Chapter Text
It´s past midnight when doubt comes in.
Evan is sitting on the big couch in the living room, knees drawn up to his chest. They´re slowly becoming numb, but he´s trying to rather focus on the gameshow that´s playing on the TV than the fact that he can´t feel his toes anymore.
He doesn’t have a clue how long he´s been downstairs, the last thing he remembers is brushing his teeth and checking in on his sister once more, making sure she really fell asleep and didn’t just pretend that Evan´s good at reading bedtime stories.
He really is, apparently. Thank god, that´s one thing he´s good at.
He checks his phone again, for the third time in the last five minutes. Nothing new, the last message he got was from Connor, an hour ago. Goodnight, Ev, with one of these shooting star emojis. They texted the whole evening, as always, but Evan fears he wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic as usual. The emoji proved him otherwise, because Connor only ever sends silly emojis to the people he really likes. As his best friend, Evan knows that and he feels bad for being so weird during the last couple of days.
It´s just…a lot has happened and it slowly begins to change him.
It´s Wednesday and it´s been two weeks now since Heidi Hansen left their house to follow the desperate call of a hospital thirty miles away.
The staff was hopelessly overstrained and undermanned when a huge mass crash happened on their local interstate and a petrol truck caught on fire during it. The accident sent dozens and dozens of people to the hospital, a rather small facility that wasn’t capable of keeping over eighty intensive care patients at once.
The whole catastrophe was on national television and Evan watched all the reports carefully and made sure his sister wouldn’t come in and see the horrible pictures of the overfilled emergency rooms. The news channel showed nurses crying out for assistance, rolling their patients down the corridor on stretchers. Evan felt sick when they showed all the relatives in the waiting area.
Somewhere in between was his mom, helping and doing the best she could.
When she announced that she had to pack up some things and drive over there as soon as possible, Evan understood, of course he did. Three huge cities divided the hospital in need and their hometown and Heidi took the car and called in to announce assistance, after talking to her own working place. His mom always had this natural instinct to help others and Evan admires her for it. She wasn’t the only one, other nurses from her station followed too, because in their town nothing ever happens anyway.
And it was a huge accident, the school held a minute of silence for the people who died. He remembers the sinking feeling in his stomach as he listened to Jared talking about burn wounds and car wrecks and Connor turned green in the face and had to excuse himself to go outside for a minute.
He feels sorry for all the families, all the parents and siblings and children who lost someone or are still waiting for news of their relatives, but after the first shock subsided, he couldn’t stop worrying about his own family.
Since the situation at the hospital escalated very fast, Heidi didn’t really leave a lot of instructions before she left. And of course, Evan isn’t clueless, he´s sixteen now after all. He is able to cook a decent meal or do the laundry and everything, but there is still another Hansen in the family he needs to take care of now.
A very small family member that doesn’t really understand the situation and wonders why their mom just left without a goodbye kiss.
Ruby is seven and the wittiest child Evan knows.
She is clever and funny and always makes up new storylines for her set of dinosaurs. All of them are living in a dollhouse and have complicated relationships. Evan would crack up every time he walks past her room and hears a new part of dialogue on the never-ending sitcom, written by his sister.
She was a surprise, something bright and happy that came into Evan´s life when the marriage of his parents was already on the brink of falling apart. Maybe Ruby is the last happy thing that would ever connect Heidi and Mark, none of them expected her.
When Evan first laid a small hand over Heidi´s stomach and felt a little kick against his palm, he vowed to himself that he would make sure she wouldn’t ever have to hear the constant fighting in the house. It turned out; he didn’t have to keep that vow.
Ruby wasn’t even in kindergarten when their dad left and Heidi was suddenly alone with a nervous and uneasy elementary schooler and a very giddy toddler who wouldn’t ever stop brabbling. He learned from the very beginning to watch over his little sister.
And now, he would braid her unruly hair in the morning, a little too tight on the first day, but he quickly got the hint and listened to Ruby educating him on the importance of doing it gently, or else she´ll be bald by the end of the week. She´s sassy and sometimes Evan wonders if they´re actually related, because if that´s so, she got all the confidence he never had.
Evan prepared breakfast and a coffee for himself in the morning and made her lunchboxes with changing vegetables and candy for each day. They would do homework together in the afternoon and he would help her to pick out clothes in the morning, making sure she wouldn’t pick two different socks. She saw Connor wearing them all the time that way, and insisted it was cool. Because Connor was cool.
Evan agreed, but collected the matching sock anyway, wordlessly ending the argument.
They´re a pretty good team actually, but Evan already knew that. It´s not like he´s alone for the first time with his baby sister. They´re both used to the late shifts or double shifts of their mom, it just feels different now, because two weeks are a long time for two minors to be alone at home, right?
Evan is sure some of their neighbors would be pretty concerned if they knew. When they walked to school together, he kept conversations with passing neighbors short and made sure to only greet them from the distance. He doesn’t want to answer questions about where the hell their mom is. He doesn’t want to talk to them in general if he´s being honest.
Just stay under the radar, that´s what Evan tells himself. There is nothing to see at the Hansen´s, only an anxiety-ridden teen taking care of his little sister, because his mom is playing superhero elsewhere.
He knows it´s too late for him to stay up any longer now, because the thought sounds way meaner in his own hears than he intended.
Is he selfish?
He thinks about the hospital staff in the other city, all the doctors that are probably very lucky to have someone like Heidi by their side. She´s a good nurse and she actually cares about her patients, but Evan and his little sister aren’t patients, he decides.
He did everything his mom would’ve done too, or at least tried, because he doesn’t have a talent for ironing clothes, but he can make some pretty awesome pancakes, so it balances itself out in a way.
He tried to act like he knew exactly what he´s doing and it worked, but he´s relieved that his mom is coming home tonight. She´s the head of the household after all and she reminds him of taking his meds and he´s just more settled in general when someone is around who knows how to take care of certain situations. Who hugs him when things get bad. After all, he can´t just drive over to Connor´s place every time he´s freaking out.
She didn’t really tell when she would get back exactly, but she said it would most likely take two weeks until the situation was under control and the other hospital crew wouldn’t need help from the outside anymore.
It´s been two weeks now.
It´s night and already dark, but his mom should come through the door at any moment now.
Any moment.
Any moment now.
The ticking of the clock on the wall is suddenly too loud in his ears and he didn’t even blink and suddenly another two hours have passed and he´s still sitting on the couch, staring at the TV screen and glancing to the entrance door from time to time.
Any moment.
She comes back tonight, just a little longer.
Maybe she´d come in an hour, sometimes traffic is thick at night too, right? That´s something that happens regularly, he´s sure he read a report about it once.
His head is suddenly on the pillow beside him and with a dull thud, his phone slips out of his hand and hits the carpet. Evan is too tired to pick it up again to bring it over to his charger, and just lets it be, on the floor and showing his lock screen, a blurry photo from a fair last year. Connor and him won these stupid hats with neon lights on top and they both looked stupid, but he loves this photo.
He waits until the phone screen locks again and closes his eyes.
Part of him still hopes the door will swing open at any moment. His mom would come in on her tiptoes and kiss him on the head, and he would get up and leave the makeshift nest of blankets, because he doesn’t have to wait any longer and they both can return to their own beds.
But, if not…
I can do it for another day, Evan thinks absently. If mom doesn’t come home tonight, I can do it again tomorrow. For Ruby.
Only four hours later, his alarm echoes through the living room and he almost falls down from his improvised bed. For a moment, Evan doesn’t know why he´s down here and not in his bedroom upstairs, why is he so tired and why is it still so dark? School will only start in one and a half hour.
His dozy eyes land on the front door, closed and not even locked, which gives him half of a heart-attack. The wardrobe where one jacket is missing.
Right.
To complete the picture, he got a text just past three am, from his mom.
I´m so sorry, honey. They will need me a little longer, it´s still pretty bad. Give Ruby a kiss from me and take care, I´m gonna call soon, okay? Love you both, mom.
Something close to surrender settles inside of his heart. It aches for a small moment and Evan wants the feeling to go away, because he´s not even fully awake yet and already wants to… What does he want? It doesn’t feel like he´s going to cry, but something else, red and hot and shameful races through him and Evan takes a while to understand that it´s disappointment. The kind of disappointment that only comes with a broken promise.
His mom promised, she actually promised him and Ruby and she´s still not back.
They´re her children and she left them alone.
Fuck, he´s such an asshole for thinking like this, but he can´t turn this part of his brain off, he´s just. Disappointed.
Evan blinks and reminds himself where he is, just in time as his bones crack while he stands up, aching from the uncomfortable position spent on the couch all night. He just wasted three minutes with thoughts that won´t get him anywhere.
He needs to be better than this, or else this ship will sink soon and the only other passenger is too little to save herself. He needs to stay the master of this situation.
Evan unlocks his phone and brushes past Connor´s smile on the bright screen.
And most importantly, he needs to bring Ruby to school in one hour, so he´ll better hurry up.
Another day.