Jamie stood outside Laurel's house for a good several minutes after she went in, struggling with two opposing forces. The desire to return to his body was growing more and more irresistible the further away he got from it. There was also the fact that he knew, at some point soon, Jenna and Derek would be allowed to go see him. As painful as it would be, he wanted to be there for that. The idea of leaving them alone, staring at his empty body as they tried to make contact with him, he couldn't stand that.

At the same time, he clung to Laurel with a stubbornness that surprised even him. Every block they had traveled, Jamie had grown more and more certain that she was going to slip away from him as it got harder and harder to keep himself bound to her. And, every block, he found a new level of resolve, an ability to push past whatever kept pulling him back, and stay with her. 

What was he doing out here? What gave him such certainty that this wasn't all a dream, some illusion conjured to comfort his permanently damaged brain. He didn't believe in any of that stuff, and he never had. He was a skeptic. Yet, if he allowed himself to believe this was real, what exactly did that mean for the rest of his beliefs? But he couldn't' convince himself this wasn't real. It was like a dream, but he could track every step that had gotten him from where he was to where he now is. There were no discontinuities, no leaps of understanding that required him to ignore the fact that some of the things that were happening just didn't work.

He would focus on Laurel. If this was a dream, she was the key factor in it. If this wasn't a dream, she was still the thing he needed to focus on. Since both possibilities had the same solution, there was no reason for him to wonder which was true. He would just follow it to its conclusion and see what happened.

Laurel's home was comfortable in a very old fashioned way. It was brown and dim and narrow, filled with all the things that made a house into a home. The floor didn't line up quite right, the two side walls were brick, and the only windows in the place were in the wall at the far end from the door.

Jamie heard Laurel before he saw her, crouched on the thick wood floor, curled up into a little ball of pain as the tears wracked her body. Jamie felt his heart twist. He'd read all the stories of cops killing innocent people, of the ways they acted as though they were above the law, and he'd allowed himself to believe that the woman who had shot him was the same way. She would show guilt in public, but in private she'd shed it like a cloak and be perfectly comfortable with what she had been done, and the fact that she was undoubtedly going to get away with it, despite Jenna and Derek's best efforts. 

He'd been deluding himself, in an attempt to justify his rage at what she had taken from him.

Jamie moved forward slowly, uncertain of whether he was gliding or walking. It didn't really matter. He stopped in front of her, before carefully taking a seat a couple inches below the floor, which allowed him to be perfectly level with Laurel's curled body. He would comfort her, if he could. At the moment, he was probably the only person in the world who could bring her a measure of peace, and he was also the only person in the world who couldn't speak with her at the moment. His hand stretched out gently, hovering scant millimeters over her head as he imagined himself gently stroking her hair back.