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We need to find his father.
 
Captain Vega’s words echo in his head, loud and percussive like mallets pounding against his skull from the inside, as Carlos stands two steps into the room and stares unblinking at TK’s motionless form in a hospital bed.
 
They’ve been here before.
 
Carlos’s breath comes in shallow, controlled puffs as he grits his teeth and takes in the white patterned gown and the lagging beeps of a heart rate monitor and the breathing tube they have shoved down TK’s throat. His lips are parted around it, forced open by the apparatus, and Carlos wants to lunge across the room and rip it off of him. TK teases with that mouth, smiles with it so big his eyes crinkle, laughs loudly, whispers delicately, presses kisses so soft they ache to Carlos’s skin. It’s precious, don’t you understand!? he wants to scream at the nurse who brushes in past him to change out an IV bag. It’s one of the most precious parts of him and it’s being violated by sterile plastic and Carlos shakes with how much he hates it.
 
Except that it’s keeping him alive. It’s helping him breathe, because he can’t breathe on his own, and they’ve been here before. Carlos had said he was sick of seeing TK in hospital beds. Typically, TK didn’t listen.
 
“What happened?” he asks.
 
“That woman’s little boy was trapped under the ice,” Nancy says, standing close beside him. “TK went out to get him and went into the water.”
 
“He was drowning?”
 
“No, he got out. But it was cold, and he was soaking wet, and we were reviving the kid.” There’s a regretful tinge to her voice, like she thinks this is her fault. “We got the boy back and then we looked up and dude was gone, wandered off into the snow.”
 
Carlos turns his head to look at her.
 
“In late stages of hypothermia people get disoriented, start thinking they’re hot instead of cold and try to take their clothes off or burrow into the snow to cool down.”
 
“Jesus,” Carlos breathes. He rubs a hand over his mouth. His gaze travels back to TK.
 
We need to find his father, their captain had said. Because TK might not make it, and Captain Strand should get a chance to say goodbye to his child before they pull the plug on him.
 
That’s why he’s here too, Carlos understands. To say goodbye, just in case.
 
The problem is Carlos doesn’t know how to do that. He’s never known how to do that, not for one minute in all the time they’ve known each other. He didn’t know how to do it after TK had a bullet dug out of his chest and a lung inflated. He didn’t know how to do it when TK told him he wasn’t ready for a relationship. He didn’t know how to do it when TK broke up with him four months ago. He’s tried, but every day he’s felt the shadows of TK still lingering, in the loft that should have been theirs, the artwork he’d purchased because it looked like something TK would like, the consideration he’d given to whether he should get a cheap, temporary sofa in case TK ever came back and wanted to be involved in picking out permanent fixtures. Carlos has never possessed any ability to let him go, and the idea that he could figure it out now is laughable and unspeakably cruel.
 
Carlos turns around. He leaves the room, unable to spend one more millisecond listening to the beeping of machines and facing how small and helpless TK looks in that bed. Nancy trails after him and Carlos is expecting her to ask why he left but she doesn’t. He sits in a chair around the corner from TK’s room and she just sits next to him, wordlessly taking his hand.
 
He can’t sit in another hospital room waiting for his heart to return to him. He can’t occupy a chair in that room that should be reserved for family when TK’s father doesn’t even know his son is in trouble. He can’t face the idea that TK might really never come back to him, when Carlos has been holding out hope like a widow at the window for all this time.
 

 
Carlos holds his breath as the woman he recognizes as TK’s doctor approaches them. He’s on a chair outside TK’s room with Nancy and Captain Vega flanked on either side of him, the three of them waiting impatiently for an update that’s been slower than a nurse told them it would be. He still hasn’t been able to sit in TK’s room. He’d tried yesterday, and lasted about two minutes.
 
He didn’t sleep the night before. They’d all been kicked out when visiting hours were over, and Carlos went back to the loft and showered and put on his pajamas and then lay wide awake in his bed for eight full hours before getting up and dressing again and heading back to the hospital. It’s left him in a state of mild nausea and a fuzzy head, and neither of TK’s coworkers sitting next to him look like they had a very good sleep either.
 
“We’ve managed to get his heart back into rhythm,” Dr. Patel says.
 
Cautiously, Nancy says, “Okay. Well, that’s good news, right?”
 
“But his body’s still not compensating.”
 
Carlos frowns. “Compensating for what?”
 
Captain Vega answers instead, and Carlos twists around to look at her.
 
“It means his vital signs haven’t returned to normal. Yet,” she adds, with an air of faux hopefulness and a smile that doesn’t look as stable as she probably wishes it did.
 
The doctor adds, “He’s been through a major trauma. I’m afraid he’s on the verge of multisystem organ failure.”
 
“How do you stop that from happening?” Carlos wants to know.
 
Wincing, the doctor says, “Unfortunately there’s not much we can do other than keep him sedated, at this point. It gives his body a chance to recover without additional stress.”
 
“Does that usually work for someone in his condition?”
 
“It can,” she answers, unconvincingly, and Carlos feels his blood turn to ice in his veins; the kind that took TK away from him.
 
“It can,” he repeats. “But realistically speaking, what are we looking at?”
 
“We’re watching his labs closely but if they continue trending down …”
 
“We could lose him,” Carlos concludes, saying what she seems so hesitant to voice out loud.
 
“I’m sorry I don’t have better news.” A nurse comes up to her with a clipboard, handing it over. Dr. Patel gives him one more pitying smile and then she’s gone.
 
Nancy puts a hand on Carlos’s shoulder, rubbing over his shirt. “Tranquillo, okay?”
 
Captain Vega slides her hand into his. “We’re just gonna keep on praying, okay?”
 
“Yeah.” Suddenly he can feel the chain around his neck, the cross that sits just below the hollow of his throat.
 
Carlos feels their hands in his, thinking he’s not sure if he’s ever physically touched TK’s captain before, until he remembers he hugged her at her husband’s funeral. She has experienced real loss; her partner in life, her spouse, the father of her children was taken away from her decades too young, and yet she’s here squeezing his hand and encouraging him to remain hopeful about his ex-boyfriend currently languishing in a hospital bed.
 
Then, Carlos remembers that to Captain Vega, TK isn’t Carlos’s ex-boyfriend. He’s her colleague, her protégé, a member of her crew. Their work mom, TK has called her on more than one occasion. And Nancy is his work sister, his partner, his closest friend. He isn’t the only one sitting here with a broken heart, and that should make him feel a little better. Supported, convivial, less alone. Instead it makes everything worse.
 
There are so many people who love him, he doesn’t belong to only Carlos. He never did.
 
“And one thing we know about TK,” Nancy adds, “the kid does not know how to stay down.”
 
“She’s right about that,” Captain Vega agrees.
 
Carlos pulls his hands away. He can’t stand the contact anymore, or the sympathy. “I think I need to get some fresh air.
 
“You want someone to come with?” Nancy offers.
 
Quickly, Carlos answers, “No. I think I need to be alone. For a minute. Thanks.”
 
With his jacket in his hands, he heads for the exit. Blood rushes in his ears, loud and overwhelming, and he clenches his jaw until it hurts. People pass him, nurses and patients and other visitors, and Carlos hopes they’re having a better day than he is. He hopes the people in street clothes are here to visit someone who’s getting better, someone who is here to rest and heal rather than slip away. He wonders if they’re thinking the same about him.
 
Carlos tugs his jacket tighter around his shoulders as he steps out into the still-falling snow through the automatic sliding doors. He passes by others, concerned visitors braving the storm to visit their loved ones. The chill seeps quickly through his clothes and into his bones. Carlos has lived his entire life in Austin, he’s never felt cold like this. TK used to tell him about winters in Manhattan, about snow and sleet and the kind of cold that burrows into muscles and tightens skin and leaves a person with chattering teeth and lungs aching from inhaling ice crystals, but Carlos could only ever imagine it until now. It’s worse than TK’d described. But come to really think of it, the cold might not be the reason he’s having trouble gasping for a proper breath.
 
He finds a brick half-wall, a built in planter than in the summer months would be filled with flowers, and he sits on it. It’s all he can do not to collapse onto the snowy ground. Carlos tucks his shaking hands into his own armpits, clenching every muscle in his body as his molars press together in a useless attempt to stop himself from bursting into tears. His eyes burn, his head pounds, his breath comes in uneven bursts through his nose.
 
It can, the doctor had said. Their chosen course of treatment can work, for someone in TK’s condition. She hadn’t meant it. Carlos may not be a medical professional like she is, he may not be the same sort of hero as her and Captain Vega and TK and Nancy, but he’s still a first responder. He still knows that dance. He knows intimately the mask of sympathy to wear and the tone of voice to adopt when the situation calls for kindly offering a grain of false hope to someone in a sand-dune of despair.
 
His shoulders shake. A woman with a teenage daughter in tow crosses in front of him on their way towards the parking lot, and Carlos tucks his chin down against his chest so they won’t see the way his eyes are filled with tears.
 
It’s important to know when a thing is over, he’d said to Marjan, only hours ago before his world was tilted off its axis. Like the well-meaning but misleading doctor, Carlos hadn’t meant it. The mask he’s constructed out of his grief and anger and loneliness and heartbreak disintegrates right off his face and seems to crumble to dust at his feet. He wipes in annoyance and tears on his cheeks. They freeze to his skin almost as soon as they’ve spilled from his stinging eyes.
 
When to move on, he’d said. She saw through him.
 
Once upon a time, Carlos was a master of this deception. He built a home for himself constructed almost entirely in lies, in half-truths and secrets and pieces of himself given only on a need-to-know basis, and he wasn’t happy, but it was good enough. It was enough that his parents still invited him over for dinner, even if he couldn’t share so much of his life with them. It was enough that his coworkers only speculated about his sexuality in private and to his face behaved at least cordially and professionally, even if behind his back they were sneering at him. It was enough that Michelle knew he was gay and accepted him for it, even if she was always too consumed with loss to ever really take an interest in Carlos’s wellbeing after Iris was gone. It was all enough, and then TK came along, and then it wasn’t. And Carlos’s ability to lie to himself so successfully burned up along with everything else he lost in the fire.
 
He never moved on, he’s still stuck right where he was the day TK walked out on him, and if he loses TK forever, Carlos can’t see a way to ever extricate himself from this spot.
 
He untucks his right hand, exposing his bare skin to the frigid air and reaching with trembling fingers into the pocket of his jacket for his cellphone. He’s been avoiding this very action for months, but Carlos hurts in every inch of his body as he sits here in the snow and considers a future in which TK is just a jumble of increasingly bittersweet memories and a gravestone he’ll never work up the courage to visit, he can’t avoid it anymore. He presses his thumb into ‘Mamá 💙’ in his contacts and brings the phone up to his ear, choking on an inhale as his heart races while it rings.
 
“Carlitos,” she answers. “Hola, mi amor, are you keeping warm?”
 
Carlos vibrates. A miserable noise escapes from his throat and he quickly covers his mouth with his free hand, reduced to clawing back desperate sobs the very second he hears her warm, familiar voice in his ear.
 
“Carlos?” Andrea says sharply. “Mjio, what’s wrong? Are you alright?”
 
Carlos gasps and squeezes his eyes shut so tightly he gives himself an instant headache, rocking back and forth just slightly against the flowerbed as he fights to pull himself under control – or at the very least to wrestle back enough control so that he can stop scaring her.
 
“Carlos!”
 
“It’s not me,” he manages to force out, with a cough. “It’s TK.”
 
Andrea inhales. “What happened?”
 
“He was … there was a little boy trapped under the ice.” Carlos’s voice shakes but he pushes through it. “His team was trying to rescue him, and TK fell into the water. I’m at the hospital, he’s … they’re saying he might not wake up.”
 
“I – might not why?” Andrea asks. She sounds so upset, and it only makes Carlos feel even more like he’s about to throw up on the sidewalk underneath his boots.
 
“Hypothermia. They’re trying, but …” He trails off, unable to finish the sentence.
 
“Oh, mijo,” Andrea sighs.
 
“I can’t …” Carlos sniffs and shakes his head. “I just wanted you to know.”
 
“What hospital?”
 
“West Park.”
 
“Stay right where you are, I will be there in 30 minutes.”
 
“No.” Carlos sits up a bit straighter and shakes his head. A few fractions of the anguish fall away. He wipes at the tears on his face and new ones don’t replace them. “It’s dangerous, there are people sliding into ditches all over the roads and the first responders are all slammed.”
 
“Carlos – ”
 
“I mean it,” he insists, kind but firm. “This is bad enough without me having to worry about you stuck in a snowbank somewhere the paramedics can’t get to you. Okay?”
 
She’s quiet for a moment and Carlos thinks she’s going to continue arguing, but she doesn’t. In a heavy, displeased voice, Andrea replies, “Alright. Keep me updated.”
 
“I will.”
 
“Te amo. I’m so sorry this is happening.”
 
“Thanks. I love you, too.” He sniffs again and ends the call before he can catch her response. If he hears her voice for one more second Carlos thinks he might break apart into a million pieces, and he can’t do that right now. He shoves his phone back into his pocket and stands, scrubbing hands over his face one last time to make sure it’s dry and then heading back inside.
 
Nancy is alone when he rounds the corner again. She gives him a small wave with a tight smile, and Carlos looks away. He’s barely keeping it together as it is, the outpouring of empathy from all these kind people is more than he can handle. So he doesn’t have to stand there awkwardly trying not to look at her, he takes a right and steps into TK’s room.
 
Two nurses are tending to him, their hands on his unconscious body, and Carlos catches the tail end of one of them saying, “Now he gets to torture the friends and family for another three days.”
 
“Three days?” the other one scoffs. “I’ve seen one go for three weeks.”
 
“No kidding? In this state?”
 
“Yup. First year out of nursing school.”
 
“Well, either way, at this point, it’s a matter of when, not …”
 
The rest of the sentence falls away from her mouth as they both turn to find Carlos standing in the doorway. His stomach is churning, skin crawling, immediately haunted by the callous nature of their casual conversation.
 
“I … we didn’t mean …” one of the nurses flounders, having the decency to at least look like she’s sorry he overheard them.
 
The other one does not, as she shortly informs him, “Dr. Patel will be by soon with an update. Excuse us.”
 
They leave him alone. Carlos opens his mouth, intending to let them know the doctor gave them an update only 20 minutes ago, but in the end he doesn’t bother. He stares at TK for a minute, but then like before, he can’t stay in this room. It hurts too much. He’s always held onto everything with such a fingertip desperation, always clinging to it like he was terrified it would disintegrate through his grasp at any moment. Maybe he held on too tight to TK, and this is the moment he turns to smoke in Carlos’s hands and melts away on the breeze.
 
He turns on his heel and exits, making his way back to Nancy in the waiting area. She smiles sadly at him again as he takes a seat next to her.
 
“Do you believe in God?” he asks.
 
“Yes,” Nancy replies.
 
Carlos reaches into the neck of his shirt. He pulls the cross out, letting it sit on his thumb for a moment and then resting it against his chest. “This was mine from when I was a kid. I got it for my First Communion, and I wore it every single day until I took it off the week I came out to my parents.”
 
“They didn’t accept you?”
 
“It’s complicated.” Carlos shakes his head. He burns, suddenly, with the need to defend them to someone who they’ve never met, but it’s a longer story than he has the energy to go into, just now. “They love me. And they supported me and … but I just …”
 
Nancy is quiet. She waits patiently for Carlos to collect his thoughts.
 
“I used to love going to church,” he says, after a moment.
 
He’s vacillating between the desire to tell someone something that he’s kept to himself for three months, and the desire to lock every bit of vulnerability away inside him so that no one else can ever see it. He let TK see him. Maybe not as much as he should have, and certainly not as easily as TK would have liked, but he did. He let TK see him cry, see him stumble, see his fragility and his weakness. He let TK hold him, reassure him, love him through his inadequacies. And now he has to live in a world where someone knows him like that, and doesn’t want him anymore. The stain of it itches on his skin.
 
“I loved the music, I loved feeling like I was part of something,” he continues, trying to be brave. “But all the messages you get. People quoting Leviticus, and sin, and evil. When I figured out I wasn’t straight, it felt like that world didn’t love me back anymore. So I stopped going, and I took this necklace off and left it in a drawer in my childhood bedroom. I’d forgotten it was there, actually.”
 
Nancy shifts a little in her chair, leaning just slightly to one side so that her upper arm is touching Carlos’s. It’s a small gesture but Carlos is comforted by it just enough to keep going.
 
“And then a few months ago, after TK left, I was helping my mom clean out some old stuff from my room and I found it.”
 
“Did you start going to church again?” Nancy asks.
 
“A few times,” Carlos nods. “It wasn’t quite the same as before. It’s still hard to feel like God doesn’t hate me, when the loudest voices in the room are saying he does.”
 
“I don’t think God hates anyone. I think he makes us exactly what we’re supposed to be.”
 
Carlos nods, eyes burning with tears he refuses to let fall. “Am I the world’s biggest schmuck?”
 
“What?”
 
Shaking his head, struck in disbelief at how utterly pathetic this entire situation is. “I’m holding vigil for a man who doesn’t even want me in his life. Doesn’t that just scream schmuck?”
 
“Hell to the no,” Nancy replies emphatically. “First of all, TK loves you. And second, where did you pick up schmuck?”
 
“From TK. Must have rubbed off.” Carlos wonders what else rubbed off on him, which other ways he is never going to be the same because once upon a time TK loved him. “Why do you say that? That he loves me?”
 
“Because it’s true.”
 
For a moment, Carlos hesitates. The question on the tip of his tongue is a dangerous one, and one that stands to unravel him completely depending on the answer. Maybe he’s never been particularly good at self-preservation, though, because he turns toward her and asks it anyway. “You’ve been by his side all this time. Does he ever … talk about me?”
 
“Honestly, not much.”
 
Carlos’s stomach sinks. “I didn’t think so.”
 
“But he does bite off my head any time I bring up your name.”
 
Rolling his eyes, Carlos grumbles, “That makes me feel so much better.”
 
“It should, you big dummy.” Nancy shoves his shoulder. “He doesn’t wanna hear it because it’s too painful for him, which means he still has it bad for you. It’s obvious, dude loves you.”
 
Tears burn once again behind Carlos’s eyes, stinging so intensely his entire skull aches, and he fights to keep them from falling. “If he loves me so much … then why did he break my heart?”
 
Nancy considers him. After a moment, she softly says, “I don’t know.”
 
Carlos sniffs. He inhales and it shakes, and he looks away from her, giving himself a moment and a few deep breaths to wrestle the reins of control back over his scattered emotions.
 
“Do you think he’s gonna wake up?” he asks. He doesn’t mean to; it slips out before he can stop it.
 
“Yes,” Nancy says immediately. “He’s the stubbornest little shit I’ve ever met in my life, death has got another thing coming if it thinks it can take TK Strand before he’s ready.”
 
Carlos can’t tell whether she’s being honest, or whether she’s putting on a show for his benefit. Or for her own. Carlos isn’t a stranger to lying to himself almost successfully.
 
“You know, I meant it, when I said I don’t know why he broke your heart. He never told me why you split up. I asked about a thousand times but he wouldn’t say.”
 
Carlos frowns. He isn’t sure what to make of that.
 
“Was it his fault?” Nancy asks. “Is that why he wouldn’t tell me?”
 
“I don’t know whose fault it was,” Carlos admits. “He wouldn’t talk to me. We had a stupid argument and … maybe I could’ve fixed it if he’d just let me, but he didn’t. He left and told me to move out of his dad’s place and to stop calling.”
 
“And did you? Stop calling?”
 
“He asked me to,” Carlos says.
 
“Hm.”
 
Carlos turns his head. “Hm?”

  “Do you think the two of you were meant to find each other?”
 
“I did,” Carlos says, swallowing the pain of that over a lump in his throat. “Now, I’m not so sure.”
 
“So, when he wakes up, this could turn into a pretty good opportunity. He’s in a hospital bed, he can’t run away. So you can sit in there with him and make him talk to you.”
 
“I’m not making him do anything he doesn’t want to do.”
 
“Why the hell not?” Nancy demands. “I love him like a brother but it’s not all about him. If you’ve got shit to say, you’re allowed to say it.”
 
Carlos shrugs and slides down a little further in his chair. “If he doesn’t want me, I’m not … he broke up with me. I’m not gonna beg him to take me back.”
 
“I didn’t say beg him to take you back.”
 
“What, then?”
 
Nancy licks her lips. She slides down too, feet planted on the floor and arms crossed over her stomach. She looks at him and one corner of her mouth curves into an understanding smile. “He’s the stubbornest shit, like I said. Maybe he wanted you to fight for him, and you didn’t.”
 
Carlos opens his mouth, stumbles over his words as he protests, “That isn’t fair.”
 
“Didn’t say it was fair,” Nancy agrees with a shrug. “But sometimes shit isn’t fair. If both of you are too prideful to blink first, nothing’s ever going to get fixed, is it? Maybe someone just has to bite the bullet, and if it ends with both of you getting the man you love back, does it really matter whether it was fair?”
 
Carlos squeezes his molars together. She isn’t wrong, necessarily, but that doesn’t mean he’s enjoying hearing it.
 
“It seems to me,” Nancy muses, “like you’ve already blinked, just by being here.”
 
“You asked me to come,” he mumbles. “Told me TK wanted me here.”
 
“I didn’t drag you in by your ear. You don’t always have to do what other people ask, you could’ve told me to tell him to go kick rocks. You’re here because you wanted to be here. Right?”
 
Sighing, Carlos rubs his hands over his face. In a voice that trembles, he admits, “I love him. I never stopped loving him.”
 
“He loves you back,” Nancy insists. “Trust me, okay? I’m not wrong about this.”
 
Carlos stares at the glass doors to TK’s room. He can’t see the bed from this angle, only some machinery and half of the wall, but his eyes feel like they could bore holes through the glass if he keeps glaring this intensely.
 
Nancy nudges him with her elbow. “Go on.”
 
Without another word to her, Carlos gets up and walks back into the room. TK is just where he was, motionless in the bed with his hands resting on his stomach and tubes protruding from his mouth. Carlos takes a deep breath. He shrugs out of his jacket and sits in a chair next to TK’s bed. He remembers so vividly the last time TK was unconscious in a hospital. Carlos had sat next to him and held his hand and fussed over how beautiful he still was, even as his body was shutting down. This is worse than that was, far worse, but he has the same thought. TK’s skin is still bright, if Carlos were to touch him he’d probably still be warm. His face looks so peaceful, if Carlos blurs his vision and blocks out the oxygen tube he could mistake it for TK sleeping soundly next to him.
 
He sits forward in the chair. His hand itches with the desire to reach out, but he keeps them folded tightly in his lap. He just looks. For the first time in four months, he gazes uninterrupted at TK. At the lips and cheeks he misses kissing, the hair he loved playing with, the face he fell so madly, disastrously in love with. It heals something deep inside him and at the same time, it shatters other things to even smaller pieces than they’d been in before.
 

 
His footsteps echo in the cavernous room. It’s all high ceilings and old brick walls and concrete floors; it wouldn’t echo so much if it was filled with furniture and art on the walls and area rugs but as it is, every step booms in the empty space. Carlos drops his lonely duffel bag onto the floor in the center of the vacant room – that sound, too, bounces off the bare walls and ceiling.
 
He turns. He still thinks a TV would fit nicely in the corner. A sectional sofa might be nice, it would give definition to the otherwise vast space and separate the living room from the entranceway. The bedroom is bigger than he remembers, Carlos thinks, as he turns his head again and looks at it through the open sliding doors. For half a second, in his blurry vision he can almost see shadows of two figures in the room, reaching for each other. They disappear when he narrows his gaze, and Carlos shakes them out of his head.
 
Turning around just once more, Carlos takes a few careful steps backwards until he bumps into the wall. He slides slowly down it, drawing his knees up once he’s sitting on the concrete and wrapping his arms around them. He rests his chin on his forearm, blinking slowly at the place that’s now his home. It should have been theirs, but Carlos ruined that, somehow. He doesn’t understand it, he doesn’t know how he managed to make such a mess when all he was trying to do was repair the last mess he made, when he let a man into their home and failed to keep TK safe so acutely. He doesn’t understand it, but he accepts his fate, because there’s nothing else left to do.
 
He’ll be angry with himself for the rest of time, maybe. He never was good enough for TK, Carlos has always known that. He wanted to be, more than he’s ever wanted anything. He’s spent more than a year hoping that if he just tries hard enough, takes good enough care, makes enough home-cooked meals and kisses TK until he can’t breathe and loves him with every inch of his body and soul, it would come close enough to making up the difference that TK wouldn’t notice. But maybe it was always doomed, because sooner or later Carlos’s shortcomings would cease to be something TK could overlook.
 
Maybe, Carlos muses as he blinks tears out of his eyes again and stares toward the kitchen he’d loved because it was sunny and big enough for two, he’d been right, when he was younger. When he was 19 and so sure he’d never have the kind of love in his life that he ached for and made stupid resulting decisions. He never told TK about that because he was afraid TK wouldn’t understand. And Carlos thought for a few brief shining moments that he had a second chance to get it right this time, with a brave, adventurous boy from New York with sparkly eyes and tousled brown hair and a smile that made Carlos weak in the knees.
 
But maybe it was just a cruel joke the universe made at his expense. Maybe he was always meant to end up here, alone.
 

 
He doesn’t know how long he sits, staring at TK’s chest as he slowly breathes in and out, the excruciating silence only broken by the slow beeping of the heart rate monitor. Carlos isn’t a medical professional like TK is but even he knows that beeping is a lot slower than it should be. TK’s body is struggling to keep itself afloat while Carlos sits here unmoving in an uncomfortable chair, so utterly useless and helpless to stop any of it from happening.
 
With a throat that feels raw as if he’s been screaming, Carlos mumbles, “I promised I’d keep you safe.”
 
He laughs softly, shaking his head. Even to his own ears, it sounds comically pitiful.
 
If they’d never broken up in the first place he still couldn’t have stopped TK from sinking into a frozen pond on a dangerous rescue, Carlos’s head knows how absurd it is to sit here blaming himself for that. His heart, though, rarely gets that memo. The only thing it’s capable of feeling as he watches TK’s eyelids twitch is regret that he wasn’t there to pull TK out faster, to wrap a blanket around him, to drive him to the hospital himself despite his objections. Nancy told him what happened, she told him out long they were out in the snow with TK soaking wet, and how he wandered off and they found him minutes later naked and delirious. It’s nothing but unearned bravado but Carlos clenches his fists and tells himself that he wouldn’t have let that happen.
 
“Carlos.”
 
He looks up. TK’s father is standing in the doorway, in a charcoal jacket, with his hair pushed back and his eyes shining. They always remind him so much of TK’s, even though his are blue and TK’s are green. He looks so much like both of his parents, and Carlos always saw their best qualities in him, and he hasn’t physically seen Captain Strand in over four months but the sight of him standing in the room makes Carlos want to cry.
 
“Captain Strand,” he breathes, pushing quickly up to his feet and accidentally knocking the chair back. It screeches on the laminate floor.
 
Stepping into the room, Captain Strand’s eyes fall onto his son. He doesn’t nag at Carlos to call him Owen. Not this time.
 
“Oh, kiddo,” he sighs. He steps closer and sits next to TK’s hip on the bed. He reaches out as Carlos watches and drags his fingers through TK’s hair, brushing back the one errant strand from his forehead that Carlos had spent ten minutes staring at and fighting the urge to fix.
 
He swallows thickly and turns, picking his jacket up from the back of the chair and tugging it back on. “I’ll leave you alone.”
 
“You don’t need to do that,” Captain Strand says. His hand cups TK’s cheek. “He’s so warm. After hypothermia I thought he’d be cold.”
 
“Yeah,” Carlos answers. To him, that’s new information, but he doesn’t say so.
 
“Have you been here long?” Captain Strand looks at him, and Carlos nods.
 
“Nancy called me after they admitted him. They made us go home last night but I came back in the morning. I’ve been here all day.” He says it with the air of a little kid trying to convince their parent that they didn’t disobey orders. He says it needing the man to believe him, needing him to know that he wouldn’t have left TK alone for one single second if the hospital staff hadn’t made him leave.
 
Captain Strand smiles at him. “That doesn’t surprise me. Thank you for being here for him.”
 
Carlos nods. He wishes the relief of it could permeate his anguish, but it barely makes a dent.
 
Looking back to his son, Captain Strand sadly muses, “How do we keep ending up here, huh? What are we going to tell your mother this time? I’m still in the doghouse from when you got shot.”
 
Carlos bites the inside of his lip. He remembers so vividly sitting in a different hospital room and praying to a God he wasn’t sure he believed in anymore that he’d never do a bad thing ever again if he could just be allowed a little more time with a man he’d already fallen in love with, but hadn’t convinced to love him back yet. He feels the chain around his neck again when he tilts his head down.
 
He’d never prayed for TK to come back to him after they split up. He’d prayed for other things, the handful of times he went back to the church he’d attended as a child. He’d prayed for strength, for clarity. He’d prayed to stop hurting. He never asked for TK to be sent back to him. Carlos didn’t want it that way, he didn’t want an outside force intervening and pushing TK in a direction he didn’t really want to go.
 
“I spoke to a nurse,” Captain Strand says. “She said she’d have the doctor stop by in a few minutes to catch me up.”
 
“Okay. I’ll give you some time with him,” Carlos says again, and this time Captain Strand doesn’t argue.
 
He does smile in Carlos’s direction, though, and it’s exhausted and sad but it’s real. “Thank you, genuinely, for being here.”
 
“Aren’t you … mad at me?” Carlos asks. He’s not sure he really wants to know the answer, but the question slips out before he can stop it.
 
Captain Strand frowns at him.
 
“Because we …” Carlos gestures aimlessly at TK.
 
Pressing his lips together for a moment, TK’s father looks back at his ailing son. “He never told me what happened. And that’s alright, it’s not my business if he doesn’t want it to be. But the Carlos that I know never would have done anything to hurt him on purpose. You took better care of him than anyone ever has, and that counts for a lot, even if you’re not meant to end up together.”
 
Carlos feels his throat closing and he puts his hands into the pockets of his coat to hide the way they tremble.
 
With another small smile and a glance at him over his shoulder, Captain Strand says, “You are one of the three people on this planet who love him more than anything, right?”
 
Carlos nods numbly.
 
“Then you’re exactly where you should be.”
 
He doesn’t answer. Carlos doesn’t know what he would say, he doesn’t know if Captain Strand is right about that, he just needs to no longer be in this room. He tries to smile as he makes his exit, and he doesn’t look back even though the sound of Captain Strand talking softly to his son makes Carlos feel like sobbing.
 
He stops in surprise as he rounds the corner, expecting to find Nancy still in her chair but instead finding Captain Vega has returned, and Marjan and Paul have joined her – Paul wearing a hospital gown and robe and attached to a mobile IV drip.
 
“Hey,” Carlos breathes.
 
“How’s he doing?” Marjan asks, standing and stepping toward Carlos.
 
“Uh, not – I don’t know, exactly.” Carlos shakes his head. He asks Paul, “Are you alright?”
 
“I will be,” Paul answers. He steps in closer too and puts a hand on Carlos’s shoulder. “Better than your boy, at the moment, anyway.”
 
“He’s not …” Carlos shakes his head again and can’t finish the sentence. TK was supposed to be his, that’s the terrible truth of it all. He should still be his. It’s been four months and Carlos still can’t seem to make peace with a world where that isn’t true anymore. Nothing feels as it should without TK next to him, like he’s been beamed to an alternate universe where one simple change has flipped everything upside down.
 
Marjan takes another few steps and wraps him up in a hug. For a moment, Carlos lets her but doesn’t return it. But then Paul embraces him on the other side and Carlos just barely holds back a flood of tears as he curls his arms around Marjan’s back and lets them comfort him.
 

 
Carlos shifts. He bounces a little, the air mattress buoyant underneath him, and tries to make himself comfortable. He should have bought a mattress pad too, but it’s all temporary either way.
 
For almost an hour he’d sat on the hard floor of his new home, until his ass was numb and he was out of tears to cry. Surprisingly quickly, he’d arrived at the conclusion that if TK didn’t want him, then Carlos was better off alone. He doubts that will last. He bets by tomorrow he’ll return to being a basket case, sobbing in the shower and squeezing his phone so tight in his hand it leaves imprints in his skin as he tries to resist calling TK again. But for tonight, Carlos was as numb as his backside was when he finally forced himself up off the floor, realizing he couldn’t spend the night sleeping on nothing but poured concrete.
 
For a minute, as he drove in the direction of the nearest Walmart, Carlos considered calling his parents. Telling them what happened, making it clear he didn’t want to talk about it but asking if he could spend a night or two in his old bedroom while he sorted out furniture for his new place. There’s nothing in it but the appliances it came with; not a chair, not a lamp, not so much as a bathmat. He could call either of his sisters, too. He isn’t particularly close with them, never really has been, but they would open their guest rooms for him if he needed a bed to sleep in for a short time. He knows that they would, just like he would for them.
 
The thought of telling any of them, though, made him feel queasy. He imagined what he might say, how he could possibly explain what’s happened when Carlos himself doesn’t understand it. He imagined the way they would pity him, feel sorry for him – or worse, blame him and take TK’s side and understand intrinsically what Carlos had done wrong because he’s the only one dumb enough to be confused about it. So he didn’t call them. He’ll have to eventually, but he couldn’t stomach the idea of that conversation while the wound is still fresh and weeping.
 
With an itching emptiness growing inside him by the minute, Carlos had headed to the aisle where they keep the camping gear and put an air mattress and sleeping bag into a hand basket, before swinging by the bedding section for a pillow. He has a phone charger and toiletries and clothing in his duffel bag at the loft – home, he’d tried to remind himself, it’s home now with or without TK in it – but he won’t have Wi-Fi until he calls to set it up so he grabbed a few magazines and a deck of cards. He took his sad little basket of misery to the self-checkout, avoiding eye contact with employees and other customers and making it out of the store as quickly as he could.
 
It’s after midnight, now, and he can’t sleep. It isn’t entirely because the bed meant for tenting isn’t as comfortable as a real mattress would be, but Carlos is trying to convince himself that’s the reason. He rolls over onto his side, wiggling around until he finds a semi-acceptable position with his hands tucked under his head. He can almost feel a body pressing in behind him and an arm looping around his waist, so he pushes his face into soft cotton and tries to push those thoughts away.
 
This is it, he thinks. His new home. Tonight it’s empty and depressing and uncomfortable but soon enough he will have that fixed. It will be cozy and nice for entertaining, like he’d imagined. He’ll buy a dining room table big enough to seat his whole family. The kitchen still has nice lighting, it’s still close to restaurants and bars and interesting shops. The first-floor neighbor he’d met, the day he came back on his own for a second look at this place, will still be friendly. He sniffs and rubs an errant tear or two into the pillow, and makes a promise to himself that he will be happy here. No matter what it takes.
 

 
Owen leaves. He spends a few minutes sitting with TK and stroking his hair, and then gets the depressing update from the doctor, hugs Carlos while tears drip down his face in front of everyone, and then he’s gone, taking TK's captain with him.
 
Carlos offers the others a chance to sit with TK and they do, for a time. And then Paul needs to get back to his own room, and Marjan and Nancy both kiss his cheek and tell him they’ll be outside and Carlos is alone in TK’s room again. Technically he isn’t alone, there is another person here with him and the steady, rhythmic beeping is a constant reminder of that, but Carlos feels alone anyway.
 
A soft knocking startles him. For the second time in only a few hours, Carlos looks up and finds someone standing in the doorway. This time it’s his own family, instead of TK’s.
 
“Mom?”
 
“Carlitos.”
 
He can’t help himself for one second, he gets up and rushes to her, all but falling into her arms. She hugs him back tightly.
 
“Aye, mi amor,” she sighs, rubbing his back.
 
“What are you doing here?” he asks tiredly. “I told you not to go out in the storm.”
 
“Cállate. You think I’d let a few snowflakes keep me from my boy when he’s hurting?”
 
“Does dad know you're here?”
 
“What is he gonna say?” she smiles and raises an eyebrow.
 
“Well, I – I appreciate it,” he tells her, accepting defeat near immediately. He’d been worried at the thought of her sliding off the road, but now that she’s here, Carlos just wants to fall back into her arms and let her promise him everything will be okay. It’s not a promise that she can make, but it always made him feel better when he was little and maybe he could pretend, just for a while, that it could work again this time.
 
Andrea kisses his cheek and rubs his chest before they turn back to TK. Holding her rosary, Andrea sits next to him. “What are the doctors saying?”
 
“That he, uh … he’s heading in the wrong direction,” Carlos admits. He feels like a traitor for even saying it, like the universe might be listening and decide he’s already given up.
 
“Well, the doctors don’t know everything. This boy is a fighter. And he has something to fight for. He’s got the love of his life sitting right here waiting for him.”
 
“We broke up,” Carlos mumbles. It’s a miracle he’s managed to keep it from them until now, but he doesn’t have the strength anymore to continue with the lie. He doesn’t have a tenth of the strength it would probably take.
 
“What?” Andrea gasps. “When?”
 
Dully, Carlos replies, “A few months ago.”
 
“Why didn’t you say anything?” she demands.
 
“I wanted to, but … it was so amazing how you and Dad supported us. I just didn’t wanna let you down.” His breath comes in heavy pants as he speaks, emotion choking him. It was everything he ever wanted and everything he was so dejectedly convinced he would never have – a partner who loves him, a home to share, his parents loving and supportive and coming over for dinner. Carlos regrets so bitterly that it only happened once before it was all burned to the ground.
 
Andrea reaches out and cups the back of his head. Her voice is soft and laced with feeling as she says, “Carlos. There is nothing you can do to let us down. Your father and I are so proud of the man you are. You have no idea how proud.”
 
He shakes. His skin crawls and his stomach lurches and it’s difficult to breathe. He’s needed to hear that so badly, maybe for a lot longer than he realized, but now that it’s been said, he finds himself unable to cope with it. “Thank you.”
 
“And we love TK, too.”
 
Carlos nods. Everything feels so much more real now that she’s here, and he’s torn between being grateful for the comfort and wishing that she’d stayed home.
 
“But when this boy wakes up, we’re gonna have a little conversation.”
 
Frowning, Carlos asks, “A conversation about what?”
 
“About why he thought he could break my baby’s heart and get away with it. Hm? Mama’s not happy.”
 
Carlos cracks up. It’s the first time he’s laughed in what feels like a year, and it lifts just a fraction of the invisible weight off his shoulders.
 
Her thumbs rubs along the back of his neck, catching on the clasp of the chain. She doesn’t ask, but Carlos untucks the necklace anyway so she can see.
 
“When did you start wearing that again?” Andrea asks.
 
“After that day I helped you clean out my room.”
 
Again, she doesn’t ask, but she keeps touching it.
 
“Did you notice, when I took it off?” he asks.
 
“One day I noticed. I don’t know how long it had been before I did.”
 
“I kept waiting for you to tell me off about it.”
 
Andrea lets her hand fall away. She wraps both around the rosary and looks at it as she says, “It’s not for me to tell you what to believe.”
 
“I don’t really know if I completely stopped believing, I just … it didn’t feel the same anymore,” Carlos confesses in a quiet voice, looking at his own hands.
 
“And now?”
 
“I don’t know,” he says honestly. “I guess suddenly I had some things worth praying about, and … I didn’t want to feel so alone anymore.”
 
He’s expecting her to point out that he could have come to them, that he wouldn’t have been alone if he hadn’t isolated himself. She doesn’t say it, but she doesn’t need to. Carlos knows it’s the truth. He didn’t need to turn down Nancy’s invitations to game nights. He didn’t need to stop responding to texts from Paul and Mateo. He didn’t need to see Marjan only while arresting her. He cut them off, not the other way around, but he’s never been any good at needing people. He’s always measured his own value against his ability to provide for others, and the idea of becoming a burden to them instead was too much to bear at a time when he was already suffocating.
 
On the bed before them, TK twitches. His hands move, fingers jerking minutely back and forth.
 
“It almost looks like he’s trying to say something, no?” Andrea asks.
 
“The nurse said they’re just muscle spasms. They don’t mean anything.” Carlos hadn’t asked for that information. The same nurse from earlier, the one who was so unfeeling in her assertion that it would have been better if TK had stayed dead, informed him of her own volition. She didn’t want him to get his hopes up, Carlos supposes. It’s difficult at this moment to see it as a kindness.
 
“Well, I wouldn’t be so sure of that. I think you need to talk to him, son.”
 
“No,” Carlos says flatly.
 
“Why not?”
 
“I wouldn’t know what to say.”
 
“You tell him what’s on your heart.”
 
“If I told him what’s on my heart, it wouldn’t be very nice.”
 
“Because you’re angry?”
 
“Yes.”
 
“Then tell him.”
 
Carlos snaps, “I can’t right now, Mom.”
 
“Now is the time, Carlitos,” Andrea insists. “He needs to hear it and you need to say it. Heaven forbid that this is your last chance to say what you need to say to this man? Hazlo, mijo.”
 
Carlos looks at her. His chest aches and for the hundredth time today his eyes burn.
 
“I’ll be outside,” she whispers. She kisses his cheek and crosses herself, kissing her rosary before she exits, leaving Carlos alone with TK once again.
 
He exhales slowly, desperate to quell what feels like ants on his skin with the movement of oxygen from his lungs. It’s a moment before he can look at TK, and when he does Carlos grinds his teeth and looks back again, glancing up at the ceiling instead. He still can’t be sure if there's anything up there, beyond the clouds and beyond this world, that sees him or cares about him or has any ability to answer prayers. But just in case there is, Carlos asks it for some strength.
 
He moves his chair forward a little. The task of speaking to the person he was so madly in love with shouldn’t feel like he’s facing down the executioner, but it does, and his voice doesn’t sound entirely like his own as he says, “Hey, TK. It’s me.”
 
Carlos stares at him. TK’s eyelids move, as if his eyes are darting back and forth underneath them.
 
“I’ve been here for a while, now. I don’t even know if you want that, but … I guess you’re not in any position to walk out this time. And even if you can’t hear it … Mom’s right. I just need to say it.” The words get stuck for a moment in his throat like a mouthful of improperly chewed food, and his eyes fill with tears. “I’m so mad at you right now.”
 
It’s the very first time he’s said it out loud.
 
It’s been rare that he’s even let himself feel it. Most days he’s still drowning in self-pity, in bullying voices in his brain telling him that it’s all his fault even if he still doesn’t understand why, a vice-grip in his chest reminding him that he never deserved TK in the first place. It’s his insecurities, his anxieties come to life like a phantom haunting him, but as Carlos sits here now, staring at TK unconscious but still perfect in his bed, anger overtakes him and Carlos shakes with it.
 
“And the worst part about this is … if this is … goodbye …” Carlos trembles and tears that burn further fill his eyes. “I can’t even hold your hand. Or run my fingers through your hair or kiss your head. Not without it feeling like it’s some kind of violation.”
 
His fingers itch with the urge to do all three of those things. Not since the very first night has Carlos felt like he wasn’t allowed to touch TK if he wanted to. They progressed in stages from dancing to kissing to other things, but never for one minute did Carlos feel like TK would bristle if he put a hand on his arm or brushed soft hair out of his eyes. The fact that he doesn’t know, now, whether TK would flinch away from his touch were he awake, makes his stomach churn.
 
TK should have been willing to explain. Everything they were building together, everything they meant to each other, and he didn’t even care about Carlos enough to be willing to explain. Carlos would have listened, he would have talked it out, he would have apologized for whatever he did. Just like when TK stormed out after they argued about his parents, Carlos would have done anything it took to make up for his mistakes if TK only cared enough to give him a chance. Only this time, TK didn’t come back. He let Carlos blame himself for months, he let Carlos live alone in the place that was supposed to be their home, and now he might die and they’ll never get to repair the damage. Carlos will just have to live with it, to exist with these open wounds for the rest of his days.
 
“Believe people when they tell you who they are. Just believe them, right?” he asks rhetorically, despising the venom he can hear in his own voice. “Yeah, well that’s exactly what I should’ve done when you walked out on our first date, I should have realized that’s who you were.”
 
He laughs, humorless and filled with fury.
 
“I should have realized when you stormed out on me after we argued about my parents, when you took your damn supplement bottles just to make a show out of leaving. I didn’t, and that’s okay! But I should’ve known you’d do it again the second we hit a rough patch. That’s your mechanism of defense, right?”
 
TK doesn’t answer, he just beeps.
 
“You asked me to feel safe with you, and then you bailed on us the instant things got hard and you wouldn’t even tell me why!”
 
More tears slip down Carlos’s cheeks. His heart thumps in his chest as he forces himself to speak the words that have been gnawing at the back of his skull for four months.
 
“I did feel safe with you. I’ve never felt that way with anybody, not with anybody, TK. I’ve never let someone see me the way you did, touch me the way you did, know me the way you did. I gave you my fucking heart, I placed it in your hands and I told you how fragile it was and asked you not to crush it, and …”
 
Carlos inhales sharply as a sob chokes him. He doesn’t finish the sentence. He covers his mouth with his hands, eyes squeezing shut and then wiping clumsily at the tears on his face. When he removes them, TK is still just beeping, with his eyelids still fluttering every second or two, and the anger drips out of him and pools on the floor at his feet.
 
“I loved you,” Carlos whispers miserably, slumping further in his chair. “I love you, and I tried so hard to make everything perfect, and … I don’t know how to live the rest of my life without you.”
 
He breathes. TK’s chest continues to rise and fall, his heart continues to beat, but in every other way, he’s gone. Carlos feels like there is an invisible wall between them, like he’s a ghost staring in at TK from another plane of existence. He can see, but he can’t reach him. TK’s gone somewhere that Carlos can’t follow, can’t pull him back from, and that’s always been his worst nightmare – watching someone he loves hurt and struggle and not being able to take their hurt away.
 
Barely audibly over the blood pounding in his ears, he says, “I could forgive you for leaving, four months ago. But if you leave me now, I will never forgive you.”
 
TK twitches again. Then he twitches bigger, and gasps, and Carlos nearly jumps out of his skin.
 
His heart leaps into his throat, he grasps the arms of his chair as he leaps into action, calling, “Nurse? Nurse?!”
 
TK is flailing, grabbing roughly at the tubes in his nose and mouth, writhing on the bed as he tries to tear them off. Carlos panics, lurching toward him and holding his wrists, trying to stop him before he hurts himself. He rasps TK’s name, mind and heart still racing faster than he thinks they ever have, before hands are grabbing at his arms and pulling him away.
 
“He’s – ” Carlos starts, but they don’t let go of him.
 
“Sir, please,” a nurse says, firm and emphatic, as Carlos stumbles backwards.
 
He wants to fight them, wants to shove them off and get back to TK, but the more rational side of his brain wins out and he lets them drag him away even as his heart screams at them not to. Hands keep pushing at him, forcing him across the room and out the door. His chest rises and falls, gasping for air as his mother appears at his side, holding onto his shoulder and watching with him as the nurses convince TK to stop fighting so they can remove his breathing tube for him before he tears it out himself.
 
“There he is, gracias a Dios,” Andrea whispers, kissing her rosary again and gripping a handful of Carlos’s shirt.
 
Carlos still can’t seem to breathe. Tears stream down his face as he watches, stuck in painful limbo until the doctor finally turns to him and gestures for him to enter the room. Carlos doesn’t hesitate, like they’re magnets who have been separated for decades of their lives he floats back toward TK, calmed and with only the oxygen remaining. TK’s hands are clutching the bedsheets, his eyes are still closed, but he’s alive.
 
“Hey, baby,” TK whispers, barely able to open his mouth to let the sound out.
 
Carlos goes numb everywhere as he stands, trembling, by TK’s bedside. He’s alive.
 
“Breathe,” TK urges, moving his hand. “Breathe, breathe.”
 
Carlos hadn’t realized he was holding his breath until he gasps, draws in a ragged gulp of air that stops his lungs from burning. TK’s done that before, when Carlos has been wound up tight and holding his breath without realizing. Carlos remembers it. He remembers everything, every minute of their life together vivid and sharp and technicolor, and ten minutes ago that was one of the most painful things he’s ever experienced. Suddenly, it’s one of the most magical.
 
He looks down. TK’s hand is still raised, using what little strength he has to hold it out. Carlos gasps again, breathing as if he’s just resurfaced from far too long under water. The hand drops back down toward the bed, and Carlos reaches for him and scoops it up.
 
TK’s palm is warm. There’s a pulse under it, weak and slow but there. Shivering everywhere, Carlos leans over. He squeezes TK’s hand, reaches out with his other one and touches his head. He smells like disinfectant and greasy hair, and his free hand touches Carlos’s shoulder. He doesn’t push Carlos away. With the shreds of energy he has, he tries to pull Carlos closer. He called him baby, and Carlos could sob.
 
He kisses TK’s cheek, feeling TK’s fingers contracting in the material of his shirt. It’s all Carlos can do not to collapse on top of him in gratefulness and sorrow and searing relief. Instead he’s careful, but he lowers his hip to the edge of TK’s bed and buries his face in TK’s neck, inhaling so that he can find the scent of him underneath everything else. Carlos’s head spins. The entire world around him seems to rotate too quickly, to blur, to shred to pieces before him and then spin back together somehow whole again.
 
“Don’t scare me like that,” he rasps, shoulders shaking with tears that for the first time in months, he doesn’t fight. He just lets them fall, lets them soak into the pillow under TK’s head.
 
“I love you,” TK whispers right into his ear, and Carlos’s whole body thrums as if TK rubbed sandpaper on his bare skin.
 
“You do?” he barely dares to whisper.
 
“Yeah, baby.”
 
Carlos sniffs and smiles against TK’s neck. “I love you, too.”