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He keeps his head down as he walks the all too familiar halls of the busy hospital. The doctor’s words repeat in his head like a terrible melody, and he pushes his tongue against the top of his mouth to avoid losing it in an elevator with a bunch of strangers. The cold burst of air as he exits the hospital hits him in the face and he lets out the breath he didn’t know he was holding.
‘There’s not much that we can do’ the doctor had said and stupidly that’s when he had realised, he’d been naive this whole time. He’d been sitting by him, like the past two times he’d sat by TK in a hospital bed, with a belief that he’d be fine. TK didn’t die, he survived. He’d survived an overdose, a gunshot, and a kidnapping. He’d come back every single time yet here Carlos was standing outside a hospital and he knew that the likelihood TK would survive this was virtually gone.
The footsteps behind him are not a surprise, he knew that he wouldn’t be alone for long, and as much as he yearns to be able to lose control by himself with the knowledge that nobody will see his control slip, he is thankful there is someone else with him, someone else who understands the enormity of what losing TK means.
Tommy stops next to him, gently squeezes his arm and he tenses his jaw as the tears fill his eyes. They stand next to each other, both looking out to the snow-covered hospital grounds and Carlos can feel the last of his hope dwindling.
“I’ve watched people sit where we were, the doctor trying to avoid what every person knows but won’t acknowledge” Carlos utters, breaking the silence “He’s not going to make it is he?”
“There’s always a chance” Tommy replies and Carlos huffs, his frustration rising.
“You don’t really think there is though” Carlos tells her and when she looks like she’s going to argue, the steady rope of his emotions snaps and he wants someone else to say what his brain is screaming at him. “I know you and Nancy are trying to be positive and hoping for a miracle but let’s be real here, the likelihood he sur-” his voice cracks and he squeezes his hands together but doesn’t wipe away the tears he can feel the wind sticking onto his face “survives is almost non-existent”
“Carlos -” Tommy starts and Carlos stares at her, pleading with his eyes for her to say what he knows to be true.
Tommy lets out a sigh and replies quietly, like she doesn’t even want to be saying it all “No. The odds are that he doesn’t make it through this.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought” Carlos mumbles out and even though he’d known it was coming, he feels the weight of her words hit him. TK was going to die, and the dreams of how he’d hoped to spend their future together would die with him.
“Why don’t we go back inside?” Tommy asks and Carlos follows her when she gently pushes him back inside. They make it into the wide entry foyer before he stops. He knows he should follow her; he should go back up to the ICU, sit next to TK’s bed with Nancy and pray that somehow TK would be the miracle but doing the right thing had got him nowhere good. It had led him to this moment, watching the love of his life first walk out of his life and now months later inside a hospital preparing to lose him all over again. Tommy stops a few steps in front of him and turns back, raising her brow when he stays glued to the same spot.
“Carlos?”
“I don’t know if I can go back there” he says and Tommy frowns at him before leading him to two chairs, out of the way of the entrance when a few people walk around them.
“What do you mean?” Carlos turns to look outside through the large glass windows as the snow continues to fall, coating the ground in a stark white. A once in a million snowstorm would be the way TK would go, wouldn’t it? He’d never look at snow the same.
“We’re not together, I have no connection to him anymore. I don’t think I should be in that room” Carlos explains, and he imagines going home, sitting in the house they thought was going to be theirs and admits, at least to himself, he couldn’t be there either.
“You’re a part of this work family and you went through a lot together, there’s always going to be a connection.”
“When Nancy told me he had asked me to come, I didn’t even think, I just left my shift and came. We’ve been apart for months. How sad is that?” Tommy reaches over to grab his hand, sitting on his knee.
“It’s not sad” she says and when he shakes his head, she grips his hand tighter to get his attention “It’s not sad” she repeats. “When you love someone, you come when they call. It’s just what you do” Carlos lets the moment pass and Tommy pats his hand once before letting go. He looks back into the hospital, watches the low hum of activity as people hurriedly move about their life.
“I keep telling myself I should leave. At first it was I’ll leave when he wakes up, and then I’ll leave when Owen gets here and then it was, I’ll leave when everyone else gets here. Now, here I am, and I can’t go back there.”
“Why?” Tommy asks gently.
“How can I go in there knowing that I’m not even sure he’d want me to be there?” Carlos had been asking himself the question since he had arrived and realised how bad it was. The only one that had the answer was in a coma and until now he had convinced himself that no matter how terrible things were between them, they’d still be there for each other. Now, his confidence was shaky.
“If it was the other way around, would you want him there?” Tommy asks and Carlos doesn’t even have to think about his answer.
“Of course, I would, but it’s not the same” Tommy sighs audibly next to him.
“He still loves you, that much is obvious. I’m with him nearly every day. I know. Even if he did break up with you.”
“I broke up with him, technically” Carlos answers and nearly has to laugh at the surprised expression on Tommy’s face before she schools it to something more neutral.
“Oh. I shouldn’t have assumed. He was so tight-lipped about it, even when Nancy was trying her very hardest. I just figured it was because he didn’t want to admit it was him” she says and Carlos lets out a joyless chuckle.
“Yeah, she’s been annoying me about it to. We agreed to keep it between us when we- “ended his brain wants to say but ended sounds so final now. He pushes past the thought. “When it happened” he finishes instead.
“You don’t have to say anything about it now” Tommy tells him and Carlos recognises it as an out, but he’s too far gone now.
“I don’t think he’s going to care now is he?” Carlos asks, a little too abrupt and he squeezes his eyes shut when Tommy jolts slightly next to him and he whispers out an apology.
“Breakups aren’t usually one-sided, Carlos. I’m sure it wasn’t your fault”
“Oh. It wasn’t” Carlos says, and Tommy huffs out a shocked laugh at the surety in his words “But I was the one who stupidly suggested we take time for ourselves. My words were ‘we need to be apart for just a second so we can both figure ourselves out’ like space between us would solve anything”
“You were going through a lot. Sometimes space is a good thing” Tommy says.
“We were together all the time, but we hardly said anything to each other. It felt like we were just stuck so I thought I’d do the right thing, I’d bring it up, and try to fix it” Carlos pauses as his mind flashes back to image of TK in front of him, green eyes screaming heartbreak. “But he was so shocked, so hurt. I can’t get the way he stared at me, like I’d betrayed him, out of my head” Carlos takes a deep breath, puts the memory to the back of his mind. “But I didn’t want us to break up”
“Of course not, you love him” Tommy says, like there’s no way she could be wrong.
‘Yeah, I love him” Carlos repeats “but he just stopped talking altogether. I kept trying, but then weeks turned into a month, and I realised that he wasn’t going to answer. I’d ruined it, so I had to accept it and move on”
“You didn’t ruin it. You did what you thought was right” Tommy tells him, and he wishes he could accept her words, but he knew better. He’d had months to realise that there were ways to fix them, but TK had heard that he wanted space from him and that’s all he had taken away.
“I should’ve just tried to make him talk when we were together, I shouldn’t have told him I needed space when I really wanted the opposite” Carlos sniffs, angrily wipes his sleeve across his face “and now I’ve lost him for good”
“He’s still there, Carlos” Tommy says, and Carlos gives her a look of disbelief.
“No he’s not. Not really” Nancy had joined him earlier that morning as they sat on either side of the ICU bed. It’d been silent until Nancy had commented that it looked like he was sleeping, and Carlos wanted to tell her that it wasn’t anything like what he looked like sleeping, that there was no twitching of his eyes, no arm absently searching for his in the dark, no muttered words as he dreamed but instead, he’d hummed an agreement and they’d continued their vigil.
“If I had the chance to say goodbye to the person I loved, I would take it every single time” Carlos swallows at the pain in the statement and her eyes as he looks at her.
“I’m sorry” he reaches over and grabs her arm in an apologetic gesture.
“Don’t be” Tommy says, her hand reaching across to lay on top of his. “You need to go back in there and say everything that you held back otherwise there’s going to be a time down the line, whether it be days, weeks or months from now where you are going to regret it”
“I don’t know how to talk to him when he’s not listening” Carlos replies, and Tommy’s expression softens, and she looks just as heartbroken as he feels.
“Just try” Tommy insists.
“Okay” Carlos says quietly, and Tommy stands and pulls him up next to her before wrapping an arm around him.
“Try not to give up on him yet, okay?” Tommy whispers into his ear and Carlos pulls out of the embrace to give her a look of disbelief.
“I know. I know what I said, but Carlos you must have a little bit of hope. Nancy’s right, if anyone were going to get through this, it would be TK”