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'Cause if one day you wake up and find that you're missing me
And your heart starts to wonder where on this earth I could be
Thinking maybe you'll come back here to the place that we'd meet
Hell, Carlos decides, isn’t a fiery world down below but rather the waiting room hearing firsthand that the love of his life is knocking on Death’s door.
TK’s doctor speaks words he doesn’t fully understand but the message is clear, whether he wants to receive it or not.
We could lose him.
“I think I need to get some fresh air,” he says decidedly.
Though they’re seated in an open space, the walls still feel as if they’re pressing in on him and the sharp antiseptic smell along with the doctor’s words is making him feel sick.
He’ll gladly take the arctic conditions outside. Anything is better than the feeling of suffocation right now.
He grabs his coat, material far too thin for the snow outside, his eyes fixed on the blue door that calls to him like a beacon when Nancy's voice distracts him.
“You want someone to come with?”
It’s a kindness he appreciates, but Carlos is barely able to hold himself together as it is. He doesn’t need an audience for the impending breakdown he feels breathing down his neck.
“No,” he’s quick to say. Nancy’s brows furrow just marginally, concern etched into her face.
She’s already so worried about TK. The last thing he wants to do is add one more item to her list of things to be preoccupied with.
His heart breaks for her. She’s been through this before, the loss of a partner. How cruel, he thinks, for the universe to make them all repeat their worst days once again.
He politely declines, begs off for just a minute to himself before turning to leave. He walks briskly to the door, an irrational part of him ready to bolt through it. But he keeps up appearances long enough to make the journey without raising any flags.
The moment he’s through, the first tear falls and Carlos lets out a choked breath, his right hand pressing against the center of his chest where a fierce knot blooms.
Panic attacks are rare for him, but he knows enough of the telltale signs to put a name to this feeling.
The lights overhead are far too bright, the ringing in his ears too loud. It’s all too much, feeling everything at once.
His fingers bump against the concealed bit of metal under his shirt. The pads of his index and middle fingers trace the outline of a cross he hadn’t touched for about a decade before TK landed here.
He’d been compelled when he’d gone home to change. He’d packed this symbol of his faith away years ago. He’s had a complicated relationship with church, to say the least. But at a time like this, Carlos figured it couldn’t hurt to stack the deck as best he could.
He’s been lucky enough to have Tommy and Nancy at his side, holding his hands through it all and explaining the words he hasn’t been fully able to grasp.
He’ll call on a higher power, too, if that’s what it will take to get TK through this harrowing time.
Carlos’ fingers dip below the collar of his shirt, the chain warm to the touch. His vision blurs, eyes swimming with tears and his thoughts almost paralyzing.
He clings to it now like a child with a security blanket, allowing it to ground him like the very religion he once held on to.
Carlos forces his legs to move forward. He maps out the trip to the ground floor, his mind on autopilot as he manages to get himself down the hallway and into the elevator.
Mercifully it’s vacant, and Carlos rests back against the paneling immediately after pressing the button, his eyes closed as the lift descends to the first floor.
He feels every bit of the distance away from TK, but in order to fully be there, to be present at this time when TK needs him the most, he needs a short reprieve to get his head on straight. He’s no good to anyone like this now.
The pressure on his chest hasn’t let up, and it feels an awful lot like he’s dying by the time he makes it to the ground floor.
His legs barely feel as if they can support his weight any more. He looks ahead, sees the snow covered hospital grounds through the sliding glass doors but the hallway sways and he does too. The world is spinning around him and one wrong move will send him straight into oblivion.
Carlos reaches out a hand to keep himself steady against the wall but it gives. It takes him a moment to realize it’s actually a door. He needs privacy. He needs to sit, think, breathe .
Without a thought, he goes inside and stops short when he realizes where he’s wound up.
The chapel is eerily empty, save for a woman up front at the quasi altar. He supposes families and loved ones are holding bedside vigils of their own in the rooms upstairs. Or maybe, he hopes above all else, no one else in this building is grappling with a situation as severe as his.
Carlos walks slowly up the aisle, each step measured and quiet so as to not disturb the woman. But as he draws nearer, really takes a moment to look at her, Carlos stops in his tracks against the flat carpet.
“Ma?” he says.
At once the woman turns at the sound of his voice, and sure enough, Carlos finds himself staring into his mother’s face, the warm brown eyes he’s been told since birth he inherited from her.
She rises from where she’s been kneeling in prayer, her head tipping to the side as she looks at him. He’s sure he looks worse for wear, but there’s nothing he can do to save face.
“How are you here right now?”
With how out of it he’s been since he was ushered out of TK’s room, Carlos can’t quite put it past himself not to think he’s somehow conjured her up.
“Mitchell called me...told me what happened to TK during your shift. I thought I’d come by and see how you were holding up and to check in on him. I just stopped by here first before heading up,” she says, gesturing up to the cross.
Carlos shakes his head, blinks three times like a system rebooting.
“I’m sorry. I should have been the one to do that, to call you. I wasn’t thinking.”
Andrea crosses the room to him, reaches both her hands up and frames his face. With nowhere else to look, he holds her gaze as she speaks.
“TK is the only person you should be thinking about right now. Don’t apologize, mijo. I understand.”
Carlos closes his eyes and lightly holds on to one of her wrists, feels her strong and steady pulse and lets it sink in that she is in fact actually here. Always showing up when he needs her most.
When he opens his eyes, tears race down his face, his bottom lip quivering. He’s never felt so small as he does at this moment.
“Come here,” Andrea says, lowering her hands and leading Carlos to take a seat beside her in the first row.
The silence of the chapel presses uncomfortably on his skin, crawls up the length of his spine and just seems to grip him tight.
He stares up at the cross while fiddling with the one around his neck. He can’t shake these last few hours, the way it has all worn down as if it’s actually been days. It’s been so hard to decipher anything through all the static in his head. But he doesn’t feel as if he has a right to complain or protest. His life isn’t hanging in the balance. Just his sanity.
“Carlos,” his mom says gently, a careful hand on his knee.
Carlos’ head snaps towards her. There’s so much concern in her eyes, and guilt sinks heavy in his stomach as she speaks again.
“Talk to me.”
Carlos opens and closes his mouth, but he can’t seem to think, let alone put his thoughts into concise words.
“I don’t have anything to say. There’s nothing I can say to make this better, to fix this. And that kills me. I can’t help him.”
Carlos rubs the sweaty palm of his hand against the front of his jeans.
“I can’t afford to be without him—not like this.”
Truth is he has been without TK for months now and he’s barely been getting by, despite all his big talk to Marjan and everyone in his life of knowing when a thing is done. Those had just been words spoken, a front to disguise the utter pain of his seemingly perfect relationship ending. In time Carlos, hoped he’d grow to believe it, trick himself into buying into his own bravado. But being here now proves in the most brutal of ways that he isn’t over TK. He could never be.
This is not a circumstance he’s willing to accept, a world in which TK Strand no longer exists.
He closes his eyes at the thought, blocks it out as best he can.
“He’s not even mine to lose,” he says softly, not even to his mother in particular. “But for his sake. His parents’. Jonah’s ,” he tacks on, voice breaking over the infant’s name.
Beyond his blood relatives, TK has a family here in Austin, too, that will be reduced to nothing if he’s taken from them so soon.
Carlos would like to think he’s still counted among that group in TK’s eyes, but he can’t say with certainty. And that cuts something fierce and raw right into the heart of him.
So much has gone unsaid these last few months, and Carlos regrets every day, every second he’s let slip by out of stubbornness and pride. It all seems so inconsequential now. Foolish even, in the grand scheme of things. These months have been nothing but time wasted.
Carlos sighs, his trembling hands steepling. Beside him, his mother tuts softly and shakes her head.
“I wish I could take all of this pain away from you.”
Carlos frowns. “There’s a lot of that going around,” he says wistfully.
He’d give anything to save TK now, if only he had the power to do more than anything but hope and pray. It feels empty.
Carlos closes his eyes and buries his face in his hands, counts to ten, and tries to remember the basic function of how to breathe.
In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Repeat.
He takes small comfort in the exercise as it actually helps to ease the tension briefly before another wave of sadness pulls him under. He blinks and sees the haunting image of the medical staff rushing to TK as he began to crash. Carlos had been unable to do anything other than look on in horror, too stunned to even move.
He’d been powerless to help. It just felt like one more way he’d failed TK.
Carlos turns to his mother now and sees the worry in her eyes for him.
“Ma, I can’t…I can’t do this. I’m not strong enough,” he admits.
Andrea opens her arms to him, and Carlos goes effortlessly into her embrace. His ear presses against her heart. He counts the beats as she strokes his hair.
“No one is expecting you to be. And besides, that’s what I’m here for and your friends too. To help you carry this,” she murmurs against the crown of his head. “This is far too much for one person.”
That feels like a cop-out, but Carlos knows better than to say that outright. Instead, he just nestles in closer against his mother, letting her arms keep him from falling to pieces.
“You feel everything so deeply,” she continues. “It’s one of the very best things about you, mi amor. But it’s a blessing and a curse, I know.”
Carlos can only agree. The highs of being empathetic can be rewarding, but the lows make him feel as if he’s hit rock bottom.
“You don’t have to carry it all. You shouldn’t. It’s also okay to feel this, to acknowledge your pain. Just remember, above all else, that it's crucial you let it out. It does you no good to keep all that hurt locked up inside, Carlitos. Set it free. Give yourself permission to react.”
She places a kiss against his hair and rocks him gently. Suddenly it’s as if he’s five years old, crying over a scraped knee. He’d do anything to return to a time like that, before he knew just how badly his heart could actually hurt. Before he knew what true pain was.
Carlos shakes as a sob rips through him. It pierces the silence of the chapel until his choking breaths seem to echo off the walls, but he doesn’t care. This place is meant to be a sanctuary, a refuge, a place to lay his burdens down.
Above all else, there’s no need to pretend with his mother. He can let his soul sit bare before her, and she won’t judge.
His hands bunch firmly onto the back of her blouse as he lets himself feel the full weight of all that he’s been trying to keep at bay.
Within a few short months, he has lost so much already: his home, his relationship. And now—
Carlos won’t allow himself to complete the thought, to put it further into the universe for fear of willing it into existence.
TK has to make it through. For both their sakes.
Carlos doesn’t know how long he stays sobbing in his mother’s arms but she holds him without protest. In soothing tones, she whispers assurances that plant themselves like seeds in his heart.
When it feels as if he doesn’t have a single tear left in him, he pulls away and dries his face.
He opens his mouth to say sorry, but she shakes her head just slightly and the apology dies on his tongue. He smiles softly at her in thanks.
“What can I do for you? What do you need?” she asks.
A miracle, he thinks. A crystal ball that will show him the light at the end of this tunnel. A solemn vow from the universe that TK will pull through.
She cannot provide any of those things, and he can’t ask that of her, but her company is a salvation all its own.
“Just…keep sitting here with me a little while longer,” he says, reaching for her hand and lacing their fingers together.
It’s funny to think that years ago, his hand was eclipsed by hers, but he holds on just as he’d done as a child, knowing without question that so long as his mother was beside him, there wasn’t a challenge he couldn’t face.
He brushes his thumb along the back of her hand as she gives him a reassuring squeeze.
“There is one more thing you could do,” he says as he looks down at their joined hands for a moment.
“Anything, my sweet boy. Just name it.”
“Will you pray with me?”
Carlos resumes his post at TK’s bedside once again. He felt restored thanks to his mother inside of the chapel. But here alone in TK’s room, he can feel that confidence waning bit by bit.
He thinks of the last two times he found himself at TK’s hospital bedside. That first trip, their relationship was so undefined but it brought his feelings into stunningly clear view. He’d been able to brush his fingers through TK’s hair, to offer comfort in the only ways he could at the time.
Their second trip had been scary, but at least he knew TK was safe. He was awake, alert, and making jokes. At least then, Carlos had a prominent role in TK’s life and knew that he was truly wanted in that room with TK.
Now he’s not so sure, but he stays anyway. He watches the artificial rise and fall of TK’s chest, just grateful for the fact that his heart is still beating. He sits quietly, unable to take his eyes off TK as if his ex will fade right out of existence if he isn’t careful.
Since TK stepped foot into Austin, he has stitched himself to the very fabric of Carlos’ life. His mind plays back the most vivid memories of their year together, from small moments like cuddling on the couch together to big moments like celebrating birthdays. Despite these last few months apart, TK is still very much a part of him.
Carlos sighs softly as he keeps up his watch. The gentle beeps from the machines are little more than white noise. The room is barren, devoid of warmth and welcomed sounds. He feels compelled to fill it with his tangled thoughts.
“There’s so much I want to say, but I don’t even know where to begin,” he starts out.
His eyes trail over TK’s unnaturally still body. His jaw clenches. This isn’t right.
“The brave thing would be to tell you that I still love you. That I’ve never stopped.”
Carlos scoffs, shakes his head at himself, picks absentmindedly at the arm of this chair he’s far too acquainted with as he thinks.
“I don’t know. Maybe it actually makes me a coward to say it now that you can’t hear me…to finally say it when you can’t even say anything back one way or another. I hope you’ve been able to feel it anyway though,…these last few months, despite everything.”
This is far too much like being within the chapel, speaking aloud to someone who may not even be listening. But it’s enough just to get the words out, to unburden himself from the crushing weight of all that’s been left unspoken since he and TK called it quits.
“I’m here, TK. You aren’t alone. I need you to know that. I’m here, and I love you. That might not be enough but it’s all I have to give to you right now.”
Carlos bites back on his lower lip, a fresh batch of tears prickling his eyes. TK doesn’t move, offer any sign that he can hear a word Carlos is speaking, or acknowledge Carlos’ presence.
TK’s always been like a firework against the night sky of his life, burning so bright and bursting with color all at once but gone in the next breath.
He thinks of how quickly he and TK had gotten together, how he instinctively just seemed to know that this man had the power to steal his heart. But he’d given it over willingly and would do it a thousand times over. For all the highs and lows, Carlos wouldn’t undo that, letting TK in in the first place.
Somehow, they managed to take a wrong turn and wound up on a dead-end road, but the journey had been worth it since day one. A part of him quietly held on to the hope that they’d find their way back.
But life, he’s been learning, is a sadistic creature that takes just as much as it gives.
He has no clue if his words are getting through. He wonders if touch would work, but that’s not an option. TK’s left hand lies right within view, but it’s an ocean away. Nothing has changed between them. His touch may not be a welcome thing.
“If this is goodbye, I can’t even hold your hand,” he says in defeat.
His palm itches with the phantom feel of TK’s skin. Going from spending over a year memorizing every inch of him to now being left with a ghost of it is dizzying. Memories are no match for the real thing, but it’s the only thing Carlos has to latch on to now.
What is he meant to do with hands that can no longer hold on to the very thing that’s kept him afloat? Hands that still feel the weight of a lover that’s been lost to him for months? That may be lost to him forever now?
Carlos settles on comforting himself, his hands clasping and settling on his lap.
He swallows hard past the lump in his throat, nausea in the pit of his stomach as he looks at TK’s unmoving frame. He wonders what he might be feeling or dreaming.
He hopes, at the very least, he’s not in any pain.
“I want you to know that it’s okay,” he starts out, his voice thick with emotion. “If you’re hurting too much to hold on, TK, do w-what you need to. I’m so sorry for all of this. You shouldn’t be here right now. Not again.”
Carlos wipes at his eyes, clearing his vision long enough to get a good look at the man he dreamed of spending forever with.
“You taught me how to open my heart too, you know. I don’t think I’ve ever said it in as many words, but you changed my life. You’ve given me more than I ever thought I could have. And I know we aren’t…that you might not even still…,” Carlos’ jaw clenches, his face crumpling.
This doesn’t sit well yet, it needs to be said.
“You’ll always be my best friend and the love of my life. Thank you for that, TK...for letting me in, even for a little while. Your heart is my home.”
Carlos lets out a sharp breath. None of this even feels real, yet he knows he’s living out his worst nightmare in real time. TK has been through hell and back and has always come out the other side.
Would it be asking too much of him or the universe to pull off one last trick? It feels wrong to think it, yet the words still fall from his lips.
“If there’s still some fight left in you, please come back to me. To all of us,” he quickly amends.
It’s a selfish request, he knows, but if he’ll take any odds. TK’s pulled it off before. Despite how dire this situation is now, his faith will always be in TK’s strength.
Carlos isn’t sure how much time has passed, but he doesn’t budge from his seat. He’ll wait until the end of time he has to.
He looks on as TK remains still. The world as Carlos knows it is confined here in these four walls. Whatever exists beyond them doesn’t register.
Carlos leans closer, aching to brush TK’s hair back soothingly as he’d done the first time he sat next to an unconscious TK in a hospital bed. Their relationship wasn’t defined then, but lines have been drawn now, and he won’t dare to cross them, no matter how much his heart calls out for TK’s.
He gets as close as he can to TK without actually touching him. He studies his face, every line he’s long since committed to memory.
There’s a faint movement behind TK’s closed eyes, so faint he might have missed it if he weren’t so close. Carlos sits up at once, not even daring to breathe as he watches. TK’s fingers flex slightly, and Carlos is on his feet in an instant, heart pounding.
“TK?” he whispers, his shaking hand finding his cross.
TK’s body twitches, his eyes fluttering open, and Carlos lets out a sharp sob, his hand flying to his mouth at the sight of those blue-green eyes.
TK blinks, his gaze casting about wildly, and Carlos can see how scared he is, can only imagine how jarring this must be. TK’s hand moves to the ventilator, his eyes growing wide as he makes a muffled sound.
“It’s okay, TK,” Carlos urges. “I’m right here.”
At the sound of his voice, TK settles down and looks at him with tear-stained eyes. It breaks Carlos’ heart and mends it all the same.
TK is awake, here and present, and it’s more than enough. It’s everything.
TK blinks and a tear falls. Carlos steps closer to the bed, tears streaking his own face.
“I’m here,” he repeats.
Logically Carlos knows he should be racing for the nearest nurse or doctor, but he can’t move, terrified that if he steps out of this moment, this whole thing will turn out to be fiction.
TK’s breathing is hard but his face relaxes as he looks back at him. It steadies Carlos, too, as he holds his gaze. He only looks away at the movement of TK’s left hand as he turns it, palm up towards him.
An invitation Carlos is quick to accept.