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A high-pitched ring was stuck in Eddie’s head. At first, he thought it was tinnitus or an alarm going off. He was deep in the too-soft pillow on his too-hard bed, and he couldn’t shake the noise so he gave up trying after an hour or so.
He was exhausted but couldn’t sleep with the ringing in his ears. He already checked the doors and windows. The fridge was humming quietly in the dark of his kitchen. His phone lay silently on his bedside table.
His kid was fast asleep two rooms down, and the last time Eddie checked on him, it was quiet save for soft breathing.
Eddie sat on the end of his bed and stared at the wall. If he tried hard enough he could still see the outline of the holes they filled from when he didn’t know he could ask for help.
It was starting to make his head hurt. It wasn’t like a bell or phone, it was stretched out and pitched on one tone. It reminded him of a scary movie; tension from a string instrument holding a high note under the psychopath monologuing his master plan.
It didn’t make any sense why a noise like that would haunt him. He wasn’t even sure when it started. With everything that happened, the noise got buried under stress, fear, and anxiety.
Eddie ran a hand over his weary face. He felt like he hadn’t gotten a good night's sleep in months. He knew that wasn’t the case because he slept just fine until six days ago.
The only thing that changed was last week his best friend wasn’t fighting for his life in a coma, and this week he was.
The noise vibrated around his skull and worsened when he dug his palms into his eyes. If he pressed hard enough he saw stars and could pretend nothing existed outside his bedroom.
The past six days had been some of the most stressful in his life, and he had been to war. He kept waiting, eyeing his phone for when it would light up with a call. A call that would tell him Buck was gone.
They’d all been through so much, but it was like the universe had it out for Evan Buckley. The lucky bastard survived a bombing, a crush injury, a pulmonary embolism, a tsunami, and a childhood filled with neglect. The very last thing he needed was to be struck by lightning, but here they were.
Buck was gone. He left the team, left his family, and left Eddie for three whole minutes.
Three minutes and seventeen seconds. His mind unhelpfully reminded him. He would never forget how long Buck’s heart stopped. He couldn’t. His hands still ached with the pressure it took to do compressions. He could still feel two of Buck’s ribs snapping under his weight.
Eddie shook his head, trying to dislodge the memory. They were firefighters, they risked their lives every day and sometimes didn’t come back in the end. Eddie knew that, but that didn’t make his throat hurt any less. That didn’t make his heart pound any softer, or stop the ringing in his ears.
Eddie grabbed his phone and sank back onto his bed. He stared at the dark ceiling and tried to remember the last time they were all happy. It was like playing a game he couldn’t win. The family that all but adopted him and his son were always teetering on the edge of disaster.
Eddie rolled onto his side and studied his phone’s dark screen. What would he do? What would he actually do if Maddie or Bobby or someone called and said Buck was gone?
It was always there in the back of his mind that they were actually pretty lucky. Eddie survived a sniper, being buried alive, and Afghanistan. Buck survived a million things that should have taken him from them in the blink of an eye. There was some kind of hubris that Eddie clung to because so far, he never had to wait for that call.
The ringing got louder, drowning everything out. Eddie clenched his eyes tightly and cradled the phone in his hand. Coming home to Christopher was the only reason he wasn’t at the hospital, sitting at Buck’s side, waiting for them to take him off the ventilator.
When they wheeled the stretcher into the ER with Buck laid out like a sacrifice, Eddie didn’t think he would ever see him again. He would never hear his laugh again. He would never get to hug him again. He would never get to tell him how he felt.
It’s not that he couldn’t live without Buck, it’s that he didn’t want to. Buck was his other half. He was the soulmate he thought he found in Shannon. Buck loved his kid like no one ever had, and Eddie loved him for that.
Eddie loved him for everything, and now he would never get to say it.
At some point, Eddie fell asleep, the ringing lulling him into a nightmare where he was too late, and Buck was already gone.
Eddie woke to the ringing still echoing in his ears. It took his subconscious playing the sound like a broken record for him to remember what it was. The cardiac monitor that told them Buck was down for three minutes and seventeen seconds was in every scene of his nightmare.
It taunted him in the cramped ambulance. It mocked them with beeping and ringing for believing they could save their friend. He couldn’t stop the ringing because that would mean Buck was truly gone. They just needed one beep to let them know he was back.
Eddie woke up with tears falling down his cheeks. He groggily rolled onto his back to the light streaming in the window. For a second he didn’t want to be awake. He couldn’t take another day of not knowing.
Nothing prepared you for losing one of the most important people in your life. Eddie thought they would have more time, but what if he’d already run out?
He sighed when he sat up, having not even made it under his covers before falling into a fitful sleep the night before. He woke up before his alarm and was kind of afraid of his phone. He knew if someone called he would hear it, but at that moment Buck was Schrödinger’s cat.
He wasn’t there with them, but he also wasn’t gone. Eddie didn’t know how long he could live like that. Seeing Chris gently talk to the man who had become like a second father to him, broke Eddie’s heart in ways he didn’t know existed.
The sound of the monitor flatlining followed him through his morning routine. It followed him as he made breakfast and woke Chris up for the day. It followed him like a ghost and reminded him of how he failed.
Eddie stood at the coffee pot, a more familiar place the longer he went without substantial sleep. He stared at the black liquid swirling like a miniature hurricane. The ringing got so loud he was afraid other people could hear it. He glanced back at Chris who listlessly played with his cereal.
Why did it feel like the whole world was stopping before their eyes? Maybe because it was.
“Dad?” Chris said, his floppy, brown hair covering his eyes. Eddie looked at him and his heart skipped a beat. Eddie’s phone rang passively in his hand with Bobby’s contact lighting up the screen. “Your phone’s ringing.”
Eddie hesitated, thinking about a cat that was dead and alive at the same time. Was he ready to find out if his world would keep spinning?
He pulled the phone close, noticing the ringing in his head getting louder, the sound amplifying as he accepted the call.
“Eddie!” Bobby didn’t sound like he was seconds from falling off the wagon. Eddie knew how destroyed the older man would be if Buck didn’t make it. “He’s breathing on his own.”
Eddie sobbed, tears immediately springing to his eyes. He looked at Chris who watched his Dad to see if everything would be alright. Eddie hugged his son, burying his face in that messy hair.
He couldn’t tell if he was crying or laughing, but it didn’t matter because his world was still spinning, and the cat was alive. They still had a long way to go, Buck wasn’t out of the woods yet, but he was still there.
Eddie hadn’t run out of time after all.
They got dressed and left for the hospital because Buck could wake up at any moment. Eddie wouldn’t notice until later when he and Buck were finally alone. He wouldn’t notice until he could hold Buck’s hand and ensure his pulse was still strong under his fingertips.
He wouldn’t notice that the ringing stopped because he hadn’t failed, Buck was alive. Eddie would never forget those three minutes and seventeen seconds because they reminded him how lucky they were to have found each other. They still had all the time in the world.
-fin-