Chapter Text
When Cameron Esposito was finally able to visit her brother at Dell Seton Medical Center, she had not expected to be denied entry to the intensive care unit. She had especially not anticipated Alex already having a visitor, especially when considering her sister, Alma, was still stuck in Houston and scrambling to find a sitter that could watch her son in time to plan a visit of her own.
Furthermore, she could never have predicted his visitor’s identity.
Though she was loath to admit it, her brother didn’t really have friends. Yes, Alex had ‘friends’, or the people he told her were his friends but, in reality, she knew they were all acquaintances. She would never say it to his face, not being one to morbidly joke (at least not under circumstances such as these) but having this post-shooting surgery was the closest to ‘opening up’ Alex had probably ever come.
Despite that, she knows he certainly would’ve told her if he’d met someone romantically, especially with her occasional prying over text messages back and forth with him as she tried, time after time, to squeeze some semblance of a familial connection out of him, and out of herself. He would’ve told her, she’s sure of it. He would’ve.
Wouldn’t he?
Upon first glance, when actually encountering Alex’s mysterious visitor in the first floor cafeteria, Cameron looked them up and down. Even underneath their PPE, they didn’t look like a cop. They were certainly broad-shouldered enough, tall enough, and built well enough but, even with the unmistakable tired gaze, it was nothing like the perpetual look of exhaustion that showed on her brother’s face. Their face was tired in the high-energy way, attentive and alert, void of the same far-away stare she had committed to memory since the last time she’d seen Alex.
Another thing they lacked was a strict posture. At his desk, in the seat of a car, sitting with her at a restaurant, Alex would straighten himself out as if he had a yard stick for a spine. Although he’d never been one to maintain it, she knew her brother held himself to high standards of self-discipline. One might call it self-inflicted. Cameron and Alma Esposito certainly did.
She was working up the resolve to clear her paltry serving of picked-at salad when they strode over and invited themself to sit down in the seat across from her. With an expression that looked far angrier than she had intended, Cameron stared up at them as they removed the filmy paper mask from the bottom half of their face.
“You must be one of his sisters,” they told her, “I saw you upstairs, before you left.”
Cameron drew in a long, deep breath and sighed, pushing away the uneaten salad in front of her. She said nothing—merely placed her hands at her face, rubbing at her eyes, then her temples.
“I’m sorry,” they said, apologizing, “I… I didn’t have any warning that you were coming. If I’d known, I would’ve found another way to keep myself busy for a while so that you could get to see him.”
“And who are you?” Cameron asked, sounding irritable. It hadn’t been intentional, it was just the headache talking. Her brother’s visitor seemed unfazed by the sharp sound of her words. For that, she was at least a little grateful.
“I’m Marlo,” they answer, their expression turning pensive. “I’m a friend of Alex.”
Slowly, Cameron covered her eyes again with the flat palm-sides of her fingers, gone cold from the alcohol-based hand sanitizers and cool hospital air, each of them like tiny cold compresses chilling the heat of frustration behind her eyelids. She relished in her relief from the overhead lights which, even while diffused, still managed to feel abrasive in their brightness.
“Alex doesn’t have friends,” she said.
“We aren’t very close,” Marlo explained, “I came here knowing his network of support was kind of… non-existent.”
“You’re close enough to know who I am, at least,” she said, under her breath. “How do you know my brother?” Cameron asked, much of her defensive tone crumbling away.
They mulled over the question, choosing their words carefully. “He asked me for help on a case.”
“And you helped?” she asked, looking up at Marlo while still shielding her eyes with her hands clasped together like a visor.
“And I helped,” they replied, nodding and echoing her.
Cameron quietly huffed and picked up the paper napkin cuff on her untouched set of flatware and used her fingertips to roll it tightly. It’s a habit of ex-smokers, Marlo knows, one which takes her through the motions as a way to cope.
“I spoke with the head nurse on-duty, and she told me he can only have the one visitor per day,” Marlo, again, apologized. “I’m sorry I ruined things for you, after you’ve already traveled so far to get here.”
“It’s not like you could’ve known. I didn’t exactly call ahead, I just… assumed ,” she said, trailing off. “I booked a hotel for the night, anyway. I’d be sleeping there whether I got to see him or not. At least, this way, I get to sleep first.”
Cameron sighed again and let her arms fold in front of her, flat on the cafeteria table.
“Your name’s Marlo, yeah?”
They looked up at her and nodded. “Marlo Foster,” they said.
“Can you tell me something, Marlo?” Cameron asked, “How is he?”
They’re quiet for a moment, the expression on their face hard for Cameron to discern.
“His surgeon told me he was lucky. Extremely lucky,” they told her, “His left lung was punctured, but he’s breathing on his own with some O2, and he’s on some pretty heavy painkillers. It seems like he’s in good hands. His prognosis is pretty optimistic, all things considered.”
And what they said was true; the bullet lodged into his chest by Marvin Heckler had been inches away from killing him, had it pierced his aorta or a chamber of his heart, factoring in how long he laid prone while he waited for help—help he didn’t even know would be coming—and eventually lost consciousness in the cab of their ambulance.
Marlo doesn’t tell her this, though. They have the sense enough not to make her worry about events that have already passed. What mattered now, all that mattered, was that he was alive.
“Is he awake?” Cameron tentatively asked.
Marlo said, “Those heavy painkillers I mentioned cause sedation. Right now, he’s in and out of it… but he’s been awake, at some points. He’s even tried speaking some.”
Cameron stared blankly and exhaled, discarding the rolled strip of paper on the edge of her salad plate. “Well, I’m sure you have a life to get back to,” she said, “I don’t want to keep you from it, and I don’t think Alex would, either.”
In truth, Marlo had been on the phone an hour prior, cashing in all their paid time off. After the last few days, the past week they’ve had, it felt like a switch had flipped within them, a point of no return.
Consciously, they’d made the choice; Alex was their life, and they his lifeline. If Marlo had ‘a life to get back to’, they would be getting back to it as soon as they were able to see him again.
Still they nodded and said, “Yeah. Something like that.”