Chapter Text
He’s not paying attention when it happens. He’s turned around looking at a weird-shaped cloud trying to figure out what it looks like, while he’s also thinking about how this new play they’re testing out is not going to work. Then all of a sudden, a searing pain hits the back of his head that has him stumbling forward. He slumps down on his knees and his hands grip the dewy grass. He clenches his eyes shut, jaw clenching as he grits his teeth together. He takes a moment to let the pain settle and tries to catch his breath at the unexpected hit. Everyone gets hit in the head once in a while, it normally isn’t a big deal and Jamie has dealt with it plenty of times before. He just needs to get up and shake it off. Except, something is wrong because when Jamie opens his eyes, it’s not right. He blinks his eyes a couple of times and tries to get them to refocus. There are black spots in some areas while the rest is a blurry mess. Frantically, he keeps blinking. Panic sets in when he realizes that it isn’t changing anything. His hands let go of the grass and presses against his face to make sure his eyes are actually open. He rubs his fist against them to see if that’ll help, but it doesn’t. His breathing is getting faster, his chest is clenching uncomfortably, and he knows something is wrong.
“Jamie?” He thinks it’s Sam who asks it, he has no idea with the way his ears are ringing in panic. He can’t breathe and his hands are shaking and he thinks he’s going to throw up. There’s shuffling on the grass but everyone goes silent in worry. He flinches when a hand lands on his shoulder, and assumes someone leans down next to him but his peripheral vision is blurry.
“Jamie,” It’s Roy, he knows it’s Roy. His hands leave his face and they move to try and find wherever he is. He’s too afraid to move his head so he keeps that straight. He hits a hard surface and grips wherever it lands. His palms are sweating, and his grip is shaky.
“I can’t see,” his voice breaks when he says it, and the severity of what’s happening finally pushes through the haze of panic, “Roy, I can’t fucking see.”
-
When he says it, everyone acts fast. Roy is suddenly gripping his forearms and yanks him up from where he’s been kneeling. He can’t bring himself to say they probably should call 999 to come get him. He’s too worried to move his head which is why they should call them. But, he just goes along with Roy. He can feel warm tears streaming down his cheeks as he’s led across the pitch. It feels neverending, has the pitch always been this fucking big? He doesn’t know where he’s being led, and it’s hard to put one foot in front of the other. He’s dry-heaving as they walk, and his hands can’t stop fucking shaking.
“Jamie, we need to go,” Roy whispers in his ear, his voice teetering on the edge of trembling. Jamie nods and starts walking with Roy instead of being led and dragged alongside him. He stands there shaking as Roy lets go of him, then hears a car door being open while Jamie focuses on the black spots covering half of his eyesight. He can’t see Roy as he opens the car door, they cover it. He looks over to the other cars parked in the lot, and he should be looking right at Colin’s bright orange Lamborghini, but he can only see the cars parked beside it. Roy is suddenly back to gripping his forearms breaking him out of his spiraling and leading him to sit down in the passenger side. Jamie feels his feet trip just a bit from the height of Roy’s car, and Roy is cursing as it happens as his hands grip his hips to steady him.
Roy has to buckle his seatbelt for him, it takes him a couple of tries to get it right and Jamie realizes he’s shaking too. He mutters a quick ‘thank you’ to Roy, and Roy doesn’t say anything back. He just slams the door shut and quickly gets in on the other side. The car ride is silent and Jamie can’t measure how long he’s been in the car with the amount of songs they listen to. It could be minutes or hours for however long he’s in the car, his mind can’t stop racing as he tries to calm down his breathing. His heart feels like it’s beating out of his chest, and Jamie runs up and down a field for a living, he usually has no trouble calming it. But, he can’t. He can’t fucking do it, and the tears keep streaming down his cheeks and landing on his hands that are trembling in his lap. He wishes Roy would turn on the radio or something, all he can hear is the passing traffic and his heartbeat in his ears.
He’s broken out of his thoughts when the car pulls to a stop. Roy is quickly putting the car into park and Jamie hears the driver’s side door slam shut. Jamie unbuckles himself and then hears his door open. Roy leads the belt back to where it belongs and helps him out. Holds him around his middle as he helps him out of the car. One of his hands holds onto Jamie as he shuts the car door this time. Roy leads him into the entrance, he can hear the familiar sounds of the hospital surrounding him. Someone must have called Roy’s sister because she’s already down there when they pass through the automatic doors.
Jamie can’t even get a moment to catch his breath before they’re leading him out of the waiting room and into a wheelchair. They’re pushing him into an elevator, and Ruth leans down next to him to talk to him. Jamie has hung out with Ruth multiple times before, but he’s never seen her in doctor mode. He wishes her voice was the same tone as it usually is when she’s talking to Phoebe during Monopoly. But, she’s coming off as authoritative in a way that makes Jamie uncomfortable. He just nods along to whatever she says even though he has no idea what she’s saying.
“Jamie, you have to tell me what happened. What are your symptoms?” Jamie didn’t even realize she asked a question.
“Um, there’s, there’s black spots covering my vision, like right in front of me, and everything else is just fuzzy, or blurry I guess,” Jamie stutters out. He feels a squeeze on his bicep in acknowledgment, and he didn’t know an elevator ride at the hospital could be this long.
Roy has to wait for him in the waiting room while he gets everything done, Ruth tells him so when he asks where he is. He makes it seem like it isn’t such a big deal, brushes it off like he’s fine and was just wondering, but he just wishes someone were here with him. He’s alone when the scan is being done. One of the nurses routinely asks him if he wants headphones to watch a movie since it’s going to take a while and is also loud. He says yes to her, doesn’t want to tell her he can’t fucking watch anything because he can’t see. He doesn’t know what movie it is when he hears it playing through the headphones, but he’s trying to figure it out. It’s interrupted by a voice telling him that they’re sorry, but he needs to try and calm himself down and not move. So, he can’t focus on the movie anyway to try and figure out what it is, instead, he has to focus on not shaking in fear.
After the scan, he’s put back in the wheelchair and led to a room where his blood pressure is checked, then blood is drawn, goes through concussion protocol and a couple of other questions he assumes is to make sure his brain is functioning. The nurse writes everything down, he can hear the clicking of a keyboard and the writing of ink on paper, then she says she’s done and the doctor will be in shortly. He opens his mouth to ask if his friend can come in with him, but the door closes behind her, and then he’s left there alone again while he waits for the results.
He doesn’t know how long he’s been waiting in the room, and he doesn’t even have his phone to be able to pass the time or talk to someone. Would he even be able to use his phone? He can’t fucking see and all his other head injury protocols say to limit screentime. But, he just wants to call his mum and hear her voice because he’s sat here terrified. She would know what to say and do to calm his racing heart and sweaty palms. He wipes them against his shorts and they flinch against him when the door opens. The doctor immediately starts introducing himself and he lets himself try to look relaxed.
“So, when we looked at the scans it’s obvious your occipital lobe is swollen, no bleeding or anything like that. That’s unfortunately where you got hit, the back of the head,” the doctor then asks if he can show Jamie where, and he nods and feels a prod to the back of his head. “The occipital lobe is responsible for our visual processing, your sight. It seems you have some central vision loss with what you’ve described. Normally you see this after an occipital lobe stroke, but you must have been hit hard enough for this to be triggered or just in the right spot for it to have the same effects. We don’t think it’s an occipital lobe stroke, you also would have lost some motor function on one side of your body along with some other symptoms. Thankfully, the only symptom you seem to have is vision loss,” Jamie notes the word use of ‘thankfully’, but the doctor keeps going on and on, so he doesn’t have time to analyze that. Jamie nods like he understands what’s happening. But, it’s setting in that this is serious and is really happening, especially since the doctors are telling him so.
“Jamie, we don’t know how long this is going to last. It could go back to normal once the swelling goes down, and there’s a chance it won’t. The brain heals the most in the first three months of such injuries. This is also when spontaneous recovery is most likely to happen. I know when I say that, that’s what you’re going to hope is going to happen, but we won’t know. After three months, we’ll reassess,” the doctor stops. Jamie lets it all sink in. So, the best outcome is he can’t see for three months, and the worst outcome is he can’t see after three months. “Right now though, rest is important. We’re not going to keep you here overnight, but someone is going to need to be with you to monitor you, just in case. As I said, we haven’t seen any signs of a brain bleed or anything that would be a cause for concern, but it’s still important that you are not alone during the first twenty-four hours. If you do lose any feeling in one side of the body, have any visual hallucinations, your black spots get worse, or something just doesn’t seem or feel right, please come back immediately,” the doctor adds.
“How likely is spontaneous recovery?” is what Jamie asks, even though that’s not the only question he has, nor is the most important one on his mind. (Is my career over? Will it get worse? How do I know if I’m having a visual hallucination? Please, can someone call my mum?).
“I think we need to focus on compensatory techniques,” which fucking answers that. Probably not fucking likely and not something he should hope for. He doesn’t even fucking know what compensatory techniques mean. They tell him they’re making a folder full of pamphlets for him, they go over some of them with him. Tell him he needs to get glasses for the blurry parts, it’s going to help them, but the black spots will stay. The doctors also know that he’s a professional footballer and they’re going to want to handle this with the best people they can get. They tell him he’ll have to look over the options with someone else, and Jamie knows that because he can’t fucking read right now. They didn’t need to tell him this when he already fucking knows. They keep talking, and Jamie isn’t listening anymore. He just wants to go home, and he wants his mum. Eventually, they wrap it up telling him he needs to come back in two weeks for more scans. The doctor pats him on the shoulder before he makes his exit, and Jamie is left alone again, though only for a couple of minutes. There’s a quick knock on the door, and someone is opening it. He looks over at it before he realizes it’s pointless, he can’t see who it is, they’re just a blurry blob half-covered by black spots.
“It’s me,” Roy grunts out, he’s about as far away from Jamie as he can get. Silence settles over the room, and Jamie sits there waiting for Roy to say something, anything. Maybe Roy is waiting for him to say something about what the doctors told him, and fill him in on what he’s learned. But, he doesn’t. He can’t spit out any of the words right now. Doesn’t want to acknowledge what’s happening. Instead, all Jamie says to break the silence is,
“Can you take me home?”
-
When Jamie gets home, he pictures his mum is already waiting there for him. She’s standing there in the driveway, her arms wide open for him to collapse into. But, she’s not. It’s Roy opening the passenger side door, not his mum. Roy helps him out of the car, and he pushes past him to walk to his door and press the code in even though his hands are still slightly shaking. He’s assuming Roy is following behind him, but he just wants to lie down and pretend nothing is wrong. Take a nap and wake up with everything back to the way it was this morning and every other day of his life. He lays on the couch, he shuts his eyes because it lessens his headache to stare at pure black rather than blurriness and black spots. Roy sits on the corner, he feels the couch dip, an arm brush against his feet, and a hand settling on his ankle to let him know he’s there. Jamie basks in the comfort of the warmth radiating off Roy’s hand, and the brush of the thumb rubbing back and forth. The weight of his hand is nice, and he’s grateful Roy is here with him, but Jamie wishes it was his mum where he could crawl close to her and lay his head on her chest.
“Mum’s on a cruise,” Jamie says as he realizes why she isn’t here. Roy would have called her, and it would have gone straight to voicemail, sometimes with a silly message saying not to bother her. It was a gift from him for Christmas, a nice getaway for her and Simon. She likes to turn her phone off when going away, and cruises have shotty service anyway. Normally it’s fine to be away for ten days, work doesn’t call her, and Jamie just waits until she’s home. But, it’s not fine today, and they just left two days ago so Jamie won’t be able to reach her for over a week. He clenches his eyes shut even tighter, and tries to will back the tears that are surfacing. Bites his lip to try and get his mind to focus on something else, tastes metallic as his teeth break just a little bit of skin but it doesn’t bring his mind off of it.
“What did the doctors say?” Jamie is interrupted from his breakdown, and good for Roy to somehow make it worse. He turns to lie on his back and the movement causes Roy to let go of his ankle. His eyes are still shut but he assumes he’s looking straight at Roy, or at least in the general direction of him. He doesn’t answer, he doesn’t want to answer. Roy can call his sister and read his medical chart for all he fucking cares, but he isn’t talking about this right now.
“I’d like Indian for dinner,” Jamie says instead. Truthfully, he hasn’t fucking even thought about dinner, and his stomach churns at the words leaving his mouth. He turns back over, his eyes still shut, and pretends to take a nap. He can hear Roy take a deep breath, but he gives no reaction to his answer other than getting up from the couch. He just lies as still as possible and waits for Roy to leave the room. He expects to hear the door open and slamming shut when he gets up and walks away. But, he doesn’t. Roy just goes into the kitchen. He can hear him pull out one of the chairs at his table, and then Roy is calling someone.
“I’d like to make an appointment, as early as possible. Dr. Sullivan told me to call you,” Jamie tunes out after that, he must be making the eye appointment. He knew the doctors told him to do that, somewhere in the multiple pamphlets he received was all about it. He wasn’t going to call tonight, and probably wouldn’t have tomorrow either, so he’s glad Roy is doing it for him.
-
Jamie doesn’t realize that he fell asleep until he wakes up to the smell of Indian takeaway being open in the kitchen and a blanket covering his body. He keeps his eyes shut for a minute, pulls the blanket up tighter around him, and the voice in the back of his head whispers that maybe spontaneous recovery has already happened. That, when he opens his eyes, the black spots will be gone and the blurriness will be fixed. But, he can’t will himself to open his eyes in fear that it’s going to be the same as it was earlier. He just sits there and lets the smell of curry fill up the room. The TV is off, Jamie knows the remote sits on the coffee table right in front of him. He could easily reach his hand out and grab it. But, if he turns it on for some sort of distraction, Roy will know he’s awake and probably will ask him again what the doctors said. Also, will tell him that he’s got some appointments tomorrow or something. Jamie doesn’t want to talk about it now, and he isn’t sure when he’s going to want to. He’d like to avoid it forever, but he knows it’s not possible. He knows the longest he’ll be able to avoid this conversation is another ten minutes at most before Roy wakes him up for dinner. He just continues to lay there with his eyes shut and listens to Roy putter around the kitchen for as long as he can. He can hear him opening the containers, unwrapping the naan from the tin foil, and putting it on a plate. He knows Roy is going to wake him up any minute, and he’ll have to open his eyes.
He can hear the heavy footsteps coming from the kitchen and braces himself for Roy to say his name to wake him up. But, he just hears Roy sitting on the footstool near the couch and deep breaths coming from him. He can picture Roy looking over him, the concerned look he gets on his face like when Phoebe trips when they’re running drills with her. The way his eyes run over him trying to look for any outward sign of injury. He tries not to break the illusion of him sleeping, but he can’t help but flinch when Roy runs his hand down his arm lightly. Roy brings it back like he’s been burned, and Jamie automatically opens his eyes. He can’t see Roy when it happens, and of course, he still can’t see. He doesn’t know why he expected otherwise. Roy’s just a bigger black blur due to his clothing, he has to look away from him because it makes him a little anxious to even think that it could get worse and the black spots would become bigger.
“I got dinner,” Roy says, and he’s up and off of the footstool in a flash. Jamie leans up from the couch and follows after him so he doesn’t give himself time to dwell on the fact his vision hasn’t changed at all from the time he got back from the hospital and now.
Dinner is good, it’s Jamie’s favorite Indian restaurant. It’s hard to chew the food with the aching in the back of his head, and the way his stomach is still queasy. He chokes it down though, the naan being the easiest to get down, and Roy must notice that. He probably thinks Jamie doesn’t notice, but he keeps putting extra pieces of torn-up naan on Jamie’s tinfoil.
Despite the noise of tinfoil being messed up and the scraping of plates, dinner is quiet. Roy doesn’t start a conversation, and Jamie sure as hell isn’t going to either. If Roy isn’t going to prod Jamie for the information from the doctors, he’s not going to bring it up himself. He’d rather not think about it all. But, it’s hard not to think about when he’s reminded of everything he blinks.
He does wish that they went to the eye doctor today because the blurriness is overwhelming. He can see the colors of everything, which lets him know what’s on his plate, but he wants to be able to see how many pieces of chicken he has left in the sauce, and where the containers are in case he wants more. He can’t ignore the black spots, they’re front and center. He has to turn his head just slightly to be able to see where his fork is going and what he’s scooping on it.
Roy grabs Jamie’s plate when he finishes his own, he doesn’t even ask if Jamie is done with his dinner, but Jamie can’t even come up with a quip about it. There has to be something to say about it, yet he can’t think of anything, so he just sits there as Roy finishes the food he wasn't able to choke down. He then gets up to take them to the sink. The water starts running, and Jamie watches the blurry movements of him washing the dishes even though his dishwasher isn’t full.
“When are going to leave?” Jamie breaks the silence. His hands are rubbing together on the table, but he moves them down to his hoodie. He can hear the scrubbing of the dishes stop and can see Roy move from where he’s standing. The water is turned off, and Jamie is looking everywhere but where Roy is standing looking at him.
“I’m not leaving,” Roy states, “You didn’t tell me what the doctors said, but I’m sure they fucking said you can’t be alone tonight.” Jamie shrugs in response, he knew Roy was going to say that, and he knew Roy wasn’t going to leave either. Probably wouldn’t for the rest of the week either, at least until Jamie’s mum gets back. The question was pointless to ask, and Roy must think so too because he just scoffs and turns back around, the water starting up again. Jamie kicks his feet and sits there.
“Eye appointment at 8 am tomorrow,” Roy states, and Jamie takes that as his queue that he can leave the kitchen. He scoots the chair out and heads for the stairs. If Roy isn’t leaving, he’s going to avoid him as much as he can. Jamie shuts his bedroom door and leans against it. Up against it, he can still hear Roy downstairs in the kitchen, and then the TV turning on, which means Roy really isn’t leaving. Jamie just heads for his bathroom. He wants to shower, and get rid of the sweat from practice and the hospital smell. He throws his clothes off, aims somewhere towards the hamper that’s in there, and turns the water on as hot as it can go.
The hot water soothes his tight shoulders, and the burn makes him focus on something other than his vision. The water going down his face makes him clench his eyes shut and let the steam overcome the room. When he reaches for his shampoo and conditioner bottle, he stops as he realizes he can’t tell the difference between them. They’re the same bottle, just the written label of shampoo or conditioner being the only distinguishing factor. He doesn’t remember if he put the shampoo on the left or right side, and he curses in frustration. He grips the bottle he’s holding and throws it down on the floor of the shower. He leans his forehead against the wall in frustration just letting the water run down his back. He knows Roy is going to be skipping stairs to make sure he didn’t pass out in the shower or something.
“Jamie?” Roy knocks on the door, but he enters without a response so Jamie wonders why he would even bother.
“I can’t fucking see if it’s shampoo or conditioner,” Jamie trembles as he says it. The steam worsens his vision, and the surfacing tears don’t help either. The sliding door of his shower is moved, and he can’t bring himself to look toward Roy. But, Roy doesn’t ask anything of him. He just grabs the bottle from where it’s laid out on the floor and holds it himself. Jamie can hear the click of it being open, and Roy grabbing his hand. He holds it face up, and squeezes it into his palm.
“It’s shampoo,” Roy whispers out. The sliding glass door shuts with the bathroom door following, and Jamie is left with the shampoo sitting in his palm. He washes his hair in silence, the conditioner bottle now sitting alone on its shelf. He feels guilty he doesn’t want to use the conditioner, especially after Roy helped him with it. So, he does it despite not wanting to. He scrubs his skin raw to get the smell of the hospital off him. He stands there letting the water run over him until it’s gone cold. His towel is on his usual hook when he gets out, he’s thankful he did it because normally he just leaves it somewhere on his room floor.
The door to his bedroom is slightly cracked when he walks out, he checks. He closes it, making sure to turn the handle before pushing it into place so it doesn’t make a sound. When he goes to sit on the edge of the bed, he sees folded clothes lying for him there, and the sight makes his chest tighten. He grips the clothes and shoves them back into their drawers where he knows Roy found them. He doesn’t need Roy setting out fucking clothes for him just because his vision is a little fucking blurry. He slams the drawers shut and seethes as he grabs his own clothes for the night. He gets dressed in the biggest shirt he owns, which he picked out from the drawer, and doesn’t bother blow-drying his hair before getting into bed.
Normally he’d be on his phone right now before bed. Checking Twitter, texting the team, and playing some sort of cooking mobile game. He doesn’t even know where his phone is, he can’t check the time or set an alarm like he normally does. It’s his routine to plug in his phone, set the alarm, check to make sure he set the alarm, and sometimes listen to ASMR if he can’t sleep. He has no fucking idea where his fucking phone is, and he can’t see the clock on his bedside table.
He lays there for a long time, just the lamp on his bedside table illuminating the room. He stares at the wall, central vision loss is how the doctors described it to him. They were definitely right with that. He can’t see anything in the middle of his sight. It’s just black with the blurriness surrounding it. He keeps blinking to see if anything will change, but each blink shows the same as the previous one.
He can’t hear Roy roaming around, and he wonders if he’s staying in the guest room or if he’s downstairs sitting on the couch. Maybe he’s reading the folder of pamphlets Jamie threw on the coffee table earlier. He doesn’t get up and check, so he just lays there waiting for any sound to be made. Eventually, he turns off the lamp, shuts his eyes, and tries to sleep. He can’t, and it’s a blessing because that means when Roy starts his journey up the stairs, he hears it. Hears the door creak open too, a spill of light entering his room, and he fakes sleeping while Roy checks on him. Footsteps come further, must have to check if he’s breathing. The edge of his bed sinks, and Roy is sitting there. He doesn’t do anything but sit there. Jamie stays still and tries to even out his breathing, and soon enough Roy leaves without shutting the door. Leaves it cracked just like he did before. It makes Jamie irrationally angry, but he can’t get up and push it closed because Roy will notice. He just keeps his eyes squeezed closed and eventually falls asleep.