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The seconds tick by and nothing happens. The team wait, tense, with bated breath and the silence permeates the air like an accusation. Happy frowns, steps forward.
“Or maybe just a short in the a/c.”
She moves towards the van, her mind already running the variables, considering oxygen sensors and ignition plugs and catalytic converters. The explosion doesn’t catch her off guard, exactly. It pulls a cliff out from underneath her and sends her free falling.
Her mind whites out for a second or two or an hour, stuck on the sense memory of her head coming to a jarring halt against the sidewalk and everything is silent. She blinks, slow and sticky, feels the thin, wet warmth of tears across her temple. The sky is too blue and gulls float and drift with the currents of the breeze above her, like snowflakes.
“Happy!”
She blinks again and winter’s gone and Walter’s there instead, cool fingers at her throat and jaw.
“Happy? Can you hear me?”
It takes a couple of seconds for his words to wash over her and sink in, but she’s just beginning to become aware of the ringing in her ears and the way that everything sounds watery and distant and his words don’t make much sense. Her eyes swim and fall and circle back until they catch Walter’s gaze and her own focuses. He looks worried, his brow furrowed and expression pinched and she blinks at him and he grimace-smiles down at her.
“You were unconscious,” he says. She can feel people hovering and fluttering around her, touching her arms and her face and the pulse in her wrists and they’re talking and shouting and crying too. It sounds like bubbles.
She pushes the hands away and tries to sit up, but a pain in her chest flares that burns hot and cold and she rolls onto her side as she chokes and wheezes against it. There are hands on her again, rubbing circles across her back and pushing at her shoulder and she closes her eyes against it, lets the nausea ebb and flow until she’s left with a dull ache; an all-over ache that throbs in her toes and her stomach and her head, but an ache nonetheless.
“Hey, Happy. Can you open your eyes for me?”
Happy does so, is surprised to find Toby hovering above her now.
“Where’s Walt?” Speaking hurts. Her voice is all crackly and she wheezes afterward, trying to catch her breath.
“Walt’s around, but he’s not a doctor. Good thing you got me, eh?” His hands are on her neck and slowly straightening her limbs out and it’s distracting, like she’s a jigsaw he’s carefully re-assembling. He looks worried too.
Happy breathes in, a stuttered hitch-hitch-one-two. “Y’not a real doctor.”
He smirks. “Am too. I need you to stay still for me, okay? And we’re just gonna make sure you’re all in working order. Can you feel this?” He asks, tracing the skin of her palms. Happy nods. “And both legs?” She nods again. “Good.”
Happy breathes in again, as slow and as deep as she can, but it’s hard. The air is so cold and it rushes through her body and settles into her corners like brain freeze.
Her eyes flutter for a second before falling closed. “You’re bein’ nice,” she gasps again, pulling in as much air as she can and still feeling like she’s drowning. “S’weird,” she tries to tell him, gurgles around a “just don’t suit ya, doc,” because her mouth tingles and she’s trying to breathe in but there’s so much pressure and it keeps pushing against her and it hurts.
The noise around her crescendos again but she can’t hear it and she can’t breathe either and she panics, reaches out for anything and ends up tangling her fingers in Toby’s shirt. She tries to speak again, or to cry or to scream, but she’s slowly being strangled by something she can’t see and all she can do is let the tears fall when she blinks and try not to pass out.
Toby’s speaking again but there’s a shrill ringing in her ears and he’s clutching at her hand too and she allows herself to drift away from it all, if just for a moment.
-x-
She is disturbed sometime later by a steady beeping sound to her left and muted conversation around her but the world is thick and dark, her mind silent of all thought except for the throbbing in her temples, pounding the offbeat of the beeping.
Her limbs are heavy and any attempts to move remain unsuccessful.
She feels the pull of sleep and sways into its welcome embrace.
-x-
Happy wakes again that same day and has enough faculties about her to recognise the obnoxious beeping and a presence nearby, heavy and warm against her arm, and she struggles at the sleep that threatens to consume her once more. It’s hard to force her eyes open and she’s not sure how long it takes, but she manages eventually and a sharp pain shoots through her head as her neurons start firing.
She’s in a private room, blinds lining the huge windows on one side of the room, hiding the outside world from her. She doesn’t know which hospital she’s at or what time it is or even what day it is, and it makes something sour settle in her stomach.
There’s an uptick in her chest that leaves her panting, and then she’s recalling the slow terror of suffocation, and the machines beside her go wild until all the tones blur together, distant and horrifying and she shuts her eyes against it all.
There are hands on her maybe, pulling her this way and that and she wants them off, wants everything to just disappear but never want to be alone and she’s lost in her thoughts, cold and lonely and dizzy and trembling and she pushes the hands away as she shakes.
She pries her eyes open, as if it could help at all, and stares at the bright lights above her, smudged with tears and there’s nothing to hold onto, to keep her firm except oh god I’m dying and she doesn’t know what she’s said or what noise she made, but there’s a voice next to her ear, firm and soft and encouraging all at once.
“Hey, Happy Quinn. Happy, Happy Quinn. Beautiful, smiling Happy Quinn. I need you to listen to me, okay? And I know you don’t like to do that very often, rightfully so; I’m an ass; but I need you to listen to me because you’re okay, okay?”
Warm breath fans across her neck, a saving grace against the cool sweat pooling against her spine and the way her muscles feel loose and shaky. She reaches for the voice, desperately grappling against her body for control and is powerless to stop the tears that dampen her hairline.
“You’re gonna be okay, because you’re in a hospital and you’re safe and I’m not going to let anything happen to you, okay? But I need you to focus, okay, ‘cause I’m gonna talk you through this, yeah?”
Happy tries to nod, jerks as best she can and chokes against the pain that sends another wave of crippling terror through her, fraying whatever control she was gaining and a sob gets stuck in her throat. She tries to gasp around it but it’s hopeless. Everything is hopeless and she’s going to die like this.
“That’s it. I know you feel like you can’t breathe right now, and it’s scary, but it’s a panic attack, okay? You’re in a hospital and you’re gonna be fine and you know how I know this? You’re gonna be okay because this is what our bodies spent thousands of years learning to do and we’re very good at it. So I’m gonna need you to focus on my voice and pay attention. Can you do that for me?”
Happy attempts another nod, grey spots dancing in front of her eyes and mouth dry. She doesn’t know how successful she is, but he carries on talking and the sound is distorted but something in his voice rings true, even if she doesn’t catch all the words.
“You’re doing so good, Happy. You’re doing so good. And I’m gonna let you in on a secret, yeah? What you’re going through now; shortness of breath, heart palpitations, chest pain, dizziness, pupil dilation, trembling muscles; is just one big, stupid ‘fight-or-flight’ response from days yonder. It’s so stupid, isn’t it? But you’re gonna make it through this, Happy, because you’re so brave and smart and there is nothing I know of that could ever stop you, could it?”
Happy fades in and out for a few minutes, hears odd phrases interspersed with the blood rushing through her ears so loud it hurts her teeth, but he talks on, never wavering and slowly, syllable by syllable, it gets easier to concentrate.
“-and you were so pissed you just clocked him right on the chin, and I promise that when you’re better and when this panic attack ends, we’ll go find him and you can do it again, just for old times sake, eh? But you’re gonna be oka-”
“You promise?”
“-y but we just ha-”
His voice stops, suddenly and there’s silence. It throws her for a second, her heartbeat stuttering in her chest before stabilising again. She blinks her eyes open, a slow flutter until she can see the bright lights again and it takes more effort than it should to let her head fall to one side so she can see him.
He looks harried, face pale and eyes bright, a flush against his neck and beneath his scruff. She blinks again, watches the way his frown smoothes out and his gaze softens, a smile hinting at his lips.
“Hi.”
She swallows against the fire in her throat and the way her mouth feels numb and heavy, lips tingling.
“Hi.”
“How do you feel?”
She takes stock of herself, tries to see herself as she was just moments ago, terrified and hopeless but it’s hard to place herself in that situation, like she experienced it through a fog. She shrugs.
“Tired,” she finally settles on.
Happy shivers and she grips at the covers she’d half pushed away in her panic and her skin feels like rubber to her, all pliable and vague sensation.
“Here,” he says. Toby withdraws to reach behind him and it makes her muscles clench up again as she shoots a hand out to stop him, pinches the very edge of his sleeve. “Hey, no, I just needed this.” He brandishes an oxygen mask in front of her. “Doctor’s orders an’ all.” He pulls her up slightly to slip the elastic over her head and settle the mask across her face. “Seeing as how you punctured a lung because you walked towards a bomb.”
His voice is all faux-lightness and cheer but Happy is stuck on ‘bomb’ and then ‘punctured a lung’ because God. She punctured a lung.
The thought makes her feel dizzy all over again but Toby’s there, dragging a thumb across her forehead and over the mask, tapping what would have been the tip of her nose twice and Happy leans towards him, hating that every movement leaves a chill from her drying sweat.
“You’re not allowed to do that anymore, by the way. Walking towards bombs is just a very bad idea. Leave that for Cabe next time.”
Happy gives a weak grin in response. The oxygen makes her feel more alert, her body settling back into normal like nothing ever happened, but she’s exhausted, her mind sluggish and hazy with drugs as the adrenaline dissipates. She struggles to keep her eyes open, blinking heavily and dragging her focus back to the steady silence of now that envelops the room.
“You should get some sleep,” Toby finally ventures, moving to give her space but it’s not what she wants. “It’s been a lo-”
He cuts himself off when Happy reaches for him, one hand pulling her mask to the side as the other lazily nudges him, her knuckles grazing his chest.
“Stay?”
Toby exhales quickly, a whoosh of air that whips away all the tension in his chest so he can finally breathe again, warmth curling around his heart and quirking his lips. He leans closer again, feels all a flutter when she moves her hand to catch against the back of his neck, her fingers tangling in his hair and he’s so helpless in the face of her.
He pulls her fingers away from the oxygen mask to settle it back against her face, his palm coming to rest against the soft skin of her neck, the throbbing of her pulse beneath her skin a calming metronome to the worry and stress of the past few days that leaves him feeling dazed, as if he’s been broken apart and pieced back together.
He pitches forward to press their foreheads together and stays, syncs their breathing and sweeps his thumb back and forth across the hollow of her cheek and it’s so easy to stay there, eyes closed and breathing her in, antiseptic and rubber and the quiet hints of smoke that cling to her because she’s okay.
She’s safe now.