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“Good session today, Eddie,” Frank says, as Eddie stands up. “I’d like you to do some homework, though.”
Like the sessions weren’t painful enough? “Okay.”
“I want you to journal every day for the next week.”
“Journal? You mean, like, keep a diary?”
Frank half shrugs. “Sort of. Just write down what happens throughout the day and how you react to it, how you feel about it. See if you make any discoveries along the way that we can talk about next week.”
“Okay.” He’s going to feel stupid enough writing down what happens that the chance of getting anything out of it is pretty slim, but he’s not the one with the psychiatric license, so what does he know? “Got it. See you next week.”
“Yeah. And Eddie, be honest. This journal is just for you. I don’t need to see it. No one does, not unless you want them to. So be honest with yourself, okay?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
***
He’d feel a little silly carrying a notebook around, and it would be kind of obvious and easy for the team to get their hands on, so he decides to journal on his phone. He downloads an app and opens to today’s date, the June 2, 8:11 a.m. staring at him with nothing but empty space below it.
Got a bagel and coffee on the way to work, he writes. Coffee was too sweet. Gave it to Buck instead, who, of course, loved it.
He saves and closes the app, hoping that will be enough to appease Frank for one day.
***
A couple hours later, though, he finds himself opening the app again.
Just left a scene where Athena was on site with us. Never realized how she and Bobby make eye contact every time they’re on the same scene, usually with a little touch or something, like they’re checking on each other to make sure they’re okay.
It’s nice. Different than what being married normally means in my experience. I mean, neither one of them has moved to another city—or another country—to work, for starters.
Eddie looks at the words for a long time before saving the app and closing it.
Maybe Frank wasn’t totally off-base after all. Maybe this would help him figure out what’s in his own head.
***
Buck was late getting out of the fire on this last call. I needed to see with my own eyes he was okay, had to touch him just enough to make sure he was real.
I kind of get Bobby and Athena now. Maybe it goes beyond marriage to people you really care about, people who are critical to your life.
Not sure what that says….
Eddie’s thumb hovers over the delete button. But Frank had told him to be honest. He’d also said he didn’t have to see this.
He hits save.
***
The last call sucked. Not as much as one where someone died—no one did, thank god—but still, it was for this girl, barely 15, in labor and terrified out of her mind.
Buck was brilliant with her. Asked her about her tattoos (seriously, fifteen!) and her blue hair, teased her in just the right way, and kept her calmer, if not totally calm, until we got to the hospital.
Of course, once she was inside, he smashed his fist so hard into the side of the truck I thought he might have broken his hand, because, as he put it, who the FUCK thinks it’s okay to have sex with a 14 year old kid?
Every day I look at Chris, at how he’s growing so fast, and I wonder if there are enough Evan Buckleys out there to outweigh the assholes who’d damage Chris the first chance they got.
***
I think maybe I’ve always taken Abuela for granted. She’s just always been there, steady as a rock, even when we didn’t live in the same state.
But it was so obvious tonight at Pepa’s birthday dinner how Abuela is the glue that keeps us all together. She’s even pulled Buck into our family—actually, I think he may have replaced me as her favorite grandson.
I feel like maybe I don’t do enough for her. I should do more.
***
Buck spent at least fifteen minutes trying to get out of me what I’m writing in here. He tried stealing my phone, he tried sneaking up behind me, he even tried repeating EDDIE over and over until Hen smacked him.
I’m just glad I keep my hair short these days or he might’ve tried pulling on that, too.
Not sure what he thinks he might find in here that he doesn’t already know—I’m half-convinced he can read my mind most of the time.
***
Eddie sits on a bed in one of the private bunk rooms, door closed, nestled in the corner with two walls to his back, staring at his phone.
He can hear Frank’s voice telling him that if this was bothering him so much, he needs to get it out, but he doesn’t know what to say.
Then again, maybe that’s the point.
Awful call to a house fire today. Father and son made it out, mother and daughter, not so lucky. All I could do as we packed up was watch the son, who couldn’t have been more than four, cling to his dad and cry for his mom.
I wanted to go over and say they would be okay. That one day it would be better. But I don’t think better is the right word. You move past it. You move on. But what you lost never gets better. It just becomes part of you, like a prosthetic where a limb used to be.
I don’t want to…no, I’m not sure I actually CAN survive something like that ever again. I live it often enough in my nightmares—Chris not surviving the tsunami, Buck not making it out of a fire—the reality of it could be the final wave that pulls me under and never lets me back up.
It’s safer on dry land.
***
The most stereotypical call ever today—rescuing a cat from a tree. Of course we sent Buck up after it. There might also be video on my phone of him performing the rescue and reuniting the cat with its two child owners.
If he ever tries to deny crying over the reunion, I have proof, and I’m not afraid to use it.
***
3 a.m. and I can’t sleep—isn’t that a song? Chris had a hard time getting to sleep tonight. I know something is bothering him, and I can’t get him to talk to me about it.
It’s hard not to feel like a failure when your kid won’t confide in you, even if you know it’s the natural order of things. Kids want independence—every book I’ve read on parenting says so. And that means not always making their parents confidants.
None of the books tell you how to make it suck less when it happens, though.
I’ll get Buck over here tomorrow. If Chris won’t tell me, he’ll tell Buck. And Buck will let me know if I need to know. Otherwise, I’ll know that Chris is taken care of, and that’s what matters.
My feelings will deal.
***
“Seriously, Eddie, are you writing the Great American Novel on your phone?” Buck asks from the coffee maker.
Eddie rolls his eyes. “I thought you’d gotten over this pathological need to know everything I’m doing.”
“I don’t need to know everything you’re doing,” Buck says, pouting as he sits down next to Eddie on the couch, lowering his voice so Hen and Chim, currently trying to murder each other at Mortal Kombat, can’t hear. “Just curious what’s suddenly taking up all your time.”
Translation: Taking your attention away from me.
Eddie sighs. “Look,” he says quietly, “Frank asked me to journal, okay? That’s all.”
“Oh, hey, man, I’m sorry for prying,” Buck says instantly, his voice just as quiet as Eddie’s. “He had me do that, too…after the truck.”
“Yeah? You learn anything?” At Buck’s nod, Eddie asked, “What?”
“No, it’s a personal journey, and I don’t want to influence yours,” Buck says. “If you want to compare notes after, though, I’m willing.”
Interesting. And also not particularly illuminating. But still, worth thinking about. “All right,” Eddie says. “Thanks.”
***
Mom and Dad had their weekly FaceTime with Chris tonight. I don’t wish any harm on them, but I also secretly hope every week that they’ll forget to call. But Chris likes to tell them all the fun stuff he’s done, and I kind of like the kick I get out of seeing the horror on their faces when he says he did things like skateboarding.
Take that and put it in your ‘special child’ pipe and smoke it, Mom.
I try not to let on to Chris how much it annoys me, but I think he has some idea. He’s always extra clingy after they call, and I don’t think it’s because he needs the reassurance. I think maybe he’s just figured out that I do.
I think Buck has figured it out, too, seeing as he always tries to worm his way into dinner on those call nights, and if he doesn’t manage to be here in person, he finds a reason to FaceTime and talk with us.
Evan Buckley, patron saint of kids, kittens and lost causes.
Lucky me.
***
I’ll never admit it out loud, but I love watching Buck teach Chris how to cook. The two of them in my kitchen, where Buck knows where everything is better than I do, is something that takes up way too much space in video on my phone and even more on my cloud.
It’s not just that he knows where everything is, either. He handles Chris like he’s been here all along, like he was born knowing how to treat Chris so he doesn’t risk too much but can still push himself.
And the way the two of them get along is just addictive to watch. They have their own little inside jokes and for once I don’t mind Chris sharing that with someone else. They also have their own shorthand language of looks when it comes to me, especially when it’s about cooking.
Really, you set ONE stove on fire and you get a reputation for life.
I used to worry that it was Chris and me against the world, and wonder who would be there for him if I was gone.
It’s one less worry on my plate now.
***
“So,” Buck says, handing Eddie a beer as he sits down on the couch. Chris has just gone to sleep, and Buck has predictably done the dishes while Eddie read Chris a story, so now it’s just the two of them.
Given his session with Frank earlier, Eddie’s not sure if he’s happy about that, or wants to run away.
Eddie takes a long drink. “So?”
“How’d your session with Frank go today?”
Eddie studies the label on the beer bottle for a long moment. “It…went.”
“You finish your journal?” At Eddie’s nod, Buck says, “You want to talk about it? Or….”
No, he doesn’t want to. But in talking it through with Frank, Eddie realized he needs to. “I realized a few things when I read back over my entries,” Eddie says slowly. “And one of them is how you’re so tightly woven into my life that it’s….” He risks a look at Buck’s eyes as he says, “It’s scary.”
“Why?”
Abort. Abort. ABORT.
No. He needs to get past this, and the only way out is through, as difficult as it might be. “I lost Shannon,” Eddie says, eyes back on his beer. “Well, really, I lost her several times. But the last one was the hardest because there was no coming back from it. She was gone.”
He glances up and Buck’s watching intently, but no judgment, no fear, just…attention, and it feels like a safety net. “I don’t have the words—may never have the words—to talk about what that was like, for me and for Christopher. And there’s this voice in the back of my head that just tells me to avoid anything that might end up doing that to either of us again.”
“Okay,” Buck says, after a moment.
“You…” Eddie clears his throat, which he can swear is closing in on itself. “You scare me,” he gets out. “Because if we…if I, if I let it become a thing, and something…something happens to you.”
“I’m not planning on going anywhere, Eddie,” Buck says quietly, taking Eddie’s hand in his, thumb running softly across Eddie’s knuckles.
The hardest thing Eddie’s done in a while is to lift his head and meet Buck’s gaze. “You want the list of the ways you’ve almost died in order of date or length of hospital stays?”
“Yeah, and look at how many people we’ve dealt with in our lives who had low-risk, ordinary lives and didn’t make it, Eds. There’s only one certainty in life, and that’s death.” He’s holding Eddie’s hand in both of his now, carefully, delicately, like it’s something to be protected. “But it’s all the stuff you do before it happens that makes it worth it in the end,” he says with a soft smile. “And being afraid to live is like a whole other kind of dying.”
“Is that what you learned from your journaling project?”
“Part of it, yeah,” Buck says. “But the biggest shocker for me was discovering how much more I wanted with you than I’d ever realized.”
Eddie stares at him for a moment. “All this time?” he breathes out finally. “Seriously?”
“What can I say? I’m a patient guy.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll remind you of that next time you can’t stop bouncing your knee to get out of the truck.”
Buck just laughs at that. “Hey, Eddie?” he says, after a moment.
“Yeah?”
Buck leans in and kisses him softly. Eddie pushes aside the fear and just lets himself feel, pulls Buck in tighter for another kiss and then another, until they’re forced apart by the need for oxygen, Buck panting against Eddie’s neck.
“So,” Buck says, lips moving against Eddie’s skin. “Was that a one-time thing? Or are you willing to give this a shot?”
Eddie threads his fingers through the somewhat short hair on the back of Buck’s head and tugs until Buck looks ups. “I…yeah. Yeah, I want to give this a shot.”
Buck’s smile is so bright it blows all of the dark thoughts into the deep corners of Eddie’s mind
--
END