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The day we met I had been rude to you, standoffish and cold. Still, as the world came back into focus and the adrenaline faded you looked at me with the kind of warmth that had previously been unfounded in my life. You decreed, “You can have my back any day”.
Unconditional trust, you gave me that when even I could not give it to myself.
Now I have stood above your broken body and know I was never worthy of the trust you had in me. The back I promised to protect is shattered like my soul, unfixable and permanently, irrevocably deformed.
For you have to be alive to heal, and silence echoes in my chest since your last breath rattled out of yours. The blood in my body pumps, but my heart fell out of the sky tonight, plummeting and splattering on the tarmac. Like a palimpsest, while the cement has been washed I can still make out the outline of where your body had once laid.
~
Mornings used to be my favorite, knowing I got to see you. You granted me permission to worm my way into your routine, saving your toaster and Christophers taste buds. Eddie, I remember fondly the way you would ruffle his hair as he ate breakfast before making sure he put his lunch in his backpack.
Those domestic moments of our shared lives together will always be my favourite. I wish we had come to our senses sooner. I I wish we had made it our wedding day so I could see that lovely navy suit Chrisopher helped you pick out walking towards me down the aisle. Instead of waiting at the end of the aisle for me in a casket. I wish I had more of these moments to bundle together with duct tape and shove into my chest in a desperate attempt to resuscitate a pulse that is not my own.
~
Our My shifts seem to last longer. No one is there to double check my harness after Hen anymore. Sometimes I hope she missed something, that I may tumble to the ground after you, in a sort of poetically ironic way.
Everyone pretends like they're not staring at me, trying to make sure I’m okay. I see it in their eyes how lost they are. They miss you too. So many people loved you. I hope you know that.
Chris misses you.
I don’t know how to do this without you. The Will was supposed to be a safety net, a precaution. It never should have had to be used. I cook him dinner, we eat in silence. He won’t smile anymore. He blames himself that you were on your way to pick him up when the crash happened. I should have pushed harder when you said you were going to pick him up alone. We would have made the hours work.
If I wasn’t at work I wouldn’t have been on a call. Then I would have been able to pick up your call.
~
One week earlier…
“So Eddie’s halfway to El Paso by now, right?” Bobby inquired as the fire truck pulled away from the station.
Buck shakes his head, “Nah, his plane got delayed. He texted me a few minutes ago that take off would be happening soon.”
“I’m glad you guys finally decided to go get Chris, not to meddle or anything.”
“Don’t worry I am too. I’ve been missing our board games and Eddie’s been climbing the walls since he left. He blames himself that Chris saw him with Kim. I told him it was a bad idea to become friends with her.”
“Are you mad at him?”
“Never”, Buck says with a note of finality.
The truck approaches a residential street with cars parked up and down both sides. The fire hydrants are of course blocked by other vehicles, lucky this call doesn’t involve a fire. Some people would definitely be getting a ticket though.
A woman sits below a banner, upon it, the words “Happy 50th Cheryl!”. She’s grabbing her bleeding arm. The man to her left is grasping his shoulder, blood spouting out of it.
Bobby strides on up to them. “What happened here?”
With vitriol the women cries out “My fuck face of an ex-husband tried to cut my birthday cake before we had finished getting all the pictures!”
“Bitch, you’d been taking pictures for half an hour.”
As the dispute raged on, Bobby sent Buck to go get extra supplies from the ambulance. Buck felt his pocket vibrate, at first he assumed it was Eddie texting him to let him know that the plane was finally in the air, but then it kept ringing.
He was receiving a call.
He hoped it wasn't anything too serious, if it was both Eddie and Chrisopher knew they could call dispatch to forward a message of anything too bad. His phone stopped vibrating.
Then he got another call, he ignored it in favour of running back to where Hen and Chim were treating the patients with the supplies that they had asked for.
Moments later dispatch rang Bobby on the radio. “Status 118”.
“Nearly done, handing both patients off to the LAPD.”
“Report to the pier, a plane just went down in it.”
“Copy Dispatch, we’re on our way” Bobby clicks the radio off, “Looks like it’s going to be a long day guys, hustle up”.
~
After depositing a woman safely in the triage area Buck stands up to go search for more people in the water, but then his step stutters, he pauses.
On top of the red tarp indicating those with critical injuries he spots a familiar brunette, blood staining his shirt matching the colour of the tarp he lays upon. Buck tastes the phantom metallic flavour of that very same blood in his mouth as he realizes just whose unconscious body lay broken in front of him.
“Eddie”, Buck whispers like a desperate prayer hoping some way the love of his life will disappear from view, and instead be relocated to where he should be, on the farm in El Paso with Christopher.
Buck staggers forward on unsteady feet “EDDIE! EDDIE! NO NO Oh God!” With a burst Buck screams his name hoping Eddie will turn around and he will see those soulful brown eyes that he just parted with this morning.
As Buck falls to his knees above Eddie’s head, the only part accessible as paramedics work on getting him on a backboard, a hand clamps down on his shoulder. He turns screaming and crying into the embrace of the only man who ever truly acted as a father, pleading with some divine force that this all be a mistake.
“Breath Buck, Breath”, Bobby whispers into his ear, rocking both of them softly as he tries to sooth his eldest living son.
Gripping Bobby’s turn outs for support Buck tries to calm down, tries to process and rationalize the tragic situation between gasps for air, “He, oh god, he wasn’t supposed to be here, he was supposed to be in Texas already, safe. With Christopher, no no… what about Christopher, he already lost his mother, he can’t lose Eddie too.”
“I know, kiddo, shhhh, I know.” Bobby says, starting to crumble at Buck’s words as the reality of the situation starts sinking in.
As Eddie is lifted away to an ambulance leaving a grieving Buck in his wake, Buck jolts up in Bobby’s lap, eyes widening. “Bobby”, he says quietly voice shaking, as if his whole world has been turned upside down, which isn’t far from the truth, half his world just fell out of a fucking plane.
“He called when we were at the last scene, I thought he was safe. I didn’t pick up. He called and I didn’t pick up, I wasn’t there for him. He might die and in his last moments he was alone” Buck starts crying anew.
“He left a fucking voicemail mail as he was plumbing out of the fucking sky and I couldn’t bother to pick up and now the last words I may ever hear from him are from when I failed to be there for him.”
Bobby’s arms tighten around him, “Buck, listen to me.” He grabs Buck’s face forcing Buck to look at him, “You did not fail him, you couldn’t have known. You are not the reason the plane fell out of the sky. You cannot put that weight on your shoulder, you will fall apart. Christopher needs one of you in one piece, you can’t fall apart too, no matter how much you want to.”
~
Present time…
Buck felt like he was dying, but it was Eddie who had died. Last week, when the plane carrying him to go pick up Christopher crashed within the first 8 minutes of taking off. Statistically, that’s one of the times planes are most likely to come down, at the very beginning and at the very end. Knowing that doesn't cease the ever growing, deeping pit in Buck’s stomach as he tries to imaging a life without Eddie.
His phone lies like a brick in his pocket. A voicemail filled with anguish hidden in its wiring. He hasn’t been able to bring himself to listen to it yet. Listening to it won’t bring Eddie back. Nothing will.
~
Your last day on earth was my first day trapped in the blackhole that has become my life, devoid of light. So as I stand here giving your eulogy, I plead to you, my one true love, to forgive me for breaking our promise. I just want to have you back one last time.
Tears drip onto the crunkled pages as Bucks carved the words out of them, smearing on thick layers of lead as the tip cracked, leaving behind shards under the pressure. He kept trying to write but nothing felt right. Words lose their meaning when the people we want to hear them are no longer able to.