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Nancy Gillian had made, allegedly, many dumb decisions in her life. But it was okay, because everyone made them, and she’ d learned from her mistakes. So much so that now, whenever she was about to do something she’d regret later, she’d get this twisting feeling in her gut. It was enough to guide her through everyday life, from under pressure work calls to that creep on the online dating apps we all seem to come across sooner rather than later.
She knew she shouldn’t. Tommy wouldn’t approve. Hell, even TK would beg her not to, if he was awake. But she just couldn’t watch idly by. So, behind her Captain’s back, she had radio’ed dispatch and asked for Grace, explicitly. Of course she had to break the news, so she was expecting the entire former 126 team to show up in no time. However, it did the trick: Carlos hurried to the hospital. And Nancy got no bad feelings about this decision. So, she must be in the right path.
Carlos, for his instance, did show up immediately, although complaining about being in the middle of a shift. Bullshit. If he didn’t care about TK at all anymore, he wouldn’t have shown up. Nancy had no idea what happened between the two. What she knew, for certain, was that they still loved each other. Even with the distance, the time apart. She was dying of curiosity to understand why would such a power couple break up. But it made no difference now. TK needed Carlos and he was here.
She would get answers to her questions, just not today. She could wait.
TK couldn’t.
She can barely focus when Carlos finally walks in.
They greet each other and Nancy hugs Carlos, which he finds strange from the go.
“Typical TK. First time he wants to talk to me in months and, of course, it’s because he’s in the ICU.” Carlos mocks.
“About that…” Nancy anxiously interjects and Carlos’ expression quickly changes from his emulated debauchery to immediate concern. Could’ve fooled absolutely no one.
“What?”
“TK didn’t ask me to radio you today.” The paramedic doesn’t care that she sounds as nervous as she does, because she is. She had always been good at keeping her emotions in check, especially in the field. Somehow, she couldn’t find that Nancy now.
“What? You said that he wanted me here.”
“I did kinda say that, didn’t I?” She stutters.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah. Well... That was a lie.”
“A lie? Why would you lie abou-”
And suddenly they get interrupted by a woman addressing Nancy about some rescue of a kid they did. But everything in Carlos’ ears is white noise. His mind races with a thousand scenarios. He can hear the woman thanking Nancy for the rescue, and the way she gives all the credit to TK; but he can’t register anything at the moment.
Everyone knew about their break up and had respected, so far, their boundaries. They were even trying to show they weren’t only TK’s friends, that they were Carlos’ too. But he just needed space. Now, he was being called to a hospital to see TK in an undisclosed status. He didn’t like to admit, but none of this looked good.
Carlos comes back to it when the woman says something about praying for TK. He can’t help to have his most serious face on. His heart is jumping hoops inside of his chest.
“How serious is it, Nancy?” He manages to say, while taking a step forward, in a hushed voice, afraid that if he speaks it too loud, it’ll make it all worse, somehow.
“Honestly, it’s not good.” The woman replies, in a broken voice. Carlos always knew Nancy had a huge heart. She was so broken when Tim died. Carlos is afraid for both of them. “Cap is finding out the latest now.”
As if on cue, Tommy comes through the corner. She doesn’t have the best expression on her face. His heart is pumping so loudly in his ears. Carlos feels like he can’t breathe.
“Cap, what did they say?” Nancy breaks out, and thank god she does. Carlos doesn’t know if he can manage to say something. The anticipation and fear almost worse than knowing the truth.
“We need to find his father.” Is all the woman says, in a stern tone. Carlos knows that tone. The professional one. The one you use to keep the grip on reality.
Tommy was famous for keeping it cool under pressured situations. The problem is, you can’t run on crisis mode forever. No one can be good at everything. When time came to deal with the fallout, Nancy was worried for her. And she hoped. And prayed. Everything had to turn out alright with TK. They couldn’t take another tragedy. TK had been through enough already, their family had been through enough already.
“What do you mean? He…” Nancy can’t finish off that sentence.
“He’s in a coma. The doctors don’t know much yet, but his delirious state because of the hypothermia puts him at several risks. They need a next of kin present to make the medical decisions about his treatment.” The paramedic Captain says, looking Nancy straight in the eye.
Carlos swallows dry. He doesn’t know Tommy as well as her subordinate. She can read between the lines. She has the medical knowledge. TK has been too damaged by the cold. The delirium. The v-fib. The coma. Nancy knew the ideal setting was to let the patient awake long enough for them to get examined by a neurologist. TK didn’t get that chance. He was in a natural coma, not induced. The next 48 hours were crucial. They needed TK’s father there, even if to make the worst possible decision a father would have to make in his life.
“Cell towers are down. Besides, nobody has seen Captain Strand in quite a long time.” Nancy says.
Carlos can’t bring himself to say anything. He watches the scene unfold in front of him without believing it. He blinks his eyes several times to keep the tears away.
“Well, we need to find him, because his mom is in New York and there are no flights either. She won’t be here before-” Tommy cuts herself as she quickly glances at Carlos.
Luckily, she sees the man hasn’t understood why there’s such urgency in her tone. She needs a family member in the hospital before the staff takes actions into their own hands that might disagree with that TK’s family might want.
“Let’s see if we can find a landline we can use. You can try calling his dad, and I’ll see if I can find his mom’s number-” Nancy starts compartmentalizing, because that’s how she deals with crisis, but she’s cut-off as a nurse comes in behind Tommy’s figure.
“Are you the people who came in with the patient on bed 19, Tyler Kennedy?”
For a second, the request goes over Nancy’s head because she’s never heard TK’s full name. But Tommy had to know, so she just answers:
“Yes, we work with him.”
“There is no signal, so I was hoping you two could help me find his next of kin.” The nurse continues.
“Yeah, we’re trying to contact his dad, but-” This time, it’s Nancy who speaks up, but she’s cut-off by the woman.
“His dad? No. His file in the system shows he has a spouse. Does any of you know a ‘Carlos Daniel Reyes’?”
In slow motion, both Tommy and Nancy turn to Carlos, surprised expressions on their faces and allow the nurse to see him standing there.
“Spouse?” Nancy blurts out at the same time the nurse takes one look at Carlos, zeroes in on his name-tag and goes:
“Oh, great! You’re already here!” She steps in between the two paramedics and goes straight to him. “Now, you might want to stay with him a little, but first we have to talk a bit about his condition. If you could follow me…”
She takes him by the arm with a warm condescending smile and whisks him away, leaving Tommy and Nancy behind, mouths agape.
—§—
With nothing else to do but wait, they decided to at least let the rest of the former 126 know about TK’s condition. Which, guess what, isn’t a hard feat, because just as they’re radioing Grace back at dispatch, in comes Paul in a gurney, with Mateo and Judd hot on his tracks.
“What happened?” Tommy asked.
“A rescue didn’t go as planned.” Mateo says.
“But it’s okay now!” Paul intervenes, trying to smooth things over. His speech is slow and slurred. “What are you doing here?”
“Hm…” Tommy chews the inside of her cheek, thinking of what to say.
“Where is Marjan?” Nancy comes to her rescue, diverging the situation.
She knew they had to check Paul out first, and then they could drop the bomb. The added stress could be bad for him.
Judd takes a look between the two and figures it out, in his head. The good news is, he doesn’t think the boys have. Paul is too out of it to do his weird mambo-jambo Sherlock Holmes thing. So, they’re in the clear for now.
“I don’t know. She went to see Cap, but we haven’t had news from either of them. Grace has been trying to reach them all day.” He manages to say without alarming the others.
A nurse comes in and pulls Paul’s gurney into the ER and that’s when they let him go, dropping the subject altogether.
“Listen, we have to go now, our shift ain’t over yet, but we’ll come by later to check on Paul. Are you staying?”
“Yeah, we have to.” That’s all Tommy allows herself to say. “We’ll keep an eye on him for you.”
“Thanks. We’ll be back in no time.”
“I don’t know. Things seem to be pretty intense out-there. Be careful, boys.”
“Sure will do.” And off they go in a hurry, leaving ice and snow everywhere they go in their brutish manly way.
—§—
They wait around for somewhat of three hours. Nancy doesn’t try to hide how nervous she’s getting. At one point, when he’s warm and recovered enough, Paul comes back to his senses and escapes his bed to find Tommy and Nancy to get to know what’s going on. He seems to be much better, so, no lasting injuries. When they tell him what happened, Paul loses his breath. Then, they spend the rest of the time calling whoever they can, including the private company that now employs Tommy, Nancy and TK to tell them they won’t be able to go back and finish their shift. Their new boss, of course, doesn’t like this, but Tommy has so much on her mind at the moment, she couldn’t care less.
Carlos comes back after this time, looking as white as a piece of paper. Strange, considering he has the most beautiful natural tan complexion, but not surprising, knowing the doctors would’ve told Carlos the same thing they told Tommy three hours before.
The man is spooked, and when Paul greets him, he doesn’t reply. He just sits in a free spot between them in the waiting room. Tommy hugs him sideways, because that’s the only thing she can think of, and this act seems to warm him up a bit.
Judd, Mateo and Grace are already informed and would be on their way on the end of their shifts. As for Marjan, no one knows where she is yet. The only information they’ve got is that Grace was able to find out Owen communicated through a radio emergency frequency requiring an ambulance a couple hours prior, but no one was able to get a hold of him since, either. Which raised concerns even more. The only thing Tommy wanted to do was to go home and hug her daughters, maybe snuggle with her new cat on the couch and pretend the cold outside never happened, but she just can’t leave TK.
“What did they say?” Nancy asks, even though she already knows.
Carlos turns to her with his watery eyes. Tommy can see he’s fighting back not to let them fall.
“They said… I have to stay close by. They’re watching him right now and that it’s not good that TK has gone into a coma naturally. So they have to watch him and test him for brain trauma. And then, if he’s unresponsive for long enough, they…” He can’t bring himself to say it, instead he just lets out a sob and Tommy hugs him again.
She takes note of how Carlos can’t even say the words. TK had been delirious, yes, but he was walking and talking. She objectively knows the hypothermia and the shock could cause brain death in severe cases, but she just couldn’t believe she was living it.
The group stays in silence while Carlos lets his head fall and tries to hide his tears for several minutes.
They look as desolate as they feel. No one knows what to do, or what to say.
“What am I supposed to do?” Carlos whispers, amid sniffles.
“I don’t know. Only you can answer that.” Is the only thing Tommy can say to him that sounds true enough. She doesn’t want to lie to him.
“We are not even together anymore. Oh, God…”
“When did this happen? You two got married?” Nancy cuts in, because, as sad as she is, she just can’t hold herself back.
It earns her a warning look from Tommy, but she pays it no mind.
“We were so stupid and so in love. We thought it’d be funny. You know, to see how long it’d take you guys to figure it out…” He half laughs, half cries, eyes lost in the distance. “We didn’t think there would be consequences. Certainly not this.”
“C’mon, brother. You must’ve had some clue of what you were doing. You two trusted each other completely, we could see that. I’m pretty sure even with everything that has gone down, TK would rather to leave his fate in no one else’s hands but yours.” Paul gently says.
“I-I can’t do this. I can’t! We need to find Owen. Now.” Carlos gets up from his chair and goes straight for the island where the nurses of the ER stay.
He asks to use their landline, but even for that there’s a line of people.
Which is of no use, anyway. If anyone had a chance of finding him it was Grace, with access to many more resources than them.
Tommy comes in as the voice of reason, once again.
“Carlos, I know this is hard. And I don’t know how bad things are between you and TK, but-”
“We didn’t sign a divorce, you know. We never even discussed it. He just left and never talked to me again. I guess I was hoping it would pass in a few days, that he’d talk to me. But it’s been months and now we’re too far to even be a we. I don’t even know if he remembered it.” His gaze is low, staring at his boots.
“He remembered.” Nancy assured him.
She had been the one to spend more time with TK in all those months. She saw the suffering he was going through and failing at trying to hide. She knew TK remembered, vividly, every single second of the time he spent with Carlos.
“Right. But none of that matters now. Even if we do find Owen, then what? You are the one with legal power here. It’s your choice, Carlos. Whatever you decide, no one can say anything about it.”
“I know what TK would want, but I don’t know if I’d be able to do it…”
“He’d want you to let him go.” Paul, who’s a little slow on his feet, only caught up to them now, but his spidey-senses are back, because he was not only able to deduce what the conversation was, but also what decision his friend would make in this scenario.
Carlos only nods.
“We will do all we can. But you can’t expect Owen to tell you what to do. Because you know, in the end, the only thing that matters is what TK would want. Even if everyone else disagrees. You have to be strong enough to carry it through. Despite his father, or anyone else.” Tommy closes her argument being right, as usual. Some truths are just hard to hear.
“We should try to call his mom.” Nancy suggests.
“I still love him, you know?”
“Yeah, we know.” Paul jokes and punches Carlos’ arm, which makes all of them laugh.
For a second, everything is lighter.
“How am I supposed to let him go?”
“I don’t know. I guess what you have to think about is: what will you be holding on to? Just a shell of a man you once knew? That’s even worse, I think.” Tommy replies. “Sometimes I’m glad Charles went the way he did. Quick. Painless. Sometimes I envy him.”
Carlos watches as a dark shadow passes behind her eyes.
He doesn’t want to know this kind of grief. Not yet. He’s not ready.
They should be together. There’s so much more they should’ve lived. They deserve so much better.
God, how did it go so wrong? They had it all.
Now, Carlos wonders if the decision to ask that pretty guy in the bar to line dance with him might’ve been the worst one he had done in his entire life. It might not have been worth it, in the end.
He hoped it was. He had never known love like this before. He had never known hurt like this before.