scottish accent.
A pair of raised voices followed by the swoosh of the lab doors and the hurried shuffle of a teary-eyed biochemist.
May isn’t surprised when the sequence of sounds interrupts her rhythmic jabs to the punching bag outside the lab doors. Similar outbursts have been happening every few days since Fitz’s return to the lab after a lengthy recovery.
With all her authority, she marches through the sliding glass doors and faces the wheelchair-bound Fitz to deliver one word: “Enough.”
Fitz stares at her, jaw hanging open.
“I know adjusting to life after a trauma like what you and Simmons went through can be hard, but you’re directing your anger at the wrong person. There’s something you need to see,” the senior agent says firmly as she pulls up a security feed on the screen in front of them. Fuzzy gray images begin to play on the wall, a vignette of scenes carefully chosen by May:
A hospital bed with an unconscious man hooked up to wires and machines. A young woman in a chair at his side, holding his hand.
The woman reading “Nature” aloud and commenting on the articles to the air, all while looking at the sleeping man.
She’s fallen asleep in the chair and an older man in a crisply pressed suit walks in and carries out her limp form. The scene repeats itself three separate times before a cot is rolled into the room.
Another young woman brings in a class of water, a bowl of soup. She leaves it for the tired woman holding vigil in that room.
She reads from “Divergent” now.
Doctors come in and advise the woman to try to move on and resume her normal life. She refuses, telling them that even if she wanted to move on she doesn’t have a normal life to return to anymore.
She reads the newspaper, sharing with the man the events of the world that is spinning on without them.
An older woman walks in and pulls up a chair next to the young woman. She sits for a while, a silent comfort to the occupants of the room.
She is crying. She begs the man to wake-up. She tells him that she is so lonely without him, that he is her best friend, that actually he’s more than that. She tells him she loves him and pleads for him to return. She holds his hands and lays her head to his chest, sobbing and begging still.
May stops the recording just shy of the scene of Fitz waking up and doctors rushing in and dragging a screaming Simmons from the room. That image might be too much for the engineer who is already in tears.
Looking up at May he stammers, “I need…. She…. Apologize….I have to go to….”
The pilot nods. “Go.”
Fitz wheels quickly out of the room to find the young woman from the footage, and May walks back to the punching bag.
She resumes her workout. Her mission is accomplished for now.