Work Text:
It's bedlam in the hospital when you come back from a break. People are running everywhere, shouting across whole rooms, swerving this way and that. You slide into the flow of things like you were born to, navigating the trauma center floor with practiced ease. You've only been a board-certified doctor for a year, but your years as an intern and then a resident have honed your body and mind for the frantic pace of the trauma room.
A frantic, redheaded intern grazes you as she passes, and you reach out, catching her arm.
"Update," you say, sweeping your eyes over the room and the general hysteria.
"Bad trauma coming in, doctor," the intern says, her eyes wide, still new to everything. She swallows hard. Her skin has a shiny, pale look to it that unsettles you just enough so you turn your full attention to what she has to say. "Severe burns," she says, her mouth twisting a bit, "and some kind of facial injury. The paramedics couldn't say everything that was wrong. It's supposed to be really bad."
"Do we have a name?" you ask. If it's as bad as she says, then the patient will probably be D.O.A. or at least close.
She shakes her head, sending a spray of red curls bouncing around her face. "Not yet. Someone working with the FBI, I think. Sorry, doctor. That's all I know." The intern gives a short nod and scurries off in search for her resident.
You're frozen where you stand, mind shuddering to a halt. The first name that runs through your head is Frederick Chilton, your long-time partner who's been occasionally assisting the FBI in first the hunt for Hannibal Lecter and, most recently, the Tooth Fairy. Just yesterday he gave an interview with Will Graham in the hopes of flushing out the newest serial killer.
"I'll be fine," he said this morning, standing at the full-length mirror in your shared bedroom. Pulling on his shirt, he smiles at your reflection in the mirror. "Jack assigned me a police detail and everything."
You shift under the bed covers, watching him with a nameless unease building in your stomach. "What if that's not enough?" you ask. Your voice is strained, though you try not to let him see how worried you really are. He was so happy to help, to "lend his expertise" as he had said. "Can't you call him again? Insist he do more? Maybe set us up in a safe house until they catch this guy."
He pauses, shirt still only halfway done up, gaping around his chest. When he turns, his face is soft, kind in a way that it isn't around the people he works with. He saves this look for you, confident now that you really care about him. Frederick pads back to the bed, perching on the edge and drawing your hands from where you've balled them up in the sheets.
"I know you're scared," he says, pressing his lips to your knuckles. "I am too. But I need you to trust me on this." He takes a deep breath, meets your eyes. "I'm doing something good. If this plan works, Jack and Will can finally catch this guy and put him away for good. Then I won't--" He looks away, takes a deep breath. "Then I won't have to worry so much about you. Or any," he blushes, "children we might have in the future. If I can do something to help put him behind bars, then I need to do it." When he meets your eyes again, there's a plea there that makes your heart jerk in your chest. "Do you understand?"
Despite the tightness in your chest, you nod. "I do," you say, turning your hand in his own to first press them palm to palm, then lacing your fingers together. "Just be extra careful today, okay?"
His smile turns more playful, more teasing, like usual. "Okay. Besides," he says, leaning forward and kissing your cheek, "I promised I'd be home to tape that show for you didn't I?"
You laugh, turning into his kiss. Your lips slot together perfectly, have since the first time you kissed him. It was your first date, and you, overcome by the fun of the night and his hopeful face, had kissed him until you were both breathless and dizzy. Every kiss since that one has been better and better.
A voice from your right pulls you from your thoughts, and you snap to, approaching the doctor who'd called you. You're being ridiculous, worrying when you shouldn't. Checking the clock over the doctor's shoulder, you feel a pulse of relief. At this hour, Frederick should be taping that show for you.
When you finish talking to your fellow doctor, you shoot him a quick text to ask him if he'll wait up for you to get home. Just as you pocket your phone, the trauma bay doors burst open, a team of paramedics and other medical professionals streaming inside.
It's the FBI patient, that much you know instantly. The body stretched out on the gurney is plastered in red and black burns that make your skin tighten just from looking. Without even getting close you already know that this is a lost cause. If the victim isn't already dead, they will be soon, whether from bacterial infection or simply the stress of this kind of injury. As you near the gurney, your stomach lurches. The patient's teeth are bared, white cards made whiter by the darkness of the surrounding tissue. You nearly shut your eyes when you realize why you can see so many teeth. The lips are gone, torn or cut away.
"Good Lord," you say, keeping your voice quiet so the patient won't hear. God knows the poor thing has enough to worry about without hearing a doctor's muttered prayer.
But when you finally reach the head of the gurney and look at the patient's face, you forget about all of that. Your throat closes up like a bear trap even as your hand whips out, bringing the stretcher to a halt. The beating of your heart drowns out the concerned voices of your fellow doctors, and all you can see are the eyes staring up at you.
Eyes that you remember seeing this morning as you lay in bed.
"Frederick," the word slips out in a papery whisper. You swallow, clearing your throat. Speak without looking at anyone else. "It's Frederick. Frederick Chilton."
"Your Frederick?" the doctor on your left asks, shock and horror clear in her voice.
You nod, grip white-knuckled on the gurney railing. "Take him to the trauma room in the Burn Unit. Oxygen chamber, morphine--"
"No." Jack Crawford, whom you only know from a picture you found online when Frederick first told you about him, steps forward. The paramedics withdraw around him, or maybe they leave because of the look that must cross your face.
"Excuse me?" you ask, still clinging to the stretcher.
"We need to talk to him," Crawford says, though he at least has the good sense to look concerned. "He might have important information that could help us with our case."
"Your case," you say. Distantly, you can feel your upper lip curl. "Right. The case he was helping you on. When you said you'd keep him safe, do everything you could. That case?"
He doesn't say anything, rubs the back of his neck.
Louder now, you say, "Oxygen chamber. Morphine. But," you say, seeing Crawford's expression, "don't put him under yet." Heart rioting in your chest, you turn your head toward the doctor beside you. "As little pain as possible."
"Of course, doctor," she says. There will be questions later, about your competency regarding your relationship with Frederick, about whether you should have been sent home immediately. But right now your main concern is seeing that Frederick is taken care of.
Crawford makes to follow you and the gurney, but you put up a hand to stop him. "Are you a doctor?" you ask. "No? Didn't think so. Wait here, and I'll send for you and whatever idiot you've undoubtedly called to come join you."
Without waiting for a response, you turn and hurry after Frederick. The tears are there, hot and sharp behind your eyes, but you can't cry right now. Later. You'll cry later.
You see that Crawford and Graham leave almost as soon as they arrive, giving them only enough time to get what they need and flee with their tails between their legs. You'll deal with them tomorrow. Someone else needs your attention right now.
"Frederick," you say, approaching the oxygen chamber in the middle of the room. You and the doctor accompanying you scrubbed down thoroughly outside before even opening the door, but all you can think about is the look in Frederick's eyes when he sees you. It nearly opens your floodgates right there.
"What have they done to you?" you ask, practically leaning against the glass of the chamber. You don't want to look at him, don't want to see the burns and the pain etched into his face. But this isn't about you. So you make yourself look at his eyes, and that's when you see it: there's no more time. Your first assessment was right when you made it, and it's right now. And if you love him the way you say you do, then you know what has to be done.
"Frederick," you say, "I'm so sorry. But I need to talk to you about your condition. Your burns are so severe and cover so much of your body." You pause, wave off the doctor who says your name. "There is no way you can survive this. The chance of a bacterial infection is high, and if that doesn't kill you, then the sheer stress this injury is putting on your body will do it. I don't want to scare you, baby," you say when you notice how wet his eyes are. "I just want you to know the truth, which is what I know you want too. And the truth is that you will live your last minutes or hours in agony unless we give you enough morphine to put you to sleep. At that point, the pain will stop, and you will die in your sleep." The tears prick the corners of your eyes. "You have the choice here, Frederick. You can choose to stay awake and fight to make it through the night. Or you can let us administer the morphine now."
"Doctor--" The woman behind you touches your shoulder, but you shake her off.
"And, Frederick," you say, voice tight and strained again, "you have another choice after that. If you wish, I can be the one to give you the morphine. The other doctors and I have discussed it. This is the logical course regardless of who gives you the dose. It would be like me giving any other patient morphine, which I do every day. But if you let me do it," you say, steeling yourself, "it can be just you and me. No one else. Until the very end."
The doctor comes to your side.
"This is Doctor Cortez," you say. "She's here to witness your choice and confirm that you made it of your own volition and of your own free will. Frederick," you say, "I know you're in a lot of pain. All you have to do is nod your head 'yes' or shake your head 'no.' And we need the decision now. Frederick, do you want us to administer a dose of morphine that will put you to sleep?"
He looks between you and Doctor Cortez before looking back at you. Slowly, barely at all, he nods.
"Okay," you say, taking another deep breath. "Frederick, do you want me to be the one to administer the morphine?"
The seconds between the question and the answer stretch out in endless slow motion. Finally, he nods.
Your next breath is shaky and shakes a few tears loose. "Alright then," you say.
A few minutes later, the two of you are alone, and you have the syringe in hand, poised by the IV snaking out from his oxygen chamber into the IV stand nearby. The tears are coming easier now, but you blink hard, clearing your vision.
You look back down at him, at the eyes you've loved for so long and with so much of yourself. It isn't fair. None of this is. But this, you watching him fall asleep for the last time, this is fair.
"I'm so sorry," you say.
He opens his mouth, tries to speak.
"Frederick, don't--"
"Wait," he says, and the rest of the words are disjointed, almost too hard to make out.
But you know what they are. "I love you too." The pain is almost too much. Almost.
"Here we go," you say, bracing your thumb against the plunger. "You're nearly there, Frederick. In a few seconds you can go to sleep, and the pain will stop." You nod at words he can't say. "It's okay. You can go now, sweetheart."
The plunger goes down. The morphine joins his bloodstream seamlessly.
You stand there, watching his face as the medicine takes hold. As his eyelids flutter, you place your palm against the glass. He can't live with his pain, but you can. You can live with it for both of you.
Frederick's eyes slip shut.