Chapter Text
Holland barrelled after the gurney as it clunkily wheeled out of the front doors and onto the bumpy asphalt. He saw Healy flinch each time the gurney jolted, sending a spike of pain up his leg. He kept his hand on Holly’s and dragged her behind him as he sped to catch up.
“Where are you taking him? Can we come in the ambulance? Can we follow behind?” he frantically asked the paramedic closest to them, senses slowly coming back to him as the shock wore off.
They stopped still in front of the ambulance as they started to load the gurney onto the lift at the back. Healy’s head lifted as they stilled, blinking slowly at March.
“Are you family?” they asked distractedly, clipping things into place so the gurney wouldn’t budge as the lift hauled a bigger man than they were used to into the back of the ambulance.
Holland froze for a second, his eyes widening slightly as cold fear settled in his chest. His mouth opened and closed a few times before he started stumbling over his words. “I— I mean, well—”
“Yes,” Jackson suddenly spoke up, voice weak but trying his best to still be somewhat intimidating, “yes, he’s family, is that going to be a problem?”
Obviously it was going to be a problem, and Holland cringed as the emergency responder looked between the two of them.
“We’re taking him to the County General. Follow us to the emergency room, you’ll be able to wait there for Mr. Healy whilst he gets treated. I’m… sorry, you won’t have any legal rights there. You’ll just have to wait.”
Holland felt the cold fear in his chest plunge into his stomach, clenching at the muscles and making him feel quite nauseous. He glanced over at Jackson, who was as white as a sheet with half-lidded eyes, and yanked Holly closer for him to grip onto to stop himself from reaching out to Jack. He had her shoulders in a death grip.
“We’ll get there as soon as we can,” he said through gritted teeth. He moved to stand at the side of the gurney, lingering for a second longer with his hands twitching against Holly’s collarbones.
Jackson just stared at him, and he didn’t know what that meant. He’d never seen Jackson in this position before, didn’t know what kind of patient he was, it was always the other way round for them. He never seemed particularly comfortable in hospitals whenever March ended up there, but who was? But right now, he could’ve sworn he could see fear in his eyes.
Truth be told, Jackson wasn’t very good at being cared for. He got tetchy whenever he needed more help than he deemed acceptable. Only a few weeks ago, after a particularly bad case, it had taken March twenty minutes to convince Healy to let him clean his wounds and bandage him up rather than struggle to do it himself. He always got it in his head that if he was too much of a burden, he’d get left behind. They were working on it.
Thankfully, Holly took some initiative and broke their odd staring contest, and took Healy’s hand in hers. March’s hand shifted down to her upper arm, as if his hand being a little closer could make it feel like he was the one gripping onto Healy instead. It seemed to work in calming him, because his eyebrows unfurrowed and his features softened as his eyes moved to her face.
“We’ll be there, waiting,” she agreed with a deft nod, briefly giving the emergency responder a glare before she turned to her dad and started to push him back towards their car.
March opened his mouth to say something more, but decided better of it and turned with Holly, breaking out into a jog as they’d hurried to the car. It was pointless, really. Like the paramedic said, no one would tell him anything when he was there, and it would be hours before Healy would be allowed to see them himself and tell them what was going on. But he wanted to be there, waiting, just in case. Just in case he was needed.
They clambered into the car, and he allowed himself three seconds of white-knuckling the wheel to let out a shaky breath, and then it was back into action. The ambulance peeled away with a speed they couldn’t match, the sirens ringing out across the parking lot as it left. They followed its route not long after.
There was too much to think about, and he must have broken about five different driving laws on the journey. Twenty minutes out from the hospital they got stuck in traffic, and Holly could see the way her dad was progressively getting more agitated the longer they sat still. She reached out and put a hand on his arm, instantly deflating some of the nervous energy out of him, and she didn’t move it for the rest of the drive.
March swung the car into a parking space wonky, but didn’t bother to correct it. They rushed to the emergency room and to the nurse’s desk at the door, where he placed both hands down a little too heavily, to try to stop them shaking. The nurse jumped a little at his sudden arrival.
“Healy, Jackson. Brought by ambulance, stabbed.”
She looked from him, to his daughter, and to his hands. It was only then he realised they were still covered in blood, dried now, but they hadn’t been earlier when he’d been dragging Holly. He looked back at her and realised he’d smeared blood all over her hands and the shoulders of the pink top she’d picked out specially for their cinema outing. His shoulders dropped in defeat, it was another fuck up to add to his long list. He hadn’t even thought about it at the time, and now his daughter was standing covered in blood.
“Relation?” the nurse asked, snapping him out of his train of thought.
“Uh — friend. Business partners. He’s my— We work together,” he mumbled, and one of the nurse's eyebrows raised.
They’d never really discussed what would happen if they were in a situation like this before. They’d never thought about what the other could say they were to each other. It hasn’t even crossed their minds, which was stupid, considering their line of work.
“I’m sorry, I can’t give you much information. Mr. Healy arrived fifteen minutes ago and was taken straight to be treated,” she looked up from the papers on her desk and at March, at the blood up to his wrists, and her hardened front softened a little. She added, more quietly, “he’s doing fine. Someone’s quick work to stem the bleeding meant he was barely losing any blood by the time he got here. As soon as they’re done with him, he’ll be in recovery and he’ll be allowed visitors then. I’m sorry, I can’t tell you anymore.”
“Thank you.”
Holly was frowning at this, but March guided her away before she could argue. That was more information than he was expecting to be given, so he was satisfied. His daughter obviously wasn’t.
“‘Are you family?’” she scoffed, “what bullshit.”
He took a second to take a deep breath and look around the waiting room. There was a family washroom in the far corner, and he nudged her in its direction.
“I know, pumpkin, I know. It’s just how things are,” he sighed, opening the washroom door for her and following her inside.
“Well, it’s stupid!” she snapped, turning to look at him, “we are his family! He doesn’t have anyone else!”
“I know. We just… have to be careful,” he brushed the hair back that had fallen in front of her eyes in her frustration, and gave her a wobbly smile. “We’re here, and that’s all he needs.”
She wanted to argue more, he could tell, but she could also see the tired sag of his shoulders and the way he kept looking at the blood splattered up to his forearms, and decided to keep her mouth shut. The weather had been cold that day, so he’d worn a t-shirt under his shirt rather than an undershirt. Small mercies, he could at least get his daughter out of her bloody clothes. He unbuttoned the top buttons of his shirt and pulled it over his head, and handed it to her.
She looked down at the shirt, confused, and then caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She gasped, and fisted the shirt tight at the reflection. Apparently neither of them had realised how messy they’d gotten. He turned his back to her and looked at the wall so she could strip off her clothes and put his shirt on instead. When he turned back, the sight caught him off guard. His not-so-little girl was rolling one of the sleeves up, which fell past her finger tips, and the hem hung down near her knees. She may be getting older, but he still felt his heart clench whenever she allowed her guard down enough to look like the child she was, and not the adult she pretended to be.
“Better,” he said softly, turning the faucet on next. As she finished sorting her sleeves out, he plunged his hands into the warm water and watched as it slowly turned pink, and then red, as the dried crust started to leave his hands.
She came beside him and peered down at the dirty water. Neither of them said anything for a while, both watching as the water eventually went back to being clear. Even then, March didn’t stop scrubbing his hands until Holly gently pulled him back from the sink and handed him a paper towel. They were red and raw, but he could at least move them again without feeling the dried blood shifting in the creases of his palms. Holly then took the time to wash what she could off her own skin. They faced each other, both not quite ready to leave the privacy of this room and go back into the bustle of the emergency room.
“Is he… going to be ok?” she asked carefully, her eyes dropping to her father’s shoes as she spoke. He felt his stomach twist again, not hesitating to pull her into him. If there was one thing he excelled at as a parent, it was giving good hugs.
“He’ll be fine,” he muttered against her hair, wishing he could take a big, deep breath in of her scent like he did when she was little. That had always calmed him down whenever he got overwhelmed about the fact that he was responsible for this fragile being. “It’s Jackson, he’s always fine.”
The next few hours moved slowly. After cleaning themselves up, they planted themselves in the back, far corner away from any prying eyes. Every time to the doors through to the wards opened, his head raised as if he’d see Jackson walking through the doors himself. No doctors paid them any attention, no one came with any updates. They just had to blindly wait.
As the second hour was coming to an end, March couldn’t keep himself still any longer. He went back up the nurse's desk, the same nurse still sat there, and she fixed him with a look over her glasses. Before he could even open his mouth, she calmly reminded him she couldn’t tell him anything, but someone would come get them as soon as they were allowed in to visit. He tapped the desk, mulling over the answer, before he pushed away with a frustrated groan and collapsed back into the seat next to Holly.
He wanted a drink, but he knew he couldn’t do that. He wanted a cigarette, but that would require either leaving Holly alone or dragging her out into the chilly night just so he could smoke. Neither of those things felt appropriate in their current situation, so he just had to swallow the feeling and wait. A cigarette would’ve stopped him twitching so much though, he knew that much.
At one point, Holly stood and March wordlessly held up a few bills to her, reading her mind. She took them and headed off to the vending machines down the corridor. A coffee and a chocolate bar were shoved into his hands when she returned, which he gave her a tired smile in return. They sat quietly as they munched away at their snacks, until March decided they’d sat in silence for long enough.
“Tell me about school. Tell me about that annoying bitch in your math class, please, something. Anything. What’s that kid who snorted sugar and said it was coke up to nowadays?”
Holly didn’t need much prompting to rant about school on any given day, and it was good to know today was no different. She went on a nearly half an hour long monologue to give him all the details and drama that were deemed as important to teenage society. He only chipped in to ask leading questions a few times, mostly just humming along as she prattled on about all sorts. He was thankful she’d inherited the talking gene from him, she was a good distraction.
Hour three came and went uneventfully, Holly had eventually settled her head against her dad’s shoulder and dozed in and out of sleep. He tried to keep as still as possible so she could rest, but nothing could stop the jittery bounce of his left leg as he continued to stare at those double doors and whoever walked through them.
“Mr. March?” someone called out as they shouldered open the doors, looking down at a chart. “For Healy?”
“Yes!” March replied with a strangled shout, his legs standing him up before he’d even shifted Holly’s head off his shoulder. He looked ridiculous, sliding her head over to the back of the chair as his waist and shoulders followed behind his already moving legs. “Yes, here!”
He clumsily scrambled over to the doctor, knocking into a few chairs on his way. His hands wrung together as the man looked up from his clipboard. He thought he was going to have to justify again who he was, but the doctor took one look at him and Holly running to catch up to him, and clearly decided it wasn’t important.
“Mr. Healy has asked for you, he is fine,” he said first, seeing the worry etched on both of their faces. “Thankfully, the laceration missed any major arteries or bone, which would’ve made things a lot more complicated. The bleeding was easy to manage thanks to your quick thinking. The muscle has been damaged, but that’s the best outcome he could’ve had here, it will take a few weeks of resting to get most of his feeling and movement back.”
He let all the information sink in for a few seconds before adding, “this potentially could’ve been a lot worse. Mr. Healy is a very lucky man.”
“Can we see him?” March interrupted, cringing at his own impatience and tacking a “please” on as an afterthought.
He couldn’t think about it being any worse, or what that could’ve meant. He couldn’t even consider it, because at just the idea he felt himself sinking back into an old, terrible feeling he’d tried to keep buried for years. It spread from his scalp all the way down to his toes in an icy wave, and he felt again like he could throw up at any second. He couldn’t be left alone again, he couldn’t lose someone else. He didn’t know if he’d be able to claw himself back from that again.
The doctor turned and began to walk back through the doors, cocking his head at them as the only indication that they could follow. March stumbled after him, Holly in tow.
“The knife was only centimetres from hitting bone, we would’ve had a lot more to worry about in that case,” he continued to explain, taking them down winding corridors. “He’ll be fine to go home later today.”
They finally arrived at a small room with the door open, and March spotted Healy’s name on the whiteboard at the door. The doctor waved them in with a mention of a nurse coming back soon, and then disappeared. Holly stepped inside first, and March followed. There were two beds in the room, and a window on the far wall. One bed had the curtain pulled around it, and the other held Healy.
He was laying in the bed, propped up with pillows, wearing a hospital gown and looking quite pale. His leg was hidden under the bed sheets, but his arms and knuckles were covered in their own bandages where the knife had nicked him or they’d split. They’d even taped some gauze over the cut on his face.
He was holding a juice carton in both of his large hands and taking tentative sips from it. Holland almost smiled at the scene, never seeing Jackson look so… helpless before. So unsure of himself. It was almost ridiculous, the way his hands dwarfed the carton. He was hunched in on himself like he was trying to hide himself, and the fear from earlier still had entirely left his face. Noted, Healy clearly had a thing about hospitals, or specifically being the patient.
March was always pretty blasé about whenever he found himself having to go through the whole hospital rigmorale, he’d done it enough times. At one point in his twenties, he’d been on a first name basis with half of emergency room staff. For someone who made a career out of beating people up, Holland was surprised he hadn’t found himself here enough to feel the same way. Jackson looked more stressed about being in a hospital bed than he did after being stabbed.
He was slow to react, his eyes groggily moving from his carton to the people in his doorway, and it looked like it took him a second to register who it was.
When he did, however, March saw the way the tension left his body as he unfurled back into the bed and his lips tugged up into a shaky smile. There were a few wires attached to him, a clip on one finger monitoring his vitals, and a tube ran out of one hand up to a bag hanging above the bed. Fluids or antibiotics, March didn’t know and didn’t really care. He just cared that he was there, fine, and looking back at him.
“Hi,” Jackson said softly, his arm reaching out to them.
March wasn’t exactly sure who he was reaching for, but he knew if it was him, he had to hang back anyway. Later, not here. Holly instead took the opening and rushed over to Healy, stopping briefly to be careful of the wires before she collapsed into his side with an arm around his waist.
“Jack,” she breathed against his shoulder as March came up behind her, trying to keep up his restraint.
“Hey, kiddo,” he said weakly, giving her a squeeze with the arm that wasn’t attached to an IV. He tugged at the long sleeves unrolling and falling over her hands with confusion, and Holland saw it in his face the moment he must have realised she’d changed into her father’s shirt so she no longer had his blood on her.
“Heeey big guy,” March jumped in, trying to distract and tease, but he felt his eyes betray him and start welling up as he spoke.
It was usually him lying in the hospital, looking bashful and drained of colour, not Healy. He hadn’t seen his partner in a hospital bed before. Small was not a word to describe Jackson Healy, but this was the smallest he’d ever seen him look. The room was reasonably private, but the door to the room stayed open and there was a constant stream of people in the corridor outside. He was fidgeting behind Holly, clearing itching to do something he wasn’t allowed to do.
He figured he could get away from some physical touch. His friend had been stabbed for Christ’s sake, but perhaps reaching out and smoothing the sweat-laden curls back from his forehead and trailing his hand all the way back to holding the nape of his neck was a bit much. Healy’s eyes widened, darting around the room and to the corridor before he ultimately melted into the touch. His eyes closed and he hummed in response, blinking as March pulled back. All he wanted to do was sink down into Jackson’s solid chest and remind himself he’s still here and breathing, but this would have to do for now.
They flopped into the seats at the side of the bed, Holly grabbing onto Healy’s hand again, and March started talking. He was rambling, because he felt if he didn’t fill the silence he really would start crying. He informed Healy an old friend from the station had called them whilst they waited, that they’d have to give statements once they were fit to do so, and that the knife-wielding man was in a jail cell. He got Holly to retell one of the funny stories she’d told him earlier, that he thought would make Healy laugh.
Doctors and nurses came in sporadically, checking numbers and medication, before the final time they came in holding an information pack and some supplies. A nurse was telling Healy about how he needed to care for the wound at home and what his recovery timeline would look like for the next few weeks. She caught on to March listening intently in the background and ended up directing the information at the two of them, and even showed March how the dressing needed to be changed and how often. No questions were asked, which he was thankful for.
“You shouldn’t be alone for the next few days, and you’ll need someone to help you for the next few weeks,” she fixed Jackson with a pointed look, clearly used to men who were too proud to properly look after themselves, before her eyes drifted over to March. “Although, it doesn’t look like that is going to be a problem.”
The statement could’ve been said with judgement, with malice, but instead she gave March a warm smile, patted his arm, and left them both staring after her in surprise. There was a pile of things for them to take home, a bottle of Betadine, rolls of gauze and tape, and some clothes. Jackson’s jeans were obviously ruined and his shirt had been splattered with blood from all the tussling in the aftermath, so they’d given him a pair of paper-like scrubs to wear out, which were definitely not his size. Healy shot him an unimpressed look when March grinned properly for the first time in hours, the sight of Jackson holding up the tiny shirt almost pulling a laugh out of him.
They left the room so a nurse could help Healy struggle into the scrubs, and waited until he was wheeled out in a chair. It was protocol to wheel him to the exit, where he was handed some papers to look over and sign, and no one spared March a second look. He handed Healy his reading glasses that he’d taken from the bag of belongings earlier and popped into his pocket, ready for this exact scenario.
As Healy looked over papers and signed on dotted lines, March’s mind drifted, his fingers clenching around the arm rest of the wheelchair. They needed to look into their legal rights for each other as soon as they could, that’s what March had learned. If anything worse had happened, if he’d needed surgery, March would’ve had no power. No access to any information or decision making, and that terrified him. He didn’t know what their options were, but he sure as hell was going to get one of their lawyer friends to find the damn loophole that gave them any sort of rights.
God, if anything happened to himself, legally Healy was a stranger to the March family. What would happen to Holly? The system would rather she was sent away than be in the care of a man who actually loved her. They needed to fix that before anything could happen.
He was snapped back to reality when the orderly started pushing Healy over to the exit, where he would become March’s responsibility. It was dark outside now, they’d been here all evening. They got him to his feet, where March tucked the crutches under his arms. Healy settled onto them, getting as comfortable as he could, before taking a tentative step forwards with the good leg, and then another on the bad leg, barely putting any weight on it. Holland heard the way it still punched the air out of his lungs and how he sucked the air in through his teeth as he tried to avoid making any sort of noise.
They continued like this, hobbling slowly over to the car as Jackson tried to act like he wasn’t in as much pain as he was. Holly was hanging back behind them, watching and carrying the brown paper bag of bloody clothes. At the car, Holly took the crutches and March held onto Healy’s waist as he rotated to face away from the seat. Not without a grimace of embarrassment, he clasped his hands around the smaller man’s neck and tried not to put too much weight onto him as they lowered him onto the seat. March strained, nearly losing his balance, but they managed. This was a lot easier when the roles were reversed.
“Okay?” he asked, leaning on the roof of the car, which he tapped twice when Healy nodded. Holly climbed into the back as March came around to the driver’s side.
The ride home was pretty quiet, the radio being the only noise in the car. Jackson was staring out of the window, and Holland kept glancing over at his leg. The scrubs barely fit him as they were, but they were really tight around his left shin where the layers of bandages were. He couldn’t stop staring at it whenever he took his eyes off the road. Half way home, he decided he was allowed to have that cigarette he’d been itching for. It was at least a short drive from the hospital, but getting Jackson out of the car at the other end was something Holland had steadily been getting more nervous about.
He was a big guy, a real big guy, and that normally was something Holland very much enjoyed. But in this circumstance, where he wanted to be gentle and avoid causing any pain, it did not help. He wasn’t weak, but he wasn’t strong enough to lug Healy around in the same way he could if they were reversed. He couldn’t lift him. Healy could throw him over his shoulder like he weighed no more than a bag of flour.
He came round to the passenger side after parking up, opened the doors and put his hands on his hips.
“Hm,” he remarked, as Healy looked up at him sheepishly, fully aware of how his physicality was going to make things tricky. “Right, come on Holls, you’re going to have to push.”
He held out his hands to Healy, and they gripped onto each other’s wrists. Holly leaned through the centre console from the back seat and planted her hands against his back. On the count of three, he yanked and she pushed, and Healy came to his feet with a sway and a grunt. He stopped too quickly and nearly fell from the overcorrection, but March was there to steady him. It took him five minutes to get from the car to the front door. March trailed behind him with his arms out ready to catch him, as if it wouldn’t just knock them both to the ground if Healy fell. Holly had gone ahead and left the door open, already looking for what food they had in since it was too late for take out now.
March darted around the place, moving any trip hazards from Healy’s way as he made his way over to their bedroom. With some help from Holly, they got him settled into bed with his leg elevated on some pillows. He made sure they were both fed and watered, before nibbling on a piece of toast himself and sitting down for a few minutes to collect himself.
After a hug, a kiss and some quiet reassurances from both of them, Holly went to bed and left her dad to it. He fretted too much, offering to make Healy more food, get him a drink, all of which he’d already done and was just running out of things to do to keep his hands busy. With a dismissal from Healy and a quick double check that he was sure the older man was comfortable in the bed, he disappeared into the bathroom and turned the shower on.
He didn’t cry. The emotions still felt too raw for his body to really understand them, but he stood in front of the mirror gripping the sink edge for a long while before he managed to actually get into the shower. The room was already full of steam by the time he got in. He washed away all the sweat and grime from the day, and scrubbed at his skin for even longer. Every time he thought he was done, he would spot another fleck of dried blood that somehow had managed to hold on through all of his furious scrubbing, and he’d start all over again. The entire time, he kept hearing the sound that had come out of Healy’s mouth when the dagger sunk into his shin.
There was definitely tension in the air when we came out of their bathroom and into the bedroom. He had one of Healy’s shirts on, which fell down to the mid-thighs of his bare legs, and his hair was still dripping. He could feel Healy’s eyes tracking him as he padded across the room. He slid into the armchair in the corner and finally met his eyes, where they stared at each other, neither one wanting to broach the subject at hand because then it would be real.
He rested his head on one of his hands and tucked his legs up underneath him, chewing over all of the thoughts that had been charging through his mind all day, but struggled to find the words. Despite that, March was still the first to break, as he always was. He looked at his hands as his voice came out quiet, nervous, unsure how to start this.
“I guess we should talk. About that.”