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Tommy hates hospitals. God, he hates hospitals. He hates the miles of cold, impersonal white tile; the terrible music you can’t escape from; the acrid stench of antiseptic that you can never get out of your clothes afterward, no matter how many times you do your laundry. He absolutely hates it.
He spent his childhood in and out of hospitals, mostly because his mom was in and out of hospitals. If not for her drinking habit—which eventually killed her—then for his dad’s quick-trigger temper and meaty, callused fists. Though Tommy himself had never landed in a hospital as a kid except for the occasional broken bone and an emergency appendectomy when he was eleven, he’d vowed to himself that he’d never go if he didn’t absolutely have to. Hospitals meant death, hospitals meant his parents, his mom having her stomach pumped or lying about why she had a fresh black eye, a yellowing bruise on her wrist, and spiral fractures that couldn’t have been caused by a fall down the stairs like she’d said.
Hospitals brought back all sorts of unwelcome memories and sensations. He’d rather be anywhere else than where he currently finds himself.
Tommy stands in the hospital waiting room, his phone clutched in lightly trembling fingers. His palms are slippery with sweat, and he wipes them on the bottom of his flannel.
He shouldn’t be here. He’s hardly talked to Howie or Hen since he left the 118 months ago; they’ve all been so busy, settling into their new lives, trying to put their pieces into new puzzles in the hopes they’ll finally fit right. Or, at least Tommy has. Howie and Hen made the 118 work to fit around them. Tommy knew, instinctively, that no matter how much the place had changed after Gerrard, the 118 had no room for him.
And yet, he’s here. At the hospital, standing in the lobby, staring down at the text on his phone.
It’s Howie, he’s been hurt real bad Tommy. You should be here.
Tommy scrolls up through an embarrassingly short text chain. The last message he’d sent Hen had been the day before his going-away party, half a year ago.
I’ll miss you guys. Thank you for everything. I mean it.
She hadn’t replied but she’d hearted the message.
Tommy sighs and stuffs his phone in his pocket. He probably won’t be permitted to see Howie, but it can’t hurt to try. He turns toward the receptionist’s desk and he’s about to go over and ask after his friend when the quiet tenor of the hospital lobby is shattered with the arrival of a hurricane in the form of a human being.
The guy is young, his eyes wide and haunted. He’s swaddled in an LAFD-issue hoodie, and Tommy assumes he must be from the 118, might even be Tommy’s replacement.
He settles next to Tommy at the receptionist’s desk and gives the woman a tired but charming smile. “Here to see Howard Han.”
The woman sighs and rolls her eyes. “Get in line, Buck,” she says, good-naturedly, tipping her head toward Tommy.
Tommy looks up, somewhat startled to be addressed. His eyes flicker to the logo on the guy’s—Buck’s—hoodie. “Uh. He’s with the 118. I’m just…”
Buck studies Tommy for a long moment, eyes flicking over his face and down, before snapping back up. “We can see him together, right Maia,” he says, turning back to the receptionist. Buck puts a hand on Tommy’s shoulder and squeezes. “He’s with me.”
Maia sighs as she digs in a drawer for visitor’s passes. “Return these when you’re done,” she says, sliding them across the countertop.
Tommy takes one of the passes and clips it to the pocket on his shirt. “Thanks, Maia.”
The woman waves her hands dismissively at the two of them and Buck takes Tommy by the elbow. Tommy lets himself be steered away from the front desk, toward a flotilla of hard plastic chairs.
“Sorry about that,” Buck says, completely remorseless. The corners of his mouth tilt up in the implication of a smile. “I’m Evan Buckley. You must be…”
“Tommy. Tommy Kinard,” he says. Buck—Evan—still hasn’t pulled his hand away from Tommy’s elbow. “Are you the guy they brought in to replace me?”
“Oh, you were with the 118?” Evan’s eyes—bright blue, Tommy realizes, now that he’s up close and personal with the guy—light up. “I thought you looked familiar. Chim was showing me some pictures of a firehouse party a few months back and I guess the guy in them that I didn’t recognize must’ve been you.”
“Yeah, probably,” Tommy says, sobering at the mention of Howie—Chim now, apparently. “He’s gonna be okay.”
“Yeah,” Evan agrees, finally letting Tommy’s elbow go. “He’s a fighter. He—he’ll be just fine.”
Tommy sighs, glancing down the hall toward where he knows Howie’s room is. “I’d really like to see him.”
“We can go together,” Evan offers.
“Yeah. I think I’d like that,” Tommy says.
It’s probably not a good time to mention his thing about hospitals, not to someone who’s essentially a complete stranger. It’s funny though, it’s only been a few minutes but Evan doesn’t really feel like a stranger at all. Tommy supposes it’s the built-in camaraderie that exists within the fraternity of firefighters, and the fact they’d both worked at the 118, had people in common.
The two of them head down the hall together for Howie’s room.
Howie looks so small and pale in that hospital bed, that it takes Tommy straight back to his childhood. To his mom, resting on mounds of fluffy white pillows like an enchanted princess who’d been cursed into eternal sleep by a witch. He remembers trying to climb into the bed with her once, to give her a ‘true love’s kiss’ to wake her up, remembers his dad nearly wrenching his shoulder out of the socket pulling him out of the bed, hurling sharp words at him like stones as he dragged him off by the arm.
Tommy lingers in the doorway while Evan drags a chair over to the side of Howie’s bed. He wants to join him, but something keeps him lingering against the doorframe. It doesn’t feel like his place anymore, like he gave up the right to hold vigil at Howie’s bedside when he left the 118 behind.
“You can sit with me if you want,” Evan says, softly, like he can read the thoughts bouncing around in Tommy’s mind. “I think he’d like that.”
Tommy pushes away from the doorframe and steps into the room, though he doesn’t come any closer to Evan or Howie’s hospital bed. “I—I don’t know. I feel like… like I shouldn’t be here.”
“Why not?” Evan asks, turning to look back at him over his shoulder.
“Like I’m intruding,” Tommy says, dropping his eyes from Howie’s sallow face. “I haven’t really been a very good friend. Kinda stopped returning his calls after a little while.” He adds, with a little more conviction: “I shouldn’t be here.”
Evan gets up from his chair and Tommy wonders for a moment if he’s going to be pushed out of the room and into the hall.
Instead of a harsh hand or even a fist, Evan’s fingers close in the sleeve of his shirt and tug gently.
“So you lost contact,” he says, pulling on Tommy’s sleeve like an impatient kid. “Make it up to him. Here’s your chance to reconnect.”
Tommy glances up, forces himself to meet Evan’s sky-blue eyes. “Howie was a better friend to me than I ever deserved,” he says, and why is he telling a virtual stranger all—any—of this.
“You still came. You heard what happened and you came anyway,” Evan says, moving his fingers to enclose around Tommy’s wrist. The warmth bleeds through the sleeve of his shirt and into his skin. “It’s been, what, months? And you still came. That has to mean something.”
Tommy looks over Evan’s shoulder at Howie again. He sighs. “You think he’d be happy to see me?”
Evan glances over at Howie too. “He hasn’t had it easy the last few weeks,” he says, turning back to Tommy. “His girlfriend kinda left him high and dry. She won’t even come to the hospital to see him. And he’s been… I dunno, I think it’d help him to see an old friend.”
Tommy sighs, and he feels his last line of defense start to wilt in the face of Evan’s fierce determination to apparently help Tommy rebuild some of those bridges he’d burnt after he left the firehouse. “I—I’ll stay,” he says.
Evan turns his bright, beaming smile on Tommy and, for just a moment, Tommy feels like he’s done something right. Like he’s scored a passing grade on a test he hadn’t even been aware he was taking. Evan lets go of Tommy’s arm to nudge him closer to Howie’s bedside.
“I’ll just be out in the hall then,” Evan says. He quickly adds, “To give you some privacy,” when Tommy balks at that.
Tommy feels Evan’s hand plant firmly on his back and he lets himself be pushed toward the bed.
He sits in the empty chair by Howie’s side and scoots it a little closer, the metal legs scraping across tile. If anything was going to wake Howie up, Tommy thinks it would’ve been that. He hardly moves, except for the shallow rising and falling of his chest as he breathes.
“Hey, man,” he says, reaching out and fiddling with a fraying thread in the thin blanket that’s been pulled up Howie’s chest and tucked under his armpits. “Bet you thought you’d seen the last of me at that going-away party, huh? Unfortunately for you, Hen didn’t delete my contact out of her phone. So you’re stuck with me.”
He hears Evan muffle a noise by the doorway—a noise that sounds suspiciously like a laugh. Despite the sudden urge, Tommy does not let himself pull his attention away from Howie and turn around to look.
“I—I should’ve returned your calls,” Tommy says, dropping his voice to a near whisper. “I think I thought it’d be easier to move on if I let the 118 go. Let you go. I shouldn’t’ve done that. But I’m here now, man. I’m not leaving.”
Tommy sits back and crosses his arms over his chest, feeling oddly vulnerable, exposed, like a raw nerve. He can feel Evan still lingering in the doorway, eyes burning into the back of his head.
Finally, Evan quietly clears his throat and says, “Hey, Tommy?”
“Yeah?” Tommy turns to look at Evan over his shoulder.
Evan rubs his palms back and forth across the bottom of his hoodie and flashes him a twitchy smile. If Tommy didn’t know any better, he’d think he was making Evan nervous or something. “You wanna grab a coffee with me downstairs?”
Tommy glances briefly over at the hospital bed before reaching out and bumping his fist against the back of Howie’s slack hand. “Sure. Not like he’s going anywhere anytime soon.”
Evan chokes out a startled laugh, hand flying up to his mouth too late to hold it back. “Morbid,” he says.
Tommy shrugs and levers himself up out of the chair. “Not the first time I’ve heard that,” he says, joining Evan by the doorway.
Standing just out of arm’s reach of this virtual stranger—who quite likely took Tommy’s vacant spot at the 118—he can see two large rosy splotches over his left eye, with a tiny smattering of smaller dots peppering the pale skin under his eyebrow. Evan’s eyes track the path of Tommy’s gaze and he lets out a soft, resigned huff when he realizes what’s caught his attention.
“It’s not a scar,” Evan says, waggling his fingers at his eye, “or eye herpes. Birthmark, actually.”
“Oh. Sorry, I didn’t mean to stare,” Tommy says, dropping his gaze. His eyes skim over Evan’s full bottom lip before redirecting to the neutral territory of his left shoulder.
“It’s okay,” Evan says, lowering his hand. “You wouldn’t be the first and you won’t be the last.”
“So,” Tommy says. “Coffee?”
“Coffee,” Evan agrees.
The two of them slip out of the small hospital room and spill out into the hallway. Henrietta Wilson is sitting on a bench outside Howie’s room, propped against the wall, thumbs flying over her phone.
“Hen!” Evan greets her with a big bear hug, face squishing against her cheek.
Tommy hangs back, his heart aching in his chest at the display. He and Hen had become closer in the months leading up to his departure, but a part of Tommy can’t help but wonder if they could have become genuine friends had he stayed. Maybe Tommy would be the one in this hallway wrangling Hen into a bear hug and lifting her off the tiled floor and this Evan would be feeling like he doesn’t fit in this family portrait.
Evan steps away from her and Hen turns her attention to Tommy. He watches her face transform from an expression of fondness to one of shock as she fully takes him in.
“Tommy, what a surprise,” she says, reaching out for his hand and catching it before he can decide to shake or go for a hug like Evan had. “I—I didn’t think you still kept in contact with anyone from the 118.”
“I don’t,” Tommy admits, sheepishly, squeezing lightly on her fingers. “I should have. Um, I’m sorry for just showing up like this but I—I had to see him.”
Tommy thinks his face must be doing things because Hen’s expression softens into one of sympathy, a thin line creasing between her brows.
“It’ll take time, but he should be okay,” she says, finally slipping her hand away. “I spoke with one of the doctors and there were some minor complications, but he made it through surgery okay.”
Tommy takes a deep breath into his lungs, holds it for one beat, then two, and lets it go. It was something his mom had taught him when he was a kid, when Dad was pissed—and when wasn’t his dad pissed—and he’d gotten scared and panicky and it felt like there was a band wrapped tight around his chest.
“When it feels like the world’s coming down on you, take a breath and hold it in here,” his mom would say, putting a hand over his chest, patting gently. “Imagine it’s Dad. Or those shitty rich kids that’re always picking on you. Your grades. This fucking house. And let it go on the next breath. And then do it again.”
He would close his eyes and do what she told him—and still does, and it helps even now. Even with Howie laid up in his hospital bed, still unconscious, gauze wound tight around his head like he’s Frankenstein’s monster.
When he opens his eyes, he finds Evan in watching him, a curious tilt to the corners of his mouth. Hen’s taken up vigil at Howie’s bedside and her head is bent toward him, one of his hands clasped between both of hers.
“You okay?” Evan asks, leaning close and nudging Tommy in the shoulder.
Tommy feels his cheeks flare with heat. “I’m good. Sorry. Kind of checked out for a sec there.”
“Nothing to be embarrassed about,” Evan says, offering up a shy smile, his eyelashes fluttering.
Tommy swallows, his mouth having gone suddenly dry. What the fuck is wrong with him? One of his oldest friends is lying in a hospital bed, still unconscious, and his mind is snagging on this kid’s sweet smile? His dad’s harsh voice, slurred with drink, tries to barge into his thoughts to shame and berate him.
Evan tilts his head, eyes narrowing, and Tommy feels like a prey animal caught in a hunter’s sights. It’s an absurd thought—he hardly knows this kid but he’s certain that he’s decent, that he’s a good person—but he feels like Evan is studying him. Like he’s seen something in Tommy that he hadn’t expected and he’s trying to parse it.
“Visiting hours are ending, might have to take a raincheck on the coffee,” Evan says, after a few more torturous seconds of Tommy’s internal blundering. He shoves his hands in his pants pockets and rocks back on his heels. “You wanna go grab a beer instead?”
Tommy feels like he’s been struck in the head by a piece of falling debris. Hurricane Evan, he thinks, allowing a wry smile to briefly curl the corners of his lips. “Are you asking me out on a date,” is what comes out of his mouth instead of—well, anything else.
His dad’s voice sneers at the back of his mind. It’s almost a comfort.
Evan’s eyes widen in surprise, but—oddly, Tommy thinks—he doesn’t seem upset by the implications. If anything, he seems intrigued, his blue eyes sparking with interest that he quickly tamps down.
“Sorry,” Tommy jumps in before Evan can find his bearings to come up with a response. “I didn’t mean to suggest you—that you’re—”
“No, no, it’s cool…?” Evan pauses, furrowing his brow, as if he hadn’t expected those words to come out of his mouth. He flicks his eyes back over Tommy’s face, his gaze settling on his lips for the quickest of moments before darting back up. “Uh, yeah. We can do that. If you want.”
Now it’s Tommy’s turn to be confused, because is this a date? Did he just talk this guy he barely knows—and that’s being generous—into asking him out on an actual date?
Tommy winces at himself and offers Evan an out he’s probably in need of right about now. “Are you absolutely sure?”
Evan pulls his hands out of his pockets to start rubbing them anxiously on his thighs. “Y—yeah. I’m absolutely sure that I wanna get that beer with you,” he stammers, the apples of his cheeks flushing prettily—and Jesus Christ, Kinard, get it together. “And, uh. Maybe we can get to know each other a little bit. You were with the 118 before, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Tommy says, sounding a little embarrassingly breathless to his own ears.
“You’ll have to fill me in on what it was like,” Evan says. “Like, before Bobby—I mean, Captain Nash, and stuff.”
“Okay,” Tommy says. His ears are ringing and his head is full of bees.
He looks at Evan, looks into his eyes, and wonders if Evan feels anything close to what Tommy does right now, or if storming into newly out firefighters’ lives like a category five storm and rattling them down to their foundations is a common occurrence for him.
Evan shuffles closer, his sneakers squeaking across the tile. He bumps his shoulder lightly into Tommy’s. Tommy looks over and meets his eyes, and something passes between them. He’s not sure what, he only knows that whatever it is—whatever’s going on between them, whatever’s happening right now, whether it leads to friendship or more—feels good. And that’s not something Tommy’s familiar with. Good things just don’t happen to people like Tommy.
But he’s pretty sure Evan is a good thing. And he thinks, as they walk out of the hospital together, shoulders grazing, squinting into the sun, that maybe his luck is finally starting to turn.