Chapter Text
It's warm outside, and night has fallen over Los Angeles. Rain follows soon after.
High up in the sky, the air is cold, and particles of rain and ice collide inside the storm until they negatively charge the lower reaches of the clouds. The negative charges seek positive charges, and they find them down on the ground, climbing the metal ladder of a ladder-truck.
The negative charges rejoice, and they race the rain to the ground.
Far down below, firefighter Buckley climbs along the positive charges the metal ladder of his ladder-truck. He grips the metal nozzle of his firehose, and starts fighting the raging fire opposite him.
Static electricity gathers around him, an imbalance of electric charges that will remain until it can escape through an electrical current. It knows what's coming.
Buck looks up into the night as the hair everywhere on his body stands right up. Goosebumps make his skin tingle. Static runs all over him, like hundreds of crawling ants. The smells of smoke and burning fire shift and deepen as they surround him entirely; they become more pronounced, more acrid. The taste of copper settles on his tongue and behind his teeth, rusty and heavy. The air vibrates, and hums, and crackles, like an old TV stuck on white noise.
What the hell is that, he wonders.
Time slows, and slows, until he can see every individual drop of rain as they fall from the infinite sky.
A sudden flash of bright light takes him by surprise. A heavy blow follows and wrenches a startled cry out of him.
It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, he can't move.
A ladder-truck fell right on top of him, he thinks with terror. It blinded him with its headlights, and it fell on top of him and it crushed him into the pavement.
The wind is punched right out of him.
He feels himself pitch forward. His stomach climbs up and up until it's in his throat as gravity turns upside down.
He can't see anything and his lungs won't work and his heart has stopped, and he falls, he falls.
-
He hits the ground with a jarring impact that knocks all the air out of his body. He can't breathe.
He can't breathe, and he can't think, but he can count. War taught him that. If he can keep count, it means he's conscious. If he's conscious, he's not dead.
Eddie lies on his back on the wet pavement and when he realizes he started counting, he's already on three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
Muscle memory kicks in and pushes him up – seven – first on his side, then on his hands – eight – and on his knees.
Nine.
He's wet. Not too far, on the ground, he sees his helmet. Instinct tells him helmet goes on the head, you get headshot you're dead, and his hand shoots out to grab it before he can comprehend the situation or get his breath back. Blood rushes through his ears, louder than the rain that beats down on him. Every drop of rain alights pins and needles under his aching skin. Instinct tells him get up, get up, get up, get up, get up.
Eighteen,
He gets up–
Nineteen,
–and his diaphragm finally unclenches. Air rushes back in, and the relief leaves him lightheaded. There's a weight, thought, that settles low in his guts and anchors him.
He keeps counting.
Twenty one,
He smells ozone, overpowering in the air.
Twenty two,
He breathes in short gasps, unsteady on his feet. Water slides through his hair, down his neck, slips under his collar, drenches his back.
His back hurts. His fingers tingle. His entire body thrums with shock as he puts his helmet back on. His entire back, his shoulders, pull painfully in the effort.
Twenty seven,
twenty eight,
twenty nine,
He keeps counting, even as his head clears.
He keeps counting, numbers adding up in the back of his mind. Like they're a safety net he can land back on if he falls again.
Like they're on a timer, and there's a bomb waiting to rip everything apart.
Thirty,
It's dread, he recognizes, the weight inside his guts.
Thirty one,
He's not at war. He's a firefighter now, and he's on the scene of a fire. MacArthur Park Apartment building. Third alarm. All those facts come back to him without him being conscious of it .
His back protests, but his legs carry him back to his post.
Thirty seven,
He's already climbing the side of the ladder-truck two whole seconds before he remembers that his post was ladder duty. He was spotting Buck.
Thirty nine,
And then he spots Buck.
For the second time in only forty seconds, he forgets how to breathe and time stops around him.
Not the timer of his mind, though, loud, pounding, and not the bomb waiting to rip it all apart.
Forty-one.
He doesn't hear himself, but the scream rips his throat apart as it comes out.
Forty-two.
Adrenaline rushes through him. His back protests, but he doesn't feel it anymore; his heart pounds and pounds, harder than the rain around him, and the fear is cold when it squeezes his insides until he's sure they'll implode under the pressure.
Forty eight,
forty nine,
fifty,
He's on the ladder, and he counts, and he climbs, but the metal is wet, and his back protests, and his legs are clumsy, and he has to be careful not to slip and fall. He has to get to Buck.
He counts, and he climbs, and he screams. In between shallow and gasping breaths, he screams Buck's name. His radio comes to life, and he hears mayday mayday mayday and it's dread, it's dread that weighs him down. He pushes forward, against it, against gravity. He needs to be up, up there, Buck needs–
He counts, and it's for an entirely different reason than when he started.
Sixty,
He's barely halfway there. From his vantage point on the ladder, he can't see much of Buck. But he knows he's there, and he's unmoving, and he's hanging, out of reach of anyone wanting to help him.
The safety line that stopped Buck's fall now keeps him preserved in a standstill, suspended in mid-air, and time itself stopped to watch.
Seventy,
Eddie keeps time.
There's a bomb. There's a bomb.
It'll rip everything apart.
Seventy one,
Eddie has to get to him, Eddie can reach him, Eddie can help him.
Before–
Seventy two,
He has no real thoughts. Just fear, and dread, and purpose.
Seventy three,
He has to slow down as he approaches the very top of the ladder. Instinct tells him to keep calm, to not risk himself. Buck's safety is on him.
He can feel the heat of the fire several meters away. His heart pounds.
Eighty four,
He counts.
Eighty five,
He grabs the safety line, screams Buck's name. He leans over the top, and there Buck is. He's right there.
Rain soaks Eddie to the bone. It's despair that drowns him.
He's right there, and Eddie can't reach him. He can't reach him anymore than he could on the ground.
Their only connection is the safety line firmly hooked onto Buck's belt, held tight in Eddie's hand. A single point of contact, keeping Buck from falling three stories down onto unforgiving asphalt.
A red string. It held strong, and Eddie does too.
He pushes all the strength of his adrenaline flooded muscles into his hands, channels the pointed anger fighting to break through the shapeless panic in his pounding heart, and he pulls, he pulls. First with one hand, and his wristbone presses against the inside of his skin, waiting to snap; then with two hands, and it doesn't make a difference. He pulls, but he can't lift him.
An inarticulate cry escapes him, the vocalization of his fear and rage and frustration.
He can't lift him. Buck moves just a few centimeters and Eddie's bones grind and his shoulders burn and burn and burn, and the scars from his old bullet wounds must rip open, tearing his skin and his muscles and his soul, tearing his arms from their sockets. He tries anyway, and he gives everything he has, and it's not enough.
He's not enough.
He's wasting time.
Ninety two,
He's failing.
Heart in his throat, he stops pulling. He reaches out, reaches down, as far as he can, muscles and tendons and fingers stretched as far as they will go. His other hand stays in a white-knuckled fist, doesn't let go of the line.
Eddie can't reach him. Buck is so close, and he's so far.
He's so close.
"Can you hear me?" he screams, begs, and his voice is wrecked, and his throat must bleed, and his heart must bleed. Talk to me! his soul begs, but Buck doesn't answer, doesn't look up, doesn't move.
"Buck!" He screams, and it's the vocalization of his love.
One hundred.
Common sense returns. He knows what he has to do. It goes against his gut instinct to reach, to pull, to hold, to never let go.
He bellows with the full capacity of his lungs, praying to be heard over the pouring rain: "We need more slack!"
The line goes slack, and he could cry out with relief. He does cry out, but it's not relief. It's fear and rage and frustration and love.
He guides the line over the edge, smoothly, with reticence, as fast as he can, not fast enough.
Buck's body descends farther and farther away from him. His face is bathed in shadows, the torch on his right temple shooting a beam of light straight up into the night, blinding Eddie.
He can't tell if Buck is breathing.
One hundred and twenty.
He lowers him down toward the waiting hands below, and he's breathing so fast he's gasping. His lungs are heaving double time, like they're trying to breathe for two.
He can't tell if Buck is breathing.
He feels like he's underwater. Air is wet and suffocating and he's soaked, to the bone. Sounds are far away and distorted. Time doesn't make sense; slow but fast, it jumps all over the place, like it doesn't care about chronology of events, back and forth, and Eddie is caught in its tumble, spinned around and around.
In his mind, he still sees himself trying to reach for Buck and call his name, even as he lowers him down. He's climbing the ladder, he's trying to get up, he's trying to find the surface; he's staring at a crashed helicopter, he's staring at a dead Shanon, he's staring at a battered Buck telling him he lost Christopher and his world shatters, even as he lowers Buck down. Not as images, but as feelings and sounds, like his life is a playlist on shuffle.
One hundred and thirty.
He doesn't let it play. He keeps his grasp on time with the seconds he counts in his head, as he carefully places them one after the other in a line like dominoes, determined not to send them all tumbling into one another.
One hundred and thirty one.
The rain falls, the fire burns, his heart pounds; and he counts, and he lowers Buck down, centimeters by agonizing centimeters.
One hundred and thirty two.
Buck doesn't move at all. Gravity pulls at his limbs and meets no resistance. He's dead weight on the other end of the line Eddie grips so hard his fingers are numb.
One hundred and forty.
He's dead weight.
One hundred and forty one.
He's dead.
One hundred and forty two.
He's not, Eddie denies, and shuts that thought process down. He doesn't need to think, or assume. He just needs to get Buck down, where help is waiting.
He was struck by lightning, his rational mind whispers, and the words echoe around Eddie's mind like an earth shattering revelation.
There's a bomb.
One hundred and sixty.
It takes forever, it seems,–
He lowers Buck down until Bobby's got his arms around him; until, gradually, the line loses tension on Buck's end as Bobby takes the weight off him.
–it's over in an instant.
One hundred and sixty two.
Bobby will keep him safe, he thinks, and it's a childish thought. He shuts it down.
Down on the ground, far out of his reach, a flurry of agitation surrounds Buck and Bobby as a gurney is brought over. They all put their hands on Buck, where Eddie's can only grip his line–
One hundred and seventy.
–until the line goes slack, as Buck's back meets the solid surface of the gurney, and it's like Eddie's strings have been cut off. He almost falls over, like Buck did. He keeps a death grip with one hand on the red rope like it's his lifeline; his other hand grabs the railing. He finds his center of gravity, keeps counting–
One hundred and seventy two.
–and shifts his weight backward. Down, down, he wants down. He wants to be down by Buck's side.
The distance between them seems infinite, as he looks between the rungs of the ladder and sees Buck surrounded by their team, like vultures surround a carcass. The thought is unkind and upsetting, and he shuts it down.
He feels removed and isolated. A spectator.
One hundred and eighty.
It's not really climbing down, what he does, closer to a controlled fall as he lets his hand slide along the railing, aided by the rain's slippery footprints. It's reckless, what he's doing. He's not secured with his own line.
One hundred and ninety.
He hasn't let go of the red line, Buck's line, so he feels it when it goes completely, entirely slack. It was unhooked from Buck's belt, his rational mind whispers. He's been cut off, his panic screams at him. He's been cut off from Buck, and it feels so final. His lifeline to Buck was severed with the unpitying snap of unforgiving scissors, and Eddie was sent adrift. But dread keeps him tethered to the world like a rock inside his flesh, heavy and hard and cold in his guts, in his throat. He doesn't try to swallow past it.
One hundred and ninety one.
Even as he slides down, he keeps stealing glances through the rain at the scene unfolding below, and they flash like snapshots seared into his retina:
Buck lies dead to the world on his gurney, oblivious to the many hands touching and pulling and grabbing him.
One hundred and ninety two.
Chimney cuts Buck's shirts down the middle, baring a vulnerable chest to the storm's violence.
One hundred and ninety three.
Hen's hands sneak onto Buck's exposed throat.
Eddie lets go of the ladder as he lands onto the truck. He has to make his fingers unclench from the safety line; he ignores the irrational loss he feels at that.
One hundred and ninety four.
Bobby stumbles, like his strings have been cut like Eddie's. Chim and Hen and everyone else stand frozen, Buck's body lies frozen.
Eddie can't jump off the truck fast enough. Talk to me, he wants to scream at them, tell me what's happening.
One hundred and ninety five.
The red line hangs, just above Buck's body, so close, almost touching him.
Eddie's heart pounds and pounds. Talk to me, he wants to scream at Buck, don't leave me, stay with me, talk to me.
One hundred and ninety six.
Eddie's feet finally touch the ground, just as Chimney's lift off it as he climbs on the gurney. Chim kneels over Buck's lifeless form, leans forward and straighten his arms, and starts compressions.
One hundred and
ninety seven.
Even as it feels like the solid ground he has just found disappears from under his feet, Eddie starts running, and he keeps counting.
He keeps counting, but he knows one hundred and ninety seven is significant. He keeps it stored, where he won't forget it, tucked behind his ribs; where the rough edges of the number dig into his soft tissue, cold and sharp and painful, right against his heart.
There's no bomb. No explosion. The world keeps going.
(He's dead weight. He's
dead.)
His heart breaks under the pressure. Above him, thunder cracks.
-
One hundred and ninety seven seconds before Chim starts compressions,
Forty-two seconds before Eddie screams,
Two seconds before Eddie falls,
Two seconds before Buck falls,
Lightning strikes, and in unison, thunder booms, loud as an explosion.
It was right on top of them, Hen thinks as she jumps out of her skin.
She looks up.
It hit the ladder, she thinks. Buck was on the ladder.
The smell of ozone is strong in the air.
She takes a step, leaves her skin and her bones and her whole body behind, leaves the safety of her ambulance; two steps, three steps. The storm descends on her. Through the barrage of rain she looks up, along the ladder, up, and there he is.
The safety line stopped his fall.
He sways under the rain, like a spider at the end of her thread. She sees the seized up arms and legs, slowly unclenching, and then his body is limp and heavy, limbs hanging, head thrown back.
Her eyes are seeing, but they don't relay the information. The receptors to her brain have been cut clean through, left behind with her skin and her bones and her whole body. It's all white noise.
She's too far, he's too high. She can't check his airway or his breathing. She can't see his face. She can't check his pulse.
She's still taking steps, even though she can't feel her legs. Her cervicals hurt from bending her neck for so long. The rain falls onto her visor, onto her glasses; it tries to get into her eyes, to obstruct her vision and prevent her from assessing her patient.
He's swaying, like the spider at the end of her thread on Hen's porch two days ago, battered by the wind, desperate to try and get back to the safety of her web, out of the elements. The spider never made it, a strong gust of wind slapping her out of thin air to God knows where.
The spider was probably fine. They're always fine. They're resilient.
Buck doesn't seem desperate to try and climb back up. There's no deliberate movement to his limbs. No confused attempt to lift his hands to grab the line, or raise his head or straighten up.
He just hangs, and sways.
A gut wrenching voice screams out Buck's name, and it's louder than the thunder before. Eddie's voice.
Buck just hangs, and sways.
Her body and bones and skin snap right back into her. Every nerve ending in her body sparks. Adrenaline spurs her on, and she retraces her steps.
"Clear the area," she shouts, straining to make her voice louder than the rain, "I'm bringing her back!" The ambulance, she means. They'll need it. She needs it.
She looks at her watch as she runs. She mentally adds thirty seconds to her count, and then another ten for good measure.
Time is against them. She knows it in her guts. A metaphorical but inescapable timer was set when that lightning struck, and the clock is ticking. Dread mounts as the seconds pile up.
Cries of "Move back!" echo around her. The fire still burns, and the smoke and the rain fill the air with thick and acrid smells.
"Mayday, mayday, mayday–" she hears Bobby's voice over the radio as she reaches her ambulance and closes the backdoors. "–this is Captain Nash, 118, we have a–" her feet carry her around to the front. "–firefighter down–"
The rest is drowned out as her mind runs a mile a minute through every possible sequelae of a lightning strike. Loss of consciousness. Skin burns. Blindness. Ruptured eardrums. Blunt force trauma. Respiratory arrest. Cardiac arrest. Neurological damage.
She grasps the driver's door handle with both hands, glances at her watch.
One minute.
She opens the door and slides behind the wheel. The familiar seat brings her no comfort. She shuts the door, and the world and the smells and the shouts fall into the background. Her mind races.
She hopes for loss of consciousness, but dreads cardiac arrest. She turns the key, starts the engine, and steels her nerves. Electrical shock victims are the easiest to resuscitate, if the only problem is a disruption of electrical signals. If resuscitation efforts are started in time. If the body isn't fried and cooked and broken from the force of the current.
Ninety percent of lightning strike victims survive.
She puts her ambulance in reverse, lets off the break. Her heart beats fast and hard, but she presses a steady foot against the pedal.
She does not want to think about neurological damage. The list is infinite. Memory loss, personality change, muscle weakness, chronic fatigue, chronic pain, decrease in cognitive ability, lesions to the central nervous system, seizures, coma.
She doesn't know the percentage of people who survive a lightning strike, only to be faced with long-term/permanent and debilitating injuries.
Buck would know, certainly. He's had a fascination for natural disasters and their statistics ever since he got struck head on by a tsunami.
The Earth must have it in for him. She can't fathom why.
She's looking into the rearview mirror as Bobby guides her. His left arm is extended toward her and her ambulance, making motions to beacon her; his right arm stretches up, aimed at the sky, ready to catch. She doesn't let her eyes follow that direction. She stares straight at that left hand, watches it rotate on the wrist, palm now up and vertical. He makes jerking motions in the universal gesture that means stop, and despite the rain, the thunder, and the blood rushing in her ears, she hears him scream just that: "Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop!"
She stops.
Two minutes.
She looks up from her watch and spots Chim as he jumps down from the truck and rushes past her in a dead sprint. She puts her ambulance in park, leaves the keys in and the engine running, and follows suit.
The smells of storm and smoke return full force as she steps out. They clog her nose and burn her throat and sting her eyes. Every raindrop beats down on her, hot and heavy. Thunder rolls far above her, threatening and menacing and vengeful, not content with the damage already inflicted. Firefighters are running around, shouting into their radio and to one another, many of them still trying to contain the fire as it rages on and on, hot and oblivious to their sudden distress. The crowd gapes and stares.
It's all so relentless, and just like Bobby a second ago she wants to scream at it to stop stop stop stop.
Some of the firemen have abandoned the fire and the evacuation and are running to where Bobby stands, and Hen follows them.
She very consciously does not look up to where Bobby's hands have now grabbed one boot, then another. One of his hands reaches up and very carefully plants itself right above the reflective letters that spell the familiar name. She doesn't look up.
Instead, she grabs the gurney as it is handed down to her, and she doesn't look, but she hears. She heard her captain's "Come here, kid, come here," as she passed him, and now she hears him as he says "I got him," twice, and the pain in his voice is intolerable. It fills her with a dread worse than before.
She lets go of the gurney and grabs her bag on muscle memory, and the dread behind her ribs takes so much room it claws its way up her throat and pushes down on her stomach until it's behind her navel. It squashes her heart. It spells in her veins and arteries and in her guts "wrong wrong wrong." It's not her professional instinct. It's the very specific instinct that exists only for Denny. The instinct that screams "Your child is in danger!" before she knows what the danger is. She doesn't understand why she's feeling it now. She loves Buck but she shouldn't be feeling this way, here, now, because Buck is not Denny.
"Bring that gurney over here, let's go!" Bobby demands.
She has her hand back on the rail of the gurney before she knows it. She helps push it forward, to Bobby who is now cradling Buck, and she understands.
She understands that the dread she's feeling is his. It's dripping off him like the rain is and soaking his voice as he shouts, "Come on! Let's go, let's go, let's go!", the words thick with urgency. It's written in the lines on his face, threatening to break through the facade of professionalism; it's in the tension of his arms as they hold something precious to his chest. She understands she's a mother watching a father grieve.
Hen feels her face twist into a grimace, her horror reflected outward.
She finally catches her first glimpse of Buck's face, half shadowed by his helmet. He's pale and drawn and his lips are the color of his skin. He doesn't move. His head hangs low, his neck bent, his throat stretched out. She wants to tell them to support his head, bring it level, don't let it hang like that—
Before she can, Chim is there, both hands reaching to take the weight. He's started yelling orders, taking charge of the situation as he's taking Buck from Bobby, like a macabre passing of the torch.
"Let's get him on," Bobby says. "Let's get him down," and they finally get the gurney under Buck.
His body is lowered the last few inches, until he's laying flat. She leans in close, desperate for any sign of life under the drenched visor.
Bobby calls Buck's name. Once. Twice.
He's unresponsive.
Three minutes.
Hen's hands are already grasping at the clasps under his chin when she glances at her watch, as the men around her open Buck's turnout, unhook him from his safety line, cut his shirts down the middle.
She slides the helmet off, thinking she should put a c-collar on him, make sure his neck is stabilized. The force of the lighting and the subsequent aborted fall could have done damage. But she's not thinking fast enough, her hands moving before her brain has a chance to tell them what to do.
The helmet's off, and she finally sees him. His face is stuck in a frown, muscles pulled taut. What looks like pain carved on every feature.
She knows his muscles contracted in response to the shock of the lightning. He might have not even felt it before he passed out. Still, the grimace haunts her.
It has only just been three minutes. And yet, the thought slithers into her mind: rigor mortis. Buck, she hysterically thinks, looks like a cadaver that's been dead for hours.
Her brain very suddenly kicks into overdrive as it goes from first to fifth gear, and in a role reversal it's her hands that can't follow anymore, too slow, too heavy.
She gasps, carefully setting the helmet down on the ground as if it is precious, all while her brain is screaming at her fingers to drop it, throw it, get to Buck, check his pulse, relay his status, assert he's not dead-
Her hands finally get to Buck's neck, to his throat, they slip under his collar, over the stretched tendons and the damp skin, searching for reassurance and his carotid artery; all while her brain is telling her to bring that hand around, feel the nape of the neck, check for spinal damage-
There's no pulse.
She feels her own pulse in her own fingers, rapid, but his is unmistakably absent. She sneaks her other hand to his chest, over his heart, and feels nothing.
She's calm, suddenly, panic abating enough for her to think clearly, in the moment and not two steps ahead. She can't waste another second.
She very deliberately does not think about Karen.
Chim is right across from her, thousands of falling raindrops and buck's dead body between them.
"No pulse," she tells him.
He's agitated, and doesn't look at her as he yells: "Get that lifepak ready!"
No. He has to understand. "It doesn't make sense to shock him," she shouts over the pouring rain, her hands stuck to Buck's skin, "he's in full cardiac arrest!"
She needs to make him understand. She needs Chimney to keep his wits about him. She can't be one hundred percent sure that Buck is asystole and unshockable without an electrocardiogram. But they can't risk it. Not when Buck already took several million volts. Not when they're under the rain. Buck is drenched. They should have gotten him inside the ambulance before anything else. They panicked, they wasted time, and Chim still isn't thinking straight.
She can't do this by herself. She needs her partner.
She doesn't need to say more. Chim does a double take, looks across at her and then down at Buck. She sees the moment he does understand. Devastation washes over his face, before determination replaces it as he snaps right back into action.
"I'm starting compressions," he shouts, "get that lifepak off!" and Hen would have sighed in relief if she could feel relief. Not yet. Not now.
Not when Chim is climbing on the gurney to start resuscitation on their dead friend.
(Three minutes,
Eddie's counting,
seventeen seconds)
She slides her left hand off Buck's silent carotid, along his clavicle, keeping a point of contact at his shoulder. Her right hand, she brings under the base of Buck's neck and finally, carefully checks for spinal injury. She doesn't feel anything out of place.
Above her, thunder roars while the weather keeps punishing them, and Chim pleads in a litany of "Come on Buck, come on Buck, come on, Buck!"
She keeps her eyes on Buck.
She's peripherally aware that Bobby and Eddie reappear at the same time, both of them shouting, We gotta move and Talk to me! Chim is still pleading. She hears herself calling to him, the four of them are yelling, the rain is pouring down on them and the fire burns above them and the fear eats them alive, but Bobby's right and they need to move.
Eddie and Bobby disappear again.
Chim reluctantly stops the compressions.
He puts his feet back on the ground as he orders: "Get him in!" before he grabs one side of the gurney. The men lift and fold the wheels and Hen lets them, her bag clutched in one hand, anxious to get back to Buck and save him.
They finally, finally push Buck inside the ambulance. Chim immediately climbs in after him to resume compressions as fast as he possibly can. She follows them in. The doors are slammed shut behind her. It's just the three of them inside.
The sudden absence of rain after so long under its assault is destabilising. She's dripping wet all over her floor. There are puddles under her, under Chim, under the gurney. The storm - that was so loud a second ago she could barely hear her own thoughts - dials back to white noise as the rain hits the roof in a continuous pitter patter.
She pays it no mind.
She's already rummaging through her bag for what she will need (saline, epinephrine). She needs to hook Buck up to the electrocardiogram. She needs to ventilate him.
She looks up and there is Buck, laid in the back of her ambulance for the first time in a long time, Chimney performing CPR on top of him.
The scene brings a certain clarity with it, like she'd been watching everything through a grainy black and white filter until the world was switched to technicolor before her eyes. The grays of the interior of her ambulance and the grays of Buck's skin are vibrant. She can taste the smell of their wet turncoats deep against her palate. She can hear the rustling of Chim's sleeves against his ramrod straight arms; she can hear the brush of Buck's wet hair and wet clothes against the wet gurney with each minute motion of his head and upper body; she can hear the sound of Buck's ribs and breast bone rhythmically creaking under Chimney's hands.
She pays it no mind.
She very deliberately does not think about Karen, lying on a gurney, heart stalling, sirens screaming above their heads.
She hears the sounds of the front doors slamming shut. One, then the other. She hears the siren start her wail and feels the floor of the ambulance vibrate under her feet, and just like that they leave the scene and the fire behind. Not the rain, and not the fear. Those follow. The path was cleared for them, and they quickly gain speed.
She turns on the ECG, connects the lifepak, takes the electrodes and a multi-fiber towel. She swipes the towel once over Buck's chest, to get rid of the accumulated water. Red lines have appeared on his skin, snaking over one shoulder and up his neck, out of sight under his sleeves, down his chest, under Chimney's hands. Lichtenberg figures. Inflammatory response to the current. Damage to the small subcutaneous capillaries.
She carefully applies the electrodes, mindful not to impede Chim's movements. She looks at the screen and the flat line tells her what she feared: Buck is in cardiac asystole. Full arrest.
A renewed spike of adrenaline floods her system. Adrenaline is exactly what Buck needs, she thinks. Epinephrine.
She forces herself to remain calm and composed. It's less hard in the familiarity of her ambulance.
"Confirmed asystole." Chim's voice is loud as he speaks into the open radio.
Bobby's answer is succinct, his voice thin and tense; he'll relay the information to the hospital.
Hen takes Buck's right hand and slides his wet glove off. The sustained contraction provoked by his muscles seizing up against the massive current is slowly letting up, his hand still tense but pliable in hers. Cyanosis has crept in, his fingernails a bluish tint. There's a small burn in the center of his palm, the skin around raised and inflamed, red lines traveling up the inside of his wrist into his sleeve. Entry point, she thinks.
She puts the pulse oximeter on his index finger. Unsurprisingly, his peripheral perfusion is poor. She raises her eyes to the readings on the ECG: reduced blood oxygen levels.
She brings her eyes back down to their linked hands, noticing on the way the small charred hole in his pants, in the middle of his leg, just over the left knee. There's no matching hole over the right. Exit point, she assumes. It went through his entire body.
She turns his hand so the palm faces down. She takes the catheter in her other hand, dabs the back of his with an alcohol wipe, and carefully inserts the needle until it's secure in his vein. She connects the IV bag, makes sure it's tucked securely to the gurney, against Buck's hip, the line vertical.
Now, epinephrine. 1mg. Plus 250mL of normal saline.
She lets go of his hand with a squeeze to his fingers. To comfort herself, she knows. He can't feel it.
"Pushing epinephrine," she informs both Chim and her radio as she pushes the stimulant into the IV bag. Her voice resonates, now that the rain is so far removed from their little bubble.
Chim nods, mouth set in a thin line. He's not pleading with Buck anymore, but the tension radiates off him in waves. Rainwater and sweat shine on his forehead and drop off the tip of his nose. His rhythm on Buck's chest doesn't falter.
Hen takes hold of her penlight, and gently lifts Buck's eyelids, one after the other. She shines her light into them, but his pupils remain fixed and dilated.
She says so out loud. Chim's rhythm doesn't falter, but his breathing does, hitching on the inhale.
"Hold for pulse check," Hen says, and her voice hitches, too. Her fingers find Buck's carotid again.
She trusts that the lifepak is programmed to detect any change of rhythm, that the electrocardiogram is equipped with filters to detect the artificial electrical inputs caused by their cardiopulmonary resuscitation efforts, but she's always had a hands-on approach. She trusts her touch and her guts just as much. Sometimes more.
They can't afford to miss any sign that Buck is fighting his way back.
Chim stops, lets his hands hover for less than a second as they both watch the screen, waiting to see if the epinephrine is doing its work. She'll give it ten seconds. Not one more.
With her free hand, Hen grabs a towel, her eyes never leaving the monitor.
one
Chimney drags his own eyes from the screen and pushes the lapels of Buck's turncoat open as far as they will go.
two
Hen doesn't need to look again to know red lines mar the expense of chest that's uncovered, over the belly, down below the waistband of his pants.
"It went through his hand," Hen says, even as she counts–
three
–still staring at the monitor.
Chim takes the towel from her, and very quickly but thoroughly wipe Buck's chest down. They need him dry.
four
"Hands," Chim points out with a nod toward Buck's left clavicle, where the Lichtenberg figures seem to extend to his shoulder, down his arm. Even as he dries Buck's torso, he uses his other hand to remove Buck's glove and uncovers a very red and inflamed palm.
five
Chim jerks his head towards the charred hole Hen noticed earlier, over Buck's knee, where the massive heat of lightning punched a hole right through the resistive nomex and thermal layer of his turnout. Right through Buck's flesh.
six
"Went out his left knee, looks like."
Hen has a flash of tending to a mangled, crushed leg, Chimney across from her then too, and wonders with horror whether the current set Buck back years, whether it undid the hard work he put into healing. He'd been fine, the leg had been good.
seven
The right leg seems untouched.
But the current could have come across any major organ on the way down.
Buck's dry enough. Chim grabs both pads from the lifepak and sticks them on either side of the unbeating heart beneath, one high right, the other low left.
eight
If the epinephrine is doing its work, the stimulant will raise Buck's arterial blood pressure and hopefully give them a shockable rhythm. She wants ventricular tachycardia, even fibrillation. She's not picky.
nine
But the line on the monitor stays flat, the lifepak stays silent. Her fingers feel no pulse, and they can't hold off compressions any longer.
ten
ten
Time is stretched out so thin, to the point she fears it will snap back in her face any moment and knock her out. She knows she's moving quickly and acting fast to save Buck's life, and her watch tells her it's been under a minute since the doors closed behind her. But every movement she makes feels like she's been put on pause then fast forwarded to catch up. Her body and her mind feel like she's been trying for hours upon hours, exhaustion already clawing its way from the dark to try and sink its teeth into her anywhere it can. She pays it no mind; she could keep going for hours upon hours more.
ten
She looks at Chim just as he puts his hands one over the other back onto Buck's chest. She watches him grind his teeth and swallow hard as he resumes compressions.
"No response, resuming compressions," he says to the radio.
"Three minutes," she says to him, tries hard to keep her voice level. They can try the epinephrine every three minutes. He nods, and Hen steels her resolve.
Buck's oxygen levels are in the gutter. He hasn't taken a breath in four minutes. She needs to ventilate him, now.
Airways first. She positions herself at the end of the stretcher, behind his head. The frown on his face is lessening, minutely, but he doesn't look relaxed. He looks vacant. He has no color. She puts both palms on his temples and her fingers along each side of his jaw. Through her thin gloves, his skin feels damp with rainwater. Gently, she lifts his jaw, until his head is tilted back and she's sure his airways are clear.
Next, she grabs the bag-valve-mask. She attaches 100% flow of oxygen to the bag, before carefully lowering the mask over Buck's nose and mouth. She makes sure it's sealed to his skin by lifting his jaw a little more with her middle, ring and little fingers, while her thumb and forefinger press down on the mask. She brings her other hand to the bag, starts to steadily squeeze.
She watches Buck's chest rise as she forces the oxygen rich air into his lungs, and she still can't feel any relief. Her insides are wound up, her veins tied into little knots, her throat so tight she thinks she'll need rescue breathing too.
Finally forced to sit back, she observes the features tilted toward her: the scrunched up eyebrows and closed eyelids, the dark lashes gathered in wet clumps, the rainwater pooled into the dip of his inner eyes, the birthmark contrasted against his pallor. She feels the urge to rub her thumbs against his skin, smooth his brow. To comfort herself, she knows.
He's so pliant under her hands; it triggers her protective instincts. A wave of protectiveness swells and surges through her, the crest of it hard as rock as it scrapes her insides raw. She wants him safe, she wants him whole. She's doing all that she can for him, and the wave of emotion crashes through her composure, finishes its course as tears that prick her eyes, sting her nose.
She's doing all that she can, but he's not responding, and she can't do more. She can't will him alive. She tries anyway.
"Come on, Buck." Chim seems to be on the same train of thought, starts pleading with Buck again. He's not shouting anymore, he's whispering, voice broken by the effort of compressions, and it sounds worse in their quiet shelter than it did outside in the storm. "Come on, Buck, please, come on, Buck." Hen can't help but mouth the words with him.
Chim's form is good, his compressions even, not showing any sign of flagging despite the fatigue he must be feeling. She doesn't ask if he wants to switch.
Above their heads, the siren cries, and the rain pounds onto the roof, incessant.
Chim's wide eyes meet hers. She notices the unshed tears, and the shock evident in every line of his face.
It breaks Hen's heart.
She pays it no mind.
They stay like that, Hen and Chim, for the rest of the ride, artificially pumping and breathing life into their little brother.
-
Time stands still.
Chim has been suspended in a single moment since he started doing compressions. On Buck, of all people. It had to have been Buck.
Under his gloved hands, Buck's skin feels cold, despite its redness. He thinks he could feel the heat of it at first. Of superficial burns and burst capillaries. Now, every second he's getting colder. Chim can feel the chill trying to climb up his arms and into his heart. He can usually detach himself from the sensation.
But, it's Buck.
Under his gloved hands, Buck's ribs move with every hard shove. He's very careful, as desperate not to break any of them as he is to get the blood flowing. They don't know what damage he sustained under the force of a literal lightning bolt, and Chim desperately does not want to add to it.
Come on, Buck.
The only soundtrack to the bleak scene is the storm's unabating downpour over their heads mixed with the urgent sound of their siren, and the rhythmic whoosh of Hen forcing air into uncooperative lungs.
He thinks he might be pleading, too, can't really hear himself.
He looks at Hen, and he recognizes himself and his fears and his doubts in her stricken expression, before he literally sees himself in the reflection of her glasses. He looks stricken all right.
He hates this.
It should have been him. The thought circles him like a pestering fly, and he swats at it in his mind's eye, but it keeps coming back.
He shouldn't have let Buck stop him, shouldn't have let him climb that ladder in his place. Should have argued. He'd let him go so easily.
He should have insisted.
What is he gonna tell Maddie? He's her little brother. Chim's got her little brother's life into his hands and he can't let her down.
Come on, Buck.
Little brothers matter so much, and when they're taken away, they leave a gaping wound behind. One that is impossible to stitch together, that keeps carving and carving, deeper and deeper, through every layer of skin like acid, through hard muscle and soft tissue, until it burrows into the marrow of the bone.
Maddie knows that pain. She's had to survive it once. He can't let her go through it again. Maddie has suffered enough. Buck has suffered enough. He wants them both safe. But he can't protect anyone. He could never protect anyone.
All he can do is pump Buck's heart and pray that he's enough, because he can't leave Maddie with yet another devastating blow to have to try and recover from by the skin of her teeth.
It should have been him. The thought is back.
He knows it wouldn't be better for Maddie if it were him instead of Buck on the gurney, he knows. She would suffer all the same. He's the father of her child, and he's now secure enough in their relationship to know her love for him is true and strong. He knows. There's no win scenario here. No winners, only losers.
He should have insisted.
"We got a possible ruptured eardrum," Hen says out of the blue, after they've been silent for ages. Her voice sounds loud. "Right side."
Of course, Chim thinks, but doesn't say anything. Of course Buck would try his hardest to tick every possible lightning injury off the list. How typical.
He can't really see inside Buck's right ear from where he is, but he catches just a glimpse of red as it seeps out of his ear and into his hairline, with the way his head is tilted back.
At least it means that Chim's got his blood pumping adequately enough.
Come on, Buck.
He doesn't want Jee Yun to grow up without her uncle. The thought is unexpected, and startles him.
He doesn't want Buck to die before Jee can remember him. She loves him already. She would feel the loss, but wouldn't keep the memories, and it makes him angry at the unfairness of it all. Buck is amazing with her. He's seen how he is with Christopher, and he wants that for Jee. He wants years and years. He wants Buck and Albert to fight for Jee's affections, over who's the better uncle.
Buck and Albert. They don't make a whole Kevin, but they are Buck and Albert. They wormed themselves into the Kevin sized hole of his heart, and patched it up with exasperating attitudes and goofy antics and a kind of wide-eyed innocence. They're little brother shaped, the both of them, and the hole of his heart will always have jagged edges, but they fill it up to the brim, enough that the pain doesn't gnaw at his bones anymore. He loves having brothers, plural.
Come on, Buck.
His shoulders ache, muscles cramping, his wrists are sore, the cold's creeping up, and the wound in Chim's heart is gaping again. He feels Buck's ribs and sternum give more and more under his assault, feels cartilage crack inside Buck's chest, and the wound in Chim's heart bleeds.
He can't lose another one.
It should have been him.
God, he's spiraling.
He looks at Hen, desperate for comfort; Hen looks at her watch.
Behind her, through the window, Chim can see the back of Eddie's head. Part of his face too, visible through the rearview mirror. He's stoic, traits taut, intently staring through the windshield. The rain is opaque, falling almost faster than the wipers can clear it. He can't see Bobby at all.
Hen looks at him, then and when he looks at her, he sees doubt in her eyes. He sees worry, and stress, sees it escalating to overwhelming levels.
Buck isn't responding. The minutes are adding up, and Buck is not responding.
He looks down before he can see the reflection of his own fears.
He can be stubborn that way.
"He's coming back," he says. From the dead. That's Buck's dead body under his palms.
God, he's dead. Buck's dead.
Saliva floods Chim's mouth and a new wave of adrenaline shoots through him, makes his heart pumps twice as fast. He has to stop himself from doubling down just as fast on Buck's heart—because that won't help, won't make Buck come back faster—has to force himself to stay measured, composed, steady, efficient.
Buck's dead.
No
He has to get him back. He has to get him back!
Come on, Buck.
What is he gonna tell Maddie? No matter what happens now, no matter the outcome, he'll have to tell her her brother died.
He really hopes, with every fiber of his being, that when the time comes, he can add temporarily to that sentence.
God, come on, Buck!
He's not about to give up. Not so soon. Not ever, he thinks. He has to get him back. He has to. Please. Please.
"Let's try again," he says, and he sounds calm, and professional, and so far away to his own ears. It's been three more minutes, time to give epinephrine another shot. They should be close to the hospital, too. Come on. Come on.
Their eyes meet again. Hen looks at him, and she doesn't hide the horror she feels, but she's also determined.
She's not about to give up either.
"Hold for pulse check?" she says, and it's framed like a question, her composure just fraying at the edges, her hands unshaking, steady.
They could really use another pair of hands, but it's just the two of them, plus a dead Buck, so they make do.
Chim nods, stops pumping Buck's stubborn heart.
They stare at the monitor, him and Hen, but once again, the seconds go by to fast, and nothing changes. Chim breathes to steady himself, feels irrationally guilty for it when Buck can't–
he can't breathe because he's dead
—and pushes epinephrine through Buck's IV. "1mg epinephrine on board," he says aloud.
Come on, Buck.
The radio comes to life: "Copy. We're pulling into the hospital," says Bobby's voice.
They stare at the monitor. Nothing. Chim feels like he should scream, or beg, or beat his fists against Buck's chest. Anything to jumpstart that heart. Stubborn. He holds onto sanity by the tip of his fingers, breathes instead, feels that pang of guilt. He puts his fingers to better use as he laces them and resumes compressions.
The ambulance reverses, backs up, comes to a stop.
They've arrived.
The lament of the siren ceases, and its absence is deafening in its silence.
They've arrived, they still don't have a pulse, Buck is dead, Chim is failing him, and Maddie, and the entire 118 and the whole universe.
The longer he fails to get a pulse back, the slimmer the chances are that they will. The minutes are adding up, Buck isn't responding, Chim is failing. His blood runs cold, nerves frantic. Like he's about to freeze over and split apart.
He's not about to give up. Hen neither.
But he's failing.
Come on, Buck.
The engine stops; Chim hadn't realized it'd been part of the soundtrack.
The engine stops, and, somehow, that feels so final. They've arrived, and they've failed. Chim's muscles are screaming; his arms, his back. His heart screams harder.
Both front doors open, close, and the ambulance rocks with the sounds.
They leave the electrodes and the pads attached to the lifepak. It'll keep an eye on Buck for them. The screen is tiny between Buck's knees. There's a flat line on it.
God, he should have insisted.
Hen breathes for Buck and the bag flattens and makes Buck's chest rise like it's another empty ballon. The displaced air roars through the oppressive silence.
They both stand up, smoothly, without disturbing either compressions or rescue breathing, ready to push the gurney out.
The back doors open, and the outside world comes rushing back in a loud cacophony, drowns out the sound of air filling Buck's lungs.
It's raining. Still.
Bobby and Eddie are there, faces grave, bodies tense, features washed in the reds and blues of the ambulance's lights. Chim turns, struggling to keep up with compressions as they start pulling the gurney, sees the moment a new wave of panic hits them both as they are once again confronted with the physical proof of their collective nightmare.
They pull the gurney out, carefully but efficiently, like they've done hundreds of times before. Except it's Buck on the gurney, and the stakes have never been this high.
Chim can't reach Buck's chest anymore. Bobby smoothly takes over rescue breathing when Hen passes him the ambu bag, and Eddie—
"Chim, I'll take over!"—takes over compressions.
Chim can't blame him as he jumps from the ambulance, and his arms and shoulders and back burn and seize in anger as he puts a hand in the middle of Eddie's back, offering support. Hen quickly reclaims rescue breathing, and Bobby leads them into the hospital.
They go through the glass doors, the five of them.
Bobby doesn't waste a second. A team of nurses and doctors is already waiting for them, fully aware of the situation, but he reiterates in rapid fire sentences.
"Thirty year-old male, struck by lightning," he says, and his eyes are wild, but his voice is commanding. "Full cardiac arrest, he was down three minutes before we started compressions."
Three minutes. It took them too long, Chim thinks. It took him too long to start compressions. That's three minutes of complete respiratory and cardiac arrest. Three minutes of interrupted blood flow, to the body, to the brain. Three minutes. Plus three more minutes—four now—of limited blood flow through artificial compressions. Buck's at risk of brain damage, if not brain death. God, Chim hopes he did a good job.
If he could just get a god damned pulse. If the epinephrine could just do its damned job. If Buck's heart could stop being as stubborn as the rest of him.
Come on, Buck!
Chim lets go of Eddie, places two fingers over Buck's carotid.
"Lightning went through his hands and out his knee, right down the midline," Hen is saying even as she keeps pushing air into Buck. Chim knows every inflection of her voice; she's exhausted and terrified. "Could be some damage to major organs."
There is silence under Chim's fingertips—until, from one second to the next, there is a very faint fluttering instead. He gets his other hand onto Buck's neck, half believing he's hallucinating. He's not. It's barely there, and rapid, very, very rapid, definitely well over a hundred beats a minute. On the lifepack, the flat line jumps. Ventricular tachycardia.
"He's in v-tach!" he exclaims.
Eddie stops compressions before he even gets the full sentence out. The lifepak advises the shock, and Eddie, finally, yells out
"Clear!"
They all raise their hands, step back, and watch as the current slams into Buck's body. How ironic, that current would save his life after killing him dead.
Please, let it save his life. They only get one shot and that single shot stretches in a stand still as Buck's body tenses all over again and anticipation swallows Chim's heart whole.
Come on, Buck, come on, Buck, come o—
Buck's body relaxes after the shock, his head falling a fraction of an angle toward Chim who can't get his hand back onto Buck's neck fast enough, and finally, finally, finally, "We got a pulse!" and he can barely believe it.
Buck stays limp, he's still not breathing, but there is a strong pulse beneath Chim's fingers. Adrenaline rushes and floods his system from the top of his hair to his fingertips, and he feels himself vibrate with excitement.
"Okay," Bobby says, and he puts so much relief in that little word. "He's got a history of blood clotting," he informs the hospital staff. Chim keeps his hand on Buck's pulsing carotid until the gurney is literally whisked from under him. "He's not currently on any medication–" Bobby raises his voice as Buck is rushed away from their care, "–but he does have an allergy to Naproxen!"
"Got it," the doctor yells back, "we'll do our best."
Eddie, stoic Eddie, shouts back, "Do more!"
Chimney knows that sometimes, there is nothing more that you can do. But tonight, Eddie's right to shout and demand because it's Buck. If he could find his voice, Chim would shout too because Buck deserves nothing less than two hundred percent effort. A thousand percent. A million.
They can't follow Buck with more than their eyes as he's quickly wheeled into an emergency room.
Just like that, he's gone.
Not gone, not anymore—
(We got a pulse!)
The sudden lack of purpose is staggering. Chim feels jittery, body still on the high of his last adrenaline rush. His brain short-circuits, and he can't think anymore, he can just feel. Terror, elation, guilt, relief, anxiety, hope, fear, shock.
It's all too much, and if he didn't feel anything at all he doubts it would make much difference.
Before he realizes they've all gravitated toward each other, Eddie's arm wraps around him, and he sinks into the comfort.
He has to tell Maddie, Maddie has to know.
He dreads to tell her.
There's still so much that could go wrong. Chim hopes they've saved him, and that the hospital will keep him safe.
For now they stand together, and they wait.